Year: 2016

Top gourmet moments 2016

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This year we’ve had pretty amazing meals: we’ve gone back to our favourite restaurants, like Geist in Copenhagen or Vista in Portimao, we’ve discovered new places, like The Dogs in Edinburgh and we’ve cooked some remarkable recipes that are now on repeat in our kitchen. We love food so we can’t finish the year without a compilation of our favourite gourmet moments. We started the year with the unbelievably good black kale with fried egg and sorrel at Geist, in Copenhagen. If you need a reason to visit Copenhagen in Winter, there you have it.   We discovered a great pizza place in London, Homeslice. Maybe our favourite pizza in London?  Perfect to share with friends and located in the heart of Neil’s Yard. The whole menu at Vista restaurant deserves a visit to Portimao. Oh, and the cauliflower cream of the room service at Belavista Hotel (home to the Vista restaurant) is one of the best dishes we’ve ever eaten! In July we devoured the best paella in the world at La Pepica, in …

Christmas party ideas

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These days everyone seems to be either going or coming from a Christmas party. Good food, fun drinks and old friends… what’s not to love? Well, all the mess that comes with it, even more if you are hosting one of those get togethers. But we have you covered: here you have 3 very simple recipes that your guests will love and you can prepare in no time! This is our informal Christmas party menu: goat cheese salad, kale chips and smoky walnut and cumin muhammara. A non traditional yet light and spicy menu that is different from what your guest would expect and is perfect to share. Lets start with the muhammara, that takes a tiny bit more time. We found this recipe in the wonderful book A modern way to eat, by Anna Jones, which we have already mentioned before in this Salted caramel brownies recipe and this Coconut and vanilla cake recipe. You will need: 75 g walnuts (plus a few more to decorate) 1 tsp cumin seeds 3 roasted red peppers, …

Top travel moments 2016

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The year is coming to an end and it’s time to look back. Instead of making a compilation of our trips this year, we wanted to revisit those special moments that we’ve experienced. Those instants, minutes or tiny lapses of time when we forgot everything else and felt truly happy. The feelings that are worth the trouble, the reasons why travel heals your soul… The moment we entered our cosy apartment in Copenhagen after a whole day of exploring in January. That satisfaction of discovering new places and being awfully but happily tired with red, burning ears from the freezing wind. The moment we saw the most wonderfully starry sky in Mallorca, which took us completely by surprise and made us remember, both with joy and sadness, those who were not with us anymore. The moment we couldn’t stop laughing during our walk on the Thames Path with our friends after a wonderful brunch in a local cafe. We catched our breath, looked up and saw a wonderful view of the city on one side …

The only gift guide that you’ll need this Christmas

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During the last few weeks my inbox has been full of wonderful gift guides. From stocking fillers to luxury items, the most beautiful things all listed and ready to buy, just a click away. And as much as I love shopping for others and, well, for me, this year there is only one item in our gift guide. And I would be very grateful if you could share it and include it in your gift guides as well. Do you remember the hilarious Ice Bucket Challenge that was all over the Internet last year?  Well, it was created to promote awareness of the Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS), also known as Lou Gehrig’s Disease. I watched every Instagram video that appeared on my feed, even more if it involved some gorgeous celebrity. My guess is you did too. But I didn’t donate. I can imagine that most people did the same, though I truly hope that if you saw those challenges you did donate. I truly hope you are a better person than I. ALS is a …

Christmas Cards DIY 2016

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This post is a holiday tradition for us. If you follow this blog, you’ll know that every year we sit down and prepare our Christmas cards for our family and closest friends. It’s fun, it feels good and it marks the start of the holiday season for us. If last year’s DIY was the easiest, this year it’s almost cheating.   We bought two different boxes of gorgeous Christmas cards by My mind’s eye and some matching decorative brads and we played with them until we got our simple yet lovely and über festive Christmas cards. By the way, if you like stationery even a little bit, check My mind’s Eye web. Their products are adorable, beautiful, joyful… I just want to live inside that web. It’s an event organizer’s dream!   The process is ridiculously easy. Just pierce the cards with the decorative brads and write your best wishes. It doesn’t matter if your caligraphy isn’t the best, it’s the thought that matters. This uncomplicated DIY is perfect for clumsy types and people that …

Coconut and vanilla cake

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This is my favourite time of the year. Advent in Germany is glorious. The otherwise dark afternoons are now full of twinkling lights, poffertjes scent and happy people drinking Glühwein at the Christmas market. Since we have already watched Love, actually there is only one thing to do until Christmas: bake, bake, bake! This recipe is our take on a coconut loaf from this book. You see,  I got a cookbook focused on vegetables for my bithday but all I’ve tried so far are a couple of dessert recipes. These amazing salted caramel chocolate brownies, for instance. So me. However, my intentions are good:  we try to eat healthy most of the time… that’s why I’m munching on spicy kale chips while writing this post and we used coconut sugar instead of refined sugar for this recipe.  If only to spread a good amount of Nutella over this delicious cake afterwards, though. This cake has lots of perks: the ground almonds, spelt flour and coconut sugar make it lighter and easier to digest, the preparation …

My top five eye shadow palettes

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There are two things I can’t get enough off: chocolate and eyeshadow palettes. Chocolate is all over the blog and over the last few years I’ve shared a few reviews of my favorite eyeshadow palettes in this space. I’m always a little bit ashamed of talking so enthusiastically about them, or make up in general for that matter, but surprisingly beauty posts always bring new followers to the blog. I guess I’ve heard so many times that liking makeup or fashion makes you automatically dumb, that the thought has got into my shead and I’m afraid of sharing my passion for lovely ranges of colors exposed beautifully in little, flat boxes. I tend to lose my personality sometimes, sorry. There are people that go crazy about color palettes. There are blogs and websites completely dedicated to them! Every December there is a color of the year chosen among the Pantone. For me, eyeshadow palettes are wonderful Pantone displays that happen to look fantastic when applied to my lids (Though it depends on the amount of …

Afternoon tea at The Howard, Edinburgh

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We love everything British, but Afternoon Tea really deserves a honourable mention. All kind of treats, sweet and savoury, served in beautiful china together with a comforting hot beverage and surrounded by a cosy atmopshere? That is heaven in our books. We’ve already shared with you our wonderful stay at The Howard Hotel in Edinburgh, but we wanted to dedicate a special post to the lovely Afternoon tea we enjoyed in the drawing room of the hotel. With only 14 places available, this Afternoon Tea is an absolutely relaxing, unique, memorable experience. Like everything in this hotel, the menu was traditional but had a few twists that made it even more delicious. Surrounded by tartan, served by the lovely team of butlers of The Howard, with a wonderful soundtrack which included the theme song of Downton Abbey (they got me right at that moment) we enjoyed one of the most relaxing afternoons we’ve had in a very long time. We found the selection of sandwiches and savoury treats particularly delicate and enticing. Our favourites were the …

Mushrooms with spinachs and cream cheese

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This recipe is perfect for a nice, healthy Autumn breakfast but it can double as a light lunch or even a side dish.  In any case, it’s marvellously light and delicious. Mushrooms are in season now so it’s a nice way of taking advantage of nature’s resources. However, I warn you: once cooked, the mushrooms don’t look as pretty as pictured above. They look quite ugly, actually. But they are finger-licking good!   You will need: A few mushrooms, peeled and stalks removed Spinach leaves 150 to 200 g cream cheese (we love using garlic cream cheese but you can add any flavour you like) Parmesan cheese, grated Black pepper and olive oil. 1 egg per person (optional) This recipe can’t be easier: Preheat the grill to high. Place the mushrooms on a baking tray, drizzle with olive oil and season with black pepper. We don’t add salt because the cheese is already salty and we try to avoid salt as much as we can, but if you want to add salt, this is the …

Winter uniform

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How do you dress for Winter? No, I’m not talking about lovely layering, adorable beanies and ankles au naturel kind of Winter. I’m talking about real Winter: when frozen wind burns (yes, like the sun would do) your cheeks, when your neck and back hurt because you are permanently shrinking and cringing, when the mere thought of going out makes you shiver, when your nose hurts every time you breathe and your breath turns into small drops that inevitably pour into your scarf and quickly turn into little dots of frost that decorate said scarf and make your breathing hurt your nose even more. That dreadful vicious circle… We’ve been suffering those Winters since 2011. And therefore we’ve developed a method, a uniform:  knit + trousers + coat + boots. Always. Every day. Of course, under all that we wear thermal tees and socks. And on top of all that we wear a good hat and a warm scarf. Our favourite knits are from COS. You don’t want very big sweaters, otherwise you’d feel very …