Dear Friday

Photo from splitshire.com – and yes, we are still having lemon water in the morning

Dear, dear Friday, so thankful that you are here! What a week! Cutting out dairy from our diet really hit us this week. We were (are) so tired – whole30-10th day hang-over-kind-of-thing. So far, the hazelnut-date-vanilla concoction wins in the category ‘best milk replacement’. The need to have milk seems to have diminished, though the need to have something is still there. We definitely feel less full – less bloated as well (hmm, might be a reason for feeling less full….), and apparently facial skin cleared up, but not so much the skin on my hands which is really playing up. Did anyone else experience this? Lots of headaches, but that could be because I pushed myself way over the edge (yep, still doing that) and with G doing 2 jobs until next week, it’s not been a walk in the park for her either. This would also be the reason why there was no Dog Tuesday – although I had planned it to be every 2 weeks (or every fortnight as they say here – took me the longest time to figure out what that meant!). We did a ‘Are you ready for a dog checklist’ – which was great fun designing and you will be able to download next Tuesday. Lists with ‘what do I need for a new dog’ and a budget planner are in the works –  exciting things ahead 🙂

But enough about us, how was your week? Are you looking forward to your Friday evening? Do you have a Friday ritual?

Do you have a food/drink ritual? This winter we have tried warm orange juice with ginger and it worked really well. Here are a couple of ideas.

My friend A has donor kidneys – he suffered from graduate kidney failure, which eventually made it necessary for his survival to be put on the list for new kidneys. It also forced him to change career paths from an active musician to becoming a great recording engineer. We talked about how it feels to live with other people’s organs -even though I found the subject difficult to approach. So, I know about a lot of the pitfalls, and this story is very unusual, but watching it will make you smile.

I got really excited when I read this article about twice baked potatoes (and the possibility to freeze them!!) Even though I can’t have them myself, they’ll make a nice meal for our guests. Y, this one is especially for you!

We knew it all along: women do more housework than men – since the Neanderthal!

And I leave you with the timeless Kathleen Battle and ‘Where’re you walk’ – Micro loves it, he ‘sings’ with it. It also brings some peace into our flat, especially when they are using the power-drill next door, like they are now…. Have a happy weekend!

Two minutes

enseimadas – on the list for the weekend maybe – but what do you do mid-week?

Wednesday evening, you come home from work, it’s cold outside, still 2 days to go until the weekend, it’s been a long day and you improvise your dinner, but there is this craving for something sweet… preferably something quick – because who has the time and energy left? And there came the solution: the-2-minute-french-toast-in-a-cup! It was already too late yesterday to give this a try, but we most definitely will try this one out. Our banana-bread-replacement will do nicely for this, too. Will you give it a try?

April Retro

Easter Sunday zoo outing

|Listened to| toddlers, babies and children explaining the world to us
|Read| Die Bahn forms on how to claim your money back if your train was delayed
|Watched| The West Wing (coming up to season 5 now – with special thanks to S!)
|Did| reconnected with old friends, visited a town in transformation, did yoga with little A, held a lot of kids’/babies’/toddlers’ small hands, played games, taught little A how to do zrbtt(s) (we’re working on the fine tuning….), went to the zoo, went to see the doctor (include here hysteria, frustration and loong talks into the night – which is particularly great if you’re supposed to be ‘fresh’ in the morning), read about scd diet and wondered if one should try this and about the practicality as well as some unanswered chemical questions (but getting confused messages about the whole thing from various sources- ending up even more confused), met up with former house-mate J and her friends from Brazil, went to museums and started PhD research project (the theory part, don’t get over-exited here)
|Learned| the more you ask, the more confused you might get
|Ate| Risotto, Paderborner Landbrot (which is surprisingly difficult to make if you can’t use the same flour suggested in the recipe, third trial seemed to have worked though), soups and a new fennel salat (G: the next best thing after licorice)
|Drank| tea, coffee, water and cider
|Thought| Dresden is surprisingly kids-friendly, particularly impressed with kids’ audioguide in the Grünes Gewölbe (green vault) and the great service at the Luisenhof
|Was happy| to see friends and family
|Wished| not to worry so much
|Planned| to have some days off
|Bought|ticket to start the gamelan course again
|Clicked|roost – accidentally surfed by and loved it. This was what initially started the mind boggling about the scd diet (as well as the lack of interest of science in challenging this idea) – beautifully photographed food, creative recipes and some explanations about how the diet works.

Can’t believe it’s nearly May and we’re still freezing our b.. off! 30°C in Munich over the weekend and we barely reached up to 12°C here. Also, it rained for days which reduced it further to a ‘felt 5°C’ – sigh  – please let May be warmer!

Food… weeks 4-7

Weeks 4, 5, 6, 7 in pictures

Finally a weekend with some breathing space. The sun is shining and it feels more like early August than October with 27 degrees celsius.

I’m listening to Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald duets and am happy to be alive – a lazy Sunday afternoon (the first really lazy Sunday since March it seems….)

On the weight loss front it’s not going so well: despite meticulously calculating WW points and stepping up the exercise (I’ve been biking to work as well as keeping up the 30 mins of morning exercise… still don’t like getting up at 6am), weight’s going up not down. Grrmpff!

Never mind – here are the long overdue food pictures from the last few weeks. I’ve really enjoyed all the beautiful colours, flavours, aromas, textures, and generally the cooking challenge. A few of them are repeat favourites, but there is a number of new mezze (tried out for M’s birthday) that I simply love. Favourites: Seared peach and speck salad and focaccia, and the pecan and cherry granary bread (Ottolenghi cookbook). Yum! Best quick fix for lunch: take corn on the cob (leaves and all still attached), put in the oven for 15-20 mins, peal out of its leaves and cut off the cob, add some green salad leaves, lemon or grapefruit juice, salt, pepper, onion, tomatoes (or whatever else you fancy adding) – et voilà 🙂 The carrot, apple and pecan cake doubles up as a breakfast muffin, and the leek & yoghurt and verduras de murcia mezze (on the mezze plate) were great as well.
1. Seared-peach-and-speck-salad, 2. Sweet-potatoe-gratin, 3. Focaccia, 4. Pecan-and-cherry-bread-in-the-making, 5. Pecan-and-sour-cherries-bread, 6. Sourdough-Bread, 7. Apples for apple sauce, 8. Seared-tuna-with-pistachio-crust, 9. Tuna, 10. Corn-salad, 11. Pumpkin-salad-in-the-making, 12. Warm-pumpkin-and-chickpea-salad, 13. Marinated-aubergines, 14. Carrot,-apple-&-pecan-cake, 15. Poached-chicken-in-the-making, 16. Poached-chicken-with-spelt-and-veg, 17. Bean-and-hazelnuta-salad, 18. Mezze, 19. Mexican wrap, 20. Carrots-and-hummus, 21. Asian-veg-stir-fry-with-chicken, 22. Pasta-with-beans, tomatoes and goats’ cheese, 23. Roasted Sweet potatoes, 24. Home-made-granola

Planning ahead

M is in the middle of her MSc exams, so I hear about delightful things such as SPSS, neuronal pathways, Thalami and hypothalamus. So glad I’m not the one having to remember all!! In the midst of all this work, we’ve become real fans of Martha Stewart’s weekly menu planner…. or we would probably never eat dinner between M’s exams and my ongoing overtime at work.

Here are some of the (in my opinion) mouthwatering first results of following the week planner:

steak sandwich with salad, using our first attempt at self-baked no-knead bread...

Steak with roasted tomatoes and asparagus... I detect a steak theme...

Eyeballs…

We’re up to our eyeballs in university essay/project deadlines… this is how it looked this morning (minus playing word games on the iPhone with G on her way to work and oh I’m sooo bad at it – hoping that I’ll improve though!) The résumé of these past days read as follows:

• books, books and more books
• notebooks (technically also a book)
• papers (a lot of them,  stored under the “essay file”- try writing about musical universals and not read till you drop dead!)
• filling out forms for my BAFöG forms (grant from German state) – the same form for the second time and one has to be grateful that one hasn’t been processed! And I was oh so early applying for it!
• a candle in memory of our friend’s granny who died yesterday
• tea (Mariage Frères roiboos) as I don’t drink enough and then I feel sick…and don’t want to drink…
• working all over the super big bed (also now called: base camp) = enough space for all the books, notebooks, food & tea at the same time!

not pictured:

• slightly tired and periodically overwhelmed brains in the process
• working phone line and broadband – after BT initially connected the wrong house number…
• first meeting for my final project (which went well – but also means a lot more to read and think about – I know, I asked for it!)
• the incredibly horrible miso/squash soup trial yesterday – that way we’ll loose weight quickly – funnily, I also don’t need to sleep with that very much either; I’m up since 4.30am
• helping A to move from her detention centre like place (also known as student accommodation) into her new, better place at Greenwich (also student accommodation) – where it rains through the ceiling- hopefully that’s going to be fixed soon…
• carpets/ sofa cover steam cleaning (done by a company and not to be paid by us as the former tenant didn’t clean when he moved out)
• slowly getting settled in the new place and finding the need to research creative storage/deco options
• listening and knitting to Dragon Lance in the evenings – now waiting for audible to release the next one. We definitely have too many book series hanging in there – speed up audible! (and yes I did play dungeons&dragons at school if you must know) Knitting: G finishing up a secret project and me starting the hare and tortoise by Kate Davies (and frogged already when once when I arrived at the first tortoise: I didn’t do my maths properly for the substitute yarn)
• Preparing for my sister’s wedding next month

I think that’s basically all we did… and now back to the essay! Essay done and handed in on time – should have pushed the publish button and not the save button on this blog post…

Comfort food needed

© thekitchn

The first week in the new flat’s nearly coming to a close and we start to settle in, unpacking boxes and hanging up pictures. We have a working phone line – since this morning, but still about a week with no internet (sigh), which wouldn’t be too bad if we didn’t have to finish our essays. Doing online research while sitting at Starbucks doesn’t work too well for me – especially the work 20 mins and lie down to rest for 20 mins is not really do-able there 🙂
I’m trying to establish a new routine in order to get a little better- moving and about 32+ hours of travel to go home (usually takes about 6 door to door, and spending Christmas Eve at the airport) used up a lot of energy.
Therefore, everything that saves me energy (or brings some) is more than welcome! I found that thekitchn has declared this week “soup week” and, to my great surprise, I followed enthusiastically! And this is coming from me- a person who is not into soups at all- you can ask my mother, who’s been trying to feed me soups all my life with no great success…
Anyway, we’ve had lentil soup this week, which somehow doesn’t qualify as a soup in my eyes. But thekitchn people put so many recipes up it will take us all of January to cook them all! Probably not the worst as soups not only qualify as comfort food (required when I look out of the window) but also budget friendly (required after moving house).
There is a chowder recipe (which also gives an excuse to finally try the no-knead bread and DIY butter), pasta e fagioli or miso soup – so much to try!

What they do in other cities…

While we’re slowly trying to crawl out of the hole, things remain quite stressful (or mildly annoying like a British friend of ours would have put it) on the house hunt front. It would probably relieve the stress to have a good rant about estate agents and what they call immaculate condition (= infested with black mould) or habitable (=dump) condition.  I understand why they call it house hunt…

But I need something inspiring today and of course we still owe you the Paris report and pictures.  So I thought I’d do a short post about creative things that happen in Stockholm and Paris. Listen to some nice audio book ( I still have to find one as I finished the last one knitting the “nameless jumper” with wool from my old LYS in Germany) and work a bit on sorting the pictures.

Meanwhile, have a look: 3 star Michelin Chefs are now cooking for free in the Métro. And creative minds in Stockholm try out a brilliant idea to help everyone’s health.

Happy Birthday, M!

M in 1979

I believe we might have spent almost the entire day eating…. Perhaps eating is not an activity, but a state of being after all?! And it came about like this: on Thursday I had asked M what kind of a birthday cake she would like. After having tentatively decided on a cheesecake, I emailed different recipes and received the answer: “I can’t decide – they all look so yummi”. So I decided to make sampler (half recipe) versions of 3 cakes instead of just one (pictures to follow tomorrow, promise! Done!). Easy to spot the glutton, n’est-ce pas? And why stop there? I also found a recipe for the cutest mini-bagels on the Delicious Days blog, which just had to be tried out for our extended brunch. So, with some London sunshine, slowly opening white and pink roses, candles, Vicky Christina Barcelona playing on the stereo, freshly baked mini bagels, a raspberry cheesecake, a cherry sheet cake, and a decadent melt-in-your-mouth chocolate cake (of course all slightly amended and made into sugar-free versions), and lots of telephone calls from lovely family and friends…. breakfast lasted a few hours… or so 🙂

Happy Birthday, M!

Cream cheese in the brain….?

Very British -Scones to live by ©Delicious Days

It’s amazing how a little post – in terms of word count – like the previous one, can inhibit you from posting a new entry, just because it makes one think so much and everything you would like to say afterwards is not thoughtful, not deep enough. There have been several (deleted) attempts to write another blog post, but none survived the editorial eye.

Oh well, I can’t be deep and thoughtful every day (deep sigh – I’d never be a philosopher!) – my brain is still full of fog or as I prefer to call it of  Philadelphia (yes I do mean the cream cheese).  Somehow I find cream cheese more comforting than fog. Also I find that this funny feeling (that seems to make thinking or, more accurately said, concentration ever so difficult and the more you try the worse it gets) is, at least for me, more tangible than fog. Fog is something light and airy even when it’s thick. But to me it feels like wading through something thick, like wet sand just without the peeling effect. I know everything is there – I just can’t reach it. I learned not to try and force it, but fly low and reach it from a different angle. But it requires a lot of patience – which I rarely have. (One of my friends said to me once that she thought God’s plan in her life seemed to be to teach her patience and I’d have to agree on that one for me).

Technically, I should write something totally different, but instead I find myself cruising the Internet for amusing and totally random things.

It started by getting or rather more or less winning a USB hoover for the computer, then I found what sounds like the perfect recipe for scones, a new version of a  chocolate cake (with the interesting fact that you can substitute Brandy with black tea – never tried that before, but I’ll definitely do it next time!) and a rather interesting intermezzo at the Elysée, a free pattern for a summer dress (which we hopefully are going to have this year – the summer I mean… perhaps also the dress), I found the t-shirt to support the all girls to school Project– I said it was random – and read an article about ‘how much would we give up to be more green’. Nothing of the above is remotely connected to my to-do-list for today…. To finish this randomness off, I watched the trailer of Food Inc. Hungry For Change.  At some point my brain will come round if not today then tomorrow (sigh – wait – again) in the meantime I try to keep myself entertained…