Our home has slowly developed an obsession for elderflower, ever since I first took André to Romania and he tried elderflower lemonade. He absolutely loved it and that made me regain a love for it too. Because what´s more magical than having your partner fall in love with your heritage? As such, every time we go to Romania, we end up drinking all the elderflower lemonade we can. And if we find ourselves there in summer, we´ll fill our car trunk with the flower and make our own back in Portugal.
From the series of “ingredients I hate that make astonishing tasty recipes” comes this #homemadeMonday. This recipe actually has two ingredients I hate and a couple that I love. It´s a tasty green soup, half creamy, that is ideal for both cold winter evenings as well as hot summer nights. Without further ado, here goes the spinach and broccoli soup with a pesto twist.
We live in a mad world and these are crazy times. And while I often feel like escaping this surrealness by burying myself in works of fiction, this month I felt the need to read some books that would help me understand various aspects of human nature better. They might seem a bit random, and perhaps they even are. But I did love the fact that I went through different topics throughout the month. From learning why we´re so bad at reading strangers, to understanding that the world is actually much better than we think it is, to realising that our behaviour as consumers is deeply rooted into human evolution and finally to discovering ways of dealing with family life when both partners are career driven, this month has been one of magical and fascinating discoveries.
Quinoa – one of those newly popular foods that no one knows exactly how to pronounce and half the people sound like pretentious pricks when they say it out loud. It looks good in your brunch, cause it comes in many colours and it´s said to be super healthy. According to Wikipedia, it is richer in protein, dietary fiber, B vitamins, and dietary minerals than other grains, making it some kind of super food. The only problem I have with it is I really don´t like it. That is, until one of our chefs at work cooked us a spin-off of this recipe. It had two things I really hated – quinoa and spinach. And it was de-li-ci-ous! I adapted the recipe slightly, taking out the spinach, adding some spices and changing the measures and out came the recipe that will make you love quinoa. Here goes this #homemadeMonday .
If you´ve ever spent more than a couple of days in Berlin or better yet lived and work here, you´ll know what I mean when I say Berliners are obsessed with maté. Doing a bit of research, I found out that maté had arrived in Germany from South America shortly after the first world war. In a town in Northern Bavaria, maté became “Club-Mate” when the Loscher brewery purchased the license to this drink. This rebranded version of the Argentinian yerba mate soon reached Berlin and is nowadays as important to Berliners as sliced bread. Personally I was never a fan of the maté herb. When it comes to Club-Mate, the caffeinated drink present and free in every Berlin start-up , I couldn´t care less. This brings me to the obvious alternative: coffee. Dark and hot as I´ve gotten to know it in Portugal. While not really a fan of coffee either, I do find the smell of it magical. It might not be just the smell but the chuckles I have when remembering the Colombian coffee scene from Bruce Almighty and the memories of my mom sipping it on our front porch. Bottom line is – I´m not big on either maté or coffee but I will admit Berlin is the ultimate connoisseur of both. So naturally, when I returned to Berlin after two years, I stumbled upon some new and old but totally awesome coffee places. This post is about two of them.