A trip to the countryside

Last weekend we drove an hour outside of Munich to the snowy countryside...

An Update on day to day Life

Hello, I thought I'd share with you what I've been getting up to and why I haven't been able to post so much recently...

A visit from the bestfriend

On Monday my best friend from England arrived in sunny Munich!

Vegan Banana Muffins Recipe

So after yesterdays fail of a Vegan cake, I picked myself up and tried again!

Summer has arrived in Munich

After a week of rain things are heating up in Munich!

Victorian Tea House

My favourite time to eat out is for breakfast...

Shortbread Recipe

Every time I go shopping I stare at the over priced Scottish Shortbread, so thought I may as well save some money and bake some instead...

Vegetable Puff Pastry Tart

Haven't played around with puff pastry for a while so thought I would experiment again as I find it so fun and easy!

Easter Holidays

It's the holidays!

Apple Cinnamon Pancakes

I had a leftover apple yesterday and a craving for pancakes...

Plum, Apple, and Banana Loaf

Hello!
Inspired by the amazing weather we're having in Munich (over 20 degrees!) and that I went a bit mad with fruit buying I decided to bake today. Basing it on the normal recipe for banana bread I also added Plums, apples, and grapes!

Pasta Bake

Hello!
Last night me and Jorg went to see a live band with his family and friends, I'm not really crazy about music but this band was actually really good! It was just in a little bar/pub and the band was called "Paranoized".

In the morning we were feeling tired and a bit hungover (me being a lightweight after only 2 glasses of wine!) and in the past I always made an english breakfast (eggs, toast/fried bread, baked beans, veggie sausages). This time I had porridge with banana, a kiwi and a prickly pear. I think I'll always do that in the future as I felt so refreshed afterwards!

Prickly pear - a bit like a little watermelon!

Anyway we just made dinner and made our own home made pasta bake! So easy to make and soooo yummy, heres what we did:

You will need:
Vegetables - we used 1 red pepper, 1 carrot, broccoli, garlic and a courgette (but you can add what you want!)
Vegetable stock
Pasta (we used the tagliatelle kind)
Cheese
Cream (single cream or you can even use creme fraiche) about 100g/half a pot
Baking tin/heatproof dish

What you do:
Cook the pasta as normal but for half the cooking time (it still has to be a bit hard!)

Cut all vegetables and throw in a pan with oil,
 cook for 5 - 10 minutes and season with what you want

Put the pasta in your heatproof dish, followed by the vegetables. Crumble the vegetable stock over and pour the cream over. Pour some boiling water over (not much - make sure your pasta and vegetables aren't swimming in water and cream).

Cover with cheese and put in the oven!
As I live in student accommodation I only have a mini oven, and it took 30 minutes - times will vary depending on the oven but once the cheese looks a bit brown and its bubbling away it's done!

Enjoy!

Pear and Quark Pastry Parcels

Yesterday I started the week off with my usual swimming and after school I went to the gym; in the past three weeks I've managed to go twice a week! It might not seem like that much but for me its a milestone, I also find the more you go the more you actually want to go back.
In the evening I made up a recipe as I had some "Blaetter Teig" - puff pastry in the fridge. It's pretty yummy so I thought I'd share the recipe:

I cut up a pear, added some sugar and cinnamon (and a bit of ginger), threw it in a pot and turned up the heat.
I cut up my pastry into squares and put a blob of Quark in the middle of each one - and covered it in cinnamon.

 When the pears were soft I added them to the pastry.

 I folded up the pastry into little parcels...

And sprinkled them with cinnamon again!

I put them in the oven for around 10 - 15 minutes, until they were lightly brown.

 This is how they came out!

Yum yum yum, easy recipe and the pear and quark is healthy! Yay!

UPDATE: I made this recipe again last night, but if you add a few blobs of apfelmus into the parcel before you cook it it turns into mini apfelstrudels! (I was also lazy and cut the whole section of cooking the pears beforehand - I put them in raw and into the oven and they still tasted good! Saves some time too).

Saturday shopping

Today me and Jorg spent the day running around Munich (but quite happily, as it was 15 degrees today!). Our day started off with going to the travel agent to book our holiday; after we went to the hairdressers for Jorg and then went to Pasing Arcaden (after getting on the wrong train).
Already tired, we stopped off at Vapiano. This is an Italian restaurant but done in a kind of "fast food" way. You get a card, order your food at the counter, get given a little device so you can sit down again, and when the food is ready the device beeps to let you know. Everything you buy gets put on the card so at the end when you leave they just swipe your card and you pay. Quite cool, and the food is good!

 Another quirky thing about this restaurant is that on each table they have salt, pepper, oil, AND a basil and rosemary plant!

Pluck as much as you want and put it on your pizza/pasta/antipasti!

 We shared a bruschetta pizza; tomatoes, rucola and parmesan. It was so good!

After we hit the shops, I bought a cute little sound speaker from Philips for just 20 euros to plug into my phone/laptop/mp3 and it is surprisingly really loud!

It looks like a little honey cone. I've been wanting one for a while and now I've started teaching tap dancing I thought it would come in handy!






I also bought a few other little things: a little shopping bag, a new cup with a happy pig on it, and essentials (nail polish, shower gel etc etc).
After shopping for ages we got some coffee/hot chocolate and a doughnut and set off home! So tired now and have to rest before going to the gym tomorrow morning.
Have a good evening!

A Pomegranate Post

Just to say that I've discovered how much I love pomegranates; even cutting them open and taking all the seeds out is fun and somehow therapeutic! I think I could actually just scrap chocolate and eat pomegranate seeds as they make such a good snack, in fact I just want to put pomegranate in everything! Which I've already started doing...

With yoghurt

With yoghurt and french toast hmmmm

The massacre of the pomegranate

Banana and pomegranate porridge

Stuffed Peppers

Just a short post on stuffed peppers that we made yesterday.

Stuffed with rice served with ahem more rice (we accidentally made too much!) and a tomato and basil sauce.















Yum!

Toasted sandwiches and Croissants

The other day me and Jorg went quite healthy and made toasted sandwiches, the fun thing is you can literally put anything you want in them and they're so quick to make.

We bought some croissant dough from Aldi last week, and made our croissants yesterday for breakfast! They were only 1 euro 50 and you get six croissants from the pack. All you have to do is open it, seperate the dough into triangles (which are already cut out for you), roll them and put them in the oven for 15 - 20 minutes! Nice and easy and they look (and are) so yummy.

Cooking post

On Saturday evening me and Jorg made Kase Spaetzle from scratch! It was the yummiest thing ever, if you like macaroni and cheese then this is even better :) Normally you would pan fry it from a pack that's conveniently already made for you, but instead we made our own dough and put it in the oven along with some onions, tomatoes and LOTS of cheese. (Generally not such a healthy dinner if you eat it everyday, sadly enough).

The photo doesn't look that appealing as Spaetzle is one of those dishes that never really looks amazing; but trust me, it tastes so good!

On Sunday me and Jorg baked an apple cake to take round a friend's...

Getting our five a day?!

Ready for the oven

Ta da!

Yum

It was amazing! I suggest you all go bake some apple cake right now. We actually cheated and used one of those packaged boxes (although is that really cheating? All they ever have in them is some flour and sugar mixed together) and it was easy to make!