breakfast in berlin

hammer eats stinky cheese on a roll,

i eat marzipan poppyseed yogurt with muesli + a blueberry bun + watermelon

my life for the past few days in berlin has been very similar to my life in new york. i bike everywhere, i run through the park, i hang out with percussionists, i spend an unhealthy amount of time at the grocery store. every so often little differences like the bikers on the sidewalk, the butter on the sandwiches, the pistachio cream as a topping option at their pinkberry equivalent, and the extra bit of time spent waiting at a restaurant remind me that i am not in new york and no, i may not jaywalk.

additionally, marzipan poppyseed yogurt just blew my mind. 

-yeh

morning meatballs

anything + egg + cheese makes it a breakfast food, right?

i've recently found myself spending large numbers of hours with a human who has a very, how shall we say, nightmare of a schedule when it comes to meal times. it includes very long shifts and overnight shifts...bloody shifts... it oft leaves me in the dark when planning meals. is it breakfast if he wakes up at 6pm to start his work day? would he like a beer with that 7am bagel? i normally require breakfast food to break the eating seal, even if i wake up in the afternoon. but i'm not so sure this human is the same, he seems to just eat whatever i put in front of him. so yesterday and today i prepared meatballs, one was a dinner way, one was a breakfast way. they were both my dinner. they were both his breakfast. they were inspired by a recent little trip to the meatball shop.

 left: the lazy girl's guide to chopping canned tomatoes.

turkey meatballs + red sauce

{for the meatballs}

1 tbs olive oil

1 1/4 pounds ground turkey

a heaping 1/2 cup of ricotta

1 large egg

a heaping 1/2 cup of breadcrumbs

1/4 cup chopped fresh parsley

1 tsp oregano

1 tsp salt

1/2 tsp black pepper

1/4 tsp crushed red pepper

{for the sauce}

3 tbs olive oil

1/2 onion, diced

1/2 tsp oregano

2 garlic cloves, chopped

1 tsp salt

1/2 tsp black pepper

1/4 tsp crushed red pepper

1 tbs tomato paste

1 28-oz can of whole plum tomatoes + their liquid

1/2 tsp white sugar

a few pinches of cinnamon

{for breakfast}

angel hair pasta

a healthy plop of ricotta 

a sunny side up egg

salt + pepper + olive oil to taste

{for dinner}

focaccia or slider rolls 

a salad

booze

{meatball clues}

preheat oven to 450, coat a pan with the olive oil, set the pan aside. combine the rest of the ingredients. make 1 1/2 inch balls and line them up snuggly on the pan. bake for 20 minutes. make the sauce while they're baking.

{sauce clues}

in a large pot over medium high heat, cook the olive oil + onion + oregano + garlic + salt + black pepper + crushed red pepper until the onion becomes soft, about 10 minutes.

add the tomato paste and cook, stirring often, for 5 minutes.

add the tomatoes + sugar + cinnamon and stir until the sauce boils. reduce to a simmer and cover, stirring occasionally. once the meatballs are done roasting, add them to the sauce and keep them over the heat until you're ready to serve them. 

{etc}

ad lib toppings or ways to eat them. slider-izing them with focaccia is yummy. or, stir some ricotta and olive oil into a bowl of hot angel hair, top with the balls and an egg, and you've got a really filling excuse for a 6pm breakfast. 

-yeh!

stream of consciousness day

 

to ring in my birthday, rob and maria and i engaged in stream of consciousness day: a 24-hour piece of performance art centered on doing whatever we want, when we want it. obviously there's not much planning to be done aside from taking a vacation day from work and mentally preparing yourself for the possibility that your stream of consciousness could lead you to a tattoo parlor or the lunchable aisle of the grocery store or, heaven forbid, staten island. luckily our streams didn't lead us to do any permanent damage. i was mostly looking to eat as many breakfast sandwiches as possible, maria and i got massages and our nails did, and rob went to the party store to buy those absurd clown glasses for us. we ate cake balls and nougats and... we just didn't hold back when it came to eating and drinking. the day ended with sangria and bacon cheeseburgers on the hudson as the sun set, some really strong coconut cake at good enough to eat, and belly aches that carried on into the next day. hehe, oops. 

-yeh!

getting real

{a breakfast quesadilla! the best way to use up breakfast taco party leftover ingredients. and how colorful and photogenic she is!}

can we talk about how grossly inappropriate my food habits are sometimes? and how eating pretty and delicious and totally highbrow food is absolutely not my norm? i mean, ok, i guess it makes sense why it sometimes appears this way. i absolutely spend energy over making pretty food prettier and i enjoy eating and telling. but it's time i began admitting the rest... for example, my daytime food the past two days: a pack of trader joe's crumpets that sat on my desk until one by one i microwaved them all {22 seconds on high yields the best results, i found} and then used them as vestibules for hummus or peanut butter or sometimes both at the same time. you know how they say desks often have more bacteria than a toilet seat? i'm convinced mine has more bacteria than a pukey port-o-potty at like bonnaroo. my dinner last night was a mixing bowl filled with scorched chow mein noodles that were probably left in my cabinet from two roommates ago, topped with a spoon of peanut butter and soy sauce. and sriracha. like, wtf, it was so good, and then i ate it all and wanted to die i was so ashamed. as an appetizer i discarded the innards of these gross veggie steamed buns that had been frozen for probably decades and then only ate the doughy part. oy! none of this is my fault, sometimes i get too hungry to make decisions so i make bad ones. that is all.

-yeh!