FLOWER PANCAKES

The other day I went to the forest with my friend to collect some more edible plants. Since I went on my first proper forage walk I’m really into it and very keen on learning more.

our bounty from the first walk

I picked some greens for a green smoothie and then my friend showed me some edible flowers. I knew you can eat elderberry flowers, but robinias were new to me. I know how the tree looks like and the smell is just delicious, but I didn’t know you can eat the flowers. I tried them and they are delicious. They taste flowery, sweet and buttery. And while you eat them you can ‘smell the flowers’, great right?! I also found them very filling, I think they’ve got lots of fats in them. I picked them at a sunny lakeside beach in Berlin, the whole area smelled fantastic!

Pretty and sweet smelling!

From Elisabeth, the lady who did the first forage walk with us, I learned you can make nettle pancakes. And I’ve heard of people making elderflower pancakes before. So I thought I’d try my own elderflower robinia pancakes.

robinia flowers and elderflowers

Pancakes I made are of curz vegan, I used,

1 part of rice milk
1 part of white flower
some baking powder
some crystal salt
and some oil

I made the mixture, heated up some oil in a frying pan, dunked the flowers in the mixture put them in the pan and put some more mixture on top of them so they look like pancakes. I didn’t read any instructions before, so I just improvised.

You can use as little or as much flowers as you want/got.

Pancakes!!

I liked them. I like trying something different. And the flowers add something fresh and sweet.

Pancakes make me really tired. No other food seems to make me SO tired! I assume it’s the gluten, not sure..

Also we saw a snake, in German it’s called ‘Blindschleiche’, in English ‘slow worm’? That’s what the dictionary said anyways. It’s like a silvery lizard without feet and it “walks” like one too. It’s completely harmless and I touched it!

Snakey!

Here is another picture of the bag I was carrying. Or I should say, ‘huffing’, on the way through the forest.

Sweet and yummy!

Have you tried a new food recently?!

EAT YOUR TREES

So I went on this ‘herb walk’/forage tour on Saturday and it was pretty awesome!! I loved it. The woman who was doing it, Elisabeth Westphal, did a really great job, she is really enthusiastic about nature, plants and the environment and you can really feel that.

The tour went for 3 hours and by the end I was pretty beat. It was  quite exhausting, how Elisabeth does it I don’t know, she’s full of energy, I think it’s coz she eats wild herbs every day. Must be good for you!

Anyways, it was really interesting to find out and learn new things. For example, we started the tour with edible leaves of trees. I didn’t know you could eat the young leaves and flowers of linden trees for example. And there are different kinds of linden trees. We tried the summer and the winter variety. The young leaves of the summer variety are really soft. And they get really slimey when you eat them. That’s supposed to be good for you.

winter linden tree

Also you can eat most pine trees. I knew that, but I didn’t quite believe it. Most of them taste disgusting. You only eat the young shoots and you can make tea from them. They taste really strong. By the way, is any tree that has needles called a pine tree in English and what are foliage trees called?

Some pine tree, I think it’s a larch.

Also, what I didn’t know is, you can eat, I think all, fruit tree leaves. Pretty cool. I tried some apple leaves and they have a really interesting, particular taste. Like a flowery, apple taste.

soft, furry apple leaves

This is a really popular plant in Germany, Bärlauch, which means ramson or wild garlic.

one of my favourite finds, I wanna make some pesto with it

Riding my bike through the forest, I found the smell rather offensive in the past, coz it’s really strong. You can buy this shit in pesto at the organic shop. Of curz I had to try it and it tastes quite nice. The store-bought pesto smells and tastes really grassy, but then developes a very piquant flavour. Almost spicy, nutty.

I liked the fresh flower, fruit thing better then the freshly picked leaves. They are really fresh and juicy and the little balls pop in your mouth. The flavour is very leeky, garlicy.

You can also eat a lot of flowers and use them as edible decoration, like for example, forget me nots.

Pretty!

But don’t eat the buttercups, they are poisenous!

Pretty beech tree. Edible too, in parts.

Yeah, so the forage tour was really successful and I could write lots more, but maybe another time. Elisabeth did a really great job and I’m looking forward to the next tour of hers. Hope you learned something and Happy Foraging!

OLD FRIENDS NEW WAYS

I have been back in Berlin for almost 5 weeks now. I LOVE it! It’s funny coming back, I really feel like Berlin is my (adopted) hometown. It just fits. I feel really comfortable here. But then, I’m not working already, once you work in a place it’s a whole nother story. At the moment it’s kind of like a holiday. An adventure.

I thought I would be blogging basically straight away, but it took me quite a while to settle. Not in a way to feel at home, as I said that was no problem, more in a way to get back into a routine.

Routines are funny, the exciting part of moving somewhere different and starting something new is that you don’t have a routine or that you change it, but I like routines in some way. It’s a funny one.

For example, before we left I was eating really healthy, mostly raw vegan food. When we got here I was like “OH MY FUCKING GOD!! Organic shops here are awesome!!! I wanna try EVERYTHING!!!” So we ate a lot of organic, vegan, but nevertheless much more processed food. And the vegan restaurants!!

I had a couple of slip ups, were I ate some vegetarian, non vegan sweets. I made this whole list in my head ages ago of all the things I wanted to eat coming back and it’s difficult to get things out of my head once they found a way in there, so yeah, I’m trying to be more undogmatic, but still straight edge, if that makes any sense?!

But now I’m basically back to my old ways.

Breakfast! I try to have something like this every day.

Also, no internet.

Some minimalists seem to go for the ‘no internet at home option’. In our shared flat we can only pick up the signal of a free internet every couple of days and then it’s really shit. So mostly we go to the library now, they give you codes for 2 hours of free internet. I’m sure you could use the internet there the whole day, but I kind of like the 2 hour limit, it keeps my internet addiction contained. It’s amazing how quickly 2 hours pass on the net. Frightening!!!

I met some of my old friends again. It’s funny how you can  basically pick up were you left with some people, even if you might not have seen them for 5 or more years. One of my friends, I’m pretty sure she’s a witch, she’s got a black cat, is a feminist and collects herbs, 3 reasons she basically would have been burned at the stake for a couple of 100 years ago, is gonna go on a herb forage with me next week and I’m super excited!

We gonna look for elderberries, linden flowers and some ramson maybe, which is like a wild garlic.

I’m also going to another forage walk tomorrow.

Here is a cool music clip, by Sticky Antlers. A band I found while watching a documentary about Punk in Africa.

Here is the crazy long trailer.

I nearly passed out watching this movie, the cinema was so overcrowded and the show was really delayed. As with the trailer, the movie would have benefited from some better editing, but nevertheless it was very interesting.

Also cinemas are so much better in Berlin!!! Oh my god! I’ve got so much catching up to do! I love art house, independent, foreign movies. I hate that regular cinemas nowadays just show this regurgitated boring hollywood crap that just insults my fucking intelligence with it’s cliches and stories that have been done 1000 times before.

I’m trying to get into blogging again more regularly, see how it goes!

Have you tried something new lately?