Der Nebel steigt, es fällt das Laub - a German and Austrian autumn thread

[AntiqueMuppet]

A thread for anyone living in Germany or Austria, or anyone else who fancies a chat.

Previous thread here

linzer sound slike you had a great trick or treat session and no headache the next day so that's even better! Yuck, I remember school milk too and the smell of it. Thank goodness our dc didn't have to have it.

cheaspicks I never have asafetida either, also another spice that Manjula often puts in her recipes but I don't think it makes much difference. She also doesn't use onions and garlic very often (if at all) so sometimes I add half a chopped onion or some garlic. Otherwise her recipes are really good.

english well done to your dh, he also saved you between 20 and 30? by doing it himself!

antique thats sounds great that so many people are interested in the flat. Lets hope someone wants to move in quickly too. Good luck.

Yes, I'm going to a GP tomorrow about dd's mole so she can get an überweisung and should help with getting a quicker appointment at a dermatologist. I've heard that it takes months to get seen otherwise.

Better go and put some washing on, have just realised they've almost used all the towels. Do you all wash towels after one shower? My dc think there is a never ending supply of towels and just chuck theirs in the wash after every shower.

I don't understand washing towels after every shower - after all you've just washed when you use them, they just need hanging so they can dry - does that mean you do a load per day purely of towels admylin I wash towels once a week and sheets once every 2 weeks, and still I'm always drowning in laundry and have the machine on at least once a day and twice more often than not... Glad your dd is going to the doctors, hope the referral gets her in with the dermatologist quickly.

My boys both drink lots of milk - as well as all of them having it on cereal DS1 gets himself milk as a drink quite often, at least a couple of glasses per day (is that why he is in age 7 / 122cm clothes - actually I don't think it is, he just has DH's genes) dd doesn't drink it on its own very often but often asks for Kaba in autumn and winter when she gets in cold from school or playing, and DS2 still finishes a 10oz bottle in the eve (blush, but anything to make him sleep and he's only just 18 months, will stop soon)... and has a beaker first thing in the morning and usually asks for some mid morning too... Seems like this may be less normal than I assumed! DD is the only one of the 3 who likes cheese though...

I remember there being a thread about that recently, admylin - washing a towel after every shower seems a bit OTT to me (especially as some days I have a shower in the morning and a bath in the evening), although I'd almost be tempted with DH's as his bath towel gets ridiculously wet. I just don't understand why his gets about ten times as wet as mine.

Hope you can get an appointment fairly soon with the dermatologist. That reminds me that I need to make another appointment with mine as she wants to remove a mole on my back plus keep an eye on one on my face (which I'm really hoping won't need to be removed). I have no excuse for putting it off either now that I can do it online.

Oh, and I did have a headache and felt quite sick when I woke up this morning but luckily was fine once I'd got up!

Meant to say that, like English, I wash towels once a week and sheets once a fortnight, barring accidents on the part of DS.

Sorry, I'm not ignoring everyone, I just seem to have missed most of the posts today. I don't know whether I forgot to press refresh or something . Must be out of practice...

I, like Linzer and English, wash towels once a week and sheets every fortnight, barring the odd "Mummy, I need a WEEEEE" incident.

English I suggested we change our own tyres to DH, but he said it would be too difficult with the automatic air pressure measurement systems, etc. that modern cars have. I'm sure he used to change his own tyres when he had a Trabant .

Happy World Vegan Day, admylin! :) It is a slippery slope! I'd gone off eggs before I went vegan, thought I'd miss cheese, but I seriously don't, not at all, and I feel better for not having any - 13 years later, I'm still vegan! :)

English, I don't drink tea because I don't like it, but my tea-drinking vegan friends tell me you quickly get used to soya milk in tea.

I truly believe dairy is actually detrimental to our health. I will never give it to DS.

Sorry, cheas, not heard anything about yeast extract being bad. I shall investigate!

Witches aren't soya products also detrimental to human health too? I'm sure I heard somewhere that soy milk contains oestrogen and in has been linked to male infertility and cancer and various other things? Pretty much everything can be shown to detrimental to health if consumed in quantities of course...

I asked DH why he doesn't change our tyres any more and he said it's because he'd have to lug them up from our cellar and down to the road (there are lots of steps up to our house from the road), and vice versa with the other set, twice a year and das tut er sich nicht an. We keep them at the garage now, although you could probably still pay to keep them there even if you changed them yourself I suppose.

cheas I have happy memories of going for rides in a Trabant in my younger and exceptionally foolish days - I shouldn't have been allowed out really as I had no street sense whatsoever. (In a slightly safer vein, I thoroughly enjoyed the film Go Trabi Go!)

But surely not my staples of wine and chocolate, English?

Linzer no, wine and chocolate are good in every way, and count towards your 5 a day... 5 good things that is, as I have also recently read somewhere that fruit is evil and we should all only eat green beans (and wine and chocolate - and tea) :o

Ooh we had green beans yesterday - I will now feel totally justified in having wine and chocolate for tea now.

Excellent Antique have a healthy living award :o (you're only allowed it once you've had your RDA of wine, chocolate and tea though).

I guess wine and chocolate for tea will do in a pinch... I wonder what the 5th essential food group is - Lebkuchen in winter? Was going to say strawberries in summer but fruit sugar is evil so perhaps icecream :o

Excellent new, English! I know that both red wine and dark chocolate are supposed to be good for you, so even white wine and normal chocolate cannot possibly be harmful in any way. (Not sure which flavour wine I'll be having this evening, so I need to cover all bases. ) And yes, I'm sure I read somewhere about fruit being bad for you...

But dark chocolate is nasty and promoted by the anti-pleasure food snobs who say anything bitter and yucky is "better" because they want to feel "elite" for liking something most people, if they are honest, actually don't - bitter dark chocolate, espresso... Being happy and smiling and laughing are good for you, therefore normal chocolate is better for you ;)

English You just described MIL with spooky accuracy!

Ah, in that case I shall feel absolutely no guilt when tucking into my Cadbury's this evening. (But I quite like dark chocolate too - does the fact that I buy it from Lidl make up for my elitist tastes? )

I'm busy for a day (mostly procrastinating...) and you all go chat crazy on me! And about wine and chocolate well I have upped my intake of chocolate (and Nutella, you know in emergency cases) because obviously I'm not managing my RDA of wine :( can I also request biscuits be categorised as a necessary food group. thank you.

Sorry English I do like the odd bit of dark chocolate... Especially chopped up and made into chocolate cookies! :o

Anyway, bedtime. Need my strength for the morning and the Vaterschaftsanerkennung Termin. Apparently, because it is a proper official thing, I have to understand it... I'm sure I'll understand most of it. DP's advice was to lie and say that I've understood no matter what

English, I don't believe soya is detrimental to health, no. That myth has been debunked. It was put out by the dairy industry to discredit the soya industry and those that are anti-dairy. China consume a lot of soya, and they do not have fertility issues. (Not saying they have none, but they don't have more!)
Chins also used to consume little or no dairy, and they had no or little incidences of many cancers and heart disease, ailments attributed to the consumption of dairy. The China Study, by T.Colin Campbell is a good book to start with, if truly interested. He is a doctor, born to dairy farmers, who has extensively studied the link between diet and health.

If people still have concerns about soya though, there are myriad alternatives, such as hemp milk, almond milk, oat milk, rice milk, hazelnut milk, among others. We do use alternatives, just for variety, but we have soya too. I cannot find hemp milk here, it is one of the best.

Agree that dark chocolate is vile! :)

Witches to be honest my point was just that almost every food there is has been highlighted as detrimental to health at some point, and all sorts of foods are "super foods" or healthy one minute and out of favour or unhealthy the next. I am not personally especially interested in the health merits of soya as we don't consume much in the way of explicit soay products - but I have read that it is in all sorts of things you wouldn't expect, as a binding and bulking out agent and used as an oil etc etc, so all the better for everyone if it doesn't cause health problems :) Of all things I might chose to read a book on that probably isn't one though!

I don't think life expectancy in China is as good as the UK or United States (nor Germany) btw (though I have no idea about fertility rates, I oly recently came across the fact the famous "one child" policy only applies to about 1/3 of the population) but of course there are lots of factors totally unconnected to diet at work on average life expectancy - wouldn't Japan have been a better example of a population who eat comparatively little dairy ;) (though the Japanese eat loads of fish they don't consume a lot of dairy). I think it probably comes down more to comparative levels of obesity, smoking and health care, and there being less tendency to eat processed foods (though that is changing) than to precisely what source their calories come from in all probability.

Yes, soya is in a heck of a lot of stuff.

I don't really know about Japan, the book was on China! :)

Anyway!

Having just been googling yeast extract, I can only agree with English - you can find some sort of "evidence" (or at least persuasive-sounding arguments) demonising most foodstuffs, especially if you assess their effects when consumed in huge doses. DH likes to quote "water, in moderation, is probably safe" whenever I ask his opinion about these matters .

I don't want to start a bunfight, but every time someone mentions The China Study on any thread I've been reading, someone else always says that it has since been discredited. It does seem unlikely that humans should need to rely so heavily on milk from another species for optimum health, though.

I don't know if anyone else has read In Defence of Food by Michael Pollan(sp?)? I think it has influenced my feelings about food more than anything else I've read. He points out that humans can live healthily on all sorts of diets (the Inuit eat virtually no fruit and veg, just meat and fat; the Okinawa Japanese eat rice and veg and occasional bit of fish), but introduce processed and refined foodstuffs and you simultaneously introduce the diseases of Western civilisation (diabetes, heart disease, etc.)

Food is a huge and fascinating discussion! My little bro has ulcerative colitis and that has certainly made me believe that perhaps your teenage years are also an important time in terms of development and that a good diet is IMHO even more important. Of course what he eats now might also be important, he wants to get on and enjoy his life and not think about food all the time. Certain changes to his diet might prevent re-occurrence of his worst symptoms; but that is always only a might at best

I agree that we can live perfectly well without milk but it is more a matter of taste - I love a bit of cheese every now and then :) I'm not sure about it actually being detrimental though.
I have read various articles about fruit and veg being pointless and on the flip side essential. Same for most food stuffs. I agree with Cheas that processed food brings a lot of health issues. and English that most things in excess are bad - I try and stick to what my Grandma used to say " a little of what you like is good for you".
I think I even read once that sleeping too long is bad for you ...