The 199 course meal day

Course 1: Low and Slow Scrambled Eggs (recipe from a self-proclaimed "girl who loves bacon but can't get fat" aka supermodel Chrissy Teigen aka John Legend's fiancée!), bacon, a baguette and freshly squeezed orange juice!!!!! We finally got a juicer (this one) -- (ultimately provoked by my and Becca's stay in Barcelona, where our airbnb hostess had one and we just got some oranges from the local market and had the besssssstttttttt morning juice with our breakfasts.) I know this sounds super snotty but I can't help it, fresh OJ is so delicious!!!!! I don't want cartons again!

Soooooo yummy

Anyway. 8 oranges (one bag, at least in terms of from Waity here -- sometimes we do grocery delivery and it's the best. Don't judge. We don't have cars and we can pay to get other people to lug around our heavy grocery choices, likes 5kg of basmati rice or 6 giant water bottles or other heavy things. Waity has a great selection and gives you free delivery if you spend £50 or more, whereas Ocado (which also has a great selection) charges you for delivery, so that's kind of annoying. That was a long parenthetical. Are you ready to go back to the sentence? Reminder: 8 oranges...) yielded about 16 ounces of juice, which was good for 3-4 small glasses. Now that I think about it, 8 oz is a pretty normal sized glass, but still. Enough and delicious.

Great way to break the fast

After some major cleaning around the house including organizing, consolidating and trashing things from our insane wine&cooking vinegars/oils/sauces section (see bacon picture), bakery cabinet and refrigerator, we headed off to Saturday's Booth's produce market down the street down the street to get some ripe avocados to make successful guacamole, as well as a few other fresh fruits and veggies. 

By then, it had of course started raining, so we grabbed some hooded jackets and headed to Potter's Field Park, where Rioja Tapas Fantasticas was going on. I love our home. Such a great area!! If you haven't come to visit already, you should :) We had some Rioja to complement all our tapas, which were:
Course 2: Calamari from 
It definitely wasn't the greatest I've ever had, so I wasn't too excited about it.
Course 3: Gambas from Donostia Social Club.
Course 4: Scallops with tomatoes and black rice with squid.
Course 5: Chorizo sandwich
Course 6: Churros con chocolate from Churros Garcia. Delicious.

Course 3: Gambas

Courses 7-199: Okay. It's confession time. We didn't really eat 199 courses. But we participated in a Guinness Book World Record Attempt! Kinda. (Sidenote: did you realize that the Guinness Book of World Records is actually associated with Guinness the beer company??) Really, it was an attempt to have the longest tasting course menu -- 193 courses in 24 hours. You can check out pics and descriptions of some of the courses on this liveblog. 
Course 7: Rose cordial (Turkmenistan)
8: olives, hummus, other unearthed snacks

Course 8

Courses 9, 10, 11, 13, 14

9: Shrimp on the barbie (Australia)
10: Kansiye (Guinea) - a hearty beef stew with peanut butter -- this one was just okay.
11: Pad Thai (Thailand) - delish, as always, but not the best ever. (plus, felt kind of like a copout! also we were in the basement of a Thai restaurant soooo...)
12: Koshari (Egypt) - an eccentric dish of macaroni pasta served with an exotic sauce of rice and lentils. This was really good! I wasn't expecting it to be, but I did really like it. I think that was because of all the butter in it...
13: Chicken (Angola)
14: Vegetable stew (Djibouti)

15: Otai (Tongo) Watermelon, pineapple and coconut drink
16: Tama (Palau) - deep fried vanilla ball. Meh.
17: Durian (Malaysia) - frozen slice. Weird smell, banned on public transport, not my fave fruit.

For those of you who were wondering--we did ask about what the dish from the US was - it was pumpkin pie.















Bonus Jonas!
A custom-made pop-tart cake by Bittersweet Bakers :)

(A giant version of this:

)

¡Happy Catorce de Junio!

Today was a cooking day.

We welcomed RostS back with a Catorce de Junio party! We used this recipe for chicken fajitas and this one for fresh margaritas. The only things we modified were adding sour cream and jalapeños to our fajitas.

Delish!

Our tequila has a hat!

Unfortunately, the avocados from this morning's Waity delivery weren't ripe enough for guacomole-makin' :(

Buenas Noches!

Berlin: Burgermeister and Lokale

I (RostS) spent my birthday in Berlin.  I had to go for work, and I wasn't expecting much out of Berlin, so I had mixed feelings about the trip.  But I loved it! The weather was beautiful and I got to spend lots of time outside and I loved the laid-back vibe of the city and the awesome galleries/boutiques/street art you find everywhere.

I was busy with work so I didn't get to do much eating out but I did have two great (and very different) meals: at Burgermeister and Lokale.

Burgermeister

I went to Burgermeister after seeing the East Side Gallery along the Spree.  Burgermeister is just across the river from the East Side Gallery under the UBahn tracks.  The restaurant is actually a converted old public restroom--I was a little wary but they did a fantastic job with it!  Everything is very simple--just a grill, a fridge stocked with German sodas and beers, a few tables, and some soda crates converted into chairs/tables.

I ordered a bacon cheeseburger and fries with mango-curry sauce.  Definitely one of the best burgers I have had in a long time! All of the individual ingredients were really good and it was just on the right side of juicy to be able to eat without too much of a mess.  The fries weren't quite as impressive but the mango curry sauce was really good and made me feel less guilty about not having currywurst (a Berlin specialty which I had no desire to try, having already disliked a few versions I've had in London.

Lokale

The next night I had dinner at Lokale, a restaurant in the Mitte neighborhood where I was staying.  Lokale is a much more traditional restaurant experience than Burgermeister, but I loved the food there too.  I was a little nervous that the menu was only in German (much better at French/Spanish/Italian food translations than German), but my waitress was such a sweetheart and translated everything for me very patiently.

I started out with some delicious fresh baked bread and spiced butter:

I got pork belly with sauerkraut, mushrooms, pea puree and strawberry puree for a starter.  This was pretty good--the pork belly was a little tough and I didn't love the sauerkraut.  But the mushrooms were amazing--definitely my favorite part of the dish.

And for my main I had homemade pasta with goat cheese, roasted tomatoes, mushrooms and spring onions.  This was amazing--the pasta was some of the best homemade pasta I have ever had.  Really springy and carb-y (for lack of a better word)--really filling but so satisfying. The veg was great too!

For dessert I had fresh baked blueberry muffins with strawberry sorbet--but I forgot to take a picture (sorry, new blogger mistakes!).  I was obviously extremely full at this point but somehow managed to finish it off.

So I would definitely recommend both of these restaurants--and Berlin is now on my list of weekend trips to take!