Food is always an important subject in this partnership! And Italian Food is extremely nice.

Here you can see the Czech Team visiting IAL Piemonte in Asti. It was June 2010 - nice and warm but not hot - so can you imagine a better time for traveling  and meeting interesting people from the Partnership?

Apart from food there are also other issues on the agenda. Talking about the challenges of teaching in Asti and in Znojmo, sharing ideas and learning from each other.

Sightseeing in Asti is a MUST of course. Dagmar and Simona enjoyed the Cathedral with its red bricks.

 

Only a few days later in July the Viennes Team visited Znojmo. This time we had a lot of work to do. Talking about evaluation, putting together further material for the website and discussing how to work on the final report. 

 

Grundtvig is very present in the Profit office!

 

Very ancient looking, isn’ it? We visited a very stocked shop with household goods. Now we can start again with cooking and . . . new projects??

This is the spicy section of the Viennese Stories: I was glad to show the best place to buy spices to  Dagmar, Dita, Bozena and Simona when they came to Vienna for a vistit and meeting.

You can find here lots of different spices, all in top quality. Imagine, there are 16 different types of pepper! Besides that, one can find the best selection of cook books at Babettes and the owner, Nathalie Pernstich, is really an expert in these two fields - Spice and Books for Cooks.

What they also offer in this beautiful shop in the City of Vienna is - Food!

You can taste some of the spices while having tasty homemade curries.

As soon as you enter the shop, you are overwhelmed by the flavour of the spices beeing just roasted and grind in the shop itself.

But this was only one part of our meeting work. Here we have a look at the Learning Kitchen Website in my office, which is not far away from Babettes.

Have we discussed all issues now? Yes, I think so. We can enjoy our coffee and make plans for my visit in Znojmo.

 

 

There is another story taking place outside from Vienna, but still belonging to this compilation of Viennese stories. On our second day, we visited the Wachau, a beautiful and well-known region along the Danube, famous for the landscape as well as the wine and the apricots.

Can you guess, where we are? This is Dürnstein, an ancient town in the Wachau.

Eni in Dürnstein, looking for blue sky and a little bit of sun!

Instead of blue sky we enjoyed dinner at a famous traditional restaurant.

They served us traditional Austrian Food: Grammelschmarrn, Topfenhaluschka and Blunzn - as a starter.

Kalbsbeuschl with Dumpling

Tafelspitz (cooked beef) with vegetable and potatoes.

This is Pike again, Pike dumplings to be precise. You remember we have prepared two different dishes with that fish during our workshop. It was interesting to compare!

Ready for a walk!

 

We crossed the Danube with a fairy boat and went for a walk in the Apricot Gardens, always looking for the blue sky. 

Until we found it!!

 

 

Looks good, doesn’it? This was the result of an interesting process going on during our cooking event. Apple Strudel is a real Austrian Speciality and if you by the dough it is not at all difficult to make.

But this was of course no option for the Learning Kitchen chefs.

So here you can see Edith respectively her hands making the dough.

Sissi is cutting the apples in the meantime. She likes to do it just simply with a knife. You should have seen her cutting - like a real chef!

Here the two specialists start to stretch the dough.

It is important to make it so thin, that you can read a newspaper put under it.

The dough is allready buttered (with melted butter) and Edith is putting the sweet breadcrumbs and roasted minced nuts on top.

Here with the apples and lots of raisins. This is a challenging part of the process!

But the two of them managed fairly well.

Now you would expect a picture of the  wonderful looking gold-brown Strudel - so sorry to have to frustrate you. Somehow nobody seems to have taken such a photograph. But believe me, it tastes really great!

It was a real Food Festival! Great place, great chefs, lots of fun and - as you will see below - lots of wonderful food!

Sissi is an expert in making Viennes Apple Strudel - but in fact, this is another story. Cornelia and Cecilia are discussing  - who knows? - the receipe, may be?

Here Cornelia is preparing a special dough for one of the delicious Romanian starters.

 

This cheese comes directly from Romania and tastes really great.

Eni is busy stirfrying the mushrooms.

 

Romanian receipe, Austrian flour, nice result!

How to put everything nicely for the table . . .

Beautiful table setting, dinner is ready! Where are all the guests?

It is always a surprise what pictures you did not take . . .

 

 

This was the first big Learning Kitchen Event: It took place in Darmstadt, Germany. Our aim was to investigate in which way cooking competences can be used as a starting point for other learning activities. The project will investigate how cooking events can make older learners aware of their informal competences and motivate them to enrole in educational offers.

16 people from five different countries met in order to cook and to learn together. Our kitchen was a studio in the Bioversum, a museum dealing with nature. Onno and Dorothee, our hosts for this event, brought along the complete kitchen equipment from the Kochwerkstatt. So we had everything we needed, much space and a wonderful workshop atmomphere!

Silvia, Cecilia and Eni from Romania.

This is Neli from Romania.

 

 Simona, Dita, Bozena and Dagmar from Czech Republic.

Giuseppina and Simone from Italy - they do not belong to the partnership, but worked with us as our guests.

Elfi, Maria and Silvia from Austria.

Sonja from Austria - I am afraid, there was no photo from all of us.

Dorothee and . . .

. . . Onno from Germany, the host of our event.

Every team prepared a meal out of eggs and flour, milk or water, oil, butter, salt or sugar in order to introduce themself and their respective country. So we could enjoy different types of pancake, Schmarren and Pasta!  In addition to that we also tasted different food - from cheese to jam - every team has brought along from his country. We cooked and eat a lot, but we also took lots of pictures! This was also on the agenda of the event: How to document cooking processes, so that other persons can follow the instructions easily. See more of it on our YouTube-Site.

After lunch and a short break we met again for a little media-workshop with examples from films and photos about cooking processes. We also listened to the sound of cooking activities - for example the boiling of hot oil. This was a good preparation for our own work in the afternoon.

Here you can see all the food stuff Onno and Dorothee had prepared for our dinner cooking session. We planned to cook four courses: soup, terrine, roulade and pastry. We worked in - in terms of nationality - mixed teams and every team documented the cooking process.

Preparing the soup . . .

. . . with vegetable, meat and spices.

Fish terrine . . .

. . . made out of wonderful fresh trout. See the recipe.

Cooperation for . . .

. . . making pasta for an extra course.

Out of the pasta dough Neli and Silvia prepared “a little something” - crispy, sweet and very good!

Wild pig stuffed . . .

. . . with bacon and fresh beans - variation of an italian receipe.

Cecilia was the chef of . . .

. . .  the sweet cuisine - with an exeptional cake.

Eating together - has to be documented as well. 

The next day started with looking at all the pictures . . .

. . . and working with them on the computer.

Interesting and intensive work! Still it was only sort of an impulse for further activities. Have a look at one example.

We enjoyed the cooking event very much: in terms of intercultural exchange and friendship, in terms of learning from each other, in terms of the place and the food!

 

Our first study visit to Romania from 16 - 20 April was really a great experience! Thank you very much to the ALEG-Team for their great hospitality!

Here are some pictures of the wonderful days - of course with focus on food again!

We had dinner at this beautiful building and experienced local cooking traditions - it is the Apafi Manor, a project of the Mihai Eminiscu Trust, where one can stay overnight.  It is also a great place for seminars and workshops!

In Sighisoara we met people on the street making “Baumstriezel”: The dow is made  with yeast. You form thin and long pieces, put them on a wooden form, butter the dow and spread sugar on it. Than you have to bake it on the fire and it tastes really great!

Casa Luxemburg in Sibiu, a very good place to stay, because it is in the center of the old town and very comfortable and nice.

In Sibiu we were invited to dinner in private homes - thank you to Cecilia and to the family of Camelia - we enjoyed it very much. It is the best way to become familiar with a new country!

More information and fascinating documentations on food and cooking traditions in Romania will be coming soon.

 

 

 

My trip to Frankfurt turned out to be a wonderful journey to the countryside! I went to visit Onno and Dorothee in order to have the first developer meeting. Onno is working in a very good place called “Bioversum Kranichstein”, which is a Nature Museum with guest house and belongs to an interesting Castle with big garden and pond and woods.

This was saturday - a lot of cars in front of the museum and the sky was cloudy. I should have taken the the picture on friday, when there was sun and no cars in front. So you must come and watch by yourself!

The most important work - all the discussing and planning for our big kitchen event - we did during dinner in the nice pizzeria near the museum. Don’t tell me the light was bad again - I know!! But this is just for documentation . . .

Eating again? Of course! The whole project is about this nourishing subject! And who can work (on food subjects) without having delicious breakfast before? I liked the sprat best (a kind of smoked fish) and of course the cheese and the honey, which is made from one of Onnos colleagues.

We also did “real” work on the computer. Here you can see Dorothee writing down all the ideas we had in the pizzeria last evening and during breakfast.  But she was also the one who took care for our lunch! Just have a look at the picture below: you will see what she brought along - beside her laptop.

So after some hours of writing and working on the computer we went on to the first small cooking session.

Cooking on the window board! Some things one can really do everywhere. The food was very special and  very good: Blood and Liver Sausages from one of the projects of the Kochwerkstatt. The red sauce turns out to be a spicy cherry sauce from an ancient recipe. Mmmhh!!

Good Food, good work, good place, good meeting! Looking forwared to coming back in June and meet you alltogether in the kitchen! Ah, I forgot, there is no KITCHEN in Kranichstein, but Onno and Dorothee will bring their enchanted boxes and build up a kitchen for us.