Brunch with family friends and gourmet store Käfer

Friends of the family invited us for a nice brunch at their house. They have moved to this new house in the mountain a few years ago and this was first time for my husband and I to visit their new place. The house is surrounded by mountains and it was beautiful and peaceful. 

The table setting for the brunch was really cute and springy. 

It was a Easter season so this table setting reminds me of Easter and spring. It is so colorful and beautiful.  I would love to be able to have a table decoration like this. The mother of this family and also my mother-in-law are awesome at table setting. I really think they have great talent in table setting. 

The food was great. There are so many different kind of stuff so again I ate so much but it was so good! 

We stopped by at the bakery and bought some pretzel and bread on the way there. Those pretzels were amazing! I love pretzels in Germany. It is different from the pretzels we get in NY. 

Other breads were also very good. 

After the brunch, we walked around the house. There are so many greens and it was very refreshing. My body was refreshed with clean air and beautiful view of alpes. 

After the walk, we had cakes! Of course :-) We had Cheese cake and Strawberry & Rhubarb cake. It is Rhubarb again! I really think this vegetable (fruits?) is getting popular! 

We had a great time. 

The last day of our Munich stay, my parents-in-law took me to this gourmet food store called Käfer. It was pretty big and they had all different kinds of delicious gourmet items there. I loved it! My mother-in-law thought I would like this store. She was right. I loved it. I wish I had this store close by. 

All different kinds of cheese.

Fresh vegetables. 

My favorite! Mushrooms. 

It was Easter season so there are easter decorations at sweets section of the store. 

Easter egg chocolate

Macaroon

It was lunch time when we visit this store so we went to their restaurant to have lunch. 

It was nice restaurant. 

I had vegetable risotto. I tasted all the flavor from the vegetable and it was creamy and great. 

My husband had flamkuchen which is something like a thin pizza but no tomato sauce. I actually like this better than pizza. It was with bacon and caramelize onion. So good!

My mother-in-law had white fish with some vegetables. I had a bite from her dish and this was also really really good! 

My father-in-law had roasted (grilled?) duck dish. Even though I did not try this one, it looked really good also.

So, we also met many people and ate a lot in Munich. We had a lot of fun. After this, we went back one more time to Frankfurt and went back to NY. I still have some more delicious photos from Frankfurt so I will upload them on the next post. I went to my favorite lebanese restaurant in a city about one hour away from Frankfurt. I will also post those photos. 

Meeting family & friends in Munich and of course, Eating more!

I also went to Munich which is my husband's hometown to see family and friends. Of course, I ate a lot here in Munich also!!

First, my mother-in-law cooked White Asparagus for us. I believe this is special spring dish for Germans. It was still very beginning of spring so these white asparagus was one of the first ones which came out at the vegetable store. My mother-in-law tried them before to make sure it is really good ones. So those were the excellent asparagus!

This is cooking the peeled asparagus.

Then, she served them with butter sauce. She also made Schnitzel and potatoes for us! She knows we love schnitzel :-) They were really good! I have never really pay much attention to white asparagus before but I would love to try cooking this wonderful vegetable from now on.

We also went some really good restaurants with family. One of them was an Italian restaurant. The waiters were talking each other in Italian and I felt like I was in Italy.

Mu husband and I had eggplant and prawn appetizer. I love both eggplant and prawn so this is perfect appetizer for me!

For main course, I had pasta with prawns and tomatoes. (Prawn again!) This was awesome. The pasta was perfectly cooked and tomato and prawn were fresh and tasty.

My husband was having Truffle with fresh pasta. This smelled so good. I had to taste them. Mmmmm, Yummy. Look at the amount of truffle. They are very generous.

I know that Truffles are quite expensive. My husband and I were just wondering if you can cultivate Truffles. I have seen people walking around the mountain with their Truffle pig or dog to find Truffle but we just wonder if it is possible to cultivate them.

Anyhow, we had lunch at a nice cafe in downtown. This was a goat cheese and herb risotto which my husband was eating. I am not crazy about goat cheese so this amount of goat cheese will be too much for me but it was perfect to get a few bite from his dish. And it looks beautiful.

At this cafe, I saw many people drinking this pink stuff. First, I thought it must be pink grapefruit or pink lemonade but my husband asked the waiter and found out that it was rhubarb juice. I have never tried rhubarb juice. I had to try. I forgot to take a picture of it but it was quite good. Tangy and refreshing.

Also, we met many of our friends at a restaurant for dinner. We were so happy that many people were able to come join us. We had a great time. I ate schnitzel again here. Their schnitzel was pork instead of veal. I think I like veal schnitzel better. But their french fries were awesome! This is such a huge schnitzel, it must be for two people.

During the dinner, one of the friends told us that they are planning to go to a midnight movie sneak preview. My husband told me many times that he used to go to these midnight sneak preview and he loves this movie theater. He wanted to go so I decided to go with him to see my husband's favorite movie theater. They told me that most of the movie they show there are English movies so I can understand.

This was a quite interesting experience. This is called sneak preview and you don't know what movie they are showing until it actually starts. It seems like before they show those movies to the general public, they do this sneak preview and see people's reaction to the movie and then decide if they are going to show them to the general public or not. At the end of the show, you put your ticket stub in one of the three cups which says "good" "so-so" or "bad".

It is quite exciting to sit in a movie theater without knowing what movie I am going to watch. The movie was...... not so great in my opinion. It was OK. It was a movie I have never heard of before. I think it was called "A Single Man". (I am not even sure about it) The actors were good and the movie wasn't bad but it was not great in my opinion. So I put my ticket stub in the middle cup.

However, I really liked this experience. My husband was also happy to take me to this movie theater which he has many good memories.

Walking around the city of Frankfurt and meeting a fellow blogger!

It seems like Frankfurt is one of the big city in Germany and you see many high buildings in downtown area. Also, you see lots of business men/women in suites on the street especially during the lunch time.
Though it is a quite big city, the center of the city is quite small and easy to get around.

There is a big river by the city and the weather was really nice so I walked along the river. Everybody was enjoying the nice warm weather after the long cold winter season. I saw a few people bringing 6 packs and drinking by the river. I guess Germans love their beer :-)

There are many modern buildings but some part of the city still remain with old traditional buildings. It is quite interesting to see the contrast.

In Frankfurt, I was able to meet someone whom I get to know from a blog. She is a Japanese lady who married to a German guy and lives near Frankfurt. She has a blog about her cute daughter who just turned 2 years old. I have never met anyone whom I only know through blog so I was a bit nervous but since we have been reading each other's blog and commenting frequently, it seemed like I have known her for a long time.

She was very nice and easy to talk to. Also her daughter was very friendly to me. Right after when I saw her, she started to walk to me and hold my hand. I was surprised :-)

We had buffet lunch at Thai restaurant. It was really good.

There are some market on the open space and people were buying some fresh food from the vender.

This vender had meat.

This one was bakery.

And this one was with many different kind of herbs.

One thing I noticed during my stay in Germany is that there are many flower shops in Germany. I saw many of them on the street, or at the station. Many people were buying flowers. Maybe it was because of the Easter coming up but I think Germans like flowers in general. And those flowers were inexpensive! I wanted to buy some flowers but since I was traveling, I couldn't. I wish I could buy flowers with this price in NY also. I think Flowers make the house brighter and nicer.

I would like to try to have flowers in my house more often. Spring has come and all the flowers are blooming. I can not wait to buy some plants for this year and have my annual container garden in front of my house! If I can find a lemon tree, I would like to try that also this year! Happy spring!