How to color much more with chalk than just the streets

I've been looking a lot into hair-dyeing options recently and so it happened that two weeks ago I ended up receiving the delivery of one package of hair chalk in all kind of colours imaginable.

If you haven't heard of hair chalk yet, it's pretty much what the name suggests: Chalk for your hair. The chalk is a non-oil based artist chalk which also can be used for normal drawings. I haven't really figured out if the hair chalk is different to the artists chalk, but from what I read, it's just the name that makes the difference.

See!? Normal pastel chalk ;)

Anyway.
I'm one pf those persons who processes life things through her hair. This way I already dyed my hair purple, red, dark brown, black and, most recently, blond. The fact that my hair is this undefinable brown-ish colour also helps a great deal ;)
Hair chalk pretty much does to your hair what any normal hair dye would. Except that it’s not permanent. Just as you would paint a picture, you’ll have to wet the parts of your hair you want to dye with water, rub chalk into them until you get the preferred colour and seal the finished product with either a flat iron or by blow-drying your hair. The colour will stay for one to two days, and simply comes off the next time you wash your hair.

...that's at least what I guessed. It turned out all right ;)

What I've learnt:
- It really is as easy as it sounds. You won't have to take extreme care of your hands or stains in general (though that's a guess, I didn't have stains) because the colour washes of easily!
- I didn't use a blow dryer or flat-iron and my colour came out really fast. Maybe it would be good to try those.
- Your hair will become super dry. As in really really dry! Also it's hard to comb. So it is fun to use the chalk once or twice but I definitely wouldn't do it too often. (Though as a plus: Your hair is only dry as long as the colour is in!)

And that's pretty much it!! (Btw: This is the package of chalk I bought, and with which I was pretty happy!)
At the end, I liked the blue so much, I went to the hair dresser and got it dyed properly....so that might be a side effect ;)
Have fun!!

..oh also: My article about hair chalk is also here! Go check their page out, it's pretty fun :)

A walk back in history {or how I started baking}

Let's talk cake.
I sometimes try to remember when my baking addiction started. Admittedly, I haven't come up with something yet. But I like to think that it was all the way back, when I made my first cake out in our garden.

Back than, my brothers and I love to pretend we were living outside in out own cave (we had built one inside our neighbours trees....cough). Anyway, as a truly outside living person I had to make dinner for us, right? So while I was happily baking/cooking/mud-ing away I was suddenly facing the question: Why not steal inside and get real ingredients outside?! (I had to mull it over a bit, because I wasn't quiet sure if cave man have had flour back than, but than again, you were allowed to use what you had, right? And after all, some hunting and sneaking had to be done in order to get my game (aka: flour, sugar and salt)).

I had a rough idea about how to bake, at least I had seen my mother several times, throwing stuff into a bowl. So out there, in our cave, I recreated what I thought was a cake. The fact that it also had dirt, common daisies and grass in it, just made it even more appealing.
To shorten this whole story, I could convince my mum to actually bake my concoction and after I had applied a generous amount of chocolate to the top the whole family ate it together (they never found out about the grass, daisy and dirt part).

Several years later I still love to make messes bake, though I might have given up on the grass and dirt ;)
So, when I heard that my mum was having a slightly larger birthday crowd, I easily talked her into letting me tend to the cake part. How much I love her ;)

After a short facebook discussion, I came up with those two beauties:

The first one is a Chocolate Mousse Cake by diethood (though no worries, there is nothing diet-y about this cake!). And the second is the Amateur Gourmet's Strawberry Shortcake.

Since I had a pretty big crowd and never had attempted those recipes before, I mainly sticked to the instructions. However, here is what I changed:

Chocolate Mousse Cake

• my cake pan was 'normal' sized which made the cake bigger but flatter. I was a bit concerned first but really liked it at the end, because this cake is really rich and the slices that we were able to cut that way had just the right size.
• I skipped the hazelnut flavour which was just fine
• Also, the cream for the center turned out just fine, when I attempted the outer vanilla cream, things just wouldn't work out. (If you look closely you can still see that under my nicely shaped...uhm....decoration is a layer of pretty flat not-creamy-at-all-cream underneath. What I sprayed on top then was a mixture of icing sugar, cream cheese, white chocolate and (here comes the genius!) wheat bran (weizenkleie oder gemahlene Flohsamen!). This will just turn anything into a spray-able form, is super healthy and close to not visible!!!

Strawberry Short Cake

• I kind of overread that this recipe is so awesome because it actually makes two cakes (yeeeah I know). So we ended up with one pretty big cake. No harm was done ;)
• I skipped the corn starch, which worked out, but if I would have had any, I would have used it!
• The filling: I don't know what it is, but cream seems to avoid me. It just never works out. So, my filling and topping ended up slighty different. It was a mixture of 1 cup heavy whipping cream, icing sugar (again. haha) and a tiny bit of melted white chocolate. Worked wonders!!!
• I drizzled some melted milk chocolate over the top at the end. This, however, is totally up to you ;)

I finally managed to label my cups accurately! (Before the baking process)

First cake base done, one to go

The beauty of cocoa and flour dust

And that's it. In total: AMAZING cakes (everyone agreed on that and they were gone at the end of the night) and totally manageable!! ;)

Happy and excited soon-to-be-eating-cake-friends. We had to hold them back so we could cut the cake properly...

....which my mum did a beautiful job on. And look at all this moist, soft, creamy, chocolaty cake goodness!!!

And this is me still piling cake on my plate in the middle of the night....after I probably already had more than my fair share of it :D

But you can never have too much cake, right?! So, happy cake baking to you all! :)

One week at home

It has been an amazing week. I ate wonderful food, had lots and lots of talks, walks with friends, bike rides, yoga nights in the garden, baking amazingness for my mum, sunshine, ice cream, laughter and all that there is to joy and happiness.
It was good to arrive, to let go of things, to breath, to smile, to find confidence and inspiration inside myself, to dream. I am truly thankful for this place and the people here.

I started right away with the probably most important game of the year!!! 

And it was so worth to be watched ;)

Because hey! We might be a small town be we do know how to to celebrate!!

So, after a short night, I headed all the way to Frankfurt to visit one of my best and oldest friends ♥

I like her kitchen (along with liking the friendship we have ;P)!...and the view ;)

DWe decided that it was not the day to be healthy and responsible...

...and made spinach noodles with Gorgonzola sauce. Deliiiiiiiiicious!!

♥

Also, it was my first time being introduced to a juicer (talk of important milestones in history!!) And I might just have fallen in love with it....but, even though I know that you all really care about me being all obsessed  in in love with all kind of complicated and expensive kitchen tools, we'll skip that for now ;)

After a couple of pretty crappy weeks, considering the weather, everything improved as soon as I went home. Look at this beautiful sky we could see from her apartment!

The next day, I had a cake mission to accomplish!

Lots and lots of walking was done on old ways

I also found this! I was not really convinced enough to buy it at the time, but curious enough now, to regret not having bought it  -.- psh

Back all the way over the fields...

And than I spent a noon and afternoon, turning my mums kitchen into a mess...a huge mess....but I cleaned it all up at the end ;P

After my extensive consumption of cake crumbs and loads of frosting during the baking, a bike tour was needed!

Which didn't mean, that we couldn't connect it with more food ;)

And another beautiful sunset (though I have to throw in (since we want to stay realistic and be honest and everything) all those sunset came with lots and lots of mosquitoes. I'm feeling quite a lot like my Indian-self last year....)

More walking was done the next day....

This time to hand over my pile of gifts to the birthday girl ;)

And we had more food in the evening. Also (major also!!!!) I got to meet my brothers girlfriends! I hope I didn't embarrass them too much (my brothers)...

My cake was devoured...

And there were lots of long talks 

This was my pretty ice cream date the day after that. The last time I saw this girl is over a year ago. So much has changed and so much is still the same :)

And then, it was time to spent more time with three of the most important people in my life. I am so grateful to call them my friends ♥ 

On the last morning, I headed out onto my dads balcony

Mainly, to display my gorgeous breakfast....

But also, because I love this place....and all the things that grow on it. We might have made one or another mess at this place all the way back when mud games where to die for!

So much for my one week at home. I definitely enjoyed every minute of it :)

Cooking together {featuring the Indian cuisine}

With one of my friends here I have this thing where we try to get together as often as possible to: cook. Than, life gets in the way, uni gets in the way, family and other friends...the list goes on and on, but we still manage to do it about once every other week. (Ok, and sometimes we also like to just head into the city and hit on the local ice cream shops and frozen yogurt places....buuut we still try our best ;)).
Anyway, just this week we managed to meet again in between our studying schedules and every time we do so, we normally try to go for something new. (Cooking for yourself somehow has the tendency to get quite monotonous. This is us learning and expanding our variety).

I had messaged her earlier this week with a list of things I was considering to cook number b) were spicy potato and pea parathas. She answered with "What are parathas?!". Needless to say we ended up making parathas.
So what are parathas?! Wikipedia said this: "a flatbread that originated in the Indian Subcontinent [...] Parantha is an amalgamation of the words parat and atta which literally means layers of cookeddough". (source)
(Also, I just noticed that Wikipedia spells them with an 'n'...the recipe didn't. So that's up for discussion).

If I would have to answer this question, I would say parathas are delicious flatbreads filled with spicy mush. Less intellectual I know. But look at this:

They were soft, and yummy. Spicy but sweet with the added chutney. They had just the right amount of flavour and the texture between the dough on the outside and the soft and chunky mush on the inside. In short: I loved them. And best of all: They really are easy to be make!!!!

Since my experience with the Indian cuisine doesn't go far when we talk about the cooking part, I will leave you with the original link (Katie at the kitchen door, spiced-potato-and-pea-parathas). Although, I changed a few things, so you'll find my changes here in between the pictures. Let's get rocking ;)

I started with the dough since the recipe wants to let it sit for 2 hours. I followed the recipe except that I simply used 2 cups whole wheat flour (no substitutional cup of any other flour). Easy peasy.

Next step: Prepare your filling!

While our potatoes were cooking, we threw together a quick salad.

And here come the changes I made:
They mainly happened because I didn't have everything on hand the recipe was asking for (ok close to nothing of it). So what I did was:
I still fried the onions with some olive oil in a pan. Than I added cumin, salt, curry, garam masala and simple semi hot mustard. And it tasted amazing!! (Though don't be afraid to add a lot of all of them. I kept adding and adding them simply because I normally just cook one-person-sized-meals and after all, those dishes live of their spices right?!) We kept sneaking bits and pieces of the potato mush while putting it into our flatbreads.

For the rest, we pretty much stuck to the recipe again. Which surprised us a bit was that the recipe had mentioned it would get quite messy so I was prepared to do a lot of cleaning afterwards. I wasn't!!!! The dough was super elastic and easy to handle. No big messes and filling spilling out!!!! (Added bonus!)

We served it with yogurt and mango chutney but I had the parathas cold with hummus the next day and that was just as delicious!!!

I hope I convinced you!!! Have fun in the kitchen ;)

Sweet potatoes two ways {The fancy 2nd}

Ok. Please, take a second in your busy day, read this post and then head out, buy a sweet potato (or maybe you're lucky and already have one at home? In that case you can skip the buying part) and make this dish! Do you have that, that sometimes there is this one dish you make (in like the period of a couple of month) and it just hits the spot?! This is what this dish is for me.
Please, please let me convince you! It's that good!!
Ok. After my rather weird kitchen-obsession-rant, we might actually get to the really interesting part.

So, as I just had prepared my sweet potatoes the easy way yesterday (well the day I wrote this...than exams hit), I had still leftovers. So obviously, I needed to come up with something for those. I wanted a main-meal-like thing, not too heavy though (I'm studying and there is nothing that stops you more than heavy food, trust me....along the line of so much more but that's a different story entirely), balanced considering the nutritional side (Fibres, proteins, vitamins...) and tasty. Oh, and it wasn't supposed to take for ages, obviously.
So here is what I came up with (again, I had a dish from the Naam in my head while creating my lunch):

Sweet potato tofu bowl with a sesame-ginger dressing

Can I just quickly interfere and say: It is sososososooooo good! Make it!!!!...just sayin'...
Anyways, if you want to (and you want to, trust me. Okok, I'll stop), you'll need:

For the sauce, 1 serving:

• 1 small piece of fresh ginger (about 1cmx0,5cm) (Or, even better if you have it on hand, ginger paste)
• 1 Teaspoon cream cheese (mine was with goat milk)
• 1 1/2 Tablespoon soy cream
• 1/2 Teaspoon Tahini
• 1/2 Teaspoon mustard
• herb salt and pepper

1. Cut the ginger as fine as possible (you don't want those sudden really intense ginger tasted bites!!)
2. Mix all of the ingredients in a bowl and mix.
3. Season with the herb salt and the pepper. Make a few variations if needed.

For the bowl:

• 1/2 a oven baked sweet potato
• ~ 50gr smoked tofu
• 1/3 of an avocado
• cress
• cucumber (or any additional veggies)

1. Heat up the tofu and the sweet potatoes (I used my microwave which, admittedly isn't that great, if you have more patient, time and an oven(!) on hand, you could use the oven to make it more healthy! (and add a nice crisp to the potatoes!)).
2. Throw together the tofu, sweet potatoes and peeled and cut avocado. 
3. Top with your sauce and add some cress.
4. Serve with cut veggies on the side.
5. Enjoy!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

This left me feeling perfect, not too full and satisfied and it really tasted amazing!!! Some fresh fruits and a tiny bit of chocolate for desert ;)
(Oh, and the second, and third, and...aehm yes, anyway. All those times after that I also added a layer of cheese before putting the sweet potato fries and the tofu into the microwave. It added an extra source of protein and so much yummy cheesiness!!!

There go my two ways for sweet potatoes. Blimey, there are so many more...but it's a good start I'd say ;)