SMALL STEPS

Blogging isn’t easy for me, so I’m trying a new approach – very quick posts.
Yesterday we went for a bike ride along the old East/West Berlin border. Really recommendable! The part we went to is between a river and an autobahn and it’s really green. There is quite a few people there, but it’s still kind of mystical. I’ve never been there before. We even went outside Berlin, crossing the border to Brandenburg, the next state. We saw horses, sheep, lots of birds and a crane.

On the way we’ve found some wild rocket. I have been finding it around Berlin quite a bit this year, never noticed it before or knew it grew wild. Just came across the smell one day and thought I’d try it. It tastes amazing! Quite peppery and so much better then from the store!

In one of the little towns outside the city we came across some bushes of different kinds of cherry plums next to the road. The bigger yellow kind, some red ones and some small unripe looking things, literally the size of cherries. I first was worried they’d be really sour. But they are delicious, bursting in your mouth, just a bit tangy, but also really sweet. So, we were grazing from these bushes for a while and then took some home too.

Another good thing about them, they are really easy to pick, coz not on a tree. If I get a garden I need to plant a couple of those. I didn’t like the yellow and red kind too much. Too floury, not so juicy and refreshing.

We also went into a garden colony, which was very neatly kept, around the corner from us. And people had put out baskets with apples and little pots with plants to take. Very sweet!

Yesterday was great! We’ve been having really great weather the last couple of days, actually the whole summer has been pretty good so far. I’m soaking in the last rays, getting worried autumn will be here soon.

Anyways, we had an awesome day out, it was really cool seeing a very different side of Berlin, at times I thought myself in another town and to get some foraging in.

Have a great week!!!

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?!

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?

Saturday Update

Today we just chilled. It was raining anyways. So we watched some German videos on alternative living.

Then we made a list of stuff we need to sell on Ebay for our move. Gotta list them soon! As we need to move out of our house several days before we leave. Getting rid off most of our possessions is also gonna prepare us for the minimalist lifestyle.

And I’m just about to sell all the clothes from my online shop. Hopefully that isn’t gonna be too stressful. Also a bit sad, I’d hate to waste stuff.

And one of my blogging friends posted this link about Berlin foraging and mushroom walks in my comments the other day. I thought that was really awesome of her! We were struggling quite a bit with the foraging here and I think that’s gonna be a great introduction to the German foraging scene. I’m really excited about it! Gonna be eating dandelions soon and making woodruff drinks and shit like that.