Food Entry, Mmmmm

Marlene and I make bets pretty often with the normal wager being having to make the other person a delicious dinner. So normally when I lose I'll try to make her favorite meal, Maki sushi rolls. I wanted to show you guys a couple pics of my progress and give a hint if you want to make them yourself.


Above was my first attempt. Marlene said they tasted pretty good, but you can see they don't exactly look right.

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This is a batch I just made today, and you can see they hold their shape much better thanks to the secret ingredient: sushi rice.

At the beginning, I looked up a recipe and went and got all the ingredients except I figured rice is rice is rice. I don't need any special "sushi rice". How wrong I was. The key to good looking Maki rolls is super sticky rice and normal long grain rice grown in Europe or the USA just doesn't cut it. Luckily, where we live in Vienna is the same area as most of the city's Asian immigrants. There's not a literal Chinatown but there are several Asian grocery stores within a couple blocks of our apartment so finding all the ingredients was pretty simple.

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Here's one of my favorite meals, a Döner kebap. It's basically my substitute for Chipotle burritos in the USA, and they're probably the most popular fast food item here.

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Finally, here's one of my favorite desserts, a Kakaoroulade. It's honestly nothing special, they're mass produced and sold at any grocery store, but they remind me of a giant Swiss Cake Roll and they only cost €1,09.

Saturday Night Blog

Hey all, it's Saturday night here and I just got back from an FK Austria Wien match where we won 4:1 against LASK Linz. It was a super fun time because we scored early and often and were up 3:0 at halftime. After that we let off the gas and Linz scored early on the second half before we scored the the fourth in about the 87th minute to put an end to the comeback.

Marlene went to Neusiedl am See tonight for an Oktoberfest revival party and I've still to hear how that went. I obviously stayed in Vienna first for the FK Austria Wien match tonight, and because FC Adrenalin has two matches tomorrow. The first team plays at 3 pm and the reserves play right afterwards at 5 pm. I'm on the first team roster and I'll hopefully play with the reserves too as long as I don't play too much with first team. If I start for the first team (which is unlikely), then I'll be super happy and won't play for the reserves. So far I haven't started for the first team, I've been playing as a sub for them and as a key player for the reserves. Last week I played the whole second half for the first team and then later in the day played 80 minutes for the reserves. Normally I wouldn't play for both teams in one day but if both teams have games on the same day and I'm only a sub for the first team, then I'll happily play for the reserves as well. Playing for the reserves is super fun because obviously the opponents aren't nearly as good so I can relax and just try to pick out dangerous passes. In my 3 games, I've played as center mid twice and both times and I've had assists, hopefully that trend will continue...

Apart from soccer, Marlene went to a cool park today I took a few pictures of her/us while we were at Wienerberg, which obviously sounds funny in English but was a fun time. It's one of the biggest green areas in all of Vienna. Here are some pictures of our day there.

News in Brief: Oct 20

Hello all, it's been a week and I never want to go a week without an entry so I just want to put together a quick post.

Since getting my residence permit, Marlene and I both registered with the authorities a second residence for our apartment in Vienna. That was a relief because it felt dishonest to be registered in Neusiedl am See since we don't actually live there. That also meant I could go register as officially unemployed at my Viennese district's employment office. I'm not entitled to receive any unemployment money but they're supposed to be search for jobs and offer different classes. I'll need to look more into what types of classes I could take from them.

Over the weekend with the FC Adrenalin reserves we played against a team of all Mexicans so that reminded me of home. We also won 6-0 so it was a fun game. Earlier in that same day I played the second half for the first team but that was disappointing as soon after I subbed in, one of our central defenders got a red card and we struggled badly. We ended up losing 1-4.

It's getting to be pretty cold here and often overcast. We actually turned on the heat in our apartment last week and we broke open the winter blankets for the bed.

Next week is the last week of my German course and it's doubtful I'll sign up for another month, unless the unemployment office would offer to pay for it, which would be a possibility. We talked about it a bit in my class today because another student has already been working with the unemployment office for a few weeks.