People who know me well wouldn’t hesitate to call me an optimist, I concentrate on the positive aspects in life and do my best in cheering up sad friends. Naturally, I have ignored the fretful voices which have been cursing the inconsistent summer weather over the last weeks.
I don’t remember the first time it happened, all I know is that it drove me crazy and it drove Oliver crazy because I got all furious when I -yet again- had spotted new tiny holes in my shirts or pullovers and couldn’t for the life of it figure out how they got in there in the first place. I almost felt haunted, certainly an unsolved mystery for a long time.

When we travel I always keep an eye out for at least one special dish or recipe that I can recreate at home and add to my ever-growing recipe repertoire. Similar to how I connect songs with places we have been to or certain occasions, food does the same thing for me: it will instantly bring back those fun days and sweetest memories with the very first bite or spoon, scientifically – if there was such as thing – it’d be the palate memory effect. Our latest trip to the Maldives wasn’t anything short of neither traditional fare nor exquisite cuisine, and yet the dish I was dying to try back home, was the soup that was the prelude to our late night dinner, shortly after we reached the island Hadahaa.

Some of the recipes from my personal, day-to-day cooking repertoire I don’t consider blog-worthy. Even though they may have accompanied me throughout many years, they are typically dead simple and hardly need written instructions. So I thought. Today’s salad recipe is one of them, but since many friends (and just recently even Bärbel, Oliver’s mum) begged me for written instructions, I finally had to give in.









