Eat a lot: Pringles Limited Edition Mint Choc

Yesterday I ate something that made me realise how lucky I am: Pringles Limited Edition Mint Choc.

Ever since my stint of life in London, I get very excited when I see something that is flavoured with mint and chocolate. Mint Magnums, Mint Terry's Chocolate Oranges, After Eight Easter eggs, I salute them all. Enter these Pringles, found in a late night shop on the Hermannstrasse.

I can just imagine someone in a high-powered Pringle job, going, 'Yes! A sweet savoury snack! This is the best idea ever.' But it just. Doesn't. Work.

Have the Pringles people tasted them, I wonder? Or are they just too American minded over there at the Kellogg company (which owns the brand) to understand the lovely way mint chocolate is supposed to taste?

The Kellogg vision is 'to enrich and delight the world through foods [...] that matter'. Their mission? 'Nourishing families so they can flourish and thrive.' Well, not with this product they won't.

The pale crisps looked not unlike normal Pringles, actually, and tasted salty and Pringle-like, but with a very distinct sauce of synthetic chewing gum flavouring poured over. I couldn't detect any chocolatey taste at all but that may have been the abundance of chewing gum flavouring taking up every receptor in my nose and mouth.

They were the most awful thing I have tasted in a long time. I didn't even eat one whole Pringle. Just thinking about them now makes me feel a bit wobbly with nausea.

So why did I feel so lucky? I realised that most of the food I get to eat is actually, even when not outstanding, edible at the very least, and most often palatable too. After just the one choc mint Pringle I was thankful for all the lovely food that's available to us all. And thankful because I won't be nourishing my family with this horrible, contrived product.

Eat a lot: Lodd Thai Imbiss, Neukölln

Thai restaurants are a dime a dozen here in Berlin. They're usually of a fairly poor standard. Vegetables from a tin, watery curry sauces, touristy dishes (Pad Thai, anyone?) only. That kind of thing. To be fair, once you have eaten Thai food in Thailand, that's it, you've ruined your Thai restaurant experience for ever...

Way back when I still lived in London, I devised a Thai Restaurant Rule: if they ain't servin' cha yen (Thai ice tea, sweet and sticky with its typical rusty brown colour), it ain't worth visitin'. It helped me separate the wheat from the chaff, or so I thought. In reality it meant that there were only two places I could go to in the whole of London town.

Cha yen (or what was left when I remembered to take a picture)

Needless to say I got very excited when I discovered that the Lodd Thai Imbiss, a stone's throw from my house, is worth a visit according to my own rule. When you order, they ask you how hot you like your food which is VERY Thai indeed. So is the inside of the place: tacky, slightly random and crammed full of pictures of colourful cocktails, elephants, flowers and the King. (There will always be a picture of the King. The Thai are extremely royalist.)

I know other people have visited this place and found it average. I liked it because they made the food from scratch (I could see into the kitchen), using fresh ingredients. They did tasty things to my tofu which is always a plus in my book, and the food was exactly the kind of hot I ordered. Oh, and the soup bowls were cute.

I'm sure there are better Thai restaurants in town (there will certainly be posher ones). But at least I won't ever have to go to that horrible Jasmin place on Hermannstraße again.

Lodd Thai Imbiss, Boddinstraße 65, 12053 Berlin

365 day project: Berlin skies

If you ask me, it all started with the blog then book then film of that easily dislikeable Julie woman of Julie and Julia fame: 365 day projects. They intrigue me, though, the people who do them. Some go through tremendous lengths every single day to create amazing photographs. I suspect they don't have jobs. Or children. Maybe a nice trust fund tucked away somewhere... Anyway. As you can tell, I am jealous.

Ever since I discovered the phenomenon, I have been trying to come up with my own 365 day project. A doable one that is, because let's face it, my day is a success when I leave the house with my hair combed. 

So this was my idea: take a picture of that iconic Berlin landmark, the Fernsehturm, every day. I can see it from my living room. Easy. And with the ever changing Berlin night skies, it might even be interesting. Excellent stuff.

I have been at it for 4 days now. I missed day 3. I am starting to realise that I will not make it to 365. Nor will I manage to post every day. I won't be opening a separate blog page for it, either. Oh well, 4 is the new 365, methinks. 

Day before day before yesterday, 10.33pm

Day before yesterday, 9.25pm

Today, 9.23pm

Shop a little: Manufactum, Charlottenburg

I don't go there very often and I NEVER stay long. It is just too dangerous for my wallet, and prolonging the longing for their lovely products only adds to the disappointment later.

Manufactum.

But yesterday I went – specific aim in mind and only 20 minutes' worth in the parking meter. All I had time for, was to buy the thing I wanted (a pull out washing dryer for our wall), to get the wheel of Kalle's stroller oiled by the lovely shop assistant who heard the squeaky noise (ooooh, the service is outstanding too, can I live there?) and to ogle this amazing coffee grinder. For which I have no space in my kitchen. Nor money. Nor need, really. But, oh, did I ogle it alright. And some other kitcheny things, too.

I'll allow myself to go again in three months or so. I would luuuurve to have a look at the stationery.

PS For those Dutch people out there who miss fluffy Dutch bread? The Brot & Butter section does a wonderful milky version of Dutch raisin bread (at €4.80 a pop). It's a little low on raisins but makes up for it in fluffiness. Did I mention how fluffy it was?

Manufactum and Brot und Butter, Hardenbergstraße 4-5, Berlin, 03024033844, website

Eat a little, drink a lot: a recipe for the King's Day party at the Dutch embassy

Serves:

enough to get about 150 people drunk on fairly empty stomachs

Ingredients:

•  1 large embassy, slightly stale:

•  1 tiny queen, abdicated but not forgotten, wearing royal purple:

•  1 drizzle of foamy beer, preferably the most undrinkable brand you can find:

Drink a lot: List, Neukölln

List, Weichselstraße 66, 12043 Berlin, website, open Mon-Sat from 12 pm till late

Eat a lot: Pizza Nostra, Prenzlauer Berg

I've never eaten quite as much pizza as I've eaten here in Berlin. There's a great place around the corner where I get my take out fare. The aubergine, chilli and 

crème fraîche pizza is the one to order there: it's fiery and creamy all at once. But when in Prenzlberg, I can't help but get a slice, at the very least, at Pizza Nostra. 

Their 'bottoms' are amazingly crisp yet chewy, not unlike a very flat ciabatta bread straight out of the oven. They say it's pizza in true Napoli style, which might very well be the case and if so, I need to go visit Napels, pronto. 

Eat it topped with fresh tomatoes and rocket for lunch (€8) and you're set up for the rest of the day. I have a Japanese friend who eats a vegan diet, and he only falls off the wagon for the Pizza Nostra pizzas. Now, if that isn't an endorsement to be swayed by…

Pizza Nostra, Lychener Straße, 10437 Berlin, 03041717000, website, open Tue-Sun from 11am - 12am.

Eat a lot: Werkstatt der Süße, Prenzlauer Berg

Dark chocolate, raspberry, Tasmanian pepper and gold leaf tart

Eat a lot: Street Food Thursday @ Markthalle Neun, Kreuzberg

Finally! Last Thursday I visited the Street Food Market at Markthalle Neun. I love the different Markthallen that are dotted around Berlin - they remind me of some of my favourite places in London: Smithfield and its surroundings, Spitalfields market on a weekday and early mornings at Borough market.

Their revival is a brilliant thing. All those enthusiastic, driven people organising weekly or monthly events and get-togethers, from the Handmade Supermarket to a distillers' festival, under their roofs. What's not to like, applaud and support?

I was looking forward to it immensely. My plan was to have a poke around, take some pictures, discover some young and upcoming Berlin chefs, too poor to start their own restaurants but with skills to be raved about. But.

Berlin finds: Rixdorf

Things are moving quickly here in Berlin. Gone are the days of massive flats, empty and waiting to be lived in. Gone are reasonable rents, illegal ping-pong bars and bullet-holed facades. Well, almost gone. But it won't be long now.

Clubs that have been open since the fall of the Berlin wall are closing to make way for chi chi shops, posh apartment blocks and media companies. When you're looking for a room in a WG (shared housing) you have to beat twenty others and still pay a premium price. One of Berlin's most wonderful traits, its greenness, is steadily disappearing to make way for, yes, more expensive flats.

As they say, all was better in the olden days.

Imagine how chuffed I am to be living very near one of the few proper authentic bits of the city still around. In the middle of Neukölln, there's a village green housing the oldest blacksmith in town plus a garage for old-fashioned horse drawn carriages. The surrounding town houses are gorgeous, spacious and light. The local thrift shop is enormous and filled with stuff no one in their right mind ever would buy - it's all just too dusty and disgusting. But what a joy to rummage through it all. Here in Rixdorf, the annual hay bale rolling competition and the Weinachtsmarkt transport you back in time. Squint and you can imagine yourself a hundred years ago. It's just lovely.

It's easy too: just take a walk on Richardplatz and the surrounding streets. Have a chai tea and some cake at Barini, opposite the thrift store, while you're at it. Buy tickets for a puppet show in the theatre next door and visit the figure skating shop, just because there is one. This is Berlin at its best.

Alt-Rixdorfer Weihnachtsmarkt, second advent weekend in december, Richardplatz, 12055 Berlin

Barini, Böhmische Straße 46, 12055 Berlin, 030 25059718, website

Berger Wohnungsauflösung, Böhmische Str. 13, 12055 Berlin, 030 68224987

Central Rixdorf Theater, K&K VolkArt, Böhmische Straße 46, 12055 Berlin, 030 26378812, website

Eisprinzessinshop, Richardstraße 76, Berlin, website

Rixdorfer Schmiede, Bürgerstr. 17, 12347 Berlin, 030 6942232, website