You can find me now on http://www.with-an-open-mind.com 🙂
I moved!
16 Wednesday Oct 2013
16 Wednesday Oct 2013
You can find me now on http://www.with-an-open-mind.com 🙂
15 Tuesday Oct 2013
Posted life
inTags
Why I haven’t written mails to talk to all those of you who offered me a friendly ear:
Firstly, I tried to keep myself busy making plans for each and every second of the day to keep myself distracted from what hurt to much to think about. And then, secondly, Jay called yesterday. My heart skipped a beat. His voice was shaky. He wanted to talk. He didn’t want to throw it all away after all these years. And most importantly: he still loves me.
In the blog sphere there is a barrier of how much to share. I’ve always been afraid of letting things become to personal but given all the words of friendship and support from so many of you, I want to give you some insight into the situation.
It’s not all rainbows and butterflies. Though, truth be told, it pretty much feels like that right now. Behind us lies a time in which we haven’t always told each other the things that made us sad. We dealt with the sadness and the differences alone instead of figuring out if they were something we could solve together. We evolved at different rates as individuals and didn’t consider that sometimes time is needed to arrive at the same point. And we withdrew our feelings and open thoughts to some extent to save ourselves from being hurt. At the end it all had the contrary effect: two people hurt and miserable, in a relationship which none of them ever wanted to turn out like it did.
The only thing that felt even worse was separating. Talking about the flaws of our relationship and seeing them through the others eyes helped a lot. We don’t know if we can fix what we have, but we made the decision that we are willing to try and give ourselves a beta phase.
I promise that I’ll be back with a less serious topic tomorrow and beautiful pictures of delicious food. For now I am back at the study desk, giving the master thesis my undivided attention. Thank you all for sticking around and I am so happy about the great reactions regarding the new blog title. Self-hosting is an adventure I cannot wait to tackle.
14 Monday Oct 2013
As you might have noticed changes are happening around here. Since this blog is partly a reflection of my life and I am going through a huge change myself right now which doesn’t seem to stop soon, with me going abroad, graduating next year and who knows what will happen then… I considered to start from point zero, tabula rasa and just make a complete switch to a new blog. But I decided myself against it. My love for cooking and passion for healthy living is still there and will remain a part of the blog and furthermore I also made so many good friends, met amazing people, who read and comment and offer an ear when I need it. I feel so blessed due to all of the support you guys offered recently and I was brought to tears experiencing the solidarity of our community. So I won’t completely give up on Health Ninja, just change it to make it a better fit for what will happen in my life that I want to share with you.
Firstly: a new name. I have the feeling that after three years of blogging I’ve outgrown the old one. Renaming the blog to “With An Open Mind” feels like a better title to embrace my move to France, the search for a new job, the creation of a new life. Accordingly the social media accounts are renamed and I’ll get a new .com address in the next days, while also, finally making the jump to self-hosting.
Secondly: my old categories are rearranged to allow a wider range of topics I’d like to talk about. Healthy living, recipes and fitness will surely still be a part of it. So will be intuitive eating, which I will keep writing posts about. But I also want to write more about what happens in my life (back to the roots of blogging, when blogs where used mostly as online diaries), learning a new language, exploring France, Online Marketing, my field of studies, and people who inspire me.
Finally: it’s not a biggy. But Health Ninja Weekly might not be a fitting name for my weekly round up and link up any longer. It is still a thing I’d like to keep around, since it helps people to get a better overview and also spread the love by sharing blogs, posts, pictures, ideas, inspirations… So, any ideas how to rename HNW?
Despite the chaos of changing I hope that you bear with me and stick around. Writing was an outlet for me since I knew how to and blogging gave me the opportunity to publish and share my written words without making writing a profession (aka my moms worst nightmare).
13 Sunday Oct 2013
Posted life
inTags
break up, jay, life, love, relationship
I am not one to regret. And I don’t. Not one of the years, months or weeks I spend in this relationship. Not even the hardest and most hurtful once. They made me become the person that I am today. They formed my character, they taught my heart. To share this part of the road with a person I have the utmost respect for leaves me grateful and sad.
I choose to remember the good things. The times he made me feel like I was worth his life, not those when I felt less than a dime in his pocket. The thoughts, the dreams, the love we shared instead of the fights, the words, the opinions which separated us. The person I want to remember is the one who made my life richer, who empowered me to become who I am today, who loved me unconditionally.
And though it hurts like hell to part two lives which were woven together for years, to accept that those two people who met more than seven years ago and felt like children exploring a new world only they knew the secret door to, have changed along the road, there is some relieve hidden under all the pain. Now there is no more hurting each other for not fulfilling the expectations the other one had. There is time to let things go. The possibility of a new life with someone who might accept the fairytale turning to reality and the changes it brings. To appreciate and love how every day life feels, to be a partner in good and in bad. Someone who doesn’t change as a person by making things work that are different from what you dreamed of. Whose dreams become yours and yours become his.
At some point I am sure that I can let go of this deep sadness that accompanied me for far too long. To smile again from the depth of my heart. To look back and all that is left to remember will be happiness.
12 Saturday Oct 2013
Posted life
in01 Tuesday Oct 2013
Tags
aunt, dining out, Lebanese cuisine, mezze, photography, short trip, starters, vacation, walk
So, as promised yesterday, here comes the second picture bomb from my short trip. Saturday was beautiful and sunny here in Germany, thus my aunt and I took the opportunity to go for a long walk in the English Garden, which is a huge local park. I brought my new canon and took over 100 pictures on this walk. Though my aunt is usually the one posing in front of every cam (she is really great in taking beautiful pictures and has heaps of captured memories from every year of her life) she took over and had fun taking pictures of me.
Her lovely dog is 14 years old by the way. He is like a family member and it is so sad to notice the signs of aging: he is completely deaf now and searches the whole flat for my aunt every time she leaves the room.
I proofed my climbing-skills on this low hanging tree, after my aunt dared me to, which reminded me of an old childhood-video my mom showed me recently. 2 year old me playing at a fountain, my mom filming and telling me to not go near the water. Cut. A few minutes later my aunt is filming me calling “go, play in the water!”. End of the story: me soaking wet, my mom telling me off and my aunt cracking up.
The walk was amazing and exactly what I searched for with this short trip: a break from worrying what I’ll be facing over the next months. My master thesis, moving, the semester abroad, job search, moving again, who knows where…
The culmination of the trip was Sunday evening. My aunt took me out to a Lebanese restaurant.
We decided to order a variety of starters and share one main course since we always tend to gorge on the starters and have no hunger left afterwards. Our 4 starters were: hummus with lamb cubes and almonds, tabbouleh …
eggplant puree (my favorite) and meatballs with a falafel-like crust and herb-yogurt-dip.
For the main course we went with the roasted lamb, spiced spinach and safran sauce.
The meat was perfect. And we enjoyed our walk back home and the night-walk with the dog after stuffing our faces with these delicacies. It is always sad to leave, but since my aunt and I are pro’s when it comes to turn musings into reality I am sure that we’ll be on an exciting trip again soon.
30 Monday Sep 2013
Tags
aunt, dining out, face mask, green juice, juicer, juicing, marvelous monday, mimm, restaurant, short trip, spirulina, weekend
Happy Monday, lovelies. I just got back home from a few beautiful days with my aunt, hence the late post. And since I have a huge bunch of pictures to share, I decided to make two posts out of my trip and thus you have to come back tomorrow to see the second part.
Marvelous was starting our day with eggy oats and the last peaches of the season. My aunt always asks me to make oatmeal for breakfast when I am around and I am happily doing so, since it’s the best breakfast in the world.
Marvelous was walking the dog and talking for hours. We had a few golden September days and enjoyed the sunshine.
Marvelous was eating out in my aunts favorite Greek restaurant. I had the roast beef with a side of vegetables and my aunt had the lamb filet with the same side dish. And the specialty of the house is the dessert which always follows the meal unquestioned: a fluffy kind of greek yogurt / mascarpone mix (the ingredients are a secret, so it’s just my assumption) topped with honey. Bliss.
Marvelous was my aunts fancy juicer and us spending half an hour juicing everything in the fridge from apples to wheat grass.
One liter of green goodness was our reward. My aunt also had some watermelon, which wasn’t sweet enough for my taste – the season is definitely over.
So I went with half a banana topped with almond butter instead. But we didn’t just feast on vitamins, but also had our fair share of treats:
Marvelous was getting macaroons from the French patisserie around the corner and enjoying cake on the antique market we hit on Sunday. Bargaining makes a girl hungry.
By the way: looking like Shrek every evening was pretty marvelous, too. For gorgeous skin glow my aunt recommends making a mask out of spirulina powder and water. The stuff smells… kind of funny… but I’ll stick to it for 10 days and afterwards I’ll report back.
More weekend fun comes tomorrow. Have a great start of the week!
26 Thursday Sep 2013
Tags
Just a quick notice: I spontaneously decided to make a short trip to visit my aunt for a few days. So the proudly announced recipe release of my Banookies will not happen today, but most likely tomorrow and I will see how the days go and hope to make time for some posts, but no promises here. Have a beautiful weekend all of you. See you soon.
23 Monday Sep 2013
Posted life
inTags
canon, cat, cheesecake cupcake, cupcakes, dslr, food photography, kitten, lou, mimm, photography course, photography technique, pumpkin pie, vegan
Happy Monday! Was your weekend as marvelous as mine? Let’s just forget about the Sick-Sunday-Afternoon part. Seems like I do really have an alcohol intolerance. Going to let it check by my doctor soon and then I’ll tell you more about it. Thus far: it’s not pretty and makes three glasses of red wine no fun whatsoever.Other than that I spend my Friday evening and most of Saturday baking up a storm of cupcakes for my brothers birthday party. Since my mom isn’t a big baking fan and prefers to make a huge roast or something like that, I am on baking duty and most of the time also on vegetarian cooking duty, since some of my cousins and their girl/boyfriends are vegan or vegetarian. This time I went with another one of Sally’s cupcake recipes, since those never failed me: Fudge Brownie Cupcakes with Peanut Butter Frosting were easily vegan-ized by using some egg-replacement, plant-based whipping cream and a shortening that truly tastes like butter (I can just recommend Alsan, if you are from Germany).For the second batch I got inspired by my fall inspiration board on Pinterest, where I linked up a recipe for Cheesecake Cupcakes with Pumpkin Pie Frosting. These were the bomb! My total favorite. The only thing you have to be aware of when making these: they take a lot of time since you have to bake a pumpkin pie for the frosting and let it completely cool down. My Pumpkin Pie Frosting turned out too sweet and I added some whipped cream to lighten it up – amazing, can just recommend doing that. After having a lot of frosting leftovers I decided to make another half batch. The Pumpkin Pie Frosting was more of a pie anyways, so I just made more graham-cracker-crust, baked it for 3 minutes, mixed 1/2 cup of flour and 1/2 tsp baking powder into the pumpkin pie frosting, filled the forms with them, baked for about 20 minutes and finally finished them of with the leftover peanut butter frosting. As always nobody could tell the difference between the vegan and the non-vegan cupcakes and most of them were gone before dinner was even on the table. On Sunday I had to get up early to drive 90 minutes to my photography workshop. The ex-girlfriend of my brother stayed this January at my place for her internship and as a thank-you gift she gave me an “adventure gift coupon” which I could redeem for various activities offered by the organisation: one of it was a DSLR-technique-workshop. Since I planned purchasing a DSLR for months I saved this coupon.
And oh was it worth waiting! I learned how to take pictures in the dark by playing with ISO-setting, exposure time and aperture setting.
We also learned when to use the flash and when to just play with the settings to get the results you wish…and that there is no one-fits-it-all setting since a) it depends on the situation and b) on what you want to achieve.When the curtains were opened I once again noticed that no matter how good your technique is, pictures look best when taken in daylight.Even though I had a headache during those 3.5 hours I sucked all the information in and after making it to the election office (big election day in Germany yesterday, in case you didn’t know) and finally my flat, I passed out for the remaining afternoon… I finally felt better at around 9 pm and decided to give my new technical-skills a try: With only my small bedside-IKEA-lamp as light source I managed to take a few darn cute pictures of Lou – no flash used. All right, this wasn’t only my achievement: props to Lou’s posing. She really loves the attention. Now I need to find the e-book on food photography everyone’s been talking about.
Do you use a DSLR? Did you ever join a photography workshop or how did you learn using it? Any recommendations on how to take prettier food pictures?
09 Monday Sep 2013
Tags
asian cuisine, barcamp, foodie, marketing, marvelous monday, mimm, outfit, running sushi, social media marketing, weekend
What a weekend. Though it was mind-blowing and amazing and delicious, I do feel like I could use one or two days off… But who am I kidding, I love weekends like this one and I could go on and on like that! Boooh Monday, boooh!
An early alarm woke me up on Saturday to get the kitchen cleaned and myself prepared for a whole day of BarCamp fun, hosted by our local Marketing Club (I am a member of the Marketing Club Juniors). It started with a to me extremely interesting lecture on social impact optimization a.k.a. a how to do online marketing and how not.
And was followed by different workshops, one hosted by us Juniors. I got so inspired and have a bazillion ideas for my Master thesis now. Cannot wait to get back to my reading and writing.
Engaging the brain makes one hungry. We skipped the lunch break to fit in another workshop but luckily were provided with amazing finger food throughout the smaller breaks. The pasta salad was especially amazing!
Back home I had half an hour to throw every blouse I own on and send a picture to Sina, helping me decided what to wear for the evening event – a 50th birthday party hosted in the VIP lounge of our local soccer stadium. I really wasn’t in the mood for high heels and a dress after this day, so I went with beige ballerinas, black pants, a playful blouse and a black cardigan.Â
The evening was such a personal and beautiful event, even though close to 200 people where invited. And the food and drinks were to die for: I chose the pinot gris, we all had tomato soup with molecular basil noodles as starter, I chose the beef tenderloin with a side of gnocchi and hokkaido squash for the main course and ended the evening with a delicious white mocha ice cream and one spoon each of the chocolate mousse and creme brulee, since both weren’t that good.
Sunday morning was spend with some cardio, blogging, sharing the BarCamp results with the members who didn’t attend and attempting a good shot of Lilou, who was obviously way to fascinated with the Canon to hold still. Sina came over for a coffee and helped me out with the strategy for my Master thesis – aaaah, too many ideas in my head! And afterwards Jay and I studied/researched before heading out for date night.
We had dinner in a newly opened running sushi restaurant, which also offers a great variety of other Japanese dishes. I have to admit that I merely ate sushi, but mainly stuck with grilled fish and deliciously fried beef. And who could resist a plate of edamame? I obviously can’t. Luckily the waiter came around every 15 minutes to clear away the empty plates, otherwise we would have been ashamed of the towers on our table… oh, the joy’s of running sushi buffets. Needless to mention that all we managed to do after was passing out on my bed and watching a few episodes of Supernatural.Lou was begging for cuddles yesterday and I fell asleep with her in my arms. She can be such a darling when she feels like it.
Hope your weekends were just as marvelous as mine? Tell me what you did!