My favorite recipes

Home for vacation to visit family on her parents’ farm near Colfax, Heidi Lothspeich seems as at ease at the farmhouse as in her new hometown, Geneva, Switzerland.

Living in Europe proves to be a great way to attract guests; friends as well as family.

Heidi graduated from Colfax High School and attended the University of Washington before graduating with a degree in education from Western Washington University, later adding a master’s degree in administration and supervision. She began teaching in the Northshore School District near Seattle.

Teaching in another country appealed to Heidi, so she applied and was accepted for a Fulbright Teacher Exchange. She taught for a special education teacher in Warwick, England. The quintessential English village, Warwick boasts the famous Warwick Castle which attracts hordes of tourists. Heidi visited several times, and had a wonderful experience, personally and professionally, teaching in England.

Heidi and Kate, the Warwick teacher who was the other half of the exchange, were welcomed by each other’s families. In fact, Kate now lives in Seattle where she’s married to Steve Lothspeich’s best friend and is now truly a part of the family.

Providing services for children with special needs in the United Kingdom is done quite differently than in the United States, and this allowed Heidi to analyze the strengths and challenges of both systems.

Ready for more adventure, Heidi moved to Switzerland in 2009 to begin teaching at the International School in Geneva. A dual language school, the primary language of instruction is English with French being the second language. Heidi has an assistant, as do many teachers. French classes are given four times weekly for the first and second year students.

Heidi teaches extended support in the Pregni—three to seven-year olds—assisting children with special needs such as Down’s Syndrome, autism and developmental delays. The children attend mainstream classes, receiving learning support from Heidi and other extended support personnel.

The International School’s EAL program is huge, as most of the youngest students speak no English when they start school. This fall Heidi will have two students who speak no English or French. It is wonderful, she remarked, to watch students acquire language. At least they are not alone—most students are acquiring one of the languages. And cultural learning comes naturally when students are coming from a wide variety of languages and cultures, 90 different countries, making a very rich learning environment.

Heidi is now the assistant principal of her school, with leadership duties as well as the teaching assignment she loves. She is out of her classroom one day each week.

International School teachers at Heidi’s school come from all over the world—Australia, New Zealand, France, Canada, South Africa, India, Serbia, Spain, Portugal and Argentina, as well as the United States.

Geneva has a population of 400,000 and features that are similar to Seattle—water and beautiful mountains—but more snow. Public transportation, buses, trams and trains, make it easy to get around, and Heidi has no need for a car. Geneva is a very diverse city, French-speaking, with a large transient population due to the many world organizations headquartered there.

Most people in Geneva also speak English. When Heidi’s parents visited in 2010, they got along well. She joined them in Normandy, and they noticed that her French was greatly improved.

When Heidi moved to Switzerland, she bought all new electrical appliances rather than deal with loads of adapters. Only her computer needs an adapter there. She carries a little bag of adapters for the different countries when she travels. The computer serves as her television, except for live events like soccer matches and the Olympics.

Cooking is challenging for an American in Europe. She cooks with her laptop nearby to manage conversions of measurements, temperatures and to translate some terms. Some ingredients are just different—baking powder and the lack of sour cream—but creme fraiche is tasty.

Heidi thinks that she probably acquired a curiosity of other cultures and a desire to travel from a People-to-People tour she took in high school with classmate Heather Heaton, who is also living far from home. When others say that they would love to do what she is doing, she encourages them to take the jump and have an overseas experience. It’s a very big world, but also very small.

“If you want to do it, you can!”

Recipes:

Conversions by the author, as Heidi was having fun with her family.

Tiramisu

from Valerie Hilen

500 g (1 pound 1 1/2 ounces) of Mascarpone

100 g (1/4 cup + 2 1/2 Tablespoons) of sugar

Lady fingers cookies, around 30, depending on your pan

1 cup of ultra strong espresso

60 ml (2 Tablespoons) of Amaretto

5 egg yolks

3 egg whites

Mix the yolks and sugar until foamy white. Add the mascarpone little by little, still beating, and two Tablespoons of the Amaretto. Mix the coffee with remaining Amaretto, dip the lady fingers into the mix, and arrange them at the bottom of a deep pan.

Add half the mascarpone mixture, make another layer of cookies, and cover the mascarpone. Refrigerate overnight.

Before serving, cover with unsweetened cocoa powder, using a small strainer.

Chocolate Cake

from Valerie Hilen

400 g (14 ounces) butter

440 g ( 2 cups) sugar

140 g (1/2 cup + 2 Tablespoons) flour

100 g ( 7 Tablespoons) cocoa powder, unsweetened and Dutch processed

6 eggs

vanilla extract

Butter and line with parchment paper a rectangular pan (roasting pan works well).

Melt the butter over boiling water. Add sugar and cocoa, then the eggs one by one while beating on high with the mixer for a few minutes. Then add the vanilla and the flour without working it too long this time.

Bake at 165 degrees C for 30 minutes. The tip of a knife should come out moist.

Ganache:

1/3 creme fraiche for 2/3 of the chocolate

(The recipe does not give exact amounts. 4 ounces of creme and 8 ounces of chocolate would be reasonable. The winning ganache from the PE Fair in 2012 had 1 cup of heavy cream and 9 ounces of chocolate.)

Bring the creme fraiche to a boil, take it off the heat and pour in the chocolate, cut in pieces. Wait a couple of minutes and whisk slowly. Et voila! You can use dark chocolate, milk chocolate, any extract you want, some alcohol also. For kids, I put some sugar in the creme and do fifty-fifty dark and milk chocolate.