12 June 2015

More time needed

The exigencies of being a tourist mean that time for reflection is at a premium. There's time spent travelling places, and time spent in cafes etc, but this is shared time and talking-about-things time.

Many photos get taken. I'd like to show them, and talk about them (oh dear, remember those interminable slide shows of the neighbours' holidays? or maybe you're too young and have been spared that!) and think about them - research and reorganise - but the early morning hours are few and precious, and thanks to my camera's recent tendency to look darkly at everything, each photo needs editing, lightening at least. 

Thus the days scurry past and already things are getting forgotten. I want to blog about the local farmers market, the walk in the Charlottenberg Palace gardens, the "blue screen" memorial, encounters with public art, quirky things, encounters with historical plaques, the natural history museum and the panda exhibition there, the contemporary art museum (Hamburger Bahnhof), the boat trip on Wannsee, the Salgado photography exhibition ... and there'll be more new experiences and photos today.

Our new experience yesterday was with the buy-a-recipe concept of cooking from the local Kochhaus - a concept available online in the UK as Gousto. It's attractive - priced per person, all ingredients laid out on a table, including the recipe - just fill the bag, take it home, start cooking.
We chose the bun bo nam, vietnamese rice noodles with chili-beef, lime and peanuts -
In the kitchen, it looked like this -
Uh-oh, beansprouts are missing ... back to the shop for them ...

Nice recipe leaflet, with pictures - but in German. You had to add your own oil, salt, and sugar, not to mention getting things ready in various bowls before it was all plated up. The noodles got a bit sticky and the cooks got a bit fraught, but it tasted delicious.

Next time, supplying my own ingredients, I would probably use egg noodles for this, and chicken. For any other dish, I would definitely write out the recipe in English first!

And here's another activity that seems to take up the time -

No comments: