Cooking in Switzerland!

Since I have the time now I really wanted to increase my cooking skills. Adam was and is a far better cook than I am. I have some mad baking skills to put up against him, but it doesn't compare to what he can create for dinner in the kitchen. Especially when that boy grills, everything is so tasty! Right now our main meal together is breakfast so I was trying to come up with some creative recipes to impress him with. However, the german words for certain ingredients have been causing me some complications. The first time I was very naive and just looked up the words on translator.google.com and went to the store. By the time I looked through everything I couldn't remember what I had looked up. So, I came home to get more prepared. I looked up everything I needed in german and wrote it down on my piece of paper in German. Went to the store again and no luck, couldn't find the correct flour, baking soda, baking powder, or vanilla anywhere. Finally, I got smart and googled the question to see if anyone else had this problem. We go to a website called englishforum.ch where a ton of expats post questions and answers. Lo and behold someone else had these problems and there were tons of solutions. Apparently Baking Soda is Natron and baking powder is Backpulver. I wasn't completely convinced that I would find these items so I tried something new.

Here, the labels are first in german, then french , and then italian underneath that. So in order to figure it out I wrote out my entire list in italian in hopes of finding my ingredients. AND what do you know I found everything I needed by writing it all in italian. I'm convinced that really I just need to learn italian now, not swiss german!So from now on I know that italian has little variation in what they call food items so I will now always write my grocery list in italian...Now on to the breakfast for this morning!!

This morning was my first attempt at from scratch pancakes (no bisquick here) and a blueberry compote. It's berry season here so blueberries and raspberry's are everywhere and reasonably priced. I made the batter  with:
1-1/4C flour
2tsp baking powder
1 egg
1/2tsp salt
1-1/2C milk (adam likes his pancakes thinner so I used more milk, I'd start with 1C and add more)
1tsp honey
and a secret ingredient...lemon zest.

Then for the blueberry compote:
3/4C blueberries
2 Tbsp sugar
1Tbsp water
1Tbsp flour
1/2 lemon - squeeze over  mixture in sauce pot

Put all ingredients for compote in small sauce pot and put over med/low heat. Let boil for 4-5min stirring occasionally and then let sit so it can thicken. After the pancakes are done just pour the sauce over it. I also dusted it all with a little powdered sugar but it blended right into the blueberry sauce so didn't really stay white and pretty.

These were probably the best pancakes I've ever made. Adam loved them and if he didn't he totally lied and ate them all :)
It's super easy to make it all. I've never made a compote sauce before and it was so easy. I did accidentally boil it over so it got on the stove, so make sure you watch it hahahaha. It cleaned up easily.

Well that was my first attempt at new exciting dishes....more to come with more recipes!