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They made me some delicious cocktails.

What does one do with several quarts of homemade sauerkraut? Make choucroute garnie of course!

On top there is a thick cut of kassler (smoked pork chop) and four types of wurst, including weisswurst, course bratwurst, rostbratwurst, and nürnbergers. Buried inside the two quarts of 'kraut there is slab bacon, bauernwurst, another cut of kassler, some onions, garlic, and a couple of apples for good measure.

Not pictured are butter-soaked hot pretzels, an amazing sour lambic, various gummi candies, and the 3600 yards I swam the following day trying to de-pork myself (literally and figuratively). ;-)

To love my hometown.

...with a flaming rum punch. Happy New Year, my friends. May 2010 bring you nothing but joy.

Sometimes when day after day we have cloudless blue skies,
warm temperatures, colorful trees and brilliant sun, when
it seems like all this will go on forever,

when I harvest vegetables from the garden all day,
then drink tea and doze in the late afternoon sun,
and in the evening one night make pickled beets
and green tomato chutney, the next red tomato chutney,
and the day after that pick the fruits of my arbor
and make grape jam,

when we walk in the woods every evening over fallen leaves,
through yellow light, when nights are cool, and days warm,

when I am so happy I am afraid I might explode or disappear
or somehow be taken away from all this,

at those times when I feel so happy, so good, so alive, so in love
with the world, with my own sensuous, beautiful life, suddenly

I think about all the suffering and pain in the world, the agony
and dying. I think about all those people being tortured, right now,
in my name. But I still feel happy and good, alive and in love with
the world and with my lucky, guilty, sensuous, beautiful life because,

I know in the next minute or tomorrow all this may be
taken from me, and therefore I've got to say, right now,
what I feel and know and see, I've got to say, right now,
how beautiful and sweet this world can be.

"Sometimes"
by David Budbill