coming home to the countryside

 What a joy to be back in the countryside! Fresh air, birds singing, a haze of green creeping over the hills and fields. So many little things to discover, like that fat, sleepy toad in the second photo. Wild garlic greens to harvest. Planks of wood used as tiny bridges over laughing creeks. I am so happy to be home!

The trip to Frankfurt to write and record a commercial jingle went well; I was working with an old friend, and we always have so many things to talk and laugh about. But my favorite part, big surprise, was when he whipped us up a delicious bowl of Frankfurter Grüne Sosse, which is a regional specialty and probably the one thing I miss about living in Frankfurt. Frankfurt Green Sauce is made from hard-boiled eggs, oil, vinegar, salt, and generous amount of seven fresh herbs, namely borage, sorrel, cress, chervil, chives, parsley, and salad burnet. In more frugal times, daisy leaves, broad plaintain leaves, and dandelion leaves were also used. Cooked complete eggs are used together with sour cream or quark as a creamy base. Some variations use buttermilk, yogurt, or cream. The sauce is served at room temperature with peeled boiled waxy potatoes and hard boiled eggs. The greens mixture, which Frankfurters are very particular about (compare it to how southerners feel about gumbo ingredients), is sold wrapped in rolls of pretty paper packaging, where it is kept moist and fresh.

Here are two photos I found so you have a better idea what it looks like:

 

 It has the most delicious fresh flavor and I hope to make it myself one of these spring days and then share the recipe with you!

As fun as it was to visit my friend and be in the studio again (I haven't recorded in years), I am overjoyed to be back here in my humble home, with my husband and our sweet little Kiki. 
When the plane took off from Vienna to Frankfurt on Friday, I watched the landscape go by like I always do...I love seeing the clusters of houses, the glistening lakes and ponds, and especially the stretches of forest. Eventually, about five minutes into the flight, I recognized our town...and then the hill and fields I walk on every day! I saw the little cemetary with the bordering evergreen farm, and the meadow with the birch and the oak. As we soared over them, I felt I was looking at my life from above, and almost expected to see myself and Kiki, miniscule in the expanse of land, making our way along the tawny fields. It was a strange and exhilerating feeling, and I was overcome with a deep love for my life, and for my home, and my little family. It was a true gift to see it all, so small and yet so meaningful, from way up high, as God and the angels must see it. 
Home! Wonderful home!
It's so good to be back.


xoxo country girl