Another Year, Another Beginning

My 2013 was such a dynamic year. It was the  year of big changes that came with great challenges. The greatest highlight would be moving my entire life to Berlin, with my husband, and my 6 cats - all in one trip. I won't bore you with the details, but I must say this is by far my biggest accomplishment for 2013.  All those months spent in saving up and other preparations so that we can start a new chapter of our lives in Berlin has finally came to reality and succeeded.

But was it really successful for me?

It has only been three months since we moved and it might be too early to expect myself to completely adjust. But most of the 3 months has been quite difficult for me. My cats adjusted way better than I did. In a week they were already settled and adjusted to the Berlin weather. Even Nishi, my hostile epileptic cat, has changed for the better. I, however, have underestimated the impact of the move to my personal life. I think I spent more time than needed focusing on how I will move my 6 cats with no hassle than thinking about how I will rebuild my life in Berlin. There were only 2 most important things in my head - move my 6 cats; be with my husband - and everything will be fine. Unfortunately, that's not all it takes.

For someone who has never lived abroad long term, I did a pretty bad job planning for myself. The language, the weather, the transportation system, and our 3rd floor apartment which I strongly insist a 4th floor unit, with no lift - all a shock to me. I've got no friends, and I have no chance to make friends since I work from home. I also don't care so much about making friends. And although Berlin is a very beautiful city, I don't have the desire to explore places around me. I don't get out of the house unless I really need to (grocery, or mark dragging me to go out). I have this inexplicable fear and hesitation to plant myself in Berlin. No matter how hard I try, I can't feel the comfort I'm used to.  Mark is my home, but Berlin isn't. Countless petty fights, cryings, dramatic moments, all because I couldn't (and probably resisting) adjust. It's emotionally exhausting, specially that I get this constant pressure from my husband to get a life.

Mark has been supportive. He's doing everything he can to make me feel at home. It must be terrible for him that after all his hard work, he doesn't feel that I want to give this new city a chance. The truth is, I'm just slow to adjust. I do want to give myself a chance to be part of the society of this wonderful city. It just took a while to sink in that I will be stuck here for a while. It just took a while for me to digest that I have already given up the comfort of my life in Manila, and that Berlin is now my new home.

And because I'm really tired of always struggling and being unhappy of a lot of things, I decided to get this project up. I know the 365 project is so yesterday, but this is a perfect time and use for it. I figured, if I want to be happy, I should work on it. I should keep my eyes open and appreciate what's life is offering me. So at this moment, I really feel the drive of working on my happiness, and at the same time document it. Welcome to the 365 days of lekker!


Oh, and Happy new year!

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Cherry Tomatoes and Mushroom Salad

There was a sudden kick of inspiration to cook and to take photos today. I was really feeling good. On Saturday I finished all my cleanup tasks and had an 8 hour sleep, so I woke up well rested, and with a clean house. The feeling is just great and positive (and it lasted for a day, hurray!).

I love fresh salads, especially easy to prepare ones. So here's my quick cherry tomatoes salad with bits of mushroom.

Ingredients:
- a bunch of fresh greens. This one looks like alfalfa (but I'm not sure). I love flavourful leaves.
- 5-10 pcs cherry tomatoes, depending how much you want to consume.
- slices of fresh or preserved mushrooms. (White button or baby portabello)
- a dash of extra virgin olive oil.
- Salt and pepper to taste.
- Vinaigrette (optional)

1. Toss them together and give it a dash of olive oil, salt and pepper to taste. That's pretty much it. You can also use vinaigrette to dress it. In my case, I used my own favorite dressing - mixture of olive oil, white wine vinegar + a teaspoon of honey. Then drizzle dizzle!

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My Weekend in the Weekend Markets

Hello 2013!

This is my post for 2013! I'm really glad that I finally snatched some time to do blogging. I know I have mentioned this a thousand times that I'm not feeling inspired to cook nor to even take photos. But I'm happy to say that this weekend I got in the mood to take photos.

First things first. I love farmers organic markets that opens only on weekends. I get to find hard to find produce, plus they are all organic. I go there almost every week, to either to shop or just look around for something interesting and then eat with friends. But I never took photos in all the years I've spent going there. So I did some last Saturday:

 L: My "must buy" in the market. I love jackfruit! R: A young girl looking at the cotton candies.

Fruit stall that sells tropical fruits.

The same fruit stall also sell freshly roasted chestnuts.

This vegetable stall  I think is the biggest stall of vegetables in the market. They got almost all of the veggies I'm always on the look out for. However, I recently lost my fondness of buying my stuff here because they are too pricey in my opinion, after buying I felt like robbed :P;  they are always crowded; they sometimes say different prices for their produce, I guess because they get confused and can't focus due to a lot of buyers; and this weekend, they forgot to put my cherry tomatoes in my grocery bag, and unfortunately realized it when I was already home - i had to buy it again today. Long story how it happened and not exactly their fault because I could have checked, but I was absent minded. I guess the bottom line is they are just quite a bit unorganized when they get crowded.

This is the first stall you'll see in the entrance. These kiat-kiat shrubs(?) look adorable. Kiat-kiat is also known as mandarin.

So this was my Saturday. On Sunday I went to Legaspi farmer's market, which basically the same as this, but only more options in the produce, and more diverse food selection, arts and crafts. In summary, I ended up with a lot of fresh produce that's resting now in my fridge. I went crazy with cherry tomatoes though:

The left most is the most common tomato size. The second one was the cherry tomatoes I'm used to. However, the last one was just super cute I can't resist, I must buy! It reminds me of alatires.

Cherry "alatires" tomatoes up close.   (segeway : I used Fuji finepix X10 in this photograph, not bad for a compact camera, eh?)

So since I have so much cherry tomatoes, it has to go first in the menu.

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December DIYs

I felt really inspired to do some tiny DIYs in the house because  :

1. My hubby's coming home for Christmas.
2. Pinterest is awesomely influential.

The outcome wasn't really superb but I'm happy it didn't end up in disaster. A few things I have learned with these DIYs:

a. It's not always as easy/simple as it looks.
b. Needs lots of patience and time investment.
c. Cats should be locked up in the bedroom while you work.

So anyways, let's start with our Christmas tree. My cats have controlled my life for years now. My rights to use the microwave, to have nice flower vase and other table top decorations, to have a nice couch  - and to have a Christmas tree had been stripped off. So I made a stick-on Christmas tree.

Made from cut out colored paper, paper snowflakes, and used elmer's glue to stick on the dry wall.

Now we know who destroyed the snowflake.

The hanging Christmas balls I used to accentuate our window. Every day Lottie wrestles with the balls hoping it falls off. The Christmas bowl ornament was just made from plastic ornaments I found in the department store and stuff it with more Christmas balls. Every single day too, these get bitten off and balls keep disappearing. 

Lastly, this DIY has taken a lot of my time. I got this headboard idea from Pinterest. Researching further, I found out that it will be more than challenging for me to build this by myself if I follow exactly the materials used and how it's built. The moment I read polycarbonate sheet, I immediately backed off. There's no way I can cut that sheet by hand, by myself. So I just improvised and used materials that I know I can handle by hand. I'm such a tiny, inexperienced girl to be able to cut hard wood and polycarbonate stuff :P.

So here it is! It looks so amateurish, but it's good enough to accentuate the empty wall in our bedroom. It feels so romantic and not that Christmassy at all, so I guess it will stay up all year.

I can't even make a non-crooked shot.

Pardon my crooked low quality shots, I was in a hurry and just wants to blog blog blog before it gets forgotten :P.

So instead of translucent polycarbonate sheet to put on top of the frame, I used 2 sheets of Jusi fabric and stapled it behind the frame. Easy enough!

Anyways, I might need to revisit this post when I get a chance to post exactly how I built it in an amateur fashion LOL.

So ciao for now and happy holidays!

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Pineapple - Celery Smoothie

I wasn't quite sure of celery in a smoothie and I'm quite new to vegetables in fruitshakes so I was feeling a little bit uneasy making this. Surprisingly, it turned out  a-w-e-s-o-m-e  and I think I'm going to make more vegetable based smoothies moving forward. It's nice to step out of your comfort zone once in a while. This drink is guaranteed refreshing and will give you the fiber you need.

Ingredients:
- 1/2 cup chopped pineapple
- about 3 stalks of celery, leaves discarded
- 1 small apple, peeled and cored.
- 1 small banana
- 1/2 cup freshly squeeze orange juice (or the prepacked one if not available).
- some sugar or honey
- 3 pieces ice cubes.

1. Dunk all of it in the blender until smooth. Add water if it feels too thick.
2. Add more honey or sugar if it's too sour for your taste.

I didn't need to add ice cubes in my smoothie because my celery and pineapple are both frozen so it's already chilled

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Quick and Easy Tomato-Zucchini Warm Salad

Yes I'm alive!!!!

I guess I don't have to say it. It's pretty obvious I've been slacking on my kitchen and have developed a bad habit of ordering take-outs, eating instant food, and indulging to junk foods to keep me alive - resulting to 2kgs of unwanted fats. To this date, I'm 43kg. Yes, I'm not big and that's not even on the line of being fat. But I do feel bloated and I feel the fat's building up in the unflattering areas. Besides, I'm 5 feet flat and couldn't really gain much, otherwise I'll look like ball. So hibernation over - time to take charge in the kitchen again and stop whining about "hubby's away I'm lonely I'm not inspired to do anything" sort of thinking. I won't promise to regularly post, but I will at least make it to a point that I feed myself responsibly.

Enough of the blah blah. Holiday's coming. I'm already forecasting so much food fest all over the place so I was thinking to prepare. So I thought about cutting down on my calories intake beginning today (when's the best time?) so that when the holiday food fest calls in, I will have space for it - guilt free. Sounds like a plan?

Actually, I thought about doing it next week, because this weekend I might have to break the diet plans since I'm taking my mom and sister out of town, hitting the beach for some bonding times filled with food + sun + sand. But what the hell, the best time is always now. If I break it, then there's always making up for it :P.

In celebration of my being back in cooking, here's a simple and super easy tomato-zucchini warm salad to fill your stomach!

Ingredients:
- 3 ripe tomatoes, sliced.
- 1 small zucchini, sliced.
- 4 cloves finely chopped garlic
- extra virgin olive oil
- some lemon juice
- salt and pepper to taste
- egg/cheese/croutons for toppings

1. Preheat your oven to 400C.
2. In a mixing bowl, put the tomatoes and zucchini together. Drizzle with extra virgin olive oil.
3. Add garlic, drizzle some lemon juice according to your liking. This will give it a nice kick.
4. Add salt and pepper to taste. Toss well.
5. Get your baking sheet on top of your baking pan and lay down the tomatoes and zucchini pieces. Drizzle some more olive oil if it appears to be dry.
6. Bake for 10-15 minutes or until it looks roasted and the garlic is golden brown.

You can serve it with feta cheese toppings, or croutons. But I personally like poached eggs :). Enjoy!

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Vegan Hash Brown Inspired Potato Cakes

We've been having a shitty weather lately. Last week was terrible as there were flooding all over the metro, and as my family, cats and I remained dry and safe, it's very sad that there were plenty of families that were evacuated from their homes because of severe flooding. The country's not even recovered from last week's monsoon rains, but here we go again getting another visit from a typhoon. Anyhow, it was moving and remarkable to see the Filipino spirit during these times. I hardly read rants about how the government performed nor criticizing the government's level of preparation for this kind of natural calamity, but rather read more about people helping people. It was tragic for most, but a lot of people affected were rather calm and trying to stay positive.

So since the flooding was so severe last week, school and business operations were suspended, Almost everything was closed. For that matter, we weren't able to do our groceries. I kinda underestimated the monsoon rains and didn't think to stock up with food supplies. All that's left in my fridge were a bunch of baby potatoes, baby carrots, onions and some cherry tomatoes. If it was just me in the house, I'd probably have settled with an instant Lucky Me Pancit Canton (Mark won't be happy reading this), but since hubby's home I gotta improvise to impress. Thanks to my food processor, grating the baby potatoes was almost effortless. The canned baked beans I never ate served us well too.

Ingredients:
- 4 medium sized potatoes, peeled and grated (I  used a bunch of baby potatoes in this photo).
- 1 medium sized onion, finely chopped.
- 1 small carrot, peeled and grated
- 1 tbsp of egg replacer + 3 tbsp of water mixture (or use 1 medium sized egg, beaten)
- salt and pepper

1. Combine the grated carrots, onion and potatoes in a mixing bowl. Add salt and pepper according to your liking, and mix well.
2. Squeeze out extra water from the mixture using your hand or a strainer.
3. Add the egg replacer mixture (or beaten eggs) and blend well. The purpose of the egg is to hold them together when you mold it.
4. Mold the potatoes in to balls (size depends on how big you prefer).
5. Heat oil in pan. Once it's hot enough, carefully put the balls and press it with a spatula to flatten it a bit. Set fire to low heat so it doesn't burn quickly and can cook evenly on the inside.
6. Flip on the other side once it's golden brown.

Serve with baked beans and fried baby potatoes.

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Asparagus and Scrambled Eggs + Some Catching Up

Mabuhay!

Yes, I'm still alive.

I'm so thrilled that my husband's back home and there's more reason to cook. After 7 long months he's finally back and although he's just gonna be around for a few weeks, I'm trying to make the most of it.

Here are some catching up photos plus a simple breakfast recipe of our very first breakfast together in 7 months.

Ingredients:
- thin asparagus, ends trimmed.
- 2 medium eggs, beaten
- 1 tbsp mayonaisse
- 3 cloves finely chopped garlic
- salt and pepper to taste
- loaf of bread

1. Heat olive oil in a pan and fry the garlic until golden brown. Set aside.
2. Pan fry the asparagus until it reaches its vibrant colors. Set aside.
3. Combine beaten eggs plus mayo and a pinch of salt, and beat it like crazy. Fry the mixture and scramble away.

To serve:
Note: Sorry, I totally forgot the name of the bread used in this picture. I just saw it in the Saturday market and it looks tasty enough so i bought it. Use preferably a long loaf like this.

Cut the bread in half, lengthwise and top it with the scrambled eggs.Then layer it with
the asparagus and sprinkle the roasted garlic. Sprinkle some pepper and salt if desired. I matched it with an arugula and kiwi salad.

And here are the catching up photos

Fresh vegetables shopping once again from the Saturday organic market place here in Salcedo Village.

Lottie in his "I'm not really into veggies" look  +  Mark's welcome home flowers.

This was actually our 2nd breakfast but I might as well add it in this post. It's baked pancake. The pancake's Pillsbury :P.

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