I’ve met a Gin on my travels and it was love at first try.

It’s name is White Gin. Macaronesian White Gin. And we’re a match made in heaven.

But before we get to drink, it’s time for some geographical ground work:

Macaronesia is a collection of four archipelagos in the North Atlantic Ocean. Vulcanic in origin, they are unique in their climate and vegetation. We gonna zoom in into one of those archipelagos – The Canary Islands – and further in into Tenerife and even further in into San Miguel de Abona where we find the Destileria Santa Cruz the Tenerife.

Here, the liquid represantation of Mediterranean savoir-vivre is created. Macaronesian White Gin. Bottled up in a white fired clay bottle, the visual design alone stands out:

The Gin is destilled with water that was filtered drop by drop through local volcanic rocks. That makes for an especially pure and high quality. The botanicals used are – according to the destillery’s website – cedar, cardamom, lime, lemon, orange, angelica root and other “top quality plants”. Whatever those are – never change that recipe, dude.

Now when you unseal and open that bottle, a very light and low key odour escapes; a hint of mint and citrus fruits and without the nauseating, repulsive and overwhelming smell of strong alcohol that most 40% spirits often have.

Now close your eyes (or rather read first, then close your eyes and do what I tell you to do now so you can actually follow my imaginary gin tasting) and imagine yourself standing on the pier of Las Salinas (s. here). The late afternoon sun shines down and warms you face and a fresh sea breeze tingles with your hair and makes you wish that this moment may last forever. This is what Macaronesian Gin smells like.

The taste ist similar. Very light and subtle. Some might call it “weak” or “shallow” but I like it. Simple but blissful. Citrus fruits are the dominating flavour, accompanied by the aforementioned hint of mint and an even subtler hint of cedar, followed by a final impression of orange spiked with a with a whiff of cinnamon.

To make a long story short: this is bottled Mediterranean Summer and best enjoyed on the rocks (as in both on ice and also whilst sitting on the vulcaniv rocks of Las Salinas), with Fever Tree’s Mediterranean Tonic Water or Thomas Henry Tonic Water and a garnish of lemon (okay), orange (pretty good) or grapefruit (amazing!).

Salud!

For more information, visit their website
http://www.macaronesiangin.com/


Las Salinas – Agaete’s Natural Pool Paradise

The Canary Islands – all-year holiday destination for all desires from party to nature. For me, it was my first mid/season aka winter holiday since working at the theatre (hooray!). I was in desperate need of Vitamin D, looked up not-too-far-away places and decided on Agaete, Gran Canaria, as my designated residency. Agaete is located in the North-West of Gran Canaria, at the edge of Tamadaba Natural Park and has an intensely rich vegetation. In January, everything’s green and blooming and the average temperature is 19-20°C so it was the perfect getaway from foggy Freiburg and into sunshine, sea breeze and nature ☼ ☼ ☼

Today, I’d like to introduce you to one of my favourite spots in Agaete. Down by Puerto de las Nieves, Agaete’s emblematic harbour town lies Las Salinas – three natural rock pools connected through underwater volcanic tubes. The pools are protected from the current current (hehe) so it’s safe to dive in during all times and tides. Concrete pylons on the edge of the outer pool have been added to keep the waves out. This provides for a safe bathing opportunity with all benefits of refreshing sea water but without the dangers of being pulled out into the open sea. As a bonus, you get an incredible panorama of the coastline, out to the sea and all the way to Tenerife.

I spent most of my very limited time down there by the pools – whether you’re sunbathing on the wooden patio, cooling off in the water, reading, dozing off, enjoying the chitter chatter, doing yoga or other exercise. Maybe you’re just soaking up that Vitamin D. Whatever is on your mind – this is the place to be. Unless you want sandy beaches, then maybe not. It’s all rocks and stones and hard floors. For me, it’s perfect. I could sit sat there all day long, watching the tide come in and the waves crushing against the shore. Paradise found.

Las Salinas, Calle el Muelle, 35480 Agaete

Pumpkin Pie with Homemade Pie Crust

And here I am, with yet another American pie recipe, straight from the US, and intended to be the sweet culmination of our Friendsgiving Dinner – an evening of all-American food traditions, from turkey to stuffing to sweet potato mash with marshmellows (yuk). However, as I was assured by my American fellows, one does not make a pumpkin pie without canned pumpkin puree and a proper pie crust. Unfortunately, you can’t get either of those in Germany on short notice so we needed plan B! Luckily, J’s Mum’s care package with Wegman’s Pumpkin Puree arrived just in time! However, with a little extra effort, you can make your own pumpkin puree, see below.

Our Friendsgiving was a magnificent feast, but that’s another story for another time. Next step: the perfect pie crust. After thorough research and vivid discussion, we settled on a combination of two recipes. Ladies and gentlemen, here it is / the ultimate, super flaky, buttery and tender pie crust that satisfies even the high expectations of my ride-or-die J.

THE RECIPE

Ingredients:

2 1/2 cups of plain flour

1 tsp of salt

6 tbsp of cold butter (German butter has more fat so for 250g of butter you need to add 1 tbsp of cold water if using an American recipe)

3/4 cup of cold sunflower marguerine

1/2 cup of ice cold water

Instructions:

Mix flour and salt. Add butter and marguerine in chopped pieces. Use a fork to mix and mash it all into a coarselz crumblz dough. Carefully add water so that the crumbs clump together slightly. Gently form a ball and divide it into 2 pieces, one for the base and, if baking any other than pumpkin pie, one for the cover. Real pumpkin pie does not have a cover!! That being said, 3/4 of the ingredients should suffice. Make a flat disk and wrap it up in plastic. Chill in the fridge for at least 2 hours.

Place some parchment paper on a baking mat. Take the dough and sprinkle some flour on both sides. Carefully roll and press the dough with a rolling pin into a circle a little larger than the pie form’s diameter so you have enough dough overlapping for the side crust. The base should be about 1 cm in thickness. Take the parchment paper, put the dough upside down into the pie pan and remove the pater. Smooth out the edges and make it all look nice, neat and tidy. Trim the overlapping bits and pieces. Look up some pie crust folding origami if you’re feeling fancy.

Now for the rest of the recipe, just follow the instructions on your pumpkin puree tin. We had Wegman’s which gives you the following directions, slightly rephrased and adjusted by me:

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees = 176° Celsius.


Mix 1 cup of milk, 1 pumpkin puree can and 2 large eggs. In a second bowl, mix 3/4 cup of granulated sugar, 2 tbsp of corn starch, a pinch of salt, 2 tsp of cinnamon and 1 tsp of nutmeg. Afterwards, stir into the pumpkin mixture and then pour it onto the pie base.

Bake in the oven for 50-55 minutes. Now comes the hard part: let it completely cool down on a pie rack. Do not eat a slice right away. It’s difficult, I know. But it tastes so much better the day after. Trust me.

❤❤❤❤❤❤

New York Philadelphia Cheesecake

I’m a freestyle chef. The kitchen is my open stage, and my recipes are nothing but the key for culinary jazz impro. There are people – and maybe I read or heard that somewhere, maybe it was a meme or some actual person told me – who say that baking, in comparison to cooking, is much more strict and can be compared to potion lessons in Harry Potter. Well then, call me the Halfblood Prince because guess what? I don’t give a damn here either. Since recently, I hadn’t even owned kitchen scales. So overrated. The ratio is what it’s all about. And most cakes need a bit of adjustment, you know, for that extra extra hint of flavour. Cheesecake recipe? Add a bit of rum or advocaat. Just as an example. And most recipes could do with half of the sugar.

However, for the New York Philadelphia Cheesecake I followed strictly the Original Philadelphia homepage orders. Why? It was a friend’s birthday, and since he’s not only from the States but more precisely from Philadelphia, it was the most obvious dish to go for. Here we go!

Ingredients

150 g shortbread biscuits (I generally use 2/3 Leibnis Original Butterkekse and 1/3 Leibniz Vollkorn, but I love to vary the base. Try speculoos, meringue, whatever. Jazz it up!!)
75 g butter
4 pck. Philadelphia Doppelrahmstufe à 175 g
150 g sugar (I recommend Domino’s Light Brown Sugar, but regular sugar works, too)
1 tbsp lemon zest
4 eggs
150 g cream
2 tbsp vanilla custard powder
250 g sour cream
30 g icing sugar

Directions

Pre-crumble the biscuits into a freezer bag, zip it up and roll over it with a rolling pin until they are super crumbly. Or, if you’re mad at someone, pretend its them and hit it. Melt the butter in a water bath and stir in the crumbles. Take a round greased baking tin and pour the crumbly mixture on it, slightly pressing and kneading it till you have some sort of firm base. Chill in the fridge till later.

Hot tub for the gute deutsche Markenbutter!

Leibniz Butterkekse, pre-crumble

Mhmhmhmh, melted butter, you golden, delicious taste intensifer!

Preheat the oven to 160° C (circulating air). Mix Philadelphia cheese with sugar and lemon zest and afterwards, whisk the eggs in, too.

Whip cream and custard powder to a well, whipped cream, and carefully fold it over into the Philadelphia cream. Pour the whole thing over the crumble base and spread it evenly. Bake in the lower part of the oven for 45min, then take it out and let it cool down for 10min. Don’t switch off the oven yet!

Whip sour cream and icing sugar together and pour it over the cake, then bake for another 10min. Now switch off the oven – but leave the cake in there for another 1h!!!

Afterwards, let it completely cool off and then chill in the fridge for at least 4h.

So easy and so tasty, I can’t believe I never made that before.

Best compliment of the evening? When the two Americans told me not only does it look and smell like a real New York Cheesecake, it more importantly also tastes like it. Bless them!

New York Philadelphia Cheesecake. Yum!

So there you go – try it and enjoy a piece of the Big Apple wherever you are.

The Benefits of Running

In February 2018, after a 2-day workshop on time management, I decided to manage my time by taking time for myself, self care, as they call it – and do something I’d benefit from both physically and psychologically: I went running. Once a week, every Friday. DJ laughed at me and made the – spoiler – false (!) prognosis I wouldn’t even manage to keep it up for 3 months. And so I did, not only to prove him wrong but because I loved it. Now, you should know that running and I used to be arch-enemies. How many marathons and what-not did my mum and brother run back in the old days, always trying to get me to join, too. Nope. No way. Tried it several times, and it felt like torture every single time.

What was different this time? I’m not sure. Maybe because I started it for a different reason. Not because someone told me I should. Not because I wanted to loose weight (I did though and the kilos just melted away). I ran like Forrest Gump after Jenny had left. For no particular reason, at least none I would have understood back then, but also to get outside, to run all things troubling me off and leave them behind and to start my day freshened-up and boosted by adrenaline. Running can help you deal with stuff. You just get into motion, let your body find its pace. Maybe you listen to a podcast, maybe some music, maybe nothing at all. I can’t do podcasts cause my mind goes elsewhere but I do love my guilty pleasure running list. Your mind starts to unravel while you are mainly focused on breathing, on taking the next step, on keeping up your pace. On not stepping on any slugs on a rainy day if you happen to have a slug-o-phobia (editor’s note: not the medical term). Emotions become energy. The more concerns in your life, the faster you run. The sensation of pushing your body to its limits, to near physical exhaustion, transforms your worries into strength and boosts your mind and metabolism. You don’t just shed those nasty extra kilos, you shed all that emotional baggage, too. You don’t overthink your problems consciously, it just happens as a side-effect and has saved me from going insane so many times by now. And you shed that nasty alcohol mist after a night of heavy drinking. Trust me, it works! It has cured many of my hangovers.

Pro-tips from a desperate runner:

If you’re mad at someone, you run faster.
If you cry while running, you run faster.
If you’re hungover and sleep-deprived, you run faster.

Where should you run?

I have two favourite running tracks. One is down Platz der alten Synagoge, over Kronenbrücke and through Wiehre up to Günterstal, with a little detour to Waldhaus on my way back. The other one just goes down the Dreisam cycle path until Lehen or on good days even a bit further. The former has the benefit that it’s all downhill afterwards, the latter quite the opposite but then you catch more morning sunshine and it’s more natural outdoor and less frequented by traffic. Lots of friends prefer to go up the Schlossberg but I’m not much of a real uphill runner. If I feel like it, I like to get up Lorettoberg. But me dragging my lazy ass up an actual hill is a rare sight to behold and not a pretty one, either.

Track 1 – Innenstadt, Kronenbrücke, Wiehre to Günterstal and back

Track 2 – Innenstadt, Stühlinger, Dreisam towards Lehen and back

One of the rare occasions of me running uphill (Dolomites, August 2018) #boyfriendsofinstagram

Equipment:

The best thing about running is – you don’t need anything super fancy or special. I’m aware that there are people who need to get a perfect running ensemble from head to toe first and install the latest running app/fitbit/whatever. But that’s all extra. Just put on whatever clothes your sports rack has to offer. Personally, I prefer short sleeves to long sleeves and likewise shorts to sports leggings, even in winter. But that depends on what you feel comfortable in. What you should invest in, though, is a decent pair of running shoes. I found mine at a clearance sale and I am super happy with them:

adidas Damen Supernova Glide 8 GFX

From once a week I quickly went up to two or three times a week, mostly alternating between the aformer mentioned tracks. To start the day outside like that, absorbing the early morning atmosphere when it’s still foggy and gloomy and you feel the first beams of sunlight on your face is amazing. Nowadays, if I don’t go running at least once a week, I miss it. I need it. You feel better afterwards. Much, much better. Running is therapy.

So now  put on your running shoes, get out, and hop off, little bunnies!

Rabbit Running GIF - Find & Share on GIPHY

Bella Italia

Italia – the land of pasta, vino e tiramisu; of sole mio e la dolce vita. And where I spent most of August 2018. Needless to say, wherever you are in Italy, it is beautiful. At least, wherever I have been so far. Castagneto Carducci, Cecina, San Gimignano, Volterra, Pisa, Napoli, Sorrento and Pompeji for instance have already been on my traveller’s log throughout my life.

This summer, I decided to go south and explore Amalfi Coast, and then back up till Lago di Caldonazzo, and eventually visiting Roma, la città eterna, and, to the east from there, Frosinone.

Four completely different areas, all beautiful in their own ways. And some of those beauties I will share, occasionally. This is a promise.

Until then: ciao, bella italia, o bella ciao ciao ciao with a nostalgia photo sneak peak.

Xx

View from Ravello towards to Tyrrhenian Sea, 08/2018.

More or Less, Potter!

Dee made me join the Pottermore universe after I introduced her to the Potterless podcast, so we introduced each other to more or less the same if you pardon the pun (and there are gonna be lots of puns to be pardoned and now you’ve been warned).  I started straight off with getting sorted into my designated Hogwarts House which is – drumroll – RAVENCLAW!

Intelligent, wise, sharp, witty, individual? Yeah, definitely me. All of that. 100 %. And humble. Did I mention humble?

And now excuse me, I’m off to my Ravenclaw Tower to solve some riddles!

The greatest accomplishment in human history

Well, one of them. The odd one out.

Last night, I attended a rooftop party in sunny Freiburg. While enjoying quite a few refreshing Hugos and slowly progressing from slightly tipsy to properly drunk, I was engaged in a stimulating conversation that quickly turned from trash talk to existential topics, culminating in the question what I’d redeem the five greatest accomplishments in human history.
So the pressure was on. I needed to come up with something clever, witty, smart. Not too profane but not too random, either. I’m proud to say that I did not embarass myself. After I had covered the deep and vast topics that cover basically everything (language, music, food), it was about time to get more into specifics.

Ladies and Gentlemen, may I present: the hammock, zu Deutsch Hängematte.

Why? Because it is the epitome of relaxation, holidays, summer and the good simple life. I know for sure, I have one. It’s up on my balcony and just seeing it makes me immediately feel so much more relaxed. Lying in there, softly swinging in the wind, you simply feel in harmony with life, the universe and everything. The broomie (=short for best roomate ever with whom I also share some kind of bromance if I was a guy and if he wasn’t gay and if those terms really mattered somehow) and I love to meet up on my balcony in the evening, lie opposite each other, our legs stretched out, snack some pretzels, drink some wine and tell us about our days or just relax and appreciate.

No matter how stressful work, life, people are – two seconds in and you’re at peace. Something humanity has always been looking for. Ergo: greatest acclompishment.

And here is the beauty I call my own: