Who loves a weenie dog in a raincoat??

I do for sure! Tanner and Toby...not so much. BK...he just kind of laughs at us as we make our way out the door.

I mentioned in a blog post a while back that we were going to need some raincoats. One of the many things I purchased while we were in the US was dachshund-specific raincoats. Now, this may sound like overkill to anyone who does not have a weenie dog, but for me, it was nearly impossible to find something that fit these guys. Thanks to www.noodleandfriends.com, they are prefect.

Unlike in Texas, where it's still sweltering, here in Switzerland we've started to see fall weather. I think the high today was around 65 and it's been raining off and on all day. As a took the boys out for their last trip outside tonight, it was raining harder and is right around 60. And I'll admit, I've been excited to use the raincoats. 

They are awesome to say the least. Tanner and Toby's legs are less than six inches long, so they don't stand very far off the ground. When it rains here that means they literally pick up anything and everything in their path when we're walking- water, dirt, leaves, other gunk- you get the picture. Their chests are the worst, as they are broad and are even closer to the ground, so they are extremely dirty when they come back in the apartment, which also means anything they jump on is also dirty. The raincoats not only cover their backs (helping combat a constant wet dog smell in our apartment), but also have another piece that covers their chest so that all the dirt now goes on the jacket and can easily be washed off. It's the simple things, right?

I just have to hope the boys start liking the raincoats a little more than they currently do, because we will be using them. Right now Tanner just runs from me when I come at him with his raincoat, eventually surrendering, but not appreciating this at all. Toby is submissive, as usual, but once it's on, he acts like he has a straight jacket on and is now paralyzed where ever I put it on him. I pretty much have to drag him when he wears the coat. Like I said, hopefully they'll get used to them. They do look pretty cute and cheerful in the raincoats too- another plus! It's supposed to rain a few more days this week, so I feel certain we'll be putting these to good use.

On a completely different note, I am using the Blogger app for the first time tonight to post, as we've been using my computer to watch Slingbox (football) all weekend. We'll see how it goes; hopefully this one turns out ok.

So many recipes...so much time to try!

Baking and cooking took a back seat while in Texas. The one exception was making an Italian cream cake for BK's dad's birthday. I used The Pioneer Woman's recipe- it went over really well! I've jumped right back into cooking since getting back to Switzerland. It seems like all I've done over the past few days is destroy the kitchen, clean it up, destroy, clean...you get the idea.

Last night I made a quick and easy Tomato Basil Soup. It's a Cooking Light recipe, so it's really healthy, and it keeps for up to a week. It's a meal that's easy to heat up, considering we have no microwave. If you decide to make it, I would add some additional salt and pepper (to your taste), garlic powder and Italian seasoning. I like to eat the soup with a grilled cheese sandwich, and BK prefers a caprese salad. It's probably a little hot in Texas right now for soup, but this would be a great winter meal.

Tonight I embarked on two new recipes that I had not made before. I found an easy recipe for Sesame Chicken on Pintrest. BK is working late tonight, so I thought I would give it a test run to see if I should work it into the regular rotation. The recipe is really easy to make and turned out really good, but I woul d change a couple of minor things. The recipe says to make the sauce while the chicken cooks, but I would recommend making it before you start cooking the chicken, as to make sure that the sauce is ready to put on the chicken when it is done cooking. The other thing I would change would be to decrease the amount of fresh ginger in the sauce and possibly add a little more brown sugar to make it sweeter. Overall, it's also a really easy recipe that doesn't take much time. I think the leftovers will be even better tomorrow!

The dessert is the one that I'm really excited about (of course)! BK has asked that we have a new tradition: that I bake something for his team on Day 5 of the month. He lives in a work world where month close is on the fourth working day of the month, so day 5 is kind of a relief that the longest day of the month is over. Last month it was the cheesecake that I posted about, and this month I embarked on Peanut Butter Cup Crack Brownies. Yum!

As of this post, I haven't yet tested them- they need a little more time to cool. The one difficult thing about this recipe, specifically while being in Switzerland, is that they don't have peanut butter cup candy! Seriously...the Swiss don't eat nearly as much peanut butter as we do in the US. They go more for Nutella, if anything. Needless to say, I had to improvise the peanut butter layer that's under the top chocolate layer. The recipe also calls for a boxed brownie mix, but I don't really do box mixes of stuff, so I found another brownie recipe that I liked and made those as the bottom layer. It would have been nice to have a microwave for this recipe, especially when melting chocolate, but I used my double boiler instead, which worked really well.

I'm thankful to have this time to try new recipes and experiment in the kitchen. Hopefully this one goes over well at the office and all the Europeans appreciate just how good peanut butter and chocolate go together!

Two weeks in Tejas

Apparently I decided to take a vacation from the blog while we were in the US. It was not intentional, but looking back now, I'm assuming it was partially because I was visiting and spending time with the people I initially started writing the blog for.

The trip was a bit of a whirlwind, but having never lived outside of Fort Worth, I wasn't sure what to expect. I've never had to schedule a bunch of friends and family for lunches and dinner, making sure we see as many people as possible. About half way through the trip it actually dawned on me that I had been gallivanting around so much with my friends that I hadn't really seen much of my family. Things slowed down a little bit during the second week, but it was still pretty packed.

In the middle of the trip we also headed to Kilgore to see BK's family and celebrate RK and HG's birthdays. We capped the trip off by watching the Frogs play LSU the night before we left. Unfortunately we lost, but it's exciting the college football has begun again. And then there's the shopping. Let's just say the BK and I personally contributed to helping boost the economy over those two weeks.

I'll be honest, I was a little worried that when we came back I would be longing for Fort Worth- for my family, friends, familiar faces and places, easy access to many things I'm familiar with. But I was very happy to find that upon our return I was very happy to be back, and as strange as it feels to say, this feels like home right now. It probably also helps that Switzerland greeted us with perfect weather- 75 and sunny for the high, and 50 and cool at night. Sounds like late October in Texas.

Today I picked up the pups, who seem to be pretty much unfazed after 18 days at their holiday home. Now it's time to get back into our routine, and now that I have a little bit of language under my belt really find a purpose and way to spend my time here. Let's make it happen!