My first handshake with British cuisine has been anything but noteworthy, quite the opposite. My friend Bettina and I had talked our parents into sending us to Britain for several weeks, officially to ramp up our English language skills for school. But more than anything, we were looking forward to spending time abroad and feeling like grown ups. Provided with a litany of good advice and a few warnings we already sat on the plane to London, where we – after hitting ground – hopped onto a bus to Hastings with a bunch of teenagers. Once arrived we were sent to our families and we immediately liked the open-hearted couple and their two small kids. Our temporary new home was small with lots of corners and cats and we felt delirious with joy… until we got served breakfast the next day. Baked beans from a can – spilled over a pale slice of toast – wasn’t exactly what we had pictured as the first meal at our host family. What I didn’t know was that things would get worse.
Let me be upfront: these cookies may not become YOUR favorites. They do have a very subtle hint of peanut butter, but that’s about it. They definitely lack salt. Oh, and they are on the very crunchy end (read: almost rock hard). Now when I tell you that I’ve received unconditional love in return, got my toes and fingers licked as a sign of utter appreciation, would you believe me?
With over four years of foodblogging on our backs now, we can look back to a considerable amount of review inquiries submitted by either food companies or PR firms. While some of them where quite amusing or strange (when you plan to offer samples of your fabulous organic ice cream, wouldn’t it be good to check if the food blog you are contacting is located on the same continent?), most of them where simply uninteresting. So from past experience, this is what it boils down to these days: there’s a 99% chance we will decline a product review. In case we do accept freebies (we’re speaking about the massive amount of two cookbooks during the last year), I never promise to actually conduct a review on the blog or elsewhere. That said, if I do craft a review, I will share my honest opinion, nothing more, nothing less.
Fortunately there is always an exception to the rule. When a dear friend who is working for the Californian car company Tesla asked, if we would like to give their roadster a spin, I couldn’t say fast enough, here twist my arm. The beautiful weather lend the perfect idea of an all the way green picnic powered by Tesla, so to speak. Said and done, the car was ours for a warm and sunny Saturday. And considering that I’m usually not a big car person, I was blown away by this racy roadster. Now while I’m finishing up the delicious picnic recipe below, I’d like to hand over the keyboard to the car-loving person in our household – Oliver:
Unkosher and chorizo challah. Those were the key words that got my attention when I stumbled upon this and I was hooked. The liaison of yeast bread and my favorite Spanish sausage, well, that’s just so me! Right away I had marked the location of Momofuku bakery in my bookmarks for a future trip to NYC and added the magic words “Chorizo Challah” as a note in my recipes-I-have-to-try notebook. At the time who would have thought that we would indeed spend some days in NYC before Christmas…
