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 :)

Sweet potatoes two ways {The easy one}

I'm a huge fan of sweet potatoes ever since the first time I tried them out two years ago in Vancouver I can't stop buying them from time to time. Just on the side, sweet potatoes are low in sodium and saturated fats, and a good source for dietary fibre, Vitamin B6, Vitamin A, Vitamin C, Manganese and Potassium (source). (If nothing of those say anything to you, they didn't really to me ;), Vitamin B6 for example is important for your metabolism especially to incorporate and convert protein. It is a lot included in meat and fish, so this is a good substitute for vegetarians! But it also it's in most of the green vegetables source. Vitamin A is good for your skin, cellular growth and your eyes source and the rest you'll have to goggle by yourself ;) ) Anyway, hence the whole studying going on right now, I needed a quick lunch fix, so this happened:

I started with peeling and cutting my sweet potato:

Next, the whole thing got thrown into a plastic bowl where I added olive oil, sweet pepper powder, Provencal herbs, salt and pepper. I gave the whole thing a good shake.

This than, made it into a oven form, lined with baking paper, and stayed in my microwave-oven for about 45 minutes at 170°C hot air, or normal 350°F if you have a really and proper oven.
Some studying might have happened in that time.

Right during the last 5 minutes, I cracked upon one egg, mixed it with some milk and herb salt and scrambled the whole thing up, in my beloved (and only!) frying pan.

Swiftly cut up some fresh cucumber (the green always adds something to every dish!), and voilá!

You have an easy, healthy, decent dish :) Oh and at the end I also spread curry ketchup over the whole thing because I'm going nuts over it. But it a) doesn't look thaaat pretty and b) I know, it's not that healthy. Oh well ;)
(My sweet potato, part 1).

Oh, and to no ones special interest: That was my desert ;)

Messy Vanilla Lime Cheesecake {A cake from waaaay back}

This might be a bit out of the line right now, but this cake needs to get it's time and attention. And while I'm too weird to write properly right now anyway, it might just be the perfect time.

This post needs a special introduction. When I first wanted to post about the cake that's going to be mentioned here, I discovered that I left my SD card inside my camera, which....I gave away to a friend. Bummer.
Thing was, she sent me my SD card over, since my camera was still at her place and I put it on my desk sort of forgetting about it. Than I got sick. With a bad bad cough and a serious runny nose. Which meant heaps and heaps of paper tissues. And somehow, my SD card mysteriously went into this paper tissue pile, and with all the paper tissues, down into the waste bin. That's at least, what I thought happened. Because I couldn't find the card anymore. And I'm normally a pretty organised person.

Anyway, make that 6 month later, weird and (ha told you so) organised me FOUND the SD card! Which left me with the thought-to-be-lost-pictures of that cake....which leaves us all with a post that got written 6 month ago and just waited for this day ;)

6 month ago:
Once again, I found myself rather unconsciously lying on my bed, too lazy to get started with anything. And, because I'm normally a pretty busy person and I hate wasting time....don't worry it never really lasted long, this time (it was a Wednesday) I went down into our kitchen to bake something.

Also earlier, when I had blogged about the Lemon-Chocolate-Pie by neverhomemaker, one of my beloved little brothers (I need to use this term as much as possible before they'll become official adults at the end of this month!!! Update: By now the ARE officially adults. Crazy!) had left a comment, saying he wanted a piece of that pie. I was kind enough to break the news to him that this pie contained a huge amount of tofu (my brother is a 100% carnivore, considering his eating habits) so he quickly took his request back. But I promised him another cake if he would come over for the holidays on that certain Wednesday. I do keep my promises!

To make the story a bit shorter, my mum wanted cheesecake, I love cheesecake, so cheesecake it was. I had planned on using my favourite cheesecake recipe (This one) but it turned out I didn't have anything (at least nothing in the right amount) it was asking for.
So, If you want to keep it simple: Follow the link above.
However, if you want to keep it messy: Follow the list below! Ha!

Amazing Messy Vanilla Lime Cheesecake (recipe below can be taken more or less serious)
You'll need:

For the crust:

• a bit of this (all the crust leftovers I had)
• a bit of that (just as above)
• some flour
• 1 Tablespoon cocoa powder
• butter to one's heart extend

In a food processor mix all the things together until they have the, for you, right consistency. Fill into a, with a baking paper lined, cake pan. Preheat your oven to 325°F/160°C.

For the filling:

• ~450gr cream cheese (we had three open packages, I just used them all)
• ~150gr no fat quark/curd (I just kept on spooning until I felt right about the amount)
• 200gr whipped cream
• a pinch of salt
• 5 eggs (I might reduce this to 4 eggs...5 made it rather...eggy)
• 1 cup brown sugar
• 1 squeeze of lime juice (leftovers from the pie again. Depending on the amount it will be more or less lime-like. I normally just like to give it a hint of lime.)
• some fresh vanilla
• 2 Tablespoons corn starch

Mix everything together in a bowl (as in there is no order, whatsoever!). Fill into the crust bottomed cake pan and bake for at least 1 1/2 hours.
While baking: Listen loud to some music and clean your room, the kitchen and the house!

When the cake is done, it's important to let it cool inside the turned off, but open oven as this will prevent the cake from getting this not so awesome cheesecake-hole in the middle!
And this messy cake was good. Really good. Maybe better than the original recipe. (At least that's what my mum said...and what I thought haha)

As you might can tell (in case you read my blog more often) this cake happened all the way back somewhere this spring. And, and here's the thing, I did found my SD card...so, you do get a picture of the cake after all ;) It's probably just another story how I, sometimes, mess up things. But in a god way ;P

I wish I could have a pieve of this right now...

Pepper and carrot scrambled egg {A student's messy egg dinner}

Sitting in the kitchen, just having had an amazing dinner, staring out into the ongoing evening, looking into red, yellow and still green leaves, chewing on some 70% dark chocolate....that does sound like heaven, doesn't it? So I must be in heaven?
Well, I know for a fact that this is not the fact but oh well. One can dream, right?

However, even though this is not heaven, I did have a pretty awesome dinner. And it wasn't just pretty awesome for the taste buds but also considering the whole colour spectrum! I mean, look at those bright and crisp colours:

By the way, there is simply no greater joy than working with a sharp knife in the kitchen. Yay for awesome kitchen knifes!!

(Yeah, this might just be the crazy food person talking. Anyway). I sometimes still surprised by how much you can improve in simple things such as scrambled eggs! I mean. There are scrambled eggs and than there are scrambled eggs!
This scrambled eggs though, also got the name "A student's messy egg dinner" (and this might be weird after all the stuff I just wrote, but) I would in no way ever say about myself that I can cook! Or that I could give advice at any chance. Cooking for me is a lot like painting. The pan is your canvas and your ingredients your colours. And I simply like making interesting messes on an empty canvas ;)

See how I had the green/yellow of the olive oil, mixed with the sharp red of the pesto with white, green and black accents from the spices? Yeeeah, anyway...;)

Enough food-philosophy. In case you want to recreate this (or any close-to) scrambled egg mess, you'll have to:

1. Cut up one small green pepper and two carrots.
2. Fry and slowly let the carrots soften in a pan with some olive oil. Later on, add the green pepper.
3. While your vegetables are frying/softening in the pan, scramble together in a bowl: 2 eggs, 1 teaspoon cream cheese, 4 small feta cubes, 1/2 teaspoon red pesto, a sip of milk and salt and pepper.
4. When your vegetables are done, pour the egg mixture in as well and stir until the egg is cooked.
5. Serve hot and eat immediately (if your not a crazy person like me and you prefer to take pictures of your food first, that is).
6. And that's it! Enjoy!

The hint of pesto and feta cheese was just perfect in this, mixed with my softened but still slightly crunchy vegetables (this also preserved a lot of their natural flavour) it made up for a perfect dinner that needed nothing else in addition. Though, I did have some chocolate ice cream afterwards. But I'm also ice cream addicted so that shouldn't be a surprise ;)

One steaming hot plate of down to earth awesomeness

I wish you all a nice start into the new week, and I know I promised pictures but a) I got distracted by building new kitchen shelves which I just bought today after University (which also meant I carried home: My bag, my groceries and two kitchen shelves. I might be super woman after all!), b) I got too hungry after that so I headed into the kitchen and c) by the time I was done there the light had just gone. So you'll have to wait a bit more. And also....my room is still kind of under construction...so we'll see how this goes.

My last post from 'home'

Silence due to this:

Wow it looks like my room vomited its content out into the middle of itself (please excuse my language). Packing and living at home for the last couple of weeks was super weird and I found myself in a rappid changing up and down mood most of the time. So I'm more than happy that it will all be over this Friday.
It's more than strange to be packing everything, throwing away some more stuff and realising that, when everything is going after my 'big plan' I'll probably be throwing away a lot of more stuff in the future...and that there are going to be even bigger moves. Wuha. So, two more days of final packing stuff, organising papers, seeing people for the last time and I'll be back when I'm done with my move ;) Wish me luck!

Oh, and we also went to IKEA. No moving without several one visit to IKEA!!!

Somehow, we look like we're 12 in this picture. Haha, I should remember how we did this in 20 years.

And a cool view while having our salmon lasagna for lunch :)

Two more times waking up to my current view...and than it will be done. Ready to move on!

And it's if she knew it, someone is super clingy and cuddly right now:

Tomatoe-Chickpea Hummus {a hummus story}

I had planned to post another recipe first but since I feel like this is rather a summer post and, sadly, summer is definitely coming to an end now, I thought I might just sneak this in before. So here we go!

I have to start with saying: I love Hummus. Seriously. I could eat it all the time. But, and here's the thing, I tried so many times to make my own hummus and it never really turned out in a way that I would be proud to share the recipe or tell anyone in the first place that I tried to make hummus again. (It gets kinda embarrassing). Maybe it's because I never used tahini (it's something I just don't seem to be able to find) or maybe it's our food processor, who knows!?
So the other day (weeks and weeks ago ups), I thought if I couldn't get a 'normal' hummus right, I might just would have to do it the not so normal way (the messy, unusual, Jo-like one. Duh). And may I say so, it turned out pretty good. Guess, we'll just stick to messy around here.

For one one-person-sized tomato hummus, you'll need:

• half a can of chickpeas
• two slices dried tomatoes (those that are preserved in oil)
• 1 large Tablespoon non fat Greek yogurt
• 1 Tablespoon cream cheese
• salt&pepper
• optional: Fajita spices to sprinkle on top

Put all of the above into a food processor and process until it reaches the preferred consistency (and adjust it to your taste preferences with salt and pepper!). Easy peasy!
Serve it with either crackers or raw veggies...or top a salad with it! And I think this might just be the start of an addiction. I mean, stuffing things into a food processor and getting something that awesome and healthy (and easy!!)!? The options are endless! Avocado, beans, yogurt, eggs, greens, potatoes...omg. Yeah. I'm addicted.

And to no ones special interested: Right after I short the pictures, I dug in and enjoyed the thing all by myself not having to share with anyone. Ups. Didn't just say that!
And isn't it funny how hummus already got the 'hmmmmm so yummy' in it! haha go figure.

...also, that picture just makes me notice how pale I was all the way back. Summer definitely did a good job this year considering my tan. Jeez. I'll be back to pale and white in no time though...

Enjoy ;)
Oh, and next time I'm going to attempt those Chickpeas instead of the store bought cans. Tschaka!

My CELTA experience

Hey there!
I'm finally back after my nearly complete four weeks on silence on this blog. That was a first! And I might just admit that I rewrote this post about a hundred of times. So, either I'm really out of the whole writing thing (naaah, 4 written assignments in the last week?! Gracefully mastered. No way I'm out of the whole writing thing...yeah ok I am) or maybe its just that I'm out of words to describe my last four weeks.

We'll start easy of with the most important point of all:
I want to send a Huge (as in with a capital 'h' and a bigger font) excuse and 'thank you' to everyone that stayed in contact with me (or well, rather did not) during the last four weeks. The experience of doing this course was definitely unique but, here comes the but, I probably wouldn't have wanted to be around myself all the time during that time as well (I really didn't want to haha).
After not getting good sleep for weeks, staying under constant stress (yeah I'm still whining. I really should shut up. They are just lame excuses)...ok so no more excuses.
I simply was one self-centred, hysteric, sleep-deprived....too make it short: Horrid person to be around.

Sorry, sorry, sorry! You'll all get a cake...or cookies...or a hug. Or all of it ;)

                                 ~************************************************************************************~

 Having said that, we might actually take a closer look on what was actually happening.
For those of you that didn't get the information yet, I participated in a CELTA 4 week intensive course. The CELTA is a certificate by Cambridge to train future ESL teachers.
If you consider taking it/wanting to, inform yourself about it: This is the official site.
Though...here are also two rather less official sites, but definitely worth taking a look at. Especially if you consider taking i!. (The use of heavy sarcasm and irony should be a common trait of yours, if you do so!)

For me, ...

There was this one point where my fb profile picture seemed to sarcastically smile down at me while I refreshed the page for the 100th time in hope to find enlightenment there. That, did not happen whatsoever. 12 pm. (And we're talking of facebook(!)  anyway. I should have known enlightenment wasn't going to show up there...)

Resubmission.s Jep. Argh. We'll let it pass.

My new mantra for the weeks was: You'll be fine. You're smart, you'll learn it all soon I'm sure. (Desperately trusting other people)

I was so proud to say that my coffee intake was down to one coffee per day....that, however, was before the celta. Secret statistics are not going to be published.

I don't care if it's a B or not. I want to PASS. Simply pass.

Hysterical laughing attacks were a common thing. To all. times. of. the. day. (Adequate or not).

Birthday cake celebrations in the middle of the week made it special again.

Finger techniques. A lot of blushing. More hysterical giggling. Jeez, and you would expect us to be grown up!

The moment when you actually count a facebook messenger conversation as a social activity. Did happen. A lot. Not often enough though.

Break downs. A lot. Again. Often. With random people. In all kind of situations.


But there was also this feeling of doing this together. As a group.
And Friday evenings with....let's say 'apple saap' ;).... at the Main Ufer.
And Starbucks Frappuccino lunch breaks with favourite American girls.
And new shoes.
Ellie's awesome cakes!
And sushi talks.
Lots of other talks.
Awesome students.
Secret second life assassins.
And funny videos.
And hysterical giggle flashes.
And more hysterical giggle flashes.
Blushing.
Facebook stalking.
Bread and healthy eating habits conversations.
New shoes.
New Outfits adviced by Jo (not me though ;P).
"Jo"wesomenes!!! (YAY!)
And so much more that can't be described.
AND: I will miss them all a lot. It has been just for four weeks. But this group of people I met, were some really special and awesome personalities!

One unique time, I wouldn't want to miss!

                                 ~*********************************************************************************************~

Btw: On a more serious level. If you do consider taking the CELTA course (or simply: you found this page by googling it and are hoping for some life saving advice. Yeah. I'll know. The statistics tell me exactly how you got here ;P)

This course is (kind of) hardcore!
I might have to admit, that my point of view makes it even a bit more hardcore. I was the youngest participant (haha I just slipped in, having the minimum age that is required), no real teaching experiences (though I didn't feel like this was a real disadvantage) and English not as a native but as a foreign language.
BUT: It is manageable. And even fun!
Though keep in mind:
If Cambridge says you won't have a social life for the course duration: They. are. not. kidding. whatsoever!
If they say it is intense: It is intense.
If they say it's a lot of pressure: It's a huge amount of pressure.

And saying all of this, is way easier after having it done (and being finished and starting to realise I might actually have some free time on hand now!!). During the course I thought ahead not much more than for one day. Ok. Make it more: I thought in one morning, one afternoon, one evening and one night. Short period of sleep. Repeat.
I also should mention, that I did the four week intensive version. There is one that will take longer and therefore be less stressful.

But (2nd time) This was also one of the most special and fun times in my life so far! And for nothing in the world would I have wanted to miss it. (And all the people that came along with it and that I hope to keep in touch with!!)
Take a look at those two pages (mentioned above 1 + 2). They sum it up quiet well. They made us laugh when it was pretty necessary. Though keep in mind, that people surviving the CELTA, tend to have a tendency towards sarcasm and irony (just sayin').
And: Every time you think this is hard and complicated and exhausting. Keep in mind: You can still do a hardcore DELTA course after that. Or a Master. You'll be thankful for just having to deal with the CELTA after those stories ;)

And that was my CELTA story....after four weeks of silence on this neglected blog. I can now focus on getting my life back on the tracks. Jeez. Oh and we're officially passed the countdown of two weeks!!! At this point in two weeks...

....I'll be blogging FROM CANADA again!!!

...haha ok probably not blogging right now. But anytime soon ;)

Less than two weeks guys!!!!

And that makes up for one big photo overload

Lots of fruits and salads

I might have tried to dip dye my hair with organic hair dye at one point...yeah, I was kind of desperate at that point...

I wasn't desperate at all times ;)

Dinner with the best friend ♥

Friday Evenings

We were back to desperate....

Some people in the course were really doodle-talented!!

Awesome pre-lesson paper messes...

A "quick" trip to Augsburg in between...there wasn't really time for anything...not even sharp pictures.

Last day after-class-party with the students

African "Good-bye" dinner. IT looks weirder than it is. Actually, it was pretty good. Stuffing myself to the top good!

One last and amazing evening