La Maison Cailler -Switzerland Synonymous with Chocolate

Switzerland is synonymous with chocolate and it comes as no surprise that the world’s oldest chocolate maker Cailler is arguably also the world’s best. In ancient times, chocolate, once considered the “elixir of the Gods,” was believed to have magical properties. I agree.

No trip to Switzerland is complete without sampling one the nation’s finest offerings, yet I never toured a chocolate factory until my niece came for a visit. Boy, was I missing out. A trip to a chocolate museum entertains all ages. It is worth it just for the free samples.

The most well known of Swiss chocolates, Cailler claims to be the oldest brand. Cailler produced chocolate in Vevey as far back as 1819 and since 1889 in neighboring Broc where today millions of tourists visit the La Maison Cailler du Chocolat. In 1929 Cailler became part of the Nestle group, but it still functions independently.

The Swiss consume the most chocolate in the world. 5% prefer white, 20% prefer dark and 80% prefer milk chocolate, which is made from treasured 200 year old Swiss secret recipe. In my opinion the darker the chocolate the better and apparently experts agree the higher the cocoa content the better it is for your health.

In 1911 Alexandre-Louis Cailler developed a different process to manufacture a creamier, milky flavored chocolate. Instead of using powdered milk, he took condensed milk from Alpine milk in the Gruyère region to create a milk chocolate with an incomparably smooth, rich milky flavor. To this day, Cailler is the only Swiss chocolate manufacturer to use this method.

While you wait your turn to enter the museum, you can watch through windows where on the floor below the chef leads a class of visitors in making 5 different kinds of chocolate in the chocolate workshop.

For 12 Swiss francs, visitors enter the museum’s historical journey of chocolate’s development through time in multi sensory audiovisual tours. Chocolate originated in antiquity from Mexico’s cocoa bean. In the 1500s, Spanish conquistadors brought chocolate to Europe where it was considered taboo until the pope declared it a wholesome drink. In the last century, the French considered it an aphrodisiac and savored tiny cups of divine chocolate silk while in bed.

As part of the Maison Cailler experience, you are allowed to touch the cocoa beans, butter, nuts and raw material used to make chocolate. A replica of the conveyor belt used in the factory shows the process of how Cailler’s signature Mini Branches – hazel nut filled logs – are made, cut and wrapped.

The highlight for any sweet tooth is the free sampling at the end. Just like at a chocolate shop, every sort of bar and cream filled chocolate align the glass counters for free sampling from the sweetest to the most bitter. I skipped the white and milk chocolate varieties and made a beeline for the end of the row to savor the dark chocolates. My niece and her friend tasted a piece of every kind of chocolate except the dark ones.

After the tour, you can savor chocolate-based drinks and desserts in the café. You can also shop for brand souvenirs and Cailler chocolate bars, pralines and famous brands of Femina, Ambassador, and Frigor.

The only problem with unlimited sampling, a gourmet may suffer from what the French call a “crise de fois,” a liver crisis brought on by too much rich food.

Grounded: Broken Wing After Skiing

Dear friends and readers just wanted to let you know I have been grounded and won’t be flying around cyber space anytime soon. I broke a wing. I should have stayed in the save confines of the gym instead of sailing down the slopes. I wiped out cross-country skiing in the Jura Mountains trying to keep up with my Frenchman who defies gravity and age. One minute I felt on top on the world celebrating life soaring under a blue sky on a snow-covered mountaintop. The next moment, I was lying in a heap on the icy side of a treacherous incline with my head shoulders pointing east and my legs twisted west.

To make a long story short, after a bumpy rescue squad ride in a snow mobile, a curvy trip back down the mountaintop and a 5 hour wait in emergency room, a doc diagnosed what I already knew, “Broken collar bone.”

“It exploded,” he said pointing to the jagged edges on the computer screen, “looks like you will need surgery.”

But just before I fainted, he called his buddy the orthopedic surgeon who balked when he found out I didn’t have insurance. (Well, I have insurance but not the kind that covers this swanky private hospital where peasants move to the back of the long waiting line.) The doc strapped me in a sling to immobilize the shoulder and sent me home with instructions to stay off slopes and out of gyms. Next week I will return for another X-ray to assure that the bone is aligning properly on its own.

At least I am in good company. My buddy Aaron Rodgers busted his collarbone twice and still throws 70-yard touchdown passes. Ditto for Charles Woodson who broke his in the Packers 2011 Super Bowl victory and he still had a heck of a career. And according to my doctor daughter, who has seen her fair share of broken bones, the clavicle is the most common fracture in the human body.

My advice to all you skier wannabes, stick to the flatlands of the Midwest, and leave the European mountains to the foreigners.

Also never ski alone. To be extra safe, bring along your own favorite doctor.

In the meantime, if I you want to hear any of my tall tales in the near future, give me a ringy ding. Thank goodness for the old fashioned, one arm operated telephone.

Raclette Party Swiss Favorite Event and Food

When guests arrive at our house for the first time, we always throw a raclette party to give them an authentic taste of Switzerland. Raclette is not only a food; it is an event.

This popular mountain dish, made from the alpine raclette cheese, has been around for centuries. Raclette, recorded in texts from German Swiss convents in 1291, dates back to medieval times. Cow herders used to melt this cheese over campfires when moving cows to and from pastures in the mountains.

Originally for this hearty, peasant meal a large raclette cheese round was heated over the fireplace then poured over potatoes. Hotels and restaurants in the mountains still use this method. Most people living in our area own an electric, tabletop raclette grills, which makes preparing the meal easier.

I love raclette because guests cook their own meal by heating sliced cheese in individual metal trays. The cheese is scraped onto small potatoes. Or it may also be served on bread like we do. Dried meats cured in the mountainous regions, such as beef, Parma hams, and viande des Grisons, can be heated on the grill top and served also. Tiny vinegary pickles and onions always accompany the dish.

The French serve raclette with a Savoy white wine, a Riesling or a pinot gris. According to the locals, one should drink only wine with raclette because water will harden the cheese in the belly creating indigestion. However, I have yet to see someone get sick even from imbibing, bubbly Coca Cola with the raclette meal.

At our house, we never had a guest who disliked raclette; in fact most people love it.

“Oh raclette, love it! Best meal of my life!” said Charlotte, Larissa’s sister who clapped her hands in delight and marveled. “Takes potato skins to a whole new level.”

My family enjoyed this so much on visits to Switzerland that I once hauled a bulky raclette machine across the Atlantic, so they could savor the meal stateside. Fortunately this is no longer necessary. You can order the raclette cheese and the grill from where else but a shop in New Glarus, the mini Switzerland of Wisconsin..

Order from New Glarus.

Imported raclette cheese is expensive. So at our cabin in Wisconsin, we use the excellent local products, the Colby, cheddar, or Swiss from Mueller’s Cheese Factory outlet. Although my French husband would disagree, I find the American cheese also suitable for this dish.

Raclette makes the perfect convivial meal to share on a cold winter night. The piping hot potatoes, heat from the grill and wine will toast your toes and warm your hearts.

Bon appétit!

Skiing Above the Clouds

When I first moved to Switzerland 20 years ago, I was sick every winter and friends told me, “Go above the clouds to breath.” Sure enough if you drive up into the mountains the cloud curtain opens revealing blue skies. Though we live in a picture perfect country with pristine views of the lake and mountains, we are surrounded by smog and fog, which becomes locked in over the basin every winter. That’s why each weekend people here fasten skis on their car hoods and head up.

Without access to mountains when I was growing up, I never learned to alpine ski. The only descent I conquered was the bunny hill at the golf course. Even though I am still wobbly sliding on 2 sticks, I love cross country skiing. To a flatlander from Illinois, cross country skiing in the mountains is every bit as challenging as downhill skiing due to the steep inclines.

Although I can only ski for no more that an hour or so, for 9 euros ($9) you can spend an entire day on groomed trails with spectacular mountain views. Our favorite spot, only a half hour away is La Vattay, on the plateau between the Valserine and Menthières in the Jura mountains.

Over 90 miles of trails wind through the pine filled forests and onto the open plateau where cows graze in the summer. Though I have skied the same route many times, I still get stymied because I am unable to navigate the 60 foot drop offs that end in sharp turns.

Luckily strategically placed gym mats are propped against trees at the bottom of curving slopes. To me those bright red mats are like STOP signs, so whenever I see one I pop off my skis and proceed by foot to the bottom of the steep incline. The only “snow plowing” I learned as a kid involved my back and a shovel, not my legs and skis.

If you grow up in this area, skiing is like riding a bike. You learn at an early age and never forget. Schools here take kids on ski day outings and across Europe people plan vacations around the sacred “ski week” holiday, a mandatory February break from school.

Depending on weather conditions ski stations are open from the end of mid December to end of March. Alas each year the ski season is shortened due to lack of snow. Global warming is wreaking havoc on the lower level of ski resorts.

But until the day snow becomes extinct, I will keep heading up going above the rim where I breathe, glide, breathe, slide, and savor life above the clouds.

Who Stole My Keys?

Everyone loses keys and teachers are notorious for it, but to prevent misplacing mine, I devised a foolproof plan. I wear them. Like charms on a necklace, my bike, car, house, locker, and school keys hang on a lanyard around my neck.

Since I literally run between three departments –English, PE and learning support – my keys open every gym, storage facility and classroom in 5 different buildings. I was dumbfounded when in the blink of an eye between unlocking the changing room door for the PE students and locking up equipment after class, my keys vanish into thin air.

Five teachers help retrace my steps on the great missing key caper. We empty wastebaskets and look behind toilets, under shower stalls, in sinks, on wall bars, under trampolines, on top of shelves and beneath ball bins.

When our search turns up empty, I deduce – someone grabbed my keys out of the door while I chatted with another student. I drag my burly colleague, a former rugby star, to the cafeteria to interrogate the suspects. The boys told us to check with the girls outside at the picnic table; the girls sent us to the smokers’ corner off campus. One guy took the cig out of his mouth long enough to say, “Pas moi, madame” and dump out his book bag as proof. He suggests I see the rest of his class that would be heading to history.

Panic set in. I made a mental, to-do checklist – empty locker, remove valuables from desk, see janitor to deactivate keys to the gyms, department offices, and equipment rooms. Frantically, I call my husband to explain insisting, “Change the house locks. Sell my car before it is stolen.”

“Why would you carry every key you own?” my husband asks.

“So, I won’t lose them.”

“But they are lost.”

“Not lost, stolen!”

I am hyperventilating when I walk into the history class and plead to the students, who I had just confronted in my PE lesson. “Don’t say anything now. No questions asked. Just bring my keys back; my life is on that key chain.”

“Désolé Madame, we haven’t seen your keys.”

Dejected, I walk back to the gym where a younger colleague with better eyesight is locking the gym door and shaking his head. No luck. I urge him to search one more time.

So we repeat the process. While I peek under gym mats, Frederic strolls out of the storage room swinging a hook filled with red bibs. Low and behold, behind the bibs dangling from a black UWSP lanyard is a beautiful set of keys. I hug him and then take off.

“Hey,” he hollers. “Where are you going?”

“To apologize to those kids.”

“Wait! Don’t forget your keys!”

I grab my keys, race across campus, knock at the classroom door and eat humble pie as I appeal once again to the students asking for forgiveness.

Then I stroll back to the gym smiling. My faith in humanity is restored by my colleagues’ kindness and my students’ integrity. With my keys jingling ‘round my neck again, all is right with world.

From Corporate World to Homestead – Reinventing in Retirement

In my final year of teaching, I have been a basket case of emotion, while my husband appeared to waltz effortless from the corporate world to the homestead in retirement. When Gérald lost his job; he found a new life. What happens when a caring boss goes head to head with the powers that be in the cutthroat, save-at-all costs, corporate world? At perpetual odds with top management for the past 5 years of his career, losing his job was inevitable, but what surprised me was how much happier he is now without his printing career.

I chose the early retirement option, while I always assumed Gérald would pursue his career into his 80s. After working long hours from the age of 14, instead of pining over his lost job, he embraced early retirement and found the freedom liberating.

Gérald worked in the printing business for 36 years producing everything from carton packaging to brochures to books to newspapers. As director of a newspaper printing firm, he lived on the edge ever ready to meet the impossible demands of clients and shareholders in a dying industry. Sleeping with one eye open, he waited for emergency phone call in the middle of the night. How do you put out a half a million copies every night without making a mistake somewhere along the line of distribution?

To be honest I thought he would be lost without the constant buzz. Instead he found time to enjoy his passions long overlooked when trying to make ends meet as a director, father and husband.

Now he plays volleyball, manages the neighborhood association, and serves as CEO of my website. He fired the gardener and finds pleasure in doing his own yard work and is giving our home a much-needed facelift after 2 decades of neglect. He learns new sports, helps me coach, and takes online classes. And he cooks gourmet meals and serves up fare that would put most restaurants to shame.

As my final school days approach, I look to him for inspiration. For the past 30 plus years, I have worked with kids. What will I do with my hours if I am no longer helping students write papers, organize schedules, navigate exams and wait for the next bell to ring?

personally designed wine labels from colleagues

With his new found joie de vivre the Frenchman demonstrates that happiness and fulfillment is attainable even after one quits the day job. And he bowed out of his arena with so much class. While I was crying over the injustice and worrying about his mental state being put out to pasture, he sailed into retirement with the same grace that he faced each day in a field filled with adversity. I admired his dignity as he spent the last 6 months training his replacement and preparing his staff for the transition of management. Then after the fanfare of colleagues, clients and employees heartfelt farewell, he never looked back, content in knowing that he served his company as an honest, well-respected, hardworking leader.

He left his profession with his integrity intact.