Whirlwind Berlin Foods

First of all, I realized today how behind I was about recapping various aspects of my Europe trip. Whoops. I'll blame it on the fact that I'm currently in my Teaching Assistant Training Program. One week down and two to go. Some of us are together in a dorm, and we have been doing some cooking together. (I was also smart enough to bring quite a bit basic cooking things.) Sometimes people have been accommodating about my veganism, other-times not. Monday I'll be making the Greek spinach pie from Vegan with a Vengeance, so that could be interesting.

Now on to the food of Berlin! Because I was there for such a short time, it was intense revisiting many of the vegan spots that I loved from the previous summer. Vöner was first on the list, though I got both the spicy and garlic sauces this time. I wasn't as impressed with the spicy sauce and very much preferred to only have the garlic as it was very tomato tasting and not spicy enough.

Since I was in the neighborhood, I had to stop by Carmello Eis to compliment my Vöner. Sadly, I discovered that the prices had gone up quite a bit since the previous year, but it was still very tasty. Lucky for me, the chocolate soy flavor was available that day because when I went back during my second visit there were no soy flavors. The huge cone pictured also contains blueberry and sour cherry, the latter of which turned out to be surprisingly delicious and a great companion to the chocolate.

Other highlights included stops by Hans Wurst and Maja's Deli for some quick sweet treats, but the best was from Cupcake. There I got to enjoy a chocolate cupcake with raspberry icing. I was very excited to get a cupcake because on several occasions last summer there were no vegan cupcakes to be had when I visited.

Even though I ate a lot of sweet things while in Berlin, I made an attempt to be healthy as well. After so much sugar, I decided on my last night there to improvise some sandwiches with things that I bought at the natural foods store. I had this great tofu product that contained lots of vegetable bits. Got to love the sheer number of specialty tofu products that you can find in German biomarkts. Sometimes the number of choices makes it hard to decide. I also am officially in love with the Streich spreads. Most are vegan, and I bought several of the smaller sample sizes so that I could try different flavors to see which ones I should take home. One of my favorites surprised me by being the apple and onion.

Other tales that I shall be recounting later this week include cooking with chemists in Göttingen and my return to Heidelberg, where I did a study abroad program 3 summers ago.