If there is one thing the viral Japanese cheesecake teaches you, it is that joy doesn’t have to be complicated. It’s the quiet revelation that a treat can be assembled, not laboured over. That a few thoughtful ingredients, layered with a little patience, can feel like a small luxury.
January always feels like a liminal month to me. Not a clean cut, not a full beginning, more like a soft corridor between worlds. Even though the calendar insists we are already well into the new year, energetically we are still shedding the skin of the Year of the Snake while slowly sensing the hooves of the Horse approaching.
So we’re all chiming in a new year. 2024! It’s real and raw as many are probably searching for a cause, looking to set new goals, counting the achievements, or just looking for a purpose. Let me give you some anti-philosophy!
On a Spring day in April, I packed my camera gear and props to make the roughly one-and-a-half-hour drive from Weimar to Eichsfeld. The weather was, as true to April's nature, fairly changeable. It was warm, my spirit was high and I was really looking forward to this trip. The district of Eichsfeld is a beautiful region in Thuringia, with its rolling hills and untouched nature, the landscape at times reminds me of something taken from the chapters of a Jane Austen book: a Nature of beauty and grace.
The last couple of weeks I’ve had my head down (mostly) and have been trying to get a lot of paperwork and organization done. The big “T” has been looming in our house and I have been procrastinating on this for as long as I possibly can.
Allow me to out myself first: Smoothie bowls are not my most favorite breakfast. Now that we have set that straight let me tell you a bit about my reasons and what I have observed about these very attractive looking super bowls that seem to be taking everyone by storm and is the big trend raging through social media and across many blogs. I also break down the smoothie bowl and consider the practicality of the super smoothie bowl vs. the real smoothie bowl! Oh yes there are many questions I need answers to!
“Simple can be harder than complex: You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple. But it's worth it in the end because once you get there, you can move mountains.” ~ Steve Jobs
My 2017 mantra is Focus and Simple! Keeping all aspects of my life clean, simple and clutter-free is something I have been aiming to achieve for a while. I am on the right path I know it – but I still tend to fall back on some old habits. That is why I have chosen to make 2017 a year where I consciously push out all the toxic junk and matter and open up to purity, to grace and to calmness.
The last thing I expected to really get hooked on in terms of food, when I first moved to Germany, was bread. Having lived in many countries I was used to a great variety of bread, mostly flatbreads. In my arrogance - or call it ignorance - I was sure that while Germany had some great bread-types – think of the pumpernickel, others were overrated – for me the pretzel!
