Chocolate with salt

As you can see, I was raised catholic, at least the first 10 years of my life or maybe even longer. That was mostly the time when I lived in Poland. Poland is very convinced catholically and you didn't have much of a choice back then, in great part because my grandparents were devout. I remember my grandparents house with all the crucifixes and pictures of the pope and saints. It was very impressing. The time we moved to Germany, my parents felt more liberated and turned their back on the church. But some habits die hard and so here we are, we had fish for lunch. 

The rain just doesn't want to come and we are over a month late this year. Every day we have cloud covered skies, yesterday we even had thunder, but still no rain. The days are so hot by now, that even me, who normally doesn't mind, just wishes the rain to fall. The Namibians are praying and wishing for nothing else then rain at the moment.

Wouldn't we have such nice organic ice cream, I would say, the weather is perfect for loosing some weight (I'm trying to get rid of my pregnancy fat), but yeah, we have extremely good ice cream , so no, no weight loss here.

Still, I love salads, no matter what weather we have and when it's as hot as it is at the moment, I don't want to eat anything else. But Namibia has a tradition of eating primarily meat. I got to know people, who said, they don't eat anything green or others, who said, they don't eat meat, the cow has had already enough grass. So you can imagine it's kind of difficult to introduce salads as a main course.

Therefore I thought, why not combine meat with a nice salad to start with. Normally I would have taken a rump steak, but we've got the opportunity to buy veal, that's why the following salad is with veal stripes.

I was unfortunately forced to make a longer break from writing again, as my husband and I suffered from food poisoning end of last week. We had sushi from our supermarket, as usual,  but that time we seemed to have bad luck. I must admit, it tasted different and was more sticky than usual. And I remember I was gulping the last pieces and was wondering why, since sushi is one of my favourite meals. Luckily our daughter decided not to eat with us, what she normally does, so we just had to cope with our own sickness and the daily madness of having two little children. I guess we won't have sushi for a while now.

So after a few days of dieting it was time to cook again and what better meat to start with than chicken.
With that said, I'm always waiting for the grape season, so I can cook one of my favourite chicken dishes. It's again an easy and quick dish, with lovely flavours. I don't remember where exactly I found the recipe, but I know, that I cooked this dish over and over. When I look back, my daughter was even enjoying that dish with one and a half already.

I hope you'll like it as much as we do.

I'm always looking for nice fish recipes, preferable quick and easy to make, as I usually need them for lunch. I rarely get hold of fresh fish, if so, it's mostly salmon, which is ridiculously expensive in Namibia. The most popular fish species you can buy in the supermarket is hake, kingklip, smoked haddock, salmon and salmon trout, less often and then rather fresh, is kabeljou and sole, but to be honest you can get hold of it almost exclusively at the cost. So every time we are at the cost, we obviously buy our fish at a fish deli, enjoy it fresh there and can't resist to bring some back home, of course frozen. 

But today I was up to something simple and quick. I had hake in my deep freezer anyway, so the choice was obvious. 

We ran out of bread yesterday and our shopping day is still a few days away. I haven't baked bread for months, so I didn't have any starter/motherdough  to bake my usual bread. I baked already bread without a starter, but they aren't as tasty, additionaly they also don't stay fresh longer then one or two days. I've set my starter immediately, but was still sitting with the problem of not having any bread at home. I decided to give it a try and find a new recipe for a quick bread.

I intended to find a recipe for a spelt or full corn bread, considering us trying to eat as healthy as possible since new year. Christmas time was a killer, we haven't watched our figure at all and since it was as hot as I mentioned already, we had lots and lots of ice cream. Now we are back on track and trying to avoid white flour, too much fat and of course ice cream. I know, my apple - kefir pancakes haven't been really diet food, but one day a week we are allowed to sin - it makes it definitely easer to stick to our plan.

By the way, for our Namibian followers, you get spelt flour only under the German name Dinkelmehl, at least I haven't found it otherwise yet. Please contact me, if you could buy it differently.

Anyway, I discovered this very interesting bread recipe I couldn't wait to try out. I should mention at the beginning, it's not meant to be kneaded by hands, because the dough is too runny.

It's summer in Namibia and extremely hot this year. The rain just doesn't want to come and everybody is eagerly awaiting the weather to change. Nobody feels like eating this days, including me and I find it extremely difficult to come up with any recipe what so ever. However, we must eat something. The challenge nowadays is to find something light but substantial, preferable salads.
In December my husband and I watched a cooking show on television, I think it was Christmas with Jamie or something similar, I can't really recall. They served goats cheese with fresh figs and walnuts. Straightaway I was back with my thoughts in my little French restaurant I was managing for a while back in Berlin and remembered the amazing salad served with gratinated goats cheese.

So, a few days ago we had our

Gratinated goats cheese croutons on a bed of baby leaf salad with caramelised figs and roasted walnuts

Kefir is a pro-biotic dairy drink with a thick and creamy texture and a refreshing sour taste, sometimes with a yeasty tone. Depending on the fermentation period it might be slightly fizzy and even contain between 0,08% and 2 % alcohol.


The kefir grain is a complex composition of specific bacteria and yeasts in one symbiosis, that contains a micro flora which develops its characteristic white, spongy form. The appearance reminds a little of a coral or cauliflower.


In order to make kefir, milk (raw or pasteurized, whole or skim milk) is steeped with the kefir grain in a suitable jar. The fermentation time is about 24 hours at room temperature (between 10 and 25 ° C).
After fermentation, the finished kefir is poured through a sieve in order to separate it from the grain. The grain is optionally washed and immediately reattached with fresh milk. This process can be continued indefinitely and with good care a kefir grain will last a lifetime!
The finished kefir can be consumed immediately or stored for later use in the refrigerator.

After some time, the grain begins to multiply and grows. Finally, you are able to either increase the amount of milk (to make more kefir) or share the grain with someone else. The passing on to family members or friends is not only fun, if anything happens to one's own grain, there is still an alternative available.
But there is also the possibility to freeze or even dry the grain.

Buttermilk by contrast is the remains from butter making and contains less than 1% fat and valuable lecithin.

Source: http://www.kefir.at/wasist.php  (in German)

Last Sunday I made apple-kefir pancakes with my daughter, when I realised that almost a year went by since my last post. I started feeling bad having turned my back on my writing for so long. Now I could try to come up with some lame excuses, but it wouldn't change the fact, that I turned a blind eye on it. Anyhow, I grabbed my camera, took a few pictures and here I am, back with apple-kefir pancakes. And I hope I will now pick up, where I started and keep that project up as planed.



Many things changed by now. We finally managed to find a source of Namibian products. I'm now purchasing my dairy products, meat and vegetables from Namibian farmers. And additionally, most of the products are organic - that's what I call a win-win situation.
I remember, when I first arrived in Namibia, how surprised I was, that relatively little products were from Namibia, all seemed to come from South Africa and Europe. But Namibia is luckily making progress and started a project "Proudly Namibian". 5 years later more and more produces are Namibian. Yesterday I even purchased olive oil from Swakop River. And surprisingly  it tastes delicious: extremely mild, with a beautiful green-golden colour.

But back to the pancakes. I thought I will start with something sweet, since it's my daughters favourite Sunday breakfast. But it's also a lovely memory of my childhood. My grandma used to spoil me with those every summer I spend with her in a small mountain village in Poland. They still taste as good as I remember and bring back memories from my home country, soothing at one go the bit of home sickness I feel from time to time.