Soups on!

While at the pumpkin farm, in addition to buying pumpkins to carve, we also picked up some pumpkins for cooking. In addition to the butternut squash I always buy, this year I wanted to try my hand at Hokkaido Pumpkin. OMG..... so delicious and thanks to my thermomix oh so easy to make.

Recipe: Hokkaido Pumpkin Soup with fresh ginger

Ingredients:

800 grams Hokkaido pumpkin, cut in small pieces

1 onion

fresh garlic

fresh ginger

cayenne pepper

salt, pepper and nutmeg

200 grams orange juice

500 grams veggie broth

200 grams cream

A City goes Pink

In honor of Breast Awareness, the city of Hamburg Germany went pink! My niece Heidi who lives in Hamburg took this wonderful picture.

Happy Pink Saturday Everyone. Be sure to stop by How Sweet the Sound for more pink!

How a stop at the book store can inspire me

Yesterday I made a quick trip to the mall, to go to one of my favorite places: TJ Maxx! This time instead of buying kitchen supplies, I actually spent some time looking through the clothes and found some nice items to wear to work. After my TJMAXX fix, I stopped at the book store and found a book called "111 spots i Berlin that one has to see" Wow, there sure are alot of places I still need to go to and explore, app 109! This afternoon we were able to knock the list down to 108, as we made the trip to Prenzlauer Berg to go the  "Book Forest".  You might have heard of the Book Forest, if not go to "www.bookcrossing.com". It really is only a small group of trees, but one small group that is filled with books. You can take a book and replace it with another.....what a cool idea. We put a book in the tree.. it is registered at bookcrossing.com which means if someone borrows it and logs on, I can track where my book has been. Of course there were some really, really old books which were fun to look at. Turns out I was not the only one donating a foreign language book, I found some books in french and here my husband thought that was a a silly idea.

Wish me luck in my quest to see the remaining 108 spots in Berlin!

Kale Season

Finally it is kale season here in germany. Now I am by now means a kale eater, but today I made an exception......found a recipe for kale chips! Oh my so easy, so good and oh so healthy!

Ready for the oven. 

And after just a short time in the oven, ready to enjoy!

Directions:

Just shred some kale, toss it with some qualtiy olive oil and seasoned salt.

It really is that easy!

Happy New Recipe Sunday!

Happy Hour

Where to start? I guess I need to go back to my high school days..... i was your typical band geek and for the post part went through the 4 years under the radar. Unlike me, though there  was a kid named Kirk who took the percussion section by storm. I was a junior when Kirk entered high school, so we were only 2 years fellow Pontiac High School Band Members. Well, now fast forward about 25 years.... I am living in Berlin Germany and Kirk is living his dream as a musician and teacher in Las Vegas. How did we reconnect? Silly question... FACEBOOK! I know many are not a fan of Facebook  but it has helped me reconnect with many from my past and that makes me happy. Anyhow......Kirk has a friend, Johnny Rivera, also a musician and the two of them have gotten together to host google+ Hangout concerts. There is a large time difference, so while the boys are up early, my day is coming to an end----or you could say my evening is just starting. :) I suggested to the boys that they host a concert on a Friday---Happy Hour Time here in Germany. And so, last Friday on the 12th of October  my wish was granted. I rounded up some of my husbands co-workers, set a "Halloween" Themed Table as it is the season and got busy cooking in the kitchen.

The menu: Mango Shrimp, Stuffed Mushrooms, bbq chicken wings, mini quiches, stuffed jalapenos, mini cheeseburgers,  brownies, and cake pops.

Okay, this pictures was taken well after midnight, so please forgive me, we all do not look our best! Our guests had gone home and family and I enjoyed a bottle of champagne to celebrate my sons 17th birthday

Should you like to take a listen to the concert, here is the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xO1a_ac0Ro8&feature=share



Wishing everyone a great day! I am linking to the following:


Tablescape Thursday
Seasonal Sunday
Wow us Wednesday
Feature yourself Friday
Masterpiece Monday
Lets Dish Wednesday
Show and Tell Friday

Dino´s and pumpkins

We are very lucky here in Berlin, on the outskirts of town there is a huge pumpkin farm. Well, to be honest, it is not just a pumpkin farm, in the spring you can get all the fresh aspargus you want along with strawberries and later in the year blueberries....not too mention the play area for the kids and my favorite the replica of the Santa Maria! For the past 7 years we have been making a trip out to the farm to buy our pumpkins. It is always a treat! The crew goes all out and makes incredible creatures out of pumpkins....this year dino´s are everywhere!

Reunions.....

Reunions.....

I guess the most popular "reunion" is the class reunion. But this past Friday I did  not attend one of those, in fact I have been now out of high school for over 30 years(yikes...I am old!) and have not made one of my high school reunions. It is not that I did not want to go, but for one, I live in Berlin Germany, so NOT quite right around the corner from my hometown Pontiac Illinois USA, and secondly, it seems that past reunions always were in the same year as an important family event, for example my dad´s 80th birthday.

The reunion I would like to tell you about today, was with my other set of parents---also known as my landlords from Cloppenburg where we lived for over 10 years. We lived in a great upstairs apartment and our landlords Berni and Lisa, lived downstairs with their 3 daughters and son. Over the course of the 10 years we got to know them well and saw their children, grow into the wonderful adults they are today. The oldest, Gaby also lives with her family here in Berlin--only 20 minutes away from me! In fact, my first nights in this city were spent with Gaby and Detlef. Well, last Thursday I got a call from Gaby asking if we were busy on friday night, her parents were coming into town and she wondered if we would like to get together for dinner.  Instead of going out to dinner, I had them all come over to the house for homemade pizza! Turns out Berni and Lisa were only in town for one evening, and Gaby was kind enough to share  her parents with us! I feel very blessed and honored.

 The bookcases....were built by Berni! I will always treasure this piece of furniture... very blessed to have a Berni Orignal in our home.

the little porcelain pumpkin....found that at IHR in Cloppenburg, you know that store where I get all my great napkins...

Not sure if I told you all about the tablecloth in my last post, but it was made from the curtians that hung in my office when we lived in the apartment in Berni and Lisa´s home!

 I love my colored wine glasses. I found some on ebay and my mom gave me a few of her own! These wine glasses have traveled now from Cloppenburg(where we used to live) to Chicago and now back to Berlin!

The whole gang!

Many thanks for the wonderful flowers and a great evening!

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