Jógvan in Switzerland - day 2

The following day we stayed close to home and wandered around the old town in Stans, which is the capital of Nidwalden canton. It's a town of some 15'ooo people. This is Froglet's favourite fountain, on the wall of someone's house. He splashed about in it a bit as he always does, and Jógvan sensibly kept clear while he was doing it!

Jógvan really wanted to have his photo taken in front of this old wall and plaque because he thought it looked pretty. The plaque's inscription reads:

Ave civis bottmingensis. Hic versi capillus anno MMIX.

The online translator assures me that this means:

Ave citizen bottmingensis. This to whirl hair yearly produce MMIX.

Which seems unlikely. Armed with the knowledge that Bottmingen is a town elsewhere in Switzerland, would anyone like to translate for me?

Finally, we tried to take a picture of Jógvan with the church spire. Unfortunately it was very big and rather far away and he was very small and close. So we couldn't get both. But Jógvan agreed with us that the details on the church spire were more interesting than him, just for this once.

And that's all I have time for now. Coming soon: Jógvan's new item of clothing and his trip up a mountain.

Jógvan in Switzerland - day 1

The cute bear in the picture above has been staying with us for the past few days. He's on a world tour before he ends up with a very brave young lady suffering from cancer in Australia. He started off in the Faroe Islands with Hans and Shinta, then stopped over with Henny in Finland before making his way on to America via Switzerland. If you'd like to show him your home town and pray for his future owner too, drop Shinta a line to see if he still has space in his schedule.

Here's what Jógvan did here in Switz.

Knowing how fond he is of boats, we took Jógvan to Lucern, where we walked along the lake front and watched the sailing boats, ferries, mountains and Froglet leaping on rocks. The mountain in the background is Mt Pilatus. Legend has it that Pontius Pilate came here in his old age and is buried there, hence the name. Legend also has it that Pilate's ghost, disturbed because of his role in Christ's death, causes storms on the lake, and that dragons live on the mountain.

At the end of our walk we took a ferry back to Lucern. We had hoped for the paddle steamer but timed it wrong so it was just a normal little ferry. Jógvan enjoyed the view anyway.

Baking this week: Nussheckli, or Swiss nut cookies

I happened across these on the internet and the author asks not to be reproduced without permission so if you want the exact recipe please visit her own blog. She has a photo too, so you can compare!

I'll just say that the basic ingredients are nuts, sugar, eggs and flour. These seem to be the main ingredients in a lot of Swiss recipes! These cookies caught my eye because they claim to be native to our canton. I've never seen them or heard of them but that means nothing as we have few local Swiss friends - most are immigrants from other cantons. So Froglet and I thought we'd make a half-quantity in case we didn't like them...

Mixing - Pretty round and heart-shaped balls - Um...???

We don't think they were supposed to all run together like that. Maybe we should have spaced them further apart, or most likely my measuring was at fault. Swiss recipes seem to need precision - well they are Swiss after all! As we don't own a weighing scale, and I seldom have all the ingredients that I need, my baking usually goes something like "100 g - let's say a cup - of flour or sugar. 100 g - roughly half a cup - of butter. Chopped nuts? We've got ground nuts, that'll do. Eggs can be replaced with bananas*..." and so on. I did not replace the eggs in this recipe though - pretty sure that wouldn't work!

The finished product:

Not quite how they're meant to look! But still tasty.

*A vegan friend taught us this. The ratio is one well-mashed banana for two eggs, if the eggs are mainly being used to bind rather than to raise (and you don't mind the taste of bananas, of course). Try making banana bread or chocolate cake with this substitution, it's yummy! Excellent way of using up those going-black bananas that no one wants to eat. You can also use apple sauce, I think it's 1/4 cup for one egg, but I prefer banana.

Edited to add: We are linking up this post to Simply Made Sunday retrospectively. Click the button to find out all about it!