Pancakes and Rolling Stones

I named the blog Ink & Spices because I thought  I might be commenting on cooking and recipes, so here goes one. This morning A. and I wanted pancakes for breakfast and because I like experimenting with recipes, the result were Buckwheat lavender pancakes: I am very satisified with the results, actually I found them delicious but because nothing is perfect, my pancakes never come out beautiful and even; they are always a bit irregular; but well!! In case anybody wants to try the recipe: 1 cup whole wheat flour, 1/2 cup buckwheat flour, 2 eggs, 1 1/2 tsp. baking powder, a bit of salt, and sugar to taste (just a bit)  - and here comes the variations: instead of water or milk I used 1 cup mandarine juice ( I had lots of mandarines that needed to be eaten soon), plus 1/2 cup water and then sprinkle some lavender. Mix everything well and then cook like regular pancakes. We ate them with just a bit of butter, they did not need any marmalade or syrup, the combination mandarine - lavender made them super tasty. Today is really sunny, although still cold, but our apartment is flooded with light and it gives already a Spring feeling. Because of what I wrote yesterday about getting no satisfaction, I am listening now to an old Rolling Stones album, damn they are good!!! I think I need to get more music from them. I used to have a lot of cds from them but between travels and broken relationships I lost several.

While I was sitting by my desk, Fermin my pug, was under the table giving me one of his looks because I was not giving him enough attention, so I tried to make a sketch of him, he moved of course, then he laid down and I though  great, he´ll sleep now, but as I was starting to draw him he left!

 

  

A. just now played a Celia Cruz cd, it is a collection of boleros; I can´t think of something more contrasting to Germany than this cd. And suddenly I feel nostalgic while listening to the song Nostalgia de palmeras

Siento la nostalgia de mi tierra
de una manera intensa, de una manera eterna
porque hasta el día que yo vuelva
siempre seré extranjera, siempre seré extranjera

It is not that I do not like Germany, there are many things I appreciate from life here, and there are many things from Bolivia that I really do not miss; but as the song says, I will always be a foreigner here. And although Germans find the "tropics" fascinating, they will never really feel it ( as I will never feel anything for yodeling - ok this is an exaggeration, also in Germany people make fun of yodelling, but actually there is a "yodical" called the Alps´ princesses which is like a musical but with yodeling, I can´t even imagine what it might be like). I went a couple of months ago to dance salsa with some friends at a really nice place here in Berlin, the music was good and just for fun we decided to take the salsa class hour To start with ,the teacher was a german with an argentinian accent; first she gave us a lecture on the history of salsa and then she gave a mathematical explanation of the steps to count, which she counted as 4. So we all followed and then when we had to get a partner, I danced with a man (german natürlich) who had learned with heart and soul the 1,2,3,4 and who got a bit exasperated by me wanting to improvise. I remember a german man in Bolivia who had got into an argument with his cuban (imagine cuban!!!) salsa teacher because in Germany he had learned a turn in a certain way and the cuban did it differently and of course the german argued that it was wrong. So that is a bit how they experience the "tropics", although I might be exaggerating.