Morocco

Look, it's a banana flower!

I had been warned before that going to Morrocco would be dangerous as a single woman, and that I would be hassled all the time. The truth is: I wasn't hassled at all, met awesome people (locals and travelers alike) and felt much safer than in most European cities. I enjoyed speaking only French for a week, too. As I've read so much about this 'female traveller' issue in advance, I will probably write an article for Bootsnall or something about this soon. Now I'm back home with a nasty virus infection. I'm blaming Ryanair germs and our crappy flat, not the maghreb. Now, the vegan thing? That was the only downside. I know proper home style Moroccan food and love it above many other cuisines, but this country does not have a restaurant culture at all. They do nice French style breakfasts (coffee, juice, croissants and baguettes with jam), but apart from that, everything was pretty bland. Well, at least it was cheap... Except for the croissants, cafe au lait and some horrid pizza, I stayed vegan, so on the whole it was a nice lacto-veggie trip. My major disappointment was to find the bread stale and the olives dry and over-salty. Apparently all the nice olives go to Europe. I visited a traditional bakery in Fez. Even today, many people in the medinas don't have an oven, so it's common to prepare the bread dough and bring it to the local bakery in the morning and pick it up later. Often, the kids do that before and after school. And the spices! I only bought one spice mix as many were clearly of inferior quality and being sold to ridiculous tourist prices, but it's just so beautiful to look at all the colourful piles! I wasn't smitten by the famous Jme el fnaa square in Marrakesh, but then I never like the obvious touristy places. It's the main square of the city, where at night, music groups, storytellers, snakecharmers and all sorts of other crazy folk meets, and there's also a night food market with food stalls (this is featured in Jamie Oliver's 'Jamie does...' series and book). Sadly, 80% of the people there were middle aged tourists with fanny packs staring at the 'exotic', and the rest seemed to be pickpockets. I would have loved to visit this place 10 years ago or so. While it was enjoyable to see all the food stalls advertising 'As seen on Jimmy Olivier' and 'Johnny Oliver', I didn't dare eating there... I'm adventurous, but everything looked like the last time it was cleaned was... not this year.
Of course I have many more pictures, but not really food related ones. Maybe next post :)

Winter Breakfast

I've never really understood the concept of a hearty breakfast until I become vegan. In Germany, a "hearty" breakfast usually consists of bread rolls, cold cuts, cheese and maybe, if they feel decadent, a boiled or scrambled eggs. In short, things I have been hating for as long as I can remember, even when I was omni.

So I kept on munching toast with jam, chocolate spread, an occasional fruit and my beloved muesli. Porridge in my British phases (=spending too much time with English people or being in England, what happens quite often).

Then came veganism and with veganism came employment plus a part-time job and commuting which means I'm out of the house for at least 10-12 hours a day.
Although it has become a lot better with bento love, I used to be scared of packed lunches and feel very uneasy to eat in company of people whose company I didn't choose (aka coworkers, class"mates" and the like).

Yes, I'm scared of packed lunch or eating at school or work and here's why: when I started school as an six year old, I had a fanatic vegan (!) teacher. He also was one of those hardcore-catholics and also thought beating kids up was a good method (this was 1993, folks).
Whenever your lunch contained something unvegan, he would turn up his nose and explain to you why what your eating is bad and insulting to all of mankind, animals and, above all, jesus (right. Jesus HATES salami!).
Nothing bad about telling things like that (apart from god and his son)- to grown ups.
It's great to explain the concepts of veganism to kids, but he completely messed it up.

But this guy made me have a sort of eating disorder for at least nine years when it came to breakfast and lunch outside my momma's kitchen.
Now you know my darkest food secret.

Be prepared to see my huge-ass breakfast consisting of v-cons chickpea cutlets, the homefries, some cucumber and tomato and yep, that's ketchup.