And just like that, summer is officially over!

I guess it must have happened while I was walking home last night with .

There’s still blue sky over Berlin, and hopefully it remains (long sleeve) tshirt weather for a while longer.

I have to admit though, I’ve been looking forward to Autumn as that means a different kind of food. The other day I made up a leek, ham, corn and potato chowder and then there was roast pumpkin with blue cheese another day. And yesterday I finally made munggo guisado – a Fillipino dish that I’ve had my eye on for a while.

There must be something kind of hippie earth mother about me that lies below my more public nerd identity. Maybe it’s the knitting, the jam making or the gardening, but something made my neighbours give me a bag of mung beans saying “We don’t know what to do with these, maybe you’d like to sprout them or something?”

Damn straight I’d like to sprout them.

So I sprouted some mung beans which was kinda satisfying. But then I started thinking of the “something”.

If Berlin wasn’t satisfying me already with interesting icecream flavours such as licorice, or quark with sesame and honey, I’d have considered making . So I googled mung bean recipes and found out about munggo guisado.

Munggo Guisado is Filipino comfort food, a blend of mung beans, seafood, pork meat and assorted greens like morning glory or spinach that’s usually served with rice. I had some quinoa I wanted to play with so I served it with that. Though I’m pretty sure munggo guisado could be good served over toast.

Let’s just say, I think I’ve found a new meal, one of those recipes like spaghetti sauce or ratatouille that you return to again and again because it’s so easy to modify.

But for now, here’s a writeup of my initial foray into Munggo Guisado. I didn’t have spinach, but I substituted in a couple of handfuls of parsley as I always have a bunch in a jar on my windowsill.

(more…)

Back at the start of April I bought this for €1 from some kids running a stall outside the front of their building.

They had a box on a piece of string acting as a cargo elevator from the floors above, and a range of things made out of bits of old wood, computers and hot-glue-gun glue.

I think my favourite thing about this is that the “Bild” (picture) key points at a tiny painting on a stamp. That’s so clever.