Home Sweet Home...and how to make perfect pancakes on an ancient gas stove...

Nothing like a WWII-era apartment that has seen little or no updating to be inspiration for  some creative redecorating.  With the help of friends and local PCV's, I used some lively print material (with traditional Azerbaijani paisley motif), which I have been able to drape over the most obvious of holes and unsightly flaws in the plaster of the kitchen--I was even able to use some colored duct-tape from the U.S.A. to decorate the exposed gas and water pipes.

But learning to adjust to the antique gas stove has been a challenge, as has been the recurring fluctuations in gas pressure.  In the late '60's and early '70's, I found it challenging to cook on the gas stove in our apartment in Munich.  But the even more antiqued stove I now use makes that one seem like the epitome of modernity.  And as in days of old, learning to make pancakes that are neither golden brown on the outside but raw on the inside, nor burnt on the outside but cooked through to the inside, has been an experiment in trial and error.  However, it has been great fun making them for Alex, et. al., and I think I might be (finally) getting the hang of cooking on a gas stove, or at least making pancakes on the gas stove.

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