eating in

The peppers are coming in and the salad is thriving in all this rain.

We picked each and every tomato that was ready and are still amazed at our bountiful harvest.

I have to say our gardening went great but we failed with cooking (again). We left all those tomatoes to ripen until we had so many of them that we couldn’t eat them all. So we made tomato cream soup with basil and parmesan chips, which turned out to be one easy way to a delicious meal! We even had a generous portion left to freeze.

The lone first pepper went into a small side salad with feta cheese. Easy and yummy.
I think working on our cooking skills will be a winter project.
On to something else completely: Our apartment hunting is really stressing us out. We saw a lovely apartment on thursday and sent in our details to the agent. They had us as their first choice but pressured us to make the decision right away, hand them over a lot of money cash pretty much right away and move in next week – no negotiation. We had some hectic talks with our landlady who was very understanding and we initially said yes, though feeling completely overwhelmed. But after sitting down and hectically weighing the pros and cons and looking at the map we found out that the nicely sized balcony was not in fact facing southwest (as indicated in the offer) but northwest! Add that the rest of the apartment was facing north and my priority of having sunlit rooms and a balcony to grow food went out the window. So we called everyone again and cancelled and just went to bed, pretty much drained emotionally and physically.
Boy will I be glad to have this search be over. Finding a nice, affordable place that meets our criteria is proving to be quite the challenge.

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cooking class with dana: part 2

If you want to check out part 1 first have a look here.
On the menu this time was real winter food. It was the first time I bought brussels sprouts fresh instead of frozen. I love brussels sprouts, maybe I can grow some on my balcony next year…*plop* my plant shopping list just grew longer…happens a lot these days.
Dana brought fresh laurel leaves from her balcony for cooking and also left me two whole branches with leaves for drying and using here!

And we finally used up all of our homegrown zucchini that we had frozen! I don’t think I’ve ever shown these in summer have I? They were beautiful and grew pretty well but we won’t be having them again next year because, well, we hardly ever eat zucchini.


Though they were delicious in our cream of zucchini soup with dried tomatoes…yum!

For main course we had the brussels sprouts with bechamel sauce, chicken leg (not for me though) and a german specialty, that my translator says is bread dumplings in english.

For dessert we made lovely molten chocolate cakes (except that the center wasn’t molten but they were delicious all the same) with my homemade elderberry syrup which went really well with the chocolate.

Any recipe requests, let me know and I’ll translate the recipes we used 😉

cooking class with dana – part 1

Like I mentioned in this post my friend Dana is teaching my boyfriend and me a monthly cooking class in an attempt to get us to cook and eat healthier.
Last weekend was our first class and it was very yummy and fun and we learned some stuff that we can definitely try again on our own. We’re also learning to cook with as few dairy products as possible, since I have just found out that I have a lactose intolerance problem (sniff, I do love fresh milk so).

We prepared a whole 3 course meal and had lots of fun in the crowded kitchen. Please excuse the terrible lighting, it was pitch black out by the time we ate.

For starters we had cucumber salad with roasted buttery bread (hey, nobody said anything about fat-free, on with the butter!).

Next came these turkey involtini with cheese and ham and a fresh summer salad and sesame rolls.


And last but not least these cream puffs with fresh homemade blueberry sauce. It was my first time making choux pastry (what a weird dough) but they came out so good!

I do hope that a couple more of these classes and by the end of the winter we’ll have learned to eat fresher and healthier and do more cooking ourselves.
Any recipe requests?