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Garden Envy

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Often in the train I look out and admire the many vegetable gardens that can be seen along the tracks. Recently I had some garden envy when I saw the setup below:It’s a work of art! Look at all of those beautiful types of plants organized and sectioned off from one another. Each type of plant has the tools it needs like stakes to grow strong and produce fruit or vegetables.

Vegetable gardening is tough and while I am still a complete newbie, I have learned a lot and love to keep on learning more each year as I try out different things. But when i see a garden like this, I am so impressed by all of the knowledge and planning that went in to get it to this stage. This person knows what they are doing!

Tell me I’m not the only one jealous of other people’s veggie gardens. I would love to have this in my someday backyard!

America, Food

American Goodies

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Whenever friends or family from the US want to give Kay or me gifts, I often find myself asking for a care package instead of anything else. Shipping to Switzerland is so expensive, so I really appreciate how much it costs to send some of our favourite American staples by post.

Most of these items are either not available to buy here or are extremely overpriced, like $8.50 for 200g/0.44lb of brown sugar. No thanks! Other things like shredded coconut are almost impossible to find and local suggestions to buy the dry, powdered, ultra-fine shredded coconut are not appreciated.

But what a joy to open a box like this! My good friend paid $78 to ship all these treasures to Kay and me.So what are my favourite things to ask for in a care package?

  • Brown sugar. The real kind, not the “Braun Zucker” kind here, which is not really brown sugar at all, but brown-colored cane sugar.
  • Imitation and real vanilla oil, because often you only find real vanilla beans or an expensive vanilla paste here. I know I could make my own using the vodka method now, but coming by a lot of vanilla beans is still expensive.
  • American baking powder. It’s just stronger and better in all ways.
  • Baking soda. Like Swiss baking powder, Swiss baking soda only comes in these absurd little individual packets with about a teaspoon inside. This is helpful to… Swiss bakers baking Swiss baked goods. That’s about it. And so much waste with all the packaging for these little packets!
  • Shredded coconut. Because for whatever reason, you can either find some very expensive fresh chunks of coconut here, chopped up into chunks that makes it impossible to shred, or you find a bag of dry, more-dry-than-you-think-is-possible coconut that has almost no flavor and a terrible sandpaper texture. Kay and I love stockpiling on sweetened coconut and then adding it to Brazilian tapioca.
  • Real and imitation maple syrup. I prefer the fake stuff for pancakes because the thicker consistency sits on top of my pancakes instead of making them soggy. Kay prefers the real stuff and we use real maple syrup in cooking often. I even add it to smoothies in an attempt to sweeten things like buckwheat oats without using refined sugar.
  • Canned black beans. Now, this one is a bit of a splurge. We can buy dried black beans here easily, but I’m really too lazy to make them sometimes. If you are making a salsa recipe in the summer, sometimes you just want to open a can of beans instead of spending 3 hours cooking dried ones. Kidney beans are available everywhere in abundance in Switzerland and make a poor substitute for black beans. You can buy canned black beans from the Mexican grocery shop, but they cost like 5CHF a can, so I just don’t do it.

There are a few other spices that we cannot find anywhere here, but we don’t use them that often, so I either sub them out in recipes or we pick them up on travels.

I feel a little ashamed that my list is mostly sugary items or items used in baking, but to be fair, we don’t use them that often, so if we stock up once a year it usually lasts us the whole year.

If you moved away from home, do you miss any food or bring back certain items with you?

Switzerland

Sport Climbing Course 2

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After an exhausting week, I was not at all looking forward to our climbing course on the weekend; I actually wanted to stay home and sleep. The weather forecast was not promising, but after Kay checked on Friday evening, we were told chances were 50/50, so we still had to prepare the climbing gear. Sigh.

The next day, Kay got up at 5:55am to call and check if the course was on before our 6:30am train to get to Solothurn on time for the 8am course. I was not a happy girl when Kay came back to bed to tell me the course was on and it was time to get up. I was a grumpy, grumpy, tired Katie. But we got ready, caught the train, and arrived at Bergsport Bordogna in Solothurn just in time.I was still not in the greatest mood as we drove to Farnern. It was 9C/48F and COLD. I did not bring enough clothes for it to be this cold. I was not really a happy camper as we started our first ascent. But, by the time we climbed all the way up and were taught in Schwiizerdütsch how to abseil down, the sun was shining some and it had warmed up to a brisk 13C/55F. It was at least warm enough that I could feel my fingers on the rock again.

And look at me there, abseiling down like a rock star. I was terrified to do it by myself the first time, but it was quite fun!

As this is considered “sport climbing” in English, where the route is set up beforehand with anchored bolts, Kay and I would climb up in turns using express quickdraws while belaying each other as the other person climbed.

It’s always a little confusing for me to explain it in English because I am learning the climbing terms directly in German and they are not words I am familiar with in English. Everything in the climbing world is new to me and because our courses are in German, I am actually more comfortable giving all the climbing commands and information to Kay in German.

We climbed two multi-pitch routes. Since I was feeling a bit more nervous, I usually had Kay do the lead climbing and I trailed behind picking up the quickdraws on the way up.

There was one route that was hard to make ground for the mid-point and I didn’t want to climb past him and keep going up, so we switched mid-route and I had him continue. I’m glad, because just after the grounding area was a very tricky part and I completely lost my footing and fell, which always scares the bejeezus out of me, but it was right by an express, so I didn’t have anywhere to fall and did not hurt anything more than my nails.

They say with climbing that in order to progress, you need to push yourself to your limit and that falling means you have pushed yourself to that limit and that you will learn from it. So while it is scary to slip, it means that I am trying hard to become better at climbing.

Below is Kay starting his descent and some of the group waiting at the bottom.

It was our first time using our new climbing shoes on real rock outside, so that was nice, but a little tight after awhile.

My mood improved a lot over the day and while I had some, “Oh shit, what am I doing here?!” moments on the rock, I was happy that I went and proud with what I accomplished.

We have our own shoes, belts, rope, and helmets; now all we need is our own express set, belaying device and break, some locking carabiners, and a belay station sling so we can start climbing any preexisting route, which we have plenty of in this country.

I still really recommend the climbing courses through Bergsport Bordogna because they are great value for a whole day of climbing. For beginners, you pay just 90CHF and the course is from 8am-5pm and includes all your gear. You would easily pay 300CHF for the same service in a climbing hall and would probably learn less.

For course level 2, we paid 110CHF and they provided all the gear we did not have ourselves yet. It’s not often you find an all day activity like this in Switzerland for so cheap!

This is the rock formation we climbed up to from the parking area.

It’s always insanely beautiful in the countryside. There’s also something really calming about being in the wilderness with only the sound of the cowbells jingling in the background.

So now Kay is buying the rest of these items for us so we can go climbing outdoors. Our only problem is transportation, as most of these routes are very faraway from public transportation and we just have Kay’s motorbike. We are looking into buying a pacsafe bag so that we could lock up the bike gear to the bike and avoid schlepping it up the mountain with us.

Health

Weekly Workout Plans

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My daily workout plan has changed a fair amount since my local gym changed their hours to open early on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. In the end, it is easier to get ready in the morning at home rather than the gym. I don’t have to worry about packing my lunch in a cooler or wondering if I missed a key piece of my wardrobe for the day.

2014: Before the gym times changed, I was headed to Zurich every morning. Monday was spin class, so I did strength training on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and on Wednesdays and Fridays I generally did my running. But if I wanted to, I could mix it up depending on how I was feeling and do running, elliptical, or whatever I felt like any day. The gym was always “there” for me.

2015: Since January, my local gym’s early opening on some days throws my schedule off. They don’t offer morning courses yet, so Monday spinning is gone. I also decided to switch to strength training on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays so that in the spring/summer I could stop running at the treadmill in the Zurich gym and start running outside, spending all my time in my hometown.

I do love getting ready at home every morning with Kay, but sometimes I miss my spin class and if it’s bad weather on Tuesday or Thursday, I don’t want to run in the rain! And it rains quite often here…

But after a year of working out, my workouts still look pretty comparable:

Strength training:I used to have a slower start up running in Zurich, but now I just jog to my gym and then spend the last 15 minutes doing different stretches and core exercises. My heart rate tends to bounce around a lot during weight training.

Spinning:My heart rate also always changes a lot during spinning, but generally it’s a lot higher overall than weight training. I have missed the good cardio workout from spinning, so I am trying to incorporate it into my schedule on Mondays again.

Running:

My running is also changing a bit as I start branching out to the real world. Running outside is a bit scary for someone who started on the treadmill. There’s so much going on! It’s definitely easier to push myself harder on a treadmill and know what I am doing, but I am enjoying getting used to running outside and Kay and I have finally been able to go on a run together.

Generally, on the treadmill my heart rate takes a constant climb:

Whereas outside, my heart rate bounces up and down a bit on hills and elevation changes:

Sometimes five days does not seem like enough time to do all my sports. Only two days for running, two days for strength training and one day for spinning. I would love to see the results from three days a week strength training, five times a week running, and two days of biking, but I’m sticking to my 5X a week gym routine, so that’s not happening. 😉

What is your gym schedule like? How do you like to mix things up?

 

Life

Happy birthday to me.

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After graduating university at 20 and emigrating to Switzerland to enter the workforce, my twenties have seemed fairly long; In my time here I have worked, saved, traveled, gotten married to Kay (twice), and bought a house together with him. He might be out of his twenties already, but I still have a couple years left to enjoy!

Sometimes, having done so much, I forget that I am still fairly young. My mother reminds me that I have always been precocious and loved doing things earlier than I “should”, but I am turning 28 and still have two solid years of my twenties left to enjoy before I reach the golden thirties.

So what would I like to accomplish before my 29th birthday next year? Well, I have some goals:

  • Health:
    • Push my fitness goals, get stronger, build endurance
    • Flexibility: Continue to stretch and push further
    • Diet: Less caffeine/sugar/alcohol, more greens
  • Travel:
    • Visit more cities and countries
    • See more of Switzerland, especially the mountains. Spend more nights in the Alps
  • Design:
    • Push to inspire myself as a designer and learn more
    • Paint and draw more. I never do it anymore!
    • Sewing: I had better have finished all our curtains a year from now!!

Do you set yourself any goals at your birthday? Or are you more of a New-Year-Resolution type person?