Reichstag Picnic

My brother and his girl are visiting. I've shown them around the main spots in Mitte today. Coffee at Hackesche Hofe, across Museum Insel and down Unter den Linden. It feels like it is in the middle of a hot summer so we decide to but some sandwiches and drinks to have a little picnic in front of the impressive Reichstag. The sun is burning so hot today, it didn’t last that long before we sought the cool shadows of the trees in Tiergarten.

Burgers!

I added a Jamie Oliver cookbook to my list: Jamie’s Dinners. First recipe: Hamburgers with homemade fries. After a long walk at Wannsee these burgers are exactly what we needed!

Wannsee

 

Volkspark

A wonderful sunshiny day today. One of the best places to be: Volkspark Friedrichshain. Marchenbrunnen, the fairytale fountain in the corner is showing its statues again after they have been hidden for the frost for a couple of months. After playing in – the dog – and around – the girls – the fountain it’s time for running around and picking dandelions. This makes you very hungry, so afterwards it’s time for pizza’s under the chestnut trees at Schoenbrunns Biergarten.

Picnic

A thing we haven’t realized ourselves enough in advance is how much we would miss a place outside with the girls. We thought we could do without because there are so many green spots in the neighborhood. In reality it means that we are inside from around six o’clock and seldom go outside afterwards with the girls.

To try and have them outside a little more we decided to go out and have an evening picnic every week, starting today. I’ve combined it with my cooking challenge and made some homemade bread, sausage rolls (forgot to put some egg yolk on top so they’re not looking as good as they tasted) and some fattoush with labneh. All again, of course, from the books of Yvette. The picnic at Schendelgasse Playground was a success; there was sun, eating, playing and a bit of relaxing for mum and dad.

My Girlies

Oatmeal Scones

No recipe, nothing much to add. Just liked this picture very much, mainly because of the hawthorn sprig we picked the other day when we were out together. She has been holding it on her hand for hours when we were out together and back home we put it in a vase. It has been there for three weeks till ot started composting.

The scone were also very good and part of my challenge, from the Home Made Winter book.

Hackesche Höfe

Today the babysitter is there to watch the little ones for a couple of hours so me and my oldest can go out and have some quality time together. We visit daddy again and have cakes and coffee, than we stroll around the Hackesche Höfe just for the fun of it. One of the quieter courtyards there is a big big chestnut tree with a small little playground at its foot. She loves it and since it’s her afternoon she may totally decide what she wants to do. What seems to be just sitting there under the big chestnut and muse a bit.

Rarebits

One of the things here in Germany we’re very happy about is that there are so many bakeries and that the average quality of the bread is so good. We really love the heaviness of the bread here. The only thing about this is that you don't need to eat a lot of bread to be stuffed and that leaves us with a lot of ‘old’ bread. This results in the eating of bread soup (also from Yvettes Home Made), bread porridge (mostly with apple and raisins) and French toast. Besides these recipes I’m always looking for new ways to process my ‘old’ bread and Yvette has once again provided me with a new success recipe! Rarebits with Stilton and Pear.

I’m not really comfortable with writing down someone else’s recipe, but please buy the Home Made Winter edition (also available in English) for this and much more great recipes. The accompanying soup is a green pea soup, but it didn’t turn out very good so I’ll be making it again to see if I can make it work better. 

Farls

Still going strong on my cooking challenge. I have cooked my way through at least a quarter of the first Home Made book and started adding other books to my challenge to cook as versatile as possible. I will only post some of what I make because on one hand most of it tastes good but is not looking that photogenic. On the other hand I do forget to take a picture most of the time and I also don’t think all these food pictures without recipes are that interesting.

Today we made something that was really delicious and looked good as well. We actually wanted to go out for a picnic, but as we were putting on our shoes thunder and lightning started as we haven’t heard before in Berlin. So we had an indoor picnic instead.

These Farls (kind of like blini’s but made with potato) with herb crème fraiche and salmon were sooooo delicious that I had to made a post with them. The girls absolutely loved them and almost didn’t leave me some. I’m writing this post a few weeks later and have made them two more times already when we had people coming over and everybody loves them!

Want to make them? Recipe can be found here

Rainy Day

Raining, raining, raining today so we’re all about the indoor activities today. One of our favorite books is the book of the Yellow Balloon (“De Gele Ballon”). It’s a book without words, but nonetheless with a story around the world. Every page shows a part of the world, from a city to the dessert, to the jungle, to the sea. On every page you have to find the Yellow Balloon of course, but besides this also the jailbird, the blue car and the fakir on his flying carpet. In this book you can stare at the pages for hours and discover new things every time. For the little ones it of course is all about tracking down this Yellow Balloon, my oldest girl I have to find new challenges to find every time. “Find the crocodiles”, “Find  Pippi Longstocking”. The other ones she knows by head since a long time and sometimes wants to show off by quickly pointing the location of the Yellow Balloon and others.

 

Gardens

One of the main questions for us for the future - besides the question in what city we will be living next year - is if we want to stay in or move out of the city. Our thoughts about this change every week to be honest. Lately we have been leaning more towards staying in the city, but our recent visit back in Holland made us change our minds about this. We stayed over at my parents-in-law’s place and visited a couple of friends who chose to live outside. With the lovely spring weather it made life easier and much more fun for the kids who were able to play outside any moment as much as they liked. Which also made my life easier, because I didn’t have to stuff three toddlers in their jackets and shoes, pack a whole lot of supplies and spare clothing for a visit to the park.

So for now our return to the Netherlands in a couple of years will be focused on a house with a garden. The whole in or outside the city questions is still undecided.

Uit de Keuken

We’re back in Amsterdam for a week to celebrate the birthdays of my brother and father-in-law who were born on the same day but 45 years apart. Or actually we’re not back in Amsterdam because we’re sleeping over at grandpa and grandma’s who live just outside Amsterdam in a little village called Oostzaan. 

Today my oldest and I were on our way to the dentist when she called in sick leaving us with a couple of hours free time in Amsterdam. We, or I of course, decided to go and visit our old neighborhood to check out how everything is holding up there. It’s changing quickly, in a good way with lots of new developments in the area behind our house.

A street behind our old house they are transforming old tram sheds into a cool new place with tv studio’s, a cinema, a hotel, a denim lab, a food market and all kind of other cool stuff. It’s opening later this week. Too late unfortunately for us to visit, but we go and have lunch on a little terrace on the other side of the road overseeing all the construction activities at “De Hallen”.

Uit de keuken is a lovely little place I’ve been eying ever since it opened a year or so ago. Never had a chance to go here until now and regretting not sitting down here before! Lovely lentil and zucchini salad for me and for her a chocolate spread sandwich. Wandering across the neighborhood we both really miss this place. 

Yvette van Boven Challenge

Being a stay at home mom makes me try to find new challenges to evolve myself in some sort of way. One of those is writing this blog to enhance my knowledge of English and try to work on improving my writing skills.

One of my other passions is cooking. It started when I was twelve and desperately wanted to join a cooking class. My parents allowed me to do so, but only if I promised to cook dinner once every two weeks. And so it happened. I’ve been cooking since I was twelve and still very much love to do so. I’m not a natural born cook, but I like to try new thing from recipes and gladly have been able to develop some skills over the last 20 years.

The last couple of years I have been a great fan of Dutch Cook Book writer Yvette van Boven who writes the tastiest recipes that are also not hard to make. She is a great illustrator as well, which makes her books very nice to look at. I’ve already made a lot of her recipes over the last years, but my challenge for now is to cook (almost) all of the recipes from three of her cooking books: Home Made, Home Made Winter and Home Made Summer.

A good way to start my challenge is to bake my own bread for the very first time: The no knead bread. Or almost no knead, there actually are 10 kneads involved. It is very nice soft bread which makes you wonder, if it is so easy to make your own tasty bread, why do restaurants often serve such bad fabric breads. If I ever start my own place I will definitely serve each table some warm no knead breads.

Today we ate the bread with some of Yvette’s cauliflower soup with stilton. Good soup, the girls loved it. I learned that they liked the blue cheese very much, so far the only thing they really do not like are Brussels sprouts. Yvettte will hopefully help me to discover more of their likes and dislikes. The challenge is on.

House

Barcomi's

Today the babysitter came to play with the twins in the morning for a couple of hours so my eldest and I could go out together for a change. Of course papa really wanted to join to on this occasion so first thing we do is head over to Barcomi’s for some coffee and cakes. I’m not really a sweet tooth myself but Barcomi’s New York cheese cake is one I can’t resist either. The location is also great, a hidden courtyard behind Sophienstrasse. We take the cheesecake as a desert, for I cannot leave Barcomi’s without having a plate of their fantastic beetroot salad. Afterwards we just stroll around the city and visit every playground we stumble upon because that what she loves most.  And chatting of course.

Ice Cream - Süße Sünde

Another great ice cream spot in our neighborhood is to be found on the other side of the road of Petit Fleury: Süße Sünde. A lovely little shop with two lovely girls behind the counter. They have some very special flavors like Raspberry Basil or Strawberry Chili. Today is the first day the two little ones get their own ice creams in a cone (requested extra tiny cones). Mango it is. They love it.

Nola's am Weinberg

Because spring is really starting, because we love spending time with daddy and because we like to explore Berlin we try to have lunch altogether once every two weeks. Starting today at Nola’s in Weinbergpark or Volkspark am Weinberg. Nola’s originally is a Swiss restaurant but during the lunch they serve a typically German breakfastmenu (served from 10 – 16) containing several breakfasts, eggs, bircher muesli and pancakes. Their afternoon menu (from 12) contains everything you always find on a German menu, supplement with Swiss specialties including a cheese fondue. A bit too heavy for us so we stick to pancakes, bagels and scrambled eggs with sausages, because it’s easy to share with the little ones. We have a lovely time sitting on their big sunny terrace being waited on by their very nice girls. Afterwards taking a stroll through the uphill park Nola’s is watching over. It feels a bit like an Amsterdam park with all the people sitting on the grass enjoying the sun.