You’d be hard pressed to find a house that’s bustling more than ours, I’m happy to report.

I’m applying the final coats of varnish on some shelves like a mad woman…

And Martin’s… well he says he’s working on the baseboard, though it’s very possible he’s passed out from exhaustion.

Varnishing and painting are my all-time favorite home projects.  We turn on our favorite music, and I lose myself.  It’s rather embarrassing.  I finally have the courage to answer the phone when Germans call us, and I don’t even notice the phone ringing on the other side of the tarp.  It’s nice when simple work can take you away from everything.  So if you don’t hear much from me, this may be why.

Last week when I told you that we avoid American foods, I realized it wasn’t totally true.  We have one very big weakness that, if not careful, could easily become our entire sustenance for multiple days.  It’s gooey.  It’s chocolaty.  It’s crunchy.  We don’t buy it, so it is a wonderfully affordable American luxury that we love to whip up ourselves.

I mix the ingredients, and Martin monitors the oven like the guards in front of the Jewish temple we biked to on my birthday.  He also sacrifices himself as our taste tester like all good husbands.  So if you haven’t guessed (because it’s not like it’s obvious in the title or anything), we’re drooling over a batch of old fashion chocolate chip cookies coming out of the oven.  They’re the perfect escape from feeling like our house is a giant construction zone.  The mere thought of them makes me want to jump up and run to the grocery store for cheap chocolate bars so that I can cut them up and pretend they are chocolate chips from back home.

The sad thing is that no one around us seems to appreciate this spectacular culinary treat.  Martin has been taking my baked goods with him to work since we started dating (it was the only way to keep us from devouring everything).  He always came home with an empty container, usually by lunch time.  He would take American treats, Czech cakes, German cookies… his coworkers ate ‘em up.

Not this time.  Not in Germany.

The Day my cookies were rejected

Martin got off of his bike after work and slowly said, “The good news is that there’s more for us.”

I wrinkled my eyes.  It’s what I do when I get confused.  “What are you talking about?” I asked.

He looked at me with the same expression my brother had the day he broke my mom’s china ten years ago.  Then Martin looked away.  He pulled the plastic container we’d filled with cookies out of his bag.  It wasn’t empty like I was used to; it was full.  There were only two cookies missing.

Martin mumbled, “Someone brought Berliners.”

Berliners are little jelly doughnuts covered in sugar.  They’re okay.  But you can’t compete with a dessert named after the city where you live.  Even with chocolate chip cookies.

It’s a very weird feeling to have your cookies rejected.  I got my recipe from The New York Times for goodness sake.  I imported vanilla extract in my suitcase, and I altered about five ingredients to match what I could find in Germany.  Let me just tell you that they are the most delicious chocolate chip cookies we’ve ever had.  I almost had to take Martin to the emergency room the first time we had them – his heart was pulsing wildly over his new love.

The problem is that the United States isn’t exactly a country known for our culinary ability.  The food we’ve introduced to the world is cheap and instant like McDonalds and Rice-A-Roni.  They’re not very good.  So when some coworker like Martin shows up with a sample of his American wife’s culinary skills – hard brown pancake thingies full of chocolate crumbs and whacked up hunks, I guess I’d go for the boring old doughnut, too.  Looks can be deceiving.

Meanwhile, we are going to eat all of the cookies those poor German men missed out on.  And if you’re looking for an American classic that is phenomenal, I feel like I’ve dug myself in a hole with my story… but I SWEAR they’re good.  I PROMISE you’ll love them, too.  The two men at Martin’s office that tried them did lick their fingers when they were done, after all.  Yeah, yeah, they probably ate Berliners next… but that’s just a cultural detail.

Here’s how I altered the original recipe on The New York Times Food Section for all you fancy people with access to soft and squishy brown sugar and other American staples:

American Chocolate Chip Cookies

3 2/3 cups minus 2 Tbsp. flour
1 1/4 tsp. baking soda
1 1/2 tsp. baking powder
1 1/2 tsp. coarse salt (like kosher)
2 1/2 sticks (10 oz.) unsalted butter, softened
1 1/4 cups light brown sugar
1 cup plus 2 Tbsp. granulated sugar
2 large eggs
2 tsp. vanilla extract
1 bag of chocolate chips or more/less as desired

Mix the flour, salt, baking powder, and baking soda together.  In a separate bowl, cream butter and sugars until light and fluffy.  Pour in vanilla and add the eggs.  Reduce the speed to low and slowly add the dry ingredients.  Add chocolate chips.

Press plastic wrap against the dough and refrigerate for 24-36 hours.  Spend those hours guarding your husband from the fridge because you know he and a little spoon are going to be stopping by on multiple occasions.

When you’re ready to bake whatever dough is still left, preheat the oven to 350°F.  Make scoops of dough approximately 1/3 c big and spread evenly across a cookie sheet covered with baking paper.  Bake until golden brown but still soft, around 15-18 minutes.  Pull cookies from the oven and slide the baking paper onto a wire rack to cool for ten minutes.

And here’s my German rendition with my American measuring cups and scale for all you wild and crazy people out there roughing it in the Old World with us:

American Chocolate Chip Cookies in Germany

3 2/3 cups minus 2 Tbsp. (17 oz.) flour
2 1/2 tsp. Baken Pulver
1 tsp. salt
1 ¼ cups (10 oz.) butter, softened
2 ¼ cups (18 oz.) granulated sugar
3 Tbsp. molasses
2 large eggs
2 tsp. vanilla extract or that vanilla sweeter in little bottles (do NOT use Vanille Zucker)
1 1/2 – 2 bars of chocolate cut into small pieces

Mix the flour, salt, and Baken Pulver together.  In a separate bowl, cream butter, sugar, and molasses until light and fluffy.  Pour in the sacred vanilla and add the eggs.  Reduce the speed to low and slowly add the dry ingredients.  Add chocolate chips.

Press plastic wrap against the dough and refrigerate for 24-36 hours.  Spend those hours guarding your husband from the fridge because you know he and a little spoon are going to be stopping by on multiple occasions.

When you’re ready to bake whatever dough is still left, preheat the oven to 175°C (350°F).  Make scoops of dough approximately 1/3 c big and spread evenly across a cookie sheet covered with baking paper.  Bake until golden brown but still soft, around 15-18 minutes.  Pull cookies from the oven and slide the baking paper onto a wire rack to cool for ten minutes.

The cool thing about these cookies is that they’re best fresh.  You can keep the dough in the fridge for up to 72 hours and bake little batches whenever you want.  This strategy is extra great for us.  We’ve decided not to give the neighbors a cookie peace offering because of all our remodeling noise.  I was thinking about it before, but now I’m certain they’d dislike us even more.  You think people would be afraid of heights or the Loch Ness Monster or something, not cookies.  I’m sort of glad they aren’t, though.  I have ten giant cookies in front of me that I thought I’d never see again.

(Image by Katie for Making This Home)

 There is nothing more miserable than feeling like you have no control over your home or your clutter.  Martin and I put a lot of things in boxes just to get them out of the way until the kitchen remodel is done.  We can never find anything because nothing has a designated spot except our tools.  Half of our stuff is in boxes; the other half is trying to find a designated space.  None of our furniture can even rest in it’s designated space because a tarp divides our living space.  Only the chop saw and screwdrivers have assigned homes, and I’m hoping they’re not permanent fixtures around here.

My husband and I have worked on a number of projects together… we’ve just never had to live in them.  There’s a reason I don’t talk to you about our renovation every day.  You can imagine that we’re progressing, but I just can’t handle thinking about it any more.  Right now, our home doesn’t serve as a relaxing place where we can get away from things.  It’s often the last place we want to be.  And when we want to run away, we can’t decide if we want to do it together or just be absolutely totally alone, which is impossible in a city of 3.5 million people.

We left Berlin one weekend before we started varnishing.  We loved escaping.  But when we came back, I’m sorry to report that we weren’t relaxed when we put the key in the door.  We were stressed and cranky with the state of our entire home.

The worst part is realizing how well I have blocked out many of the things that would normally frustrate me.  Like the fact that my husband hangs his coat on a bike… which actually makes me happy because it’s not on a chair or the table, which are the only other places he could put it.  It also means that I get to hang mine on the bedroom door.

Now we have two choices as we finish up the major projects in the kitchen:

1. wrap up the kitchen remodel with the rest of the house undone and start all over with a new tarp next year, or
2. keep on truckin’ and get it all done with already

The lucky winner is number one.  I know you saw that coming.  We’ve decided to leave our tarp up a little bit longer than planned, which the live-for-the-moment bit of us isn’t too happy about.  It’s the smaller part of us and probably loses every time like our coin has two heads and no tails.  So here’s a little of what we’ve got planned for more marriage testing… err remodeling:

1. Our very German, very irritating bathroom (you just have to see it for yourself so we can be confused together)
2. A bench for taking our shoes on and off and storing them in the hallway
3. Martin’s desk (that’s a post in itself because the two of us have very different preferences… like the fact that I don’t want to see his soldering iron in my living room on Christmas morning)
4. A system for hanging our bikes where I will not be smacking into them every time I walk to the bathroom
5. A coatrack since the bikes will no longer be an option

In the meantime, I’m going to keep varnishing and being as sweet and patient as I can like a good Valentine should be.  I hope you can wait out the storm with us.  I hope Martin can with his little wifey, too!

I promise some beautiful pictures soon.

Have you ever noticed how much you need to have things under control?  It’s beyond a want; it’s almost like a need.  If things aren’t in control in our lives, we get overwhelmed or we panic.  So we start to close our minds to possibility and focus on what we know and what makes us feel safe.  That pressure to keep everything going smoothly wipes us out by the end of the day.

As you know, it’s amazing what a big change in your life can show you about yourself.  For some, it’s having a baby, getting married, or losing someone you love.  For me, that change was our move to Germany.  I didn’t realize how obsessed I was with maintaining control in my life until we got here.  Since I couldn’t speak German, the only way for me to keep in control was to have my husband, Martin, with me.  Everywhere.  

Besides the grocery store and anything within walking distance of our house, I didn’t go anywhere by myself.  He was my crutch, and I felt like I needed him in order to do anything.  I didn’t order for myself at restaurants or answer the phone when the caller had a German phone number.  I didn’t even speak to clerks who clearly knew English.  I’d speak to Martin in English, who would then speak to them in German for me.  It didn’t occur to me that I could or should do any of these things for myself.  I just put a huge roadblock in front of myself without even fully realizing what I had done.

I remember the exact day I began tearing down this barrier.

 An American friend and I had agreed to meet and take the subway across the city to go shopping.  It would be our first time getting together without our husbands.  I really wanted to see this craft shop I’d found online, so when she had to cancel that morning, I did not cancel, too.  I think it was because I was so desperate to find some colored paper as ridiculous as that sounds.  So I went alone, accepting that if I truly wanted to experience life in Europe, I had to step out of my comfort zone. 

Two weeks later, I did an experiment.  I got on my bike after an errand and just started going.  I didn’t know where I was headed; I just started following the wind until I was so totally lost that I couldn’t even tell you which way was north an hour later.  At first, my journey was filled with panic.  The sense of being lost does that to you.  But after a while, my feelings of apprehension started to disappear.  I felt confident.  I felt inspired.  That day, Martin was no longer my crutch.  I was free.

Ever since that day, I’ve thought a lot about the control we all fight so hard to keep in our lives.  We hardly ever let ourselves get lost. 

Why not let go just a little this next week? 

Take a moment to get lost.  You can always pull out a map or ask someone for directions later.  Walk and walk until you have no idea where you are instead of following the same path that you’ve grown accustomed to.  Try ordering tofu in your next meal (because I know how totally freaked out people are by tofu until they try it).  Or sign up for a dance class with your partner, which is scarier than heck for a lot of us.

All of these experiences open your mind to new possibilities if you just let yourself get lost.  Maybe it won’t be as awakening as my first day alone in Europe was.  Then again, it could be even greater.

Like most people, Martin and I have done our fair share of dish washing.  I’m pretty sure we’ve hated just about every minute of it, too.  So while I’ve introduced you to our tiny oven/microwave combo, the 2-burner stove, and our dorm fridge, I haven’t shown you the Most Important Addition to our apartment:  our dishwasher.

For as long as I’ve known, Germans have preferred to cover their appliances with cabinet fronts, which is a wonderful breath of fresh air from the stainless steel mania in the US.  Lucky for you, this part of our kitchen is varnished, so maybe that makes looking at a wood-covered dishwasher a little more exciting as we remodel.  You can probably guess that with a small kitchen, we can’t handle a dishwasher bigger than this half-sized fella.  We don’t have room for something bigger OR enough dishes to fill it.  We worship it just as it is.

The Age-Old Question:  Should you use a dishwasher or hand wash to save energy (and money)?

Every so often, I read about women who claim they are saving money and water by washing dishes by hand.  While this theory sounded very probable (especially when you have a water meter running beside you like we’ve got), I set out to find out what the most energy efficient method really was.  The truth, of course, is that I want to be sure that my laziness is actually helping the planet.  Let’s see:

Hand washing is more efficient when:

Dishwashers are more efficient when:

So I’ll give you a hint as to what wins over at our house every time:

The Old-Age Question: What  do you do when a dishwasher goes Kaput?

Finally, where would we be on Making This Home if we didn’t talk about what to do with the old clunker?  As previous used appliance hunters, take our word that dishwashers are the most sought after used appliance.  When your dishwasher breaks or is ready to retire from your house, make sure you:

So there you have it.  No more prune hands or doing dishes in the bathroom for us.  Now we just need some inspiring meals to whip up.  We’d love to know about the many ways you and your family test your dishwasher with yummy treats.  There’s nothing like a little eye candy to get us drooling in the morning.

(Images by Katie for Making This Home.  Data from Green up Your Cleanup and Living Like Ed.)

A fabulous green company called Mr. Ellie Pooh is offering a special discount on all their products to Making This Home readers.  For the month of February, receive 10% off on your order when you use the promotion code “hearts” at checkout.

I think that Mr. Ellie Pooh is a company worth standing behind, which is why I feel so excited to share them with you again.  They’ve been nominated as the 2008 Green Business of the Year, and I worry for companies like these that are trying to improve the world as the economy worsens.

Their handmade products (like journals, stationery, ink jet paper, wedding invitations, and business cards) are 100% recycled and contain no bleach, acids, or any of those other nasty chemicals like most papers, which you have to love.  All the profits go toward saving wild elephants in Sri Lanka.  The poor guys are being pushed out of their habitats and killed just so we can have more area for agriculture.  

Plus these gifts are so cute!  For all the little male valentines on your list… just tell them that this paper is 75% pooh from orphan elephants.  What guy – green or not – wouldn’t get a little excited at that?  (Or is your family not like mine?)

So I don’t know.  If you’ve managed to save a few dollars with genius frugal measures, maybe you could think of helping these guys out.  Their products are pretty cheap, and I’m really urging Martin to help their cause with a Valentine like one of these.  Or these.

(Images from Mr. Eli Pooh)