Have a lazy autumn weekend!

45 days until Christmas: time for the first rough planning

For now I'm collecting ideas, browsing cookbooks and blogs. I write to-do-lists and have a look into my chests filled with  Christmas decoration in the basement.  I call up my dearest relatives and friends to find out how many guests we will  have on Christmas. Hopefully last year's crazy snowfalls  won't keep them off from coming.
(I have to buy a new snow shovel!  FORGET NOT,  FORGET NOT,  FORGET NOT...)

Ah, and have you already thought about Christmas gifts? Everything planned and fine??

If you are looking for pretty and useful things made from extravagant fabrics I strongly recommend you browse the website of Juliane Jdanoff.  Luckily she lives and manufactures in Dresden. I promise, you couldn't resist if you saw all these beautiful pieces exhibited in a winter garden flooded with sunlight. I was tempted to buy a baby's napkin bag sewn from an eye-catching monkey/ jungle fabric to use it as a clutch!

Juliane is open to suggestions, be it special sized cutlery bags or your desired colours or designs. Just pass by, give her a call or send an email!

You have cold? I'll warm you up: Potato-kurkuma-sauerkraut

Well, Sauerkraut actually is fermented white cabbage, a VERY traditional German winter vegetable. (Some of you might have heard about it?)

The traditional way it is served with mashed potatoes and a piece of roast meat, or Bratwürstl, or goose...

The way I recommend to prepare it today is entirely without meat, a bit crossover (lentils, curcuma and apricots) and very warming. The perfect lunch for someone who has been outside the whole morning raking oak leaves, planting tulip bulbs and piling logs.... Although the sun is still shining (splendid november until now!), the air is getting chilly.

Here's the recipe: Potato-kurkuma-sauerkraut


500g sauerkraut (canned - or the fresh fermented kraut, which must be cooked before)
60g dried apricots, cut in small stripes
60g lentils
600g potatoes, in small pieces
1 onion, chopped
250ml vegetable stock
1 ts paprika
1 ts caraway seeds
1 ts kurkuma (turmeric)
1 tbs curry
1 tbs olive oil

Put the onion and the olive oil in a sauce pan and fry until golden.  With a wooden spoon stir in the paprika powder and then add the vegetable stock.
Add now potatoes, lentils, caraway, curcuma and curry, cover it and let it simmer for about 20 minutes until the lentils are smooth.
Finally add the apricots and the sauerkraut. Let it simmer for another 5 minutes to give the sweet and the sour time to blend in.

When I use freshly cooked sauerkraut I like to add a few spoonfuls of the delicious sauerkraut stock. And of course, for me a dash of Tabasco!

Moritzburg Schlossteich without water after the big fish harvesting

Powerdrink N°3: beauty mask for the stomach

Believe me, this drink has been a real challenge to photograph! Due to the mixture of the violet acai berry powder, the dark orange quince sauce and the green portulaca leaves it  quickly adopted an uninviting brownish greyish colour (just like a facial mud pack!)

I took two  nice glasses we inherited from Grandpa  - those with the silver rims, poured in the drink and decorated it with pieces of beautiful apple skin. Now a little bit of overexposure, focus clearly on the apple skins and a seductive name...  I hope, you'll like my marketing efforts!

To prepare Powerdrink N°3 in your own kitchen, blend

1 apple
1 banana
a handful of portulaca leaves
1 teaspoon acai berry powder
1tablespoon quince sauce ( to be prepared like apple sauce; can be substituted by quince jelly or quince juice)
1 teaspoon flax seed oil
1 teaspoon almond butter
a glass of water (2 glasses, if you prefer your drink more liquid)

Enjoy and be healthy!

I wish you a lovely weekend!

Powerdrink N° 2

It was soooo good. Can't wait for a repetition tomorrow!

For 2 glasses blend:

1 apple
1/2 banana
a handful of portulaca (can be replaced by lettuce)
a shot of quince juice
1 glass of water

October is a paintbox

.... assorted with soft greens and blues, a broad range of earthy colours and the brightest reds and yellows ever.

I have a juneberry in my garden, so sparkling red, that even on cloudy days it appears to be illuminated!

My juneberry in the evening sun

There's no season in the year which makes me call out so often " I want my camera. Now! How the hell could I leave it at home?" This usually happens  when I'm driving the car to just run some quick errands.  It's bedevilled: exactly in those moments the most unexpected, unique, awesome, irretrievable frames turn up in front of me. 

The pictures below I took the conventional way: riding my bicycle, ready-to-shoot-camera hanging around the neck, photographer's eye ON. I hope you'll like them anyhow!