Trash Heap Survivor: The Candelabra

Jeff found this one on the street near Boxhagener Platz when we lived around there (two sublets ago, if you’re keeping track). It’s currently hiding in our friend’s basement while we prepare for what is hopefully our final move into a more permanent apartment.

For the record, I’m not into taking things from the trash just because they are trash. I try to strive for simplicity and not take too much more than I need (though my success is debatable!). Most of our curbside/Craigslist/dumpster finds are pretty functional, but sometimes a little decoration is nice. And this piece is not without its own purpose… I mean, it’s a candle holder! It can hold candles or little pots with seedlings or strings of beads or Barbie doll heads. Or maybe it will just stand in a corner looking pretty. Either way I like it, and we’re keeping it.

What are you guys finding in the trash? I’d love to know!

Super Simple Carrot and Potato Soup

Jeff and I have been moving around a lot lately. As in, we have a new home every month. Which means I spend a decent amount of energy concocting recipes that will use up all of the bulky and/or heavy foodstuffs we’ve accumulated at any given apartment, so that we don’t have to move with them. Chief suspects are bags of potatoes, carrots, onions, and celery – the main ingredients in this incredibly simple and surprisingly delicious soup. As a bonus, this dish is very filling and also quite the comfort food – perfect for helping our bedraggled, nomadic souls feel a little bit more grounded.

You can serve this soup with a delicious salad or some crusty bread… or just by itself. This recipe makes about four normal sized bowls – enough for one hearty meal for both me and Jeff, but my classic disclaimer is that we possibly (probably) have bigger appetites than many. Swapping out the chicken stock for veggie broth or water makes it a good vegetarian/vegan dinner option.

Easy Carrot-Potato Soup

Olive oil (about two tablespoons)
Two onions, quartered
3 cloves of garlic, minced (or more depending on your preference/tolerance for garlic)
5-7 Carrots, peeled and chopped
5 small quick-cooking potatoes, washed, peeled and diced
5-7 stalks of celery, chopped
Chicken stock/bouillon (can sub water or veggie broth for a vegan alternative)
Bay leaf (optional)
Salt and pepper to taste

If you want to get fancy, you can add the ingredients one at a time, but more often than not I just dump the vegetables into the olive oil, sweat them for a while (until the onions turn translucent) over medium-low heat, and then add the stock and the bay leaf. Add only enough liquid to just barely cover the veggies. Bring to a boil and then reduce to a simmer. When the carrots and potatoes are tender, remove the bay leaf (important!!!), take the pot off the heat, remove (but reserve – you’re gonna add it back in in a second) about half of the liquid, and use a potato masher or an immersion blender to get the veggies to your desired level of puree (I prefer chunkier because I am too lazy to mash more than I have to). Stir the liquid back in, a little at a time, until soup is at desired consistency. If there’s any liquid left over, dump it, drink it, or save it for later. Whatever. At this point, taste the soup. Add salt and pepper if you deem necessary. Cook it a few minutes longer over medium heat, and then serve.

I tend to use a lot of spices in my cooking, but this recipe really doesn’t need any help in the flavor department. In fact, additional spices would muddle the taste of the vegetables and make for an inferior soup. Sometimes I even skip the bay leaf, salt and pepper, and it tastes really great – just pure carroty goodness. So enjoy the simplicity of this one.

New Food Obsession: Cucumbers in Yogurt

My new thing is cucumbers in yogurt. Chopped up cukes mixed with salt and pepper, maybe a few cloves of garlic, all stirred into a big bowl of plain yogurt – I have been eating this lately as breakfast (great for hangovers!), as a side dish at dinner (goes great with lamb!), and as a sauce/creamy dressing. Calling this snack a raita or tzatziki or even a “salad” feels overblown, though in essence it is all three of those dishes. It could even possibly be described as a healthy version of my favorite Polish dish, mizeria – cucumber salad in sour cream. Turns out about a zillion cultures around the globe have a version of this delicious, healthy treat.

What’s so great about cucumbers in yogurt as a meal/snack/side dish/salad topper (aside from its versatility)? Here are just a few things:

First of all, it’s delicious and nourishing at the same time! That should be a good enough reason to eat anything. It’s tasty, with the benefit of leaving you feeling energized rather than sluggish like a lot of snacks might.

The yogurt contains healthy bacteria that basically perform your digestion for you. You need these little dudes. Cultured and fermented foods usually (but not always) provide a good source of bacteria – the addition of preservatives and some packaging methods can destroy these little good guys. Check the yogurt container and make sure it says “contains live and active cultures” to ensure you’re getting the probiotic benefits. If you add garlic to the mix, be aware that the anti-biotic properties of the garlic may destroy some of the good bacteria in the yogurt (but you are getting a host of other benefits with the addition of garlic!), so plan accordingly.

Cucumber helps to hydrate your body, and contains vitamins and minerals essential to your vital processes (aka what you need to keep your body alive and functioning properly). For a good rundown of the known health benefits of cukes, check out their listing on World’s Healthiest Foods, a website which basically translates peer-reviewed scientific research on healthy foods into understandable normal-people-speak.

The yogurt gives a good balance of protein and carbs, and gives you energy while keeping you full. The water content of the cucumbers can also make you feel fuller faster, if you have a problem with delayed satiety (aka if it takes you a while to feel full). It’s not going to kill you if you have two or three bowls of this stuff anyway, so don’t feel so bad about it if you do. You shouldn’t feel bad about eating. Period. Unless you’re eating babies or something. Then maybe you should feel bad.

Lastly, this is a simple, tasty, totally not daunting way to get more vegetables in your diet. I know that’s something that many people struggle with (even the most well-intentioned, health-knowledgeable among us!) – I totally have problems fitting in enough veggies sometimes. But this recipe is so easy! No cooking, not much cleanup, barely any chopping. And big taste/nutrition returns for such a small investment of food-prep energy.

Here’s my method (it’s barely a recipe):

For one breakfast-sized serving, chop (any way you want! I quarter and then slice) about half a large cucumber. Add however much plain yogurt (Greek or regular, full or low fat… I use bio, regular, full-fat) you would like, sprinkle on as much salt and pepper (and other spices if you want – cayenne, oregano, parsley?) as you see fit, and maybe throw in some minced garlic. Mix it all up and enjoy! Too easy, right?

P.S. Sorry I don’t have a picture! I ate too fast (it’s that good!)

DIY: Doing What You Want in Life

If you’re wondering where I’ve been for the past month, first of all, I’m flattered that you’re regularly reading my blog and noticed my absence at all. Thanks! Sorry for deserting you!

I’m afraid I’ve fallen victim to a bit of hopelessness – Jeff and I have experienced quite the run of bad luck on the finding-an-apartment front, and are sublet-hopping for our lives as we wait for the stars to align and some key documents to make their way into our possession. I’ve also had a string of false starts on my search for employment (if you have a freelance writing job for me, drop me a line!). Luckily Jeff and I have some really awesome and supportive friends, or our morale would be in the negative digits right now.

In addition to the stupid living and working mess we’ve got going on, I realize that I’m falling victim to my own stupidity, for which I owe myself a big apology. In my quest for stability and safety (neither of which I’ve really found yet, oops), I’ve neglected my personal wellbeing, and forgotten what exactly I want out of life. So I’m writing this DIY tutorial for myself, to remind myself that personal fulfillment is worth striving for, even if everything else in life sucks. Maybe it will help you, maybe you will read it and go awwww, maybe you have advice for me, maybe you can relate. This is my plan of action, and as far as I’m concerned, everyone should have their own.

To start: don’t listen to anyone who tells you that if you do what you love, the money will follow. It’s most likely a lie, unless you love investment banking, lobbying for big business, or being a high-class hooker (and have the luck and connections to pull off those careers). I love making sound collages and performance art. I love writing. I am fairly talented at these things, and have almost a decade of training in these artforms from some of the most capable, inspirational artists and teachers you will ever meet. I’ve also been paid a sum total of less that $5,000 for all of the artistic work I’ve done over the past 10 years, and most of that money came from writing copy, not poetry. Forget about making money. Do your thing because you love it. Maybe you’ll find a way to make a few bucks off of it, maybe not. Don’t let that be your only goal. Don’t let money define your legitimacy, either. Own what you do. Care about it. Work hard at it. Or don’t.

Decide for yourself if your passion is a hobby, or a vocation. For me, it’s a vocation, a calling. Saying that makes me feel stupid, and like people are going to question my legitimacy/talent/devotion/credentials. But it feels better than not saying it! And if you’re out there and laughing at me because you think I’m a wannabe or a no talent hack (I realize you probably aren’t thinking that, but this is my big fear), then screw you! Death to the nonbelievers!

If you don’t have money, do things that are cheap/free. Don’t use poorness as a crutch  - you’ll still be poor if you neglect yourself. Poor and unhappy.

Reach out to people. Even if you don’t particularly care about building a community of like-minded individuals, chances are you want to know about what’s going on in the world and how you can become a part of it. I’ve booked awesome shows by e-mailing strangers who sent out ads. I’ve gotten grants and studio space and opportunities by talking with people. I’ve never gotten anything but depressed sitting at home on my butt, refusing to interact with anyone.

Work. Work on something. Actively. Engage your interests. I can’t perform a show if I haven’t created one. Can’t publish the blog I haven’t written. Maybe this isn’t my best blog post, but it’s better than the one I didn’t write, and infinitely more shareable.

In the end, I think the best advice is the beautiful cliche: Just Do It. I’ve pushed aside my personal calling and emotional needs for the past several months, waiting to figure everything else in my life out before getting back into the studio/discovering a community/doing my thing. And I’ve been deeply dissatisfied, and it’s only made everything else harder. Lesson learned: don’t push aside your personal needs, or they will grow and overwhelm you. Do what yo gotta do, or the meltdown will eat you alive.

Pasta with Sardines and Berlin Princess Cheesecake

Yesterday Jeff and I celebrated Valentine’s Day (I know, yuck! Etc.) by riding the escalator to the sixth floor of KaDeWe and buying two slices of Berlin Princess ‘I Love New York’ Cheesecake (I wasn’t kidding about the cheesecake in my KaDeWe post). We took our little slices of happiness to go, and ended up eating them in a little platz in front of what turned out to be the Deutsches Instutut für Normung – the German Institute for Normalization. Yay for standardized romantic holidays? I have mixed feelings about Valentine’s day so I guess it’s a little funny that we ended up there!

The cake was devoured before I could dig my camera out

After eating the cheesecake (which turned out to be delicious), we walked around the Zoologischer Garten area, which is, like much of Berlin, a huge construction zone with some historical sites/statues/memorials scattered throughout. Around the corner from Zoo Station, a building was being demolished from the roof down – we stood watching a crane pull off pieces of the top floor for probably about twenty minutes!That’s my idea of romance

We took the S-Bahn home from “Zoo”, and got to work on making an early dinner: spaghetti with sardines. It’s a fairly simple dish that we’ve been eating a lot recently, but also feels fancy enough for a “special dinner.” The basic ingredients are spaghetti and sardines (obviously), with breadcrumbs, lemon and parsley.

Pasta with Sardines

500g (1lb) spaghetti
¼ cup breadcrumbs, plus salt and pepper to season
Olive oil
3 shallots, chopped
5 cloves garlic, minced
1 dried hot pepper, crushed, or red pepper flakes
Juice of ½ lemon
2 tins sardines packed in oil
3 heaping teaspoons salt-packed capers, rinsed
1 teaspoon pickled green peppercorns (optional)
1 bunch flat-leaf parsley, or 1/3 bunch curly-leaf parsley, finely chopped
Grated parmesan

Boil water for spaghetti (or other pasta). While you are cooking the pasta (according to the directions listed on the box/bag), prepare the following:

In a medium pan, heat a glug of olive oil over medium heat and add breadcrumbs. Cook , stirring well, until toasted (keep an eye on them to make sure they don’t burn!) and remove from heat. Season with salt and pepper (optional: add cayenne, garlic powder, and/or oregano). Set aside.

In a larger pan, sauté garlic and shallots in another glug olive oil. Add crushed red pepper, lemon juice, sardines, capers, and peppercorns. Cook until all ingredients are warmed throughout. If mixture is dry, add a ladle of pasta water (to provide starch, flavor and moisture). Remove from heat and set aside.

When pasta is ready, drain and toss with butter or olive oil. Add breadcrumbs, fishy sauce mixture, and chopped parsley, and mix well. Served topped with grated parmesan cheese and perhaps a bit of fresh ground pepper.

This dish is very filling – I can never eat more than one plateful, which is rare for me (I have a big appetite)! It’s fairly healthy, too: the little oily sardines provide a lot of essential nutrients, and far less mercury/contaminants than many larger fish (who live longer and are exposed to more toxins). This is also a relatively inexpensive meal, especially considering how filling it is. So there you have it. A healthy, cheap, filling meal fit for a special occasion or your everyday supper.

Tea Tree Oil Sugar-Salt Scrub

Yesterday morning, I stepped out of the shower feeling like a cloud. A cloud made of babies. I know that’s a totally weird/gross visual, but that’s exactly how I felt. Like a baby-skin cloud. I had been reading recipes for homemade sugar scrubs online, so I decided to try my own…it turned out to be transformative! I NEVER exfoliate and almost never use body lotion, so this was a totally new experience for me. I was afraid it would be too harsh for my ultra-sensitive skin, but it was actually super moisturizing and cured the terrible dryness-related itching I’ve been experiencing lately. Plus it made me feel like a cloud-baby (is that a prettier visual?). This is going to become a weekly ritual for me, I can tell.

I’m not going to post a picture because the stuff isn’t very photogenic. But it will make your skin look and feel years younger (I know this is a cliche claim, but I am here to tell you that this is the truth!! Baby skin!). This scrub isn’t drying at all. It won’t clog your pores. I wouldn’t use it on broken skin, but I have heard that people use similar scrubs to treat acne. I didn’t use any on my face, but I might try that out next time.

As an aside, for those of you who believe that real men smell like sandalwood and women smell like goddamn begonias all the time: you can make this with whatever scent you want, or no scent at all. Also, get over yourselves.

Other advantages to making your own body scrub: it’s a super cheap, customizable, and fun DIY project, and 100% free of unpronounceable nastiness… I know that everything is chemical blah blah science, but it’s nice to not have more irritating toxins and/or carcinogens rubbing up against my skin when I’m trying to get clean and pretty.

Tea Tree Oil Sugar-Salt Scrub

1/3 cup granulated sugar
1 tablespoon finely ground mineral bath salt or sea salt
1 tablespoon baking soda
about 20 drops tea tree oil
olive oil (enough to create a sludge-like mixture)

Combine all ingredients. Step into shower or bath. Do your normal shower or bath things, then use exfoliant. Apply scrub to wet skin, rubbing in circular motion. Rinse off. You are now a baby cloud. Pat dry with a towel and go about your baby-cloud day.

I am short so there was a bit leftover, if you are tall this is probably enough for one shower.

Hearty Hybrid: Red Bean Ratatouille/Vegetarian Chili

You may think, based on the recipes I post to this blog, that Jeff and I eat mostly meaty, boozy, and/or sugary things. It’s winter and we certainly are eating a lot of heavy foods, because it’s cold and that’s what you do when it’s cold outside. But warm, hearty meals don’t always have to be cholesterol-laden heart stoppers. This extremely filling kidney bean based dish is somewhere between vegetarian chili and ratatouille, and will leave you feeling both healthy and satisfied. It’s fairly quick to make, it’s easy, it’s good for you, and it only requires one pot – all pluses in my book!

Jeff and I probably make a variation on this dish at least two or three times a month (oftentimes adding eggplant, bay leaves, tomato paste, or other spices). As with most of my recipes, it’s fairly customizable, so feel free to experiment! The directions below make enough to fill four standard serving bowls. That’s one meal for me and Jeff, but you may eat more or less than we do.

Red Bean Ratatouille

Olive oil
1 onion, roughly chopped
4-8 cloves of garlic, minced
1 carrot, peeled and quartered length-wise, then chopped
1 green bell pepper, diced
1 yellow bell pepper, diced
Hot peppers, chopped (Choose variety and amount according to your heat preferences)
2 zucchinis (corgettes), quartered length-wise, then chopped
3 (15oz/425g) cans kidney beans, drained and rinsed (or equivalent amount of soaked and cooked dried beans)
1 (15oz/425g) can diced tomatoes, with juices
Fresh ground pepper to taste
Cayenne pepper to taste
Dried oregano to taste
Garlic powder to taste
Cumin to taste
Grated cheddar cheese (optional)

Saute onion and garlic in a few tablespoons of olive oil over medium heat. Add carrot and peppers, and cook for a few more minutes, until the peppers start to become tender. Add zucchini, and let everything simmer together for a while, until the vegetables are cooked thoroughly but still somewhat firm. Add beans, tomatoes, and spices, and continue to simmer, stirring, a few minutes more. Do not cook too long, or vegetables will become soggy. Serve topped with grated cheddar cheese.

If you choose to forego the cheddar cheese, this meal is 100% vegan. If you don’t, it’s still meatless. I don’t really understand why anyone would need or want to have meat with every meal, but if you are one of those people who “needs” animal proteins at least three times a day, I urge you to try this recipe. It might change your mind about the whole plant-based nutrition thing.