Tonight’s the eve of the Lunar New Year, tomorrow the Year of the Horse begins. Wishing you a year as full of sweetness and longevity as these colorful cans of condensed milk I admire in the local Asian supermarket. To begin the year right, I suggest my grandmother’s fried dumpling recipe, which was featured here on the Convivialist blog last New Year’s. Tagan’s Kitchen also has a how-to. Happy New Year!
Last Wednesday, I was tour guide to six folks from the Ruppiner Feingebäck cafés in scenic north Brandenburg. It’s the second research and tasting trip I’ve organized for them in Berlin. We criss-crossed the city to try my favorite neighborhood cafés, brainstorming new design and menu ideas for their own café along the way…
This wheel of cheese landed in my shopping basket simply because I liked the wrapper. It’s a simple, soft-ripened cheese, like a large, plain-tasting Camembert. The label declares it a handmade (actually, “hand-cheesed”) speciality of Saxony, flavored with caraway. Neither the typography nor the illustration are the world’s most refined, but I like their straightforwardness and the bold colors. Amidst the drop-shadows and photos of “serving suggestions” in the dairy case, this cheese feels honest and homey.
Obscure chocolate bars and tasty-looking business cards have been accumulating on my desk. My excuse for noshing on the job: I’ve been busy planning a tour of Berlin’s most charming cafés and food shops (in my opinion, of course).
Happy New Year! I’m honored to help Slow Travel Berlin ring in the new year as well, by writing their first article of 2014. In this piece, recount my day trip with huskies and other animals, wild and tame, in northwestern Germany.
Here is the full article on Slow Travel Berlin.
Photos courtesy of Freizeit mit Huskies.
This is the candy machine at the California laundromat from which I’m sending you my greetings on Christmas Eve. Have a sweet holiday, all.
The wondrous Buchstabenmuseum, nomadic thus far, is opening in a more permanent location. Opening party tomorrow. Come meet Berlin’s retired neon letters and other signage veterans.
UPDATE Jan 20, 2014: We’ve found a new officemate so the desk is no longer available. We recommend our neighbors’ co-working space Launch Co. if you’re looking!
Come work with us! Are you looking for a quiet, friendly, professional desk space to work alongside like-minded creative colleagues? We have a desk open in our 4-person shared workspace in Berlin-Friedrichshain’s Oberbaum City / Rudolfkiez area, available immediately through May 2014.
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Bookstore windows seem to be catching my eye these days, terraria of print-and-paper creatures. This one, located in San Francisco’s Mission district, is populated only by orange and yellow books. I like the book-fox and book-hedgehog illustrations on the Cabinet anthology. I like its title, Curiosity and Method, too.
A paperback vending machine has appeared on the busy U8 subway platform at Berlin-Alexanderplatz station. While friends in the US report that Kindles and iPads have all but erased colorful book covers from the subway scenery there, print appears to be alive and well underground in Berlin. Or at least the inventors of this machine seem to hope so.
