Chemistry worldview.

I have to learn a huge load of chemistry these days, which includes learning about the structure and reactions of salt. The daily table-salt 'NaCl' is one that appears rather often in my life, as it also does in the books. I know by now, how the atoms/ions connect to each other, that they form a specific, regular cristall-structure and how they dissolve in a polar solvent like water. I like learning this stuff. Signe Emma's images even give it an aesthetic value, a beautiful touch. 

Thank you for that.

(you should really check her site, as the story to these images gives them another dimension more. and she has other funky stuff to offer too!)

My little farm.

I started growing my own vegetables on 20 square metres. And I want more!
It is a beautiful experience to see your food grow, to get a feeling for the time and care it takes and for uncomparable freshness when nibbling the radish directly from your garden...
It is also surprisingly easy to produce your own 'best veggies in the world'. Therefore I will definitely work more and more land in the future. And these two videos are encouraging me to follow my hippie-dreams of being a part-time farmer! (as does my dear friend Saskia, by recommending me these videos.)

Everyday.

via oldchum

I just ordered a biweekly delivery of fresh veggies and fruits from an ecological farm near Berlin. I love to be surprised by what they will bring and along the way I get to know (and am forced to use) vegetables that I would probably never buy myself because I never heard of them. 

Lately I also learned some about vegan nutrition (as my sister turned vegan, I am not even vegetarian) and stumbeled over raw diet as well, wich I both find very inspiring for my daily cuisine.

Our daily bread, or: Deliver us from evil.

I leave it as the film does: uncommented.

Swimming Sushi.

Do you love sushi -that healthy stuff from Japan- as much as I do?
Then you have to face the same problem I have:

Tuna is completely over-fished and salmon is usually farmed under industrial, environment-hostile conditions. Also most other sea-food ingredients are usually from problematic sources – hardly any of them being sustainable. In addition, the frozen fish, transported by cargo-airplanes leaves a double carbon-footprint: freezing and transportation. So if you want to consume ethically, you have to refrain from sushi as they are served or sold in most places.

source

But art will help. What? Art??

The interdisciplinary performing arts unit post theater has created a series of performances about the cultural history of fish-consumption, “Fish-Tales”. As part of their research, they traveled to Denmark, Iceland and Japan, to learn more about fish. Art can raise awareness, but the artists of post theater wanted to offer also a solution for the problem. Hence, they opened their installation/restaurant nekkko that serves sustainable sushi.

All major ingredients are as regionally and seasonally shopped as possible and most ingredients are certified organic. There are also vegetarian (V) and vegan (VV) variations in the mouthwatering menue (Berlin-Brandenburg). In order to reduce the friction, noise and energy of  the typical conveyer-belt system of running sushi, post theater replaces it with a miniature water canal. In it, wooden rafts in the shape of a boat or fish float in a circle, carrying the sushi to the diners. Some examples of what might float by:

* * * *
Zander Nigiri
Raw zander-fish painted with lemon, rapeseed oil, Tabasco, sugar, Maldon sea salt

Trout Nigiri
Home-smoked trout with dashi, brown butter, horseradish, lemon

Bacon Maki

yummy!

Fried bacon in thin slices with fried slices onion, marjoran, soy sauce, honey

Deer Nigiri
Pink roasted deer with cranberries, Mirin, horseradish

Beetroot Maki (VV)
Red Beet with pumpkin seed oil, soy sauce, Balsamico, honey

Carrot Mousse Gunkan Maki (V)
Carrot mousse with crème fraîche, saffron, ginger, lime, honey

Tomato Nigiri (VV)
Tomato filets marinated with Maldon seasalt, pepper, oliveoil, soysauce, rucola pesto
* * * *

nekkko is a pop-up restaurant, so if you want to try it - check out the dates. And you know what? If you cannot get enough of it - learn how to make it for yourself, either in one of the workshops, or with the book soon to be published.

Now: who's coming with me on september 18th - workshop and dinner??
Update: I was there - it was marvellous. delicious. soon to repeat.

(source for many text parts and round image: nekkko website)

Fish-Tales (Trio version) from post theater on Vimeo.

Tarte.

well, it's really a cake for sunny days - and today I heard that the seasons are renamed as: spring, shit, autumn, winter - but I wanted to share this beautiful cake with you since I saw it but not before I tried to make and eat it myself. I finally did and I can only say: I was so proud (no, I don't see a problem with a 'feminist' proud about her cakes...) and it was gi-ga-great and dazzling-delicious, yay. I found the original Stella-Cake (inspired by Stella McCartney's citrus-prints) by appolinas via todayyouinspiredme, I changed the recipie to a more european version (half the amount of butter of the original american version, cream-cheese instead, less sugar, more fruit). I will also soon add my version of the recipie to this post, with all european measures and so on.

Taste the Waste

It’s a system that we all take part in: Supermarkets constantly have the complete selection of merchandise on offer, the bread on the shelves has to be fresh until late in the evening, strawberries are in demand at any time of the year. And everything has to look just right: One withered leaf of lettuce, a crack in a potato or a dent in an apple and the goods are sorted out...

Amazing but true: On the way from the farm to the dining-room table, more than half the food lands on the dump. Most of it before it ever reaches consumers.

When it comes right down to it, no one actually thinks this is okay: Food is not something to be thrown away “because others have nothing to eat”, as younger people would say, and as for the elderly: “I was around during the war and we were glad to get our hands on every crust of bread!” That’s one side of the story. They discover the other side when they venture a look into dumpsters: behind their local supermarket and, if they can summon up enough courage, in the trash cans outside their own door. We’re not talking about chicken bones and potato peels here. The topic at hand is perfectly edible food, some still in the original packaging, and frequently enough not even the ‘best before’ date has expired.

If we were to save merely half of the avoidable garbage, that would have the same effect on the world climate as when we took one out of four cars off our roads.

And on famine, too. My mother always reminded me to eat everything on my plate: “Children in Africa would be glad to have that food.” We children never took her seriously. How were the leftovers on our plates supposed to get to African children? The rising prices of wheat clearly illustrate the point: These days we buy our food on the same world market where developing countries buy theirs. If we threw away less and bought less as a result, the prices would drop and more would be left for the hungry.

(selected quotes from the website to the film, rearranged)

Summer dish.

Yummy.
and as easy as you could wish.

+ cook the broccoli for 3 minutes
+ put it in the blender and crush chunky (or as fine as you wish)
+ add yoghurt, salt, pepper ... and maybe a little lemon juice and honey
+ fry the tomatoes in a pan until they get softer and crack
+ serve on top of noodles for example.
(I liked the broccoli-yoghurt cold with hot tomatoes)
+ crumbled feta-cheese would surely also go well with it

Over the teacups.

a coffee klatsch in the bosphorus metropole 

and a brunch in the nest at the lake constance.

"One of the delights of life is eating with friends, second to that is talking about eating. And, for an unsurpassed double whammy, there is talking about eating while you are eating with friends." (Laurie Colwin in "Home Cooking: A Writer in the Kitchen")

Or posting pics of eating with your friends on your blog.