Welcome to the prairie!

Yes, meat&chocolate is still alive. It just went through a hibernation and metamorphosis process.
New home, new plans, new name!

A little more than one month ago Wil, my pet rabbit Beule and I moved from Berlin to the Canadian prairies. We traded our little tiny apartment in the vibrant capital city of Germany for a life on the countryside south of Calgary.

As you can probably imagine, this is a huge change for us, and quite an adventure.

There are tons of things we need to learn and have to get used to.

For example, we are now completely dependent on a car. The town of Okotoks is 5km away and it takes us about 45 minutes to get to downtown Calgary. I didn't drive for over 12 years  because I always lived in big cities with a good public transport system. Now I have to drive in order to buy groceries or to get to work, and I have to practice being a hoarder buying enough food in advance.

So that's definitely a little challenge, because I'm used to just popping downstairs to the grocery store next door for some spontaneous wine, chocolate etc.

But there are also a lot of good things about living on the countryside. Rather than listening to drunk party folks yelling in front of our house at 4am in the morning, we get to fall asleep to coyotes howling in the fields, and wake up to deer eating the crabapples in our garden. And then there is wide-open space, beautiful sunsets and a breathtaking view of the Rocky Mountains.

Here are some impressions of our new home:

Our little house on the prairies, including our temporary
but mandatory pick-up truck. 

Our property with the big red barn!

Our future vegetable garden - photo taken from our kitchen window

The view we wake up to every morning. I love the rockies!

We even got a little barn cat. We named her Schröder, after my maiden name.
She is still a kitten, but very hungry and growing quickly.

 Schröder, the kitten

And yes, before you ask, my rabbit Beule arrived safe and sound and is enjoying his Canadian home....

The rabbit loves Canada!

...especially his new favourite spot in front of the fireplace.

With so much space and freedom we made tons of (food-) related plans. 

But first of all we need to build up our lives here. 

A few days after our arrival I took on a part-time position at the Kensington Wine Market to learn more about wine, beer and whisky. I've also been helping out as a production assistant at photo shootings for HeroImages. The last time I worked for them I was asked to do some spontaneous food styling for one of their "Christmas"-shoots.

Food styling for HeroImages...The Christmas Ham

So two jobs within the first two weeks of being here...I guess that's not that bad!

You see, I've been quite busy the last couple of weeks and I'm still pretty overwhelmed. Therefore cooking and blogging didn't really happen, also because we didn't have well-functioning internet.

Well, we cooked, but not really anything new...

One of our standard meals for the past four weeks:
scrambled eggs from hutterite eggs with tomatoes, chive from our garden
and maple bacon.

This is going to change very soon! I'm so excited and motivated to try out new recipes and get to know our new kitchen a bit better. But I also want to focus more on the self-sufficient aspect of living on the country side. Wil and I want grow our own fruits and vegetables, hunt, forage, make cheese, smoke meat and maybe have livestock of some sort.

Hibernation is over, my friends. I'm awake and ready to throw myself into new food adventures!

Welcome to Our Little House On the Prairie!

River Gojee.

I don't know if it's cause I'm busy with wedding preparations and my two jobs or if I'm just annoyed by not being able to take nice photos of my food due to winter darkness. For some reason I just seem to be unable to write new blogposts. It's probably a combination of both.

But I'm optimistic that it will be getting better again in the near future, once I have more time and spring is approaching.

Since I don't have a recipe to share with you I would like to leave you with two recommendations today.

The first one is "River Cottage" a British TV show that aired at the end of the 90s beginning of the ne millenium. For those who don't know this show already: Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall, a food writer and chef and journalist leaves the city and moves to Britain's countryside to live a self-sufficient life. He grows everything himself, gets livestock and, of course, cooks really nice meals from what he finds on his land and around it. It is very inspiring. Thanks to Carson and Erin for recommending this to us. We watched the whole trilogy "Escape to", "Return to" and "River Cottage Forever" within a couple of days. The newer episodes I don't like as much though. They get too Jamie Oliver, kind of...
Not that I have a problem with Jamie Oliver. But one is enough and I prefer the episodes where Hugh discovers a whole bunch of new things and is rather teaching us how to be self-sufficient rather than being a chef.

Anyway, watch it. It's great!
Here is a youtube-link:

My second recommendation is the NY based food site Gojee.com. From how I understood they pick really good foodblog writers and post their recipes on their website. I may be wrong though... But, at least there is a whole bunch of food writers who contribute recipes to the Gojee page.

However, the recipes divided by food and drinks look so delicious, and before browsing you can enter what you crave, what you dislike and what you have at home.

Go check it out: www.gojee.com
(you have to register)