(Vegan) Chocolatey Strawberry Tart: erdbeer pfluecken in Urdorf

It’s the first sunny weekend in a while and I am dying to go do outdoorsy stuff. I have a slightly embarrassing confession. Instead of opting for erm… more respectable/strenuous Swiss activities along the lines of hiking and biking, I decided to have a ‘domesticated Saturday morning’ and (very nicely) dragged Mark to this strawberry farm in Urdorf, just 20 minutes outside of Zurich.

Meatless Mondays - Swiss Chard (Krautstiel) Pesto

I just realised recently that I’ve been pretty ignorant when it comes to vegetable shopping. When I first started cooking (fresh out of college and finally got a real kitchen in a share house), my champion dish was always the Mie Goreng. From all the vegetable choices out there, for some reason I have always stuck to zucchinis, capsicum and mushrooms which I always put in my Mie Goreng. This became a habit and for a long time these were the only three veggies I would even think of buying!

Red velvet cupcake with Bailey's cream cheese frosting: Happy Valentine's Day from Zurich!

I caved in and decided to do Valentine's baking after a boring day of doing admin work for my thesis. I was initially going to do macarons but that failed miserably so ended up with a red velvet cupcake instead. For a first try I thought it was ok, nothing like Magnolia Bakery's version of course  (I don't have enough butter in the fridge to do that).... As for the Bailey's, well any excuse for booze on Valentine's right? 

Summer Spritz: Zurich, Switzerland

Chilling by the lake thinking "will own boat one day" (top-left); Zurich Street Parade (bottom-right);
Jumping off Quaibruecke (right)

Summer in Switzerland is pretty awesome... 


The Swiss clearly know how to pack as much fun as possible in that tiny window of 3 months where the mercury constantly nudges the mid 20's. In Zurich, it's all about spending every single afternoon possible by the lake (fighting the 'crowd' to get patches of grass to sit on, never mind it feels so weird that it's not a sandy beach!), outdoor bars and barbecues (grills), music festivals on weekends, people packing up their Winnebagos and going on leave for 2-3 months at a time. For some reason, the Swiss are also obsessed with throwing the biggest parties during summer... The Zurich Street Parade in mid August which is supposed to be the biggest in Europe, the legendary Montreux Jazz Festival, and the open air festivals across the country (Paleo, Frauenfeld, St Gallen, Locarno)...  I swear I almost went broke by the end of August...