A heartfelt Hello

Hi, Y'all,

I relocated a lot but when asked for my hometown, I'll answer Eschweiler. As you might have heard in the news, the city was severely damaged by heavy rain and floodwater by the river which runs right through the city center. Family and friends are affected, and my thoughts are with everybody who was hit by the flood!

May I post something nice anyway? Or is it inappropriate in light of the catastrophe? I considered and reconsidered and finally came to the conclusion that it is okay. I am grateful that we and our river Elbe were spared, I am relieved that nobody of my relatives was bodily harmed, I am proud for my nephew who is constantly out there in the field with his fire department and actually saved someone's life the other night, and I am deeply touched by the solidarity not only in my family but in the whole area. People help each other, spontaneously, solidary and unrequested - just so. Everybody contributes in his or her way, and this is f....ing amazing!

And if I can offer only a minute of distraction with this little blogpost, then this is exactly what I intended. Nothing more, nothing less. And therefore, a heartfelt hello from my kitchen counter:

Right now, we are BBQing all the time, and after our monkey bread experience I wanted to try something else as side dish. And as my new casserole needed to be put into action, I thought of focaccia bread. Basically, that is a normal yeast dough, but with added olive oil and baked in a flat pan. I got hand on a finely ground spelt flour which I tested right away: 

You could leave it like that but I added some cherry tomatoes and dried rosemary needles as well as some herbal salt (thank you, sis) and of course another good drizzle of olive oil. Looked like this:

Although this was a dough made of 500 g of flour, the bread was done after 20 minutes in the oven. Please have a look at the golden fluffy awesomeness! 

Last weekend friends visited us in the afternoon, and in this situation, Germans usually serve coffee and cake. Due to the heat I wanted something light and summery - sorry, no Black Forest Cherry cake for now :-) And as I wanted to avoid using my oven, I made a Key Lime pie. Which means: crumbling some oatmeal cookies and mixing them with melted butter. Put that in the fridge and in the meantime, whisk cream cheese with lime juice, lime zest and whipping cream. Add gelatin, put it on the cookies and again let it sit in the fridge for quite some time. Decorate before serving, and note to self: Add the icing prior to the cookie crumbles. If you put the cream/icing on top of the crumbles, they slide sideways. Therefore, please excuse the somewhat unsymmectrical placement. It's called cake artists for a reason, right? But it was yummie!  

And as we are talking summer and coffee - ever heard of Dalgona coffee? Totally new to me, but thanks to Pinterest I now have an alternative to iced latte. 

With Dalgona (I believe, it's from Japan) everything is different: Not the milk is frothed, but the coffee, and the milk doesn't go on top but comes first into the mug. But one thing after the other: You need instant coffee powder, milk (any type you prefer - oat, soy, you name it), sugar and ice cubes. Pour the milk over ice into your glass and then take three table spoons of instant coffee, one and a half table spoons of sugar and three table spoons of hot water into a separate bowl. Whip it up with a handheld electric mixer. I didn't believe my eyes, but that mixture turns light, fluffy and creamy in 30 seconds only - simply wonderful! And heavenly when the warm coffee foam gets mixed with the cold milk! I don't recommend freezing the milk but I might consider testing a bit of Bailey's or caramel syrup...

Btw, this is how it looks like:

Just. Stay. Safe.