Dinner at Björn's

A few weeks ago, we had dinner at Björn's. Björn is from Swabia, the southwestern region of Germany, so for dinner we had traditional Swabian food: sauerbraten, a large piece of meat marinated for several days in vinegar, wine, broth, juniper cones and cloves, then roasted for several hours. David was very excited about this. It was accompanied by spätzle or egg noddles, my favorite. The noodles were made from scratch - here's Reni, stirring (and stirring and stirring):

Erich then hand pressed the noodles into boiling water. We were told that this method was actually cheating - true traditional spätzle is made by cutting the individual noodles on a board with a knife. (The only spätzle we've cooked for ourselves was premade from a package from the supermarket, I guess that's really cheating.)

Our contribution to the meal? A big salad, a blueberry pie and chocolate chips cookies - pretty American of us.

While we were waiting for the roast to cook, Gwendolyn entertained Björn's kids or vice versa. She discussed the major themes of children's literature with Flora.

And convinced Sarah that even if you only have two teeth, you still have a pretty good bite.

Luckily, Sarah took this with great poise. We were sad to miss Björn's wife, Maja, who was out of town.

David was there, of course, but he was taking all the pictures. You may note his empty chair at the far end of the table--with a large piece of sauerbraten and a tall weissbier. It was quite an act of willpower for him to get up to take this photo before digging in. The final verdict? Delicious!