Having been off blog (and mostly also off computer) for the best part of the last month, there is a big heap of not-urgent-but-possibly-interesting stuff that has accumulated and is now cluttering up my inbox.

So to get a few of them off my list, here you go:

- Hortulus has issued a call for papers for the next issue, topic: Wounds, Torture, and the Grotesque. Deadline for contributions is February 15, with the possibility of a later deadline upon request.

Now, apart from going to the conference, we had a little extra time to spend in Cardiff, and just in case you would like to hear about that as well... here you go.

First of all, Cardiff was really, really nice. They have a very good and quite affordable public transport system, with a bus going out to Cardiff Bay every few minutes and buses going everywhere about all the time. (Except to the airport on a Sunday morning!) There is lots of small and large shops and many different shopping arcades, a large covered market where you can buy food and other stuff, several parcs, the very imposing castle, lovely food for fair or very fair prices and lots of friendly people.

My only problem with the friendly people that were chatting at us randomly was that I sometimes had a lot of trouble understanding the accent. It’s a lovely accent (I am a fan of locally different forms of language anyways) and I had already heard a little bit more of it due to watching Torchwood, but sometimes… well, sometimes it could as well have been Welsh they were speaking at me.

Apart from all this, there is also lots of culture going on in Cardiff – events at museums, galleries, there’s the Millenium Centre with lots of stuff happening and so on and so on. We had not enough time to take advantage of all that, but altogether, it reminded me a tiny bit of London, only much smaller and less expensive. (And with probably more Dr Who and Torchwood.) We did manage to stroll along the Bay and visit the Dr Who experience, which was a lot of fun.

The only disappointment was public transport to the airport. It is called “Cardiff International Airport” but should probably called “Wales International Heliport”, judging from its size. It has exactly one runway and is tiny, and with only very few flights going in and out. (Nuremburg has only one runway and is sort of as tiny, but much more busy.) Now, I’m all for small airports (I find them much more charming and nice, in general, than the huge ones), but if it is not possible to get there by train or bus by 9:30 on a Sunday… well, that is kind of inconvenient. We had to take a taxi out to get there in time, not something I had planned on.
To be fair, we had to take a taxi to get out to Nuremburg airport on our way to Cardiff as well, but that was for a flight taking off at 6 in the morning, and I can understand public transport not running then! 

That minor issue aside, I totally enjoyed being in Cardiff, as well as the conference, and I could well imagine going back there some day in the future. Probably in the summer, though, not in January!

It feels enormously, deliciously nice to be back home again after several weeks of being only there for a very short breather and then off again to something somewhere. Even though I enjoyed all the away-time a lot – Christmas with the family, New Year with friends, the EAC with colleagues – I am now really content with being home for some time, getting stuff into order and taking care of all the interesting things that were on the back-burner all this while. And catching up on cuddling the cat!

But you probably want to know about the conference much more than about how happy I am to be home again, so…

 The EAC took place in two locations - one of the university buildings (which was ample room for the ~100 participants of the conference) and at St Fagan's, a little ways outside Cardiff. It started with a very nice meet-up in the Pen and Wig on Thursday evening and then went into a tightly-packed programme of papers all Friday long. The topics were varied and interesting, and I enjoyed most of the papers very much. (With a few, I had some trouble understanding everything, since the speakers sometimes mumbled a little, but that's to be expected.) 
I especially enjoyed the paper about the ovens used for cooking on the Mary Rose, which was a totally astounding contraption that I'd love to cook in. Well, maybe not really, seeing as it's for feeding about 500 people.

After the papers, there was wine, snacks and a poster session before almost all of us walked off to a conference dinner.

Saturday we were taken to St Fagan's in a bus that seated 70 persons (though the persons it was intended for were much younger than archaeologists usually are), which was a little cramped but must have looked very amusing to anyone watching the bus spit out almost 70 adults instead of the schoolchildren that its bright yellow colour would lead one to expect.

The papers at St Fagan's were as nice as those the day before, but unfortunately the weather was not. Any open air museum will look much nicer in sunshine and good weather than in fog, grey clouds and drizzling rain - but I still enjoyed having a little walk around the premises and peeping into a few of the houses.

As all conferences, this one was too short, and unfortunately I was quite tired and not up to my best networking abilities. There's always the trade-off at conferences between a programme packed full of papers*, getting much into a short time, or leaving lots of room for questions and socialising at the cost of having fewer presentations. Cardiff EAC clearly opted for a full programme which left me more exhausted than I would have wished. So somehow I have the feeling that I could have gotten more out of it - but then one never knows what will follow later. At least I did manage to deliver my talk, do a spinning presentation and meet a good number of new people, as well as catch up with old aquaintances. And hear about a number of very interesting topics!

... to slide into the festive season!

And then, the year's end will be fast approaching, and with it the new year, and with that the January conference in Cardiff, so the first days of next year, I will be quite busy getting my paper into its final shape, and packing my bags.

Which means that I will now go on blog pause for the last days of the year, as usual - but this time, the blog pause will be a bit longer due to the conference and include a healthy chunk of January. Regular blogging will resume on January 16.

I wish you all a good festive season with lots of nice food, lovely people and a pleasant warm feeling in your heart, a wonderful New Year's Eve and a happy and healthy start into the year 2013. I'm looking forward to see what next year will bring us!

See you on the flip side!

You know how that date with all the festivity attached always creeps up on one, each year? It's weird how it manages that. Even though its creeping plans should be totally thwarted... but still.

We have a traditional boardgame outing every year in October, and that is also the traditional start-of-thinking-about-presents time. Yes, that is pretty early, but it's the perfect opportunity since a lot of our friends enjoy a boardgame or five (or the other stuff that can be gotten there). And you'd think that someone thinking of Yul or Xmas or Hanukah or whatever you call your festive season's peak in October should not be surprised by that date actually coming, right? Well, wrong.

October gently passes by, and November starts - it's getting colder outside and more grey, and the first advent approaches and with it the time to eat gingerbread and enjoy the pretty lights on pretty trees. Another reminder. And then, some time after that, the baking starts.

Then there's our traditional little excursion to a small and sort-of-artsy Christmas Market in one of the neighbouring towns, and of course the celebrations with friends and co-workers and ex-co-workers (or co-students). So theoretically, the steady approach of the date with the 2 in front and the 4 in back should not come as a surprise.

But with all these things that should keep one aware of time ticking by... each year I have the feeling that December especially just rushes by. Like a time-lapse, I am surprised by the first of the few days with the 2 in front suddenly approaching. Oh goodness, is it that late already?

And that's how I felt this morning, looking at the calendar. Oh goodness, is it the 20th tomorrow already? How does December get its super-sneaking superpowers?

Blogging is an education unto itself, including learning about what is different food-wise between different countries.

I grew up with the word "nougat" meaning exactly one thing: a sweet, nutty, chocolaty smooth confection that would melt in your mouth leaving only deliciousness and a desire for more. So the first time someone gave me a piece of "nougat" as in that white stuff with the nuts in it, I was thoroughly disappointed - and a little bit confused.

So then I learned that there is more than one nougat (though the white stuff with nuts, here, is normally referred to as "Türkischer Honig" - Turkish Honey.)
These days, one can just check the Internet for a definition. And the Internet tells me there's three kinds of nougat, and mine is not the most common, but the German kind.

What it does not tell me is whether it's possible to buy that on the other side of the Big Pond, or somewhere else outside of Europe. So just in case, here's a recipe on how to make it. Please note that though it's from a reliable German cooking database, I have not tried this... here, you can buy "baking nougat" in the baking goods section in every supermarket. (Especially around this time of year, of course.)

75 g hazelnuts (or almonds without the brown skin, if you prefer, but hazelnut is more typical)
75 g icing sugar (powdered sugar)
100 g dark chocolate coating or dark chocolate
50 g butter

Roast nuts at medium temperature until golden, let cool. (You can rub the hazelnuts in a cloth after roasting to remove the dark skin.) Grind very finely in a grinder, blender or similar contraption together with the powdered sugar - it should be ground very finely.
Chop the chocolate into pieces and melt (using a water bath so it does not overheat). Mix in the butter, then mix the nut paste and the chocolate paste together to make a thick, malleable nougat. 

(If too soft, you can add more chocolate; if too hard, more butter.)

And this should give you German style nougat, should you not be able to buy it. Another quick-and-dirty solution would be to substitute with Nutella, though I am also told that Nutella tastes different in countries that are not Germany - seems they have a slightly different recipe there.

I was making marzipan-filled dates yesterday and thought that I could blog the instructions today... and then I remembered that I did exactly that last year. (To be really precise, 363 days ago.)

So instead, you get another cookie recipe... one for really delicious nougat-filled spritz cookies.

You will need 225 g of butter, 100 g powdered sugar, 1 pack (= 8 g) of vanilla sugar, 2 egg yolks, a generous pinch of cinnamon, 230 g flour, 40 g cacao, 1 teaspoon (leveled off) of baking powder, and German or Viennese style nougat for the filling.

Beat the butter until soft and creamy, and beat in powdered sugar, vanilla sugar, egg yolks and cinnamon; blend together flour, cacao and baking soda and gradually mix in the mixture. Fill into a spritz biscuits contraption and spritz it onto a baking sheet (I use silicon baking mats instead of greasing the sheets).

Bake at about 175°C for 6-7 min (hot-air fan oven). Let the cookies cool, then stick two each together with warmed nougat.

Hide well until they may be eaten.

(Thanks to Phiala's comment, I now know that the German nougat might not be as common in other countries as here. If a German says "nougat", it almost always refers to that hazelnut-or-almond-and-chocolate confection, and a recipe will be in tomorrow's blog post.)