Monday, May 27, 2013

Was jetzt wieder?!

It is time to return to the continuing story of the building activities here at the Carré Charlotte apartment building site. Last week, my son and I gladly noticed the removal of the yellow workman's cabins in front of our balcony. Would the building activities finally come to an end?


Indeed, the whole site looks a lot better with all the trees having leaves again and the rubbish removed. We were already daydreaming about a playground with a swing and a water pump, when the next day...


an excavator arrived, which tore down the whole wall on the eastern side of our terrain?! What was that all about?


That afternoon, I met out our neighbor on the staircase and she told me that she was furious because she had heard from the Hausmeister that another apartment building will be built right in front of our balconies! Staright away! After clearing the site they will immediately start building?! We were both quite sure that nobody from the Hausverwaltung had ever told us this was going to happen when we rented this place. She asked me what we were going to do about it. Well, we are moving out at the end of August... She said that she was so angry that she thought about moving out as well. And she knew from several other tenants that they are thinking the same. The Hausmeister had also told her that there is another project from the same builder in Berlin Lichtenberg with the same problems: taking way too long to finish, lots of complaints about missing stuff in the apartments, bad communication with the Hausverwaltung. Hmmmm...


Sunday, May 26, 2013

Purslane pesto

A few weeks ago, I was doing my usual Saturday shopping round at the local eco-market at Karl-August-Platz here in Charlottenburg. I love the many local producers that come here every week to sell their homegrown products - all of them are from Berlin or from somewhere nearby in Brandenburg. Germans are quite passionate about their food and they love fresh vegetables in many varieties. And so I was very happy to find the lovely tender bright green leaves of purslane in one of the stalls. I remembered a recipe for purslane pesto that I had found in a Christmas special of of PUUR, a magazine of an eco-supermarket chain in The Netherlands:


Ingredients
* ± 90 grams (winter) purslane
* 6 tbl spoons olive oil
* 50 grams walnuts
* 50 grams grana padano cheese, grated
* 1 tbl spoon lemon juice
* 1/2 tea spoon salt
* 1/2 tea spoon freshly ground pepper

Mix all ingredients in a mortar or in a mixer. Add more oil if the mixture is too dry. Be a bit careful in adding the cheese: this pesto has a wonderful subtle taste, and too much cheese can make the taste too 'heavy'. Enjoy!