The House of Small Wonder

Because everyday life is not about the big wonders, its about the small wonders that make things just a little more pleasant" is the slogan of this hidden gem in a corner of Mitte.

The House of small wonder is hidden on the first floor of a, on the outside, cheerless building. It’s easy to pass by, even if you know it must be there somewhere. Once you’ve passed the heavy front door you know you’re at the right place, just by seeing the fairytale staircase at the end of the hallway. On the top of the stairs awaits a wonderful decorated place full of green and blue tints, wallpaper with birds and tons of plants.

We ordered one of the sandwiches with, a perfectly proportioned corn soup and a salad, and a Japanese rice breakfast with miso soup. The food is simple but tasty, a good start of a new day, and the service is friendly.

Cevicheria

Today is my 35^th birthday. Five years after the birthday I unsuccessfully tried to skip. I didn’t see it coming, me hating turning 30 as much as I did, but it hit me in the face a week before the big day and progressively got worse from there. On the day itself I started telling people I was turning 29. Most of them reacting with “oooo, one year left till the big 3-0” made me feel even more depressed, so I just went on joking around that it’s inappropriate to ask a lady her age. 

It luckily only took me a week to get over it and accepting my new age. I decided to join the trend and make myself a bucket list, so I won’t be as grumpy when I turn forty. My bucket list only contains 2 items:

1. Finding myself the perfect hairdo that will make me look more nature in a sophisticated ladylike kind of way
2. Writing my own cookbook

I still have five years to accomplice both, so today is just about celebrating my birthday by spending a day with my husband doing one of the things I love the most: strolling around and eating. We went to have lunch at one of the places on my wish list: the Cevicheria in Kreuzberg.

Ever since I ate the Peruvian fish dish for the first time at Gordon Ramsey’s Bread Street Kitchen in London it is one of my favorite things to eat. Curing the fish in citrus fruits optimizes taste and structure, making the fish briny and tender with a sour twist. I’ve made ceviche several times back in Amsterdam, mostly with salmon or scallops. Since Berlin is not really that close to the sea I’ve never prepared it here, for I don’t know if the available fish is fresh enough to eat it raw. Today I will finally have a plate of ceviche again, and the Cevicheria far from disappointed me!

If only for the entourage it would be worth visiting this place. The light blue interior, the friendly people and last but not least the South American music make you feel you’re in another country, leaving the busy city behind for a moment.

As for the food we ordered a pulpo salad and the white fish ceviche with prawns. The salad was a very well balanced combination of oil and herbs, freshened up with chopped tomatoes and cucumber. I could’ve easily eaten a whole plate of it. The ceviche was perfect as well, classically accompanied by sweet potato, corn, red onion and coriander. We enjoyed every bite of it.

Please go here if you have the opportunity! Even if you don’t like raw fish (they have grilled and baked dishes) or you don’t like fish at all (as befits a Berlin restaurant: the have vegetarian dishes)

For the both of us eating here felt like a mini vacation.

Easy Does it

Wednesday evening is German language course evening, which means I do not have a lot of time to cook. Mostly on Wednesdays we eat something I can prepare in advance, like this quiche we are eating tonight. I got the recipe from the Season to Season cookbook by Sophie Dahl and, as I always do when I'm trying a recipe for the first time, I followed the recipe to the letter.

The thing I normally love about quiches is that you can put in heaps of vegetables for the kids without having to pay special attention to them eating it. Unfortunately for me this quiche is all about bacon, eggs and a bit of onion. We cover the veg part by eating a green salad with oven baked tomatoes. 

The reason I nonetheless wanted to share this recipe is that it one of the best flan bases I have ever made before. And as long as the base is perfect, the rest will work out just fine and you can throw in as much veg as you’d like. 

For Sophie is sharing the full recipe on her own website, I won’t bother you be writing is down again myself. You can find it right HERE

Teufelssee

We went for a visit to Ökowerk Berlin again . It was a beautiful sunshine day, sunglasses all around, winter suits as well. Sunny but cold

The middle of the forest is the perfect place to tell you have to pee. For our oldest at least, who somehow likes to pee outdoors. One more reason we hope for summer to start asap

First we took a walk around the lake, Teufelsberg in the background. There still is some ice on and around the lake. Afterwards of course a walk around the premises of the Ökowerk, concluding with some elderberry lemonade and seabuckthorn cheesecake

Prinzessinnen Garten

Oma came over to stay with us for a couple of days. She has an amazing kitchen garden back in Holland, so I wanted to go and visit the Prinzessinnen Garten with her today.

6.000 square meter hidden behind a round-a-bout in Kreuzberg. Boxes and crates full of herbs and vegetables. Of course not really the right time, vegetable wise, but it all looks great anyway. Oma explained the girls about Jerusalem artichoke, we bought seeds for her garden. We had coffee, lemonade and carrot cake in the shadow of the foliage.

It is a beautifully warm and sunny day for the time of year and this is one of the best spots to be on a day like this. It feels fresh in their shadow, the atmosphere is extremely relaxed. People around us drinking coffee or beetroot juice. Ordering a plate of the daily special or opening the lunch box they brought themselves. What also strikes me is the diversity in people that sit here. It’s not just the organics one might expect, there also are tourist, business people, groups of friends catching up, hipsters and three generation families. That’s us

Yam Yam

Sometimes during a Sunday walk the girls fall asleep in their stroller and when they do we quickly walk to a nearby terrace. Today I’m happy to be in the neighborhood of Yam Yam, a small Korean restaurant I’ve been wanting to go to for a while now to try their Bibimbap. It indeed is a very comforting dish.

The girls woke up before the food was on the table, but that was more than ok. We ordered them some fried Mandu (dumplings), so they were happy as  well. The noodles were a bit too spicy for me, but if you do like spicy this also is the place to go. We had a wonderful lunch. Hopefully next time they’ll fall asleep around the corner of Yam Yam again

Sparrow

There’s two species that dominate Berlins summers. Sparrows and Wasps. It’s been many times this summer we had to change places or leave a terrace, because circled by these small striped insects. I do get nervous when the wasps around the kids. And those Berlin sparrows, those guys really are as cheeky as can be. You can’t turn your back on anything eatable.

Today they were totally lurking us at Kiezkind. Just chilling out with some sausage sandwiches and mango lassies. They almost got hold of Lou’s lunch. Nothing that can make her more mad than trying to steal her food, especially when sausages. She completely told them off, those sparrows

 

Meierei

A favorite coffee place: tes Meierei. Because they have a nice terrace under the trees of Kollwitzstrasse, good coffee, good babyccinos, the people that work here are really, really nice, they have a tasty beef soup and last but not least: they have buttered bretzels 

Shiso

Definitely a favorite place for both us as for the children. This has to do with their homemade fries. A special treat after a morning of playing. They really do have delicious hamburgers and what I like best: they have fantastic veggie burgers as well. Today we had their Toad burger, with a Portobello instead of meat

Oysters

Today we have a family outing with just the five of us. My parents have camped in Normandy just a couple of weeks before us and for my mums birthday they went to the town of Saint-Vaast-la-Hougue to eat some of their famous oysters. They have found a perfect little place just beside the harbor and since they’re so enthusiastic about it (and since we love oysters) we can’t help but visit.

After strolling around the village, having coffee in the harbor, picnicking with just baguette and camembert, we go down the harbor again to end the day with white wine and oysters. Whenever in Saint Vaast please visit the small Yellow oyster shop to pick a plate of their delicious oysters in whatever, they offer five different, size you like. The girls weren’t absolute fans of the oysters, but we definitely were. Writing this I’m wishing I was there again to order another plate.

Beach

Zeeland has the best beaches in the whole of the Netherlands, at least I think so. We picked the week just before summer break starts, which means the beaches are almost empty. The B&B is just around the corner from the beach and the ladies who run it also have a small beach house which is available to use for their guests as well. Therefore we spend our first day laying and playing on the beach of Westkapelle. Only to move to the beach of Domburg at the end of the day for an evening stroll along the dunes, having dinner at  ‘het Badpaviljoen’ – the only place we have found so far that serves the ‘krukels’ (small sea snails) our eldest loves to eat – and ending the day with ice cream on the empty beach.

Claerchens

Just because we love this place some much, especially in summer times. Beer and Pizza’s. Everybody who visits Berlin should go to this adorable spot, we try to take everyone that visits here. Today is fathers day so we all go out for Pizza's and Beer. 

Meanwhile it has become my dad’s favorite place and he doesn’t visit without at least having a beer in Claerchens Garden.

Mozzarella Bar & Bottega

Two of my dearest girl friends came over for the weekend. Daddy took care of the girls for the whole weekend so I was able to spend all of my time chatting and eating with them. We did a whole lot of that these three days and I was able to visit a couple of the places on my list among which the small Mozzarella Bar on a corner in the Augusststrasse I’ve walked by many, many times these last months.

It is totally worth visiting, if not for their delicious mozzarella and antipasto platters, then for the cheerful waiters (or the fact that it’s Brad Pitts favorite Italian). It helped that the Dutch football team gloriously won a game the other night and these guys kept on congratulating us. But these mozzarellas of theirs are really something to come back to another time. We weren’t able to decide which one of the five different we liked the best. 

Schendelgasse

The playground at Schendelgasse is another of our favorite playgrounds. Not the playground itself it what attracts us that much –it probably is one of the least fancy playground in the area and could really use a bit of paint-, but the area around it that makes it a good place to spend out weekend in and around. It’s situated next to the Alte Schoenhauserallee and this gives us the opportunity to go out with the whole family, have breakfast together, let the girls entertain themselves and have mum and dad run errands in turns like going to the hair dresser, Flip Flop, &other stories or one of the other good places this street and the surrounding streets hold.

The best place for breakfast in the Alte Schoenhauser is definitely Zeit fur Brot. No weekend passes without us visiting this place for either a full breakfast including some yoghurt and sandwiches, just a cup of coffee or a cappuccino together with their ab-so-lute specialty (something you must absolutely try when in this area): their Zimtschnecken, which are the most fluffy cinnamon rolls I’ve ever tasted. Very sticky business, but so good. They also come with marzipan, white cholate or maple and walnut, but for me the original cinnamon ones are the very best.

And while we have our breakfast, coffee or snack, the girls are happy to entertain themselves on the swing, slides or in the huge sandpit.

Mogg & Melzer

Pastrami! Best ever! I’m not a big pastrami fan per se, but I guess I never ate a real pastrami sandwich. After seeing this movie that Imre send us I couldn’t not go to Mogg & Melzer and have one of their pastrami sandwiches. We waited till Imre was visiting to go there and I kind of regret it because their sandwiches are really, really good. All of it, the mustard, the meat, the pickle and definitely also the coal slaw.

It’s located in an old Jewish girl school on the auguststrasse and easy to miss because it’s hidden behind big wooden doors. It’s a cozy little place and we were in luck to find a place immediately when we walked in, but otherwise it would definitely have been worth the wait. The only thing I was sorry about was to have taken the small sandwich and not the big one.

Curry B

My sisters’ hubby is visiting us for a couple of days. He’s here for work, but luckily sleeps over at our place. The girls are very excited. Our oldest is super-over-excited. She asks me every morning if he’s still there and if he will be staying for the whole day. They always play this monster game. She wants him to be the monster over and over again. If he does, she screams as if she’s terrified. If he stops she wants him to be the monster again. The twins obviously also loved their uncle visiting as Lulu wanted to cuddle all the time and little Diez teasing him by calling him Bobo for some reason.

Everybody that visits Berlin for the first time should, in our opinion, be eating some currywurst at least once. We ourselves are at a point that we only eat them when people are visiting, guess we’ve overeaten ourselves a bit in the first months. There is one place we love to take people for some nice wurst and that’s Curry B. Curry B sell their sausages from a silver trailer in a corner of the terrain of Bötzow Brewery Berlin. Once one of the first breweries of Berlin, nowadays an area in development to be a creative place. It also houses one of the best new restaurants of Berlin: Soupe Populaire by Tim Raue. We really would like to eat there, but making reservations two months ahead is a bit hard for us at this moment.

Curry B makes a perfect alternative with their laid back attitude, relaxing lounge chairs and of course one of the best Currywursts of Berlin.

Aubergine and Tomato with Poached Eggs

The dish the girls and I had for lunch today was from one of my Sophie Dahl cook books. In Dutch it’s called Season to Season. I bought this book because of the box of veg I got every week and I didn't always know what to make with all these seasonal veg. Also of course a bit because of her grandpa who has given me so much fun in reading in my younger years. I honestly can’t wait until my girls are big enough to read the books to them.

I have to say it’s a sweet book and I use it as an inspiration, but the recipes are not always quite elaborated and often ‘missing’ something for my taste. Also with this recipe, the combination of the fried aubergine and tomatoes with the poached egg is fantastic and I will definitely keep that in mind, but I will definitely work on the taste of the veg. The original recipe by Sophie can be found here.

About poaching the eggs, I have a great tip from my Yvette van Boven books: make sure you stir the water (with vinegar and salt), so it swirls, before putting the egg in. It was my first time poaching and didn’t fail an egg!

Grilled Fish

At the Kollwitzplatz market we visit almost every Saturday there is a stand that sells whole grilled fishes. We never tried one before because there’s mostly a long line in front of the stand, but today we were early and were in luck there was no line at all. Our chance to finally try their fish. A whole grilled trout. 

The girls really very much like fish, but we don’t eat it here that often simply because the availability of fresh fish. Especially our oldest, she loves everything from the sea very much, in particular when we eat snails, scallops or a whole trout. What is so special about a whole trout? The eyes. She loves to eat the eyes. As far as I know in a big part of the world these are considered as a delicacy, but not so much in the Netherlands. I see no reason to not let her eat them, but haven’t been brave enough yet to try them myself. Maybe one day and in the mean time I couldn’t make her happier than to give them to her.

Mother’s day

Mother’s day for me is not about getting presents and all, but I very much likes the breakfast in bed the girls and their dad made me today. Normally on this day we would have two big bouquets of flowers and go and bring both our mothers a visit, but today it’s about what I like to do the most: strolling around the city and have coffee. So that’s what we did. Coffee on the terrace of No Fire No Glory when the sun was still out, later on lunch at Das Blumencafe, hidden behind their forest of plants and finish the walk with some gries-himbeere ice cream at Susse Sunde before heading home because the rain just wouldn’t stop. Wonderful day

 

 

 

Olive Blinis

Today for lunch, and as part of my challenge, I made Olive Blini’s with Beets and Salmon. This seriously is one of the most delicious little bites I have ever tasted. The combination of the sour beet with the salty salmon and the sweet mascarpone is amazing. It was hard to stop eating them, luckily the girls loved them as well and most of the blini’s were served directly to the plate because it was hard to bake faster than they were eating.

Of course my picture does not look as nice as they look in the cookbook, but that was mainly because I don’t own a flapjack pan. One more reason to get one. I did manage to find the recipe on a website right here