2024 October: 🎼 Oh It’s Good to be Back Home Again 🎼

We arrived home to Kehl and put Virus, our boat, to bed until next season…we hope!

After a long day of cleaning and packing, we enjoyed a delicious shrimp dinner at Kehl Harbor Restaurant, which I have replicated at home. Check out this month’s recipe at the end of this post. Delicious!

But as Dorthy said in The Wizard of Oz, “There’s no place like home.” Our plants survived the draining heat, and our jacuzzi is filled and ready to hop in. The heat on the boat was excruciating, 38-40c (80-100F) in the sun, and now it’s lovely, 28-30c (75-80 F). Plus, we had company to look forward to. Jeet and Steve have been my friends since I was 19 (woo, 53 years). We visited them in Florida last year and agreed to start making time to see each other more often instead of FaceTime over the years. So, they had just completed a river cruise from Budapest to the Netherlands and flew from Amsterdam to Strasburg to visit us for six days.

They had Flammkuchen for the first time! I forgot a picture, but they loved it. We spent the day in Strasburg and, of course, took the city tour!

They were pooped by the time we got them home, and Lutz planned a German/Black Forest dinner! His favorite is headcheese (no explanation needed), liverwurst, sausages, blood wurst, cheeses from the area, and fresh Black Forest bread. I ensured we had other tasty treats since not everyone enjoys the same morsels as Lutz. But to my surprise their German heritige came through, Jeet and Steve dug in and were so excited to taste it all! Well, most of it…

I’ve owned Fritz, my Mazda Miata, since 1994, and it still runs like a dream. It was time to take Jeet out for a memory spin. The last time they saw it was in Florida over thirty years ago. They were so surprised to see Fritz was still around. Off we went shopping and checked out the surrounding villages! Steve and Lutz got a break.

It was a great visit, but six days is not enough time to catch up. Friends like these are far few and far. It’s like we’ve never been apart.

After taking them to several museums and different German restaurants to sample more delicious meals, it was time to head to Frankfurt airport to send them home.

The next day, the temperature dropped to 16-18c. It was time to order wood for the winter!

For four hours, we carried and stacked wood. I skipped exercise on this day! The next morning, neither of us could get out of bed, but we knew we had to do our back and leg exercises to get those muscles working again.

For the last couple of weeks, we’ve been going to annual doctor appointments daily, fixing phones, etc. So, we had a couple more days of sun and took Fritz to several appointments on the back roads of the Black Forest to see the beauty.

Whenever we head through the forest, I think of the movie 🎼 “The Sound of Music” 🎼 and want to start singing.

This last weekend, we celebrated Doris’s birthday (Lutz’s sister) with her sons. Matthias lives on the east coast of the USA with his wife Megan and their three children. Unfortunately, they could not come due to school and other commitments. Thomas and his wife Pia (with me in the kitchen) came along with their two children. Lutz was the photographer on that day. It was a super birthday dinner (Rouladens and the works), but we missed Dieter. He is back in the hospital, and please keep him in your thoughts. So far, he is doing much better.

It took three very educated men to put her birthday gift together! Lutz took photos and read the directions while Thomas and Matthias tried to follow his directions.

They were very successful! Now Doris has her indoor bike for the upcoming cold weather!

I was so lucky to fit in a day with my International friends. We had a clothes exchange at my home. I’m so sad I did not take more pictures. Several left before I remembered to “click” the camera. My husband is glad my closet is less crowded. He’s hopping to get his share of the closet back! We will see.

Now, we are preparing for our next adventure. We will head to Munich to visit Lutz’s son, Philipp, and his family, and then go to Vienna to visit Dominik Lutz’s other son. We planned a four-day stay in Mondsee between Munich and Vienna to explore the area. I’ll be sharing these travels as well as more next month. Stay tuned!

New Fave Recipe: Cast Iron Grilled Saucy Shrimp

We arrived in Kehl at about 3 p.m. and decided to eat at the harbor restaurant. After cleaning Virus and packing the next day, we went again and had the same grilled shrimp and parsley dish—it was that good! I had to figure this recipe out, and Lutz was all for it. He even bought me the individual cast iron serving dishes. It’s now on the top of our favorite list!

New Fave Resource: Two of the Best Books I’ve Ever Read!

Nothing has pulled me like these two books I’ve read this year. It’s like gravity. I could not stop reading them. For days afterward, my mind was consumed with the heroic sacrifices so many before us have made for the good of man. You will thank me later!