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Monday, August 13, 2012

Where are you Tahini?


A baby arrives in the Netherlands
I still have enormous difficulty finding thing in Vienna.

Today my quest was to make a pumpkin and goat’s cheese salad  - with tahini and sesame seeds. Well you can forget tahini – it is probably available at Naschmarkt – but that may be the only place in Vienna.

(I expect that Merisi will now tell me that it is available in her local Spar – which is indeed far superior to mine - and focuses on alcohol and chocolate).

It took me ages to find sesame seeds. After scouring the spice and condiments shelves in Interspar in Simmering I finally realized that they were probably in the baking section – and they were indeed. You can only buy a half kilo bag.

And the German word for parsley is petersilie – but this does not grace the shelves of any stores I have seen. One has to look for peterkraus – which is entirely Austrian word and does not appear in my German dictionary.

The problem is of course that I am using Australian cookbooks. If I switched to Austrian cookbooks I would probably find all the ingredients quite readily.

But Austrian food generally is a bit stodgy and lacking in imagination.

And the last word on the Olympics.

I was watching a morning show on SKY today and they were wittering on about how wonderful the British Olympians were and how badly the Australians did. (Giggle).

They went further to say that – while they came third overall in the medal tally – the really came first because their population is much smaller that of the USA or China. Oh really?

Based on that premise – with a population of 65 million and 65 medals – it equates to one medal per million Poms.

Australia – with a population of 22 million – won 35 medals which equates to 1.6 medals per person.

So there

I should report that front page of a local paper reported last week that an Austrian narrowly missed out on a bronze medal. It would have been their first and only medal.

But they are terrific at the winter Olympics and currently have the best ski jumpers in the world.

I will report further on the Olympics in 2016.





8 comments:

  1. 2016? If I have to wait that long I should relax, so I reclined the chair. Ah, much better. I did have to turn the car around 180 degrees because she left me sitting in the sun. Otherwise it would have got up to 180 degrees F. So as I was turning a big U-turn in the parking lot I suddenly noticed my son running beside the vehicle, so it was a good thing I didn't run over him.

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  2. I couldn't find tahini here for the longest time. It is Oklahoma after all, and anything more exotic than meatloaf throws these people off and traumatizes them for years. Last week I saw it--Lo and Behold!--on the shelf at Walmart, of all places.

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  3. There is something to living in the boondocks, we have all the good stuff on the supermarket shelves. ;-)


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  4. I love it when you do math.

    I remember a time here when no one would eat Tahini as it contains sugar and that was bad that year.

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  5. I see the Kiwis got another gold medal overnight thanks to the original winner of the ladies shotput failing a 2nd drug test. Wonder where that would put NZ in your mathematical calculation??? I'm sure they've worked it out.

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  6. esb: It would be poor form to run over your son. Glad you noticed him.

    SK Waller: That's a bit too far for me - I will try to find it locally.

    Merisi; I knew it!

    fmcgmccllc: I remember that year - thank goodness we move on to salt or bread or cheese or something.

    Sandy: I think the Kiwis have won easily

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  7. haha!
    one thing i'm really looking forward to about going back to england is the SUPERMARKETS!

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  8. angiv: I have yet to find a really good one in Wien.

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