IPA Lebkuchen

For tomorrow's linguist department christmas party I made vegan lebkuchen with chocolate frosting and IPA decoration. I hope the symbols are recognizable.
The recipe itself is pretty easy:

• 500g flour
• 500g sugar
• 500ml soy milk
• 3 tblsp oil
• 1 pkg baking powder
• 20g cocoa powder
• 10g lebkuchen seasoning
• additional chocolate for the coating

Have a nice Saint Nicholaus' day!
I put a chocolate bar in each of my roommate's shoes, because that's a german tradition and this year I really feel like giving presents to my friends :)

shōjin ryōri

Inspired by a book I got for my last birthday from my best friend I wanted to consume some leftovers the fancy buddhist way.
The book is called The Heart of Zen Cuisine by Soei Yoneda and is a zen buddhist cookery instruction volume. It shows how to prepare vegetable and which dishes match the current season.
I didn't use original recipes, but I used some ingredients from the marinade recipes.

In the big bowl there is rice, brown champigongs, alfalfa sprouts and natto. Side dishes were kimchi, steamed and marinated savoy and sautéed carrots, leek and zucchini with sesame. Not only was I filled the entire day but the fresh vegetables were just as pure and nutritionally complete as I needed a meal to be these days.
I really enjoyed preparing the meal just for myself and quietly tasting every flavour for itself. I should do this more often, but the orignal recipes are usually really time-consuming. Of course it's worth it. So there will be more when I feel like cutting my carrots into the shape of cherry blossoms *lol*
I will have to buy some new japanese ingredients, since my rice wine is really old and I've run out of miso and other important stuff. I will go shopping this week and the upcoming recipe will be mochi pizza. Really looking forward to that.

Some food I found

This week started with some new foods, and exploring new tastes is probably one of my top 5 things to do.
I had nothing for breakfast yesterday, so I decided to buy some grapes and banana at a discount supermarket. They have some cheap organic food, that I go for when I want to save some money. I met these guys:

Prickly Pears! I've never ate these before as whole fruits. I guess I had some fancy drinks where I doubt that real prickly pears were actually inside. I was hungry so I figured to ate just everything. Later I found out that you should peel them, lol. I liked it anyways. I was happy because they were cheap, even though organic. I thought those were way to exotic to buy, because I try to buy as local as possible (= Europe. I try to buy bananas rarely, but they are so tasty!). But they came from Italy, so it was all perfect.

After work I went some more shopping. I have to watch out, lately I've been shopping a lot. Especially the bathing balls from Lush were really expensive >.<
Düsseldorf has the third largest japanese community in Europe, so of course I love to go shopping in japanese (and korean) stores, too. I love japanese foods. I bought a (big) bag of organic green tea (matcha), because I want to try some nice matcha recipes. The vegan baker inside of me has to go to more challenges (it's my boyfriends and my birthday this month). And I found the first Onigiri Store in Düsseldorf. I knew Onigiri only from japanese festivals or from preparing them myself. They had several fillings, and some vegan ones among them.

I've got huge decision issues (and was kinda hungry), so I bought 3 packages.

shiitake-konbu, akashiso, natto-kimchi (left to right)

Yum, Onigiri is one of the best "fast-food" snacks you can think of (ok, except fruits...). My favorite was shiitake and konbu (mushroom and algae), really savory and flavorful. Akashiso was great, too, because I didn't knew what it was before (it's japanese read leaf aka japanese perilla). They also had black perilla filling and a lot more. The onigiri with natto and kimchi was ok. Although I love natto (fermented soy beans) I think it had a bit of a large role here. Not much kimchi (spicy cabbage) flavor unfortunately. Next time I'm near the japanese district I think I try the other fillings, but I enjoy exploring new flavors with friends the most.
Tomorrow I'll be making a hazelnut ice-cream pie for my boyfriend's birthday (he hates birthdays, so there should be something nice to eat). I hope the result will be tasty and photogenic.

Rainbows, Roses and Chocolate

Lately I concentrated more on sweets than on anything else. I'm not proud of it. But I realized that my digestion doesn't like this trend. So more clean food will be getting into my tummy.
Yesterday I bought a three-tiered platter, a tea bag plate and a tea cup with roses. I love it, gets me happy on misanthropic days like this one.

I need more tea, I disregarded our collection of tea. We have a lot of flavors. I love white tea, green tea and chocolate tea.
The organic food market offered white and lilac ("purple haze") carrots. I bought lilac ones. Also a lilac kohlrabi. I made this "double rainbow" salad (because it's so colorful) with tomato-chili-miso dressing. Yums. I really love raw corn.

The fair trade store offeres a lot of Zotter chocolates bars. Recently the matcha+sesame drinking chocolate bars turned vegan, but the bars they had in the store still had the old recipe with milk powder. I was a little shocked when I found out they have chocolate bars with bacon oO But they also have a lot of vegan bars, so I got these pretty boys:

mint (70% chocolate), soy chocolate with goji berries and sesame nougat, soy chocolate with sesame, soy chocolate with goji berries (left to right)

Hell yeah, these absolutely hit the spot. I didn't know any of these flavors. I really like sesame chocolate. This week I also tried dark chocolate with sesame from a cute chocolate store in Düsseldorf. Tried lavender chocolate,too, because everything in lilac has to be good. Trust me, I have positive experience with lilac/purple food (kohlrabi, carrots, cabbage, chocolate, rice...).
What crazy colorful food do you like?

They look like modern dancers, don't they?

 At dancing school I registered for Zumba, HipHop and Dance Hall. I'm excited. Happy September to all of you!

Chips and Cookies

Yesterday I got my weekly supply of fresh, local vegetables. I ordered Palm Tree Kale and ate the whole bunch the same day. I made my first Kale Chips (at first I wanted to try salad, but raw kale is a little squeaky for me).

I tried 3 different flavours. First was nutritional yeast and herb salt, then garlic powder and balsamic vinegar and finally pepper powder and salt. I made them in the oven, therefore they weren't raw. But I liked them. Next time I'm gonna marinate them before baking, because the final product lacked some flavor. Never thought I could eat so much kale. It's amazing how much food can shrink.
The dried mango I ate last week were 1,2 kilos when they were fresh...

I just can't find dried and unsweetened cranberries. I'm really into dried foods right now (and mangos <3).
Yesterday I I ate one green smoothie with spinach, blueberries and stevia for breakfast. Second breakfast were the kale chips. For lunch I had double layered cookies. I didn't eat anything for the rest of the day. How could I? I was shopping at the organic food market and the cookies were on sale and I could try them in the market. So I bought them, because I love those with chocolate. At the health food store then the ones with vanilla were on sale, too. So I bought a second package. Shame on me! Of course I ate them all (a few I gave to my boyfriend).
Nevertheless I lost about 3 pounds. So I'm gonna continue my raw path.

I fell in love with so many recipes. I made oat milk and almond milk and have to restrain myself not to drink everything. This week I also had these great nori rolls (you can't really call them sushi without fish or rice, can you?).

The white ones are with rice noodles on the outside. I spread the vegetables with wasabi, and I'm a wasabi addict. But that really hit me, ouch!
The fillings were:
- cucumber
- yellow bell peppers
- carrots
- sesame
- spinach leaves
- pickled ginger
- mungoose sprouts
I recommend to make extra wasabi and not to spread the roles with it. It's dangerous, guys!

I love to have a different salad everyday. I love them with sprouts and dried fruits. Here's a picture of Rafael's happy salad.

Happy salad is happy

I know I could make a whole blog only about my kittehs, but for now I'm still mixing raw foods with footage of cuteness.



P.S.: Zumba was great! My instructor is even younger than I am, but I want to go there as often as I can, starting next week.

Five toes and hard shaped sweets

Hi everyone!
I'm feeling great these days and I have the urge to get a little more active. I haven't been in the gym for ages, since I find it really dull there... but tonight I'm gonna have my first Zumba class. I'm super excited about it. Rythm and dancing has been my world for many years and I can't wait to start that again. When I went to school I had dance training every week. This Zumba class is 5 times a week, so I can decide how often I want to go. The dance school also offers Hip Hop dancing for 20 year olds and up (I'm turning 21 next month o_o). This would be twice as expensive as the gym is, but if that's what brings me to shake my butt, I'm gonna go for it. I can afford that.

Eating raw also got better. I eat about 10 percent cooked everyday (maximum), without any rules. Just because I have a lot of options in my fridge that want to get eaten.
Yesterday I noticed that my blender is a little broken (I bought it last month). So I will be sending it for repair on thursday. I think I'll need an official bill, but amazon will send this in 5-8 days. I hope everything will turn out ok, I want my smoothies back!
Rafael is really focused on consuming cool stuff, so he tells me about the vitamix blender, the Norwalk juicer and a lot more equipment we should buy. I think we'll be fine with our 100 euro Philips blender.
A friend of mine is planing on buying a dehydrator and I can borrow it anytime. Maybe we spend money on one of those... I thought they were a huge waste of energy, but I didn't really research on that much.
What do you think of raw food equipment? And how expensive do they have to be?

We also think of buying vibram five fingers shoes. Some friends of mine are very happy with them.

 Does one of you have these? How do they feel?

For breakfast I have a nice fruit salad everyday, sometimes with buckwheat, cocoa nibs or hemp seeds.
Since we have a lot of bananas right now, I ate a second breakfast today. Two bananas, some maple syrup and macadamia nut butter. Yes, life's good.

Saturday I made the first food picture of mine that I actually liked. In the front you can see grilled eggplant with mixed mushrooms, behind there is a delicious mixed vegetable salad (raw) and walnuts and a dried tomato on the side. I'm not good at grilling eggplants, but I love to eat that at Italian restaurants. How do they do that? I'm asking myself this question every time I eat at and Indian restaurant, too.

This Sunday I thawed the raw dough from my last picnic. The dough is made of hazel nuts, agave syrup and tamarind. Last time I filled the cupcakes with sour cherries and chocolate-avocado-cream. This time I filled them with banana, vanilla extract and almonds. My friends really enjoyed those.

The best surroundings for my sweets

Bidding food farewell?

This morning I started with my frozen blueberries, frozen bananas and chili-cocoa nibs (and some green smoothie).

Have to eliminate the dates on the photos...

Super yummy! I love "ice-cream" for breakfast.
I can tell you right now, this day wasn't 100% raw again, but I think I'm on a good path. (I'm snacking on home-made seitan nuggets right now v.v)
In the afternoon we went shopping fresh fruits at the organic food shop. I got some dried mango and figs, also. The mango were a bit sour and not as chewy as I imagined it to be. But it was okay.
At home I freezed 6 bananas and ate one, meanwhile we cooked brown rice, a lot of mushrooms we got from Rafaels parents and broccoli. I ate 3 small plates of that together with sesame-almond tofu. v.v

I also had a small piece of chili chocolate, a lot of dried figs and mango.
Someone, hide the seitan, I love it way to much. Tomorrow some friends of mine want to go grab some falafel... I think I'll pass on that. ; )
I have to practice shooting photos of food. I'm using the digital camera right now and discovered some more kitty pictures I want to share with you.

Cute Boldi showing us his cutey paw

Double kitteh baskets, so intense!

Rafael craved some fries today and wanted to say good-bye to fries. He does that with almost every possible meal when he wants to start a diet. He spents more time on bidding farewell to "forbidden" food than sticking to the original diet.
What do you think of bidding food farewell?
I resisted to say goodbye to all the tasty cookies in the store, because that task would never be done completely, lol. Just one more bite, plz...