This week marks my first Valentines Day outside the US and it was honestly really cute. I ate a ton of heart shaped foods and felt zero pressure about having an actual Valentine. In addition to the tons of food on Valentines day, I also kept eating well throughout the week with classic Bavarian foods like Maultaschen and Kaiserschmarrn. To counteract all of the food I spent a lot of time at the gym and I shoveled protein into my body with protein powder so that I can be big and strong when I grow up. I went to a random Jazz bar jam sesh in the middle of the week, watched horror movies with my roommates, got my snowboard tuned and got to see two new exhibits at my favorite museum in Berlin. It was a really busy week, but super fun and jam packed with new experiences.
VALENTINES DAY IS NOT A THING IN GERMANY, BUT ATLEAST WE HAVE GOOD FOOD
Despite living in an anti-capitalist state, I had an amazing time celebrating the oh so lovely and oh so capitalist Valentines Day. Prior to Valentines Day I bought a silicone heart muffin mold from Amazon and on the 14th I used it for morning muffins and evening cakes. I love cooking and so most of my Valentines Day was centered around food, as it should be. I had wildberry muffins in the morning, salmon and pasta for lunch, homemade bibimbap for dinner and little lemon heart cakes for dessert. It was perfect and my stomach agrees too.
My only goal is to do a pull up by 2023
I started out this week with cardio and yoga before shifting into my new workout plan. Starting this week I am going to do alternating arms and legs days, with a full body day on the weekend. I’m still figuring out what weightlifting plan works for me, but the journey is fun and that’s all that matters. The most important improvement this week is my new crop top, cut off Obama 2012 election shirt. It was a hand-me-down from Alice, but now it is one of my favorite shirts!
Making Maultaschen
Maultaschen is a large dumpling that is typically filled with minced meat and onions, but this week I found a package of vegan Maultaschen at Aldi. I don’t know what the vegan filling is, but I do know that it’s delicious and that’s all I need to know. In fact, I didn’t even know what the food was until I started boiling the noodles at home in the kitchen and my roommate told me that they were a popular dish in southern Germany. To improve the already delicious dish he recommend I cook the noodles in vegetable broth instead of water then eat it all like a soup. Adding in the veggie broth made this easily one of my favorite meals I have made recently.
LOLA TURNS ONE
Little Lola turned one year old this week! It’s been so much fun having a dog in the apartment and especially one that is super cute and extremely well trained. To celebrate her birthday, auntie Jade got Lola a doggy water bottle for the park. Now Lola will be the coolest dawg in the kiez.
Jazz Jam Session
This week I went to my first open stage jam session at B Flat and it was so much cooler than I expected. When I left my apartment on Wednesday night I thought that I was going to grab a quick drink with my friends at a local Jazz bar, but what I didn’t know is that 1) the Jazz bar was having an open stage session, which is basically instrumental karaoke and 2) my friend is an amazing pianist. It was so impressive watching people jump on stage and start free style riffing with each other. The vibes were high the entire night and therefore the drinks kept flowing. We ended up closing out the jazz bar with all the other musicians and catching an Uber home some time after Midnight. Such a fantastic random night and I can’t wait to go back.
Cooking kaiserschmarrn
After my Maultaschen meal, we really leaned into Bavarian classic dishes with Kaiserschmarrn. Kaiserschmarrn is basically fluffy pancakes that are scrambled up and covered in powdered sugar, strawberries, applesauce and ice cream. After politely begging my roommate to make this dish, we were delighted to find him walking in the door after work one day with a bag full of groceries. It was really interesting getting to watch him mix up 1,000 eggs and lots of butter, then turn all of that into big fluffy piles of Kaiserschmarrn. It was even better getting to stuff my face with all of the food and call it dinner.
Ingredients
3 large eggs
3 Tbsp unsalted butter, melted
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 Tbsp granulated sugar
1 pinch of salt
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 cup oat milk
raisins (bonus points if soaked in rum)
top with apple sauce, strawberries, ice cream and powedered sugar
Directions
1. Separate the eggs and set the egg yolks aside for a moment. Beat three egg whites with mixer until stiff peaks form.
2. Add the three egg yolks, melted butter, vanilla extract, sugar, and a pinch of salt into a bowl. Mix for 3 minutes.
3. Slowly add in flour and oat milk.
4. Once mixed, fold in the stiff egg whites until combined.
5. Heat butter in a 12-inch skillet over medium heat. Pour the batter into the skillet and cook until golden brown. After 3 minutes sprinkle the rum raisins over the batter.
6. Once the pancake is golden brown underneath, sprinkle the top with a little bit of sugar and flip over.
7. Cook until both sides are golden brown.
8. Once cooked, tear the pancake into bite-sized pieces.
9. Add 2 tbsp butter and sprinkle 2 tbsp sugar over the pancake pieces. Turn up the heat to medium-high and gently toss the pieces with a spatula for about 3-4 minutes, until the sugar has caramelized.
10. Sprinkle with confectioners’ sugar and serve in the pan with applesauce on the side.
SUNNY RUNS
While the weather can get a little gray in Berlin, there seems to always be one day of the week that has blue skies. This week I took full advantage of the perfect running weather and I zoomed all around my neighborhood for an hour exploring the different parks. Mauerpark is obviously the best and so I did a few laps around the grassy park.
Horrorfilm Nacht
My roommates and I had been discussing watching a scary movie for awhile and this week we ripped the Band-Aid off with a randomly chosen horror film hit, The VVITCH. The movie came out in 2015 and none of us knew the plot, but I did know it starred Anya Taylor-Joy and I love her. Watching a horror film during a giant storm was also such a good idea. The constant wind and rain from outside added an especially creepy element to the movie, which made us all have our eyes constantly checking on the back door.
Overall the movie was pretty creepy with a few jump scares. I would compare this movie to other horror films like Midsommer and the Shining. They’re not necessarily bloody and gory, but they’re creepy and make you feel uncomfortable. After watching the VVITCH we decided to treat ourselves with another scary movie, Texas Chainsaw Massacre. We decided to watch the new remake of Texas Chainsaw Massacre and it’s the complete opposite type of film to the VVITCH. It’s 100% blood and gore with loud noises and jump scares the entire time. To me, it’s not really that scary because it all seems so fake, but I do jump and scream more at the Texas Chainsaw Massacre type movies. Next I want to watch some scary movies in German so I can be both terrified and confused at the same time.
TUNED UP
Next week I am going to ski in the Swiss Alps, so this week I am putting in some prep work by taking my snowboard in to get tuned. It’s been a year since I had anything done to the board and I could feel the difference when I was skiing in Garmisch at the beginning of the month. Lucky for me, there is a ski shop in Berlin called Skiservice Skiverleih Berlin that does tuning and edges for only 30ish Euros. It’s such a deal to basically get a revived board for so cheap and the people who work at the shop are quick and kind.
PACKING IN THE PROTEIN
In addition to increasing my workouts, I am also focusing on pumping up my protein to get about 120g a day. I didn’t realize this, but protein is important for muscle growth and I have been only getting about 20g of protein a day for years. I mean, it makes total sense that I should be eating more protein because people have always asked me where I get my protein from, but I never really thought it was that big of a deal. Now I eat fish, tofu and tons of protein powder to make sure I hit the mark each day. It’s funny how much work it is to get ‘enough’ protein and how long I was able to go without giving a shit about macros.
My favorite thing to eat to get my protein in is salmon. This week I discovered a new fish monger called omega3 and they’re now my favorite place to get fish in the city. The people who work there are super nice and they have a huge variety of fresh fishes and Mediterranean spices to add to any dish. I highly recommmend!
hamburger bahnhof – ‘CHURCH FOR SALE’ AND ‘Nation, Narration, Narcosis – Collecting Entanglements and Embodied Histories’
In my opinion, one of the best things to do on Sunday in Germany is visit museums. Luckily, museums are also one of the only things that are ever open on a Sunday. This Sunday I got to revisit my favorite museum in Berlin, the Hamburger Bahnhof. The museum is a collection of contemporary art and the exhibits rotate once every few months. The current exhibits were ‘CHURCH FOR SALE’ and ‘Nation, Narration, Narcosis – Collecting Entanglements and Embodied Histories.’ I really liked each exhibit and they both had some of my new favorite pieces.
My favorites from Church For Sale were the selection of pieces from Jenny Holzer’s Die Fast and Quiet (from Survival Serie) and the video installation ‘Crossing Surda’ by Emily Jacir. I have been a fan of Jenny Holzer since I saw her pieces in the London Tate museum, so it was cool to randomly stumble upon her work again in an entirely new city. These pieces said ‘The Beginning of the war will be secret,’ ‘men don’t protect you anymore’ and ‘you live the surprise results of old plans’. Just like the first time I saw her work, I really loved the way she can make you feel ‘some type of way’ with only a few words. The second piece that I loved from the Church for Sale exhibit was Crossing Surda by Emily Jacir. This piece of art was a video installation that showed 8 days of Emily Jacir walking to work through Israeli checkpoints when filming was not allowed. The videos themselves are very simple, they show mostly the crowd and feet as she hid her camera in the bottom of her bag with a small hole, but the overall spirit and statement that is made with the video is really impressive. Despite being held at gunpoint and having her passport thrown in the mud, she still decided to risk everything and record the walk.
The second exhibit was the Nation, Narration and Narcosis exhibit and it had a lot of cool pieces, but also one of the best video installations I have seen in awhile. The video installation was called Korakrit Arunanondchai: Songs for dying / Songs for living and it was a lengthy video which broke out life into several sections of living and dying with close captioned quotes over beautiful videos. Some of the quotes said things like “please take my leftover feelings,” “all I have left from you are these melodies that run through my brain,” “death will take you away from all the people you love forever” and “are you ready to say goodbye and hug them one last time.” It was really 2008 dark Tumblr vibes and I loved it. I watched the entire thing and I got really chocked up at the end. I am going to try and find the video online so I can watch it again and take notes, but if not then I am heading back to Hamburger Bahnhof before the exhibits switch again.
