Mixed and Stirred - Latest News From the Cooking Course

If you are suffering from boredom or melancholy in these times it is a good idea, even a therapy, to book an online cooking course, e.g. at the Food Future Institute. I have been filling my days since March 2020, when the so called first lockdown began (did it ever end?), not only with research about baroque architecture (my favorite subject as art historian) but also working intensely for the special cooking course I had still written about. Nothing is more satisfying than to cook and to taste. You will forget the lockdown world around.

We produced different types of amazing Smoothies, something my husband and I are enjoying every day before lunch. For the course we were making pistachio milk, pumpkin seed and macademia cream and kiwi strawberry smoothie. It is so nice to get the idea for new mixtures as one (= us) are very “traditionel” and are almost always changing under two different smoothies.

If I ran a restaurant or an elegant coffee house this hazelnut coffee smoothie would be on the menu. It tastes exceptional, is a nice substitute for traditional coffee and much healthier. Don´t worry, coffee isn´t that unhealthy as it is said. If you take it in the morning, black and preferably without sugar, it is ok. It only becomes harmful if you take too many cups a day.

Back to the idea of my coffee house and what I would serve with smoothies and coffee: superfood fudge and chocolate energy bites (s. photo above). Always provided that the coffeehouse visitors would like to take something with chocolate … And I would offer superfood cereal cookies (s. photo below) that taste so good that everyone would like to eat the whole batch. – In the jar, there is another self made product, rolled oat cereal, a müsli base, by far the best I ever had.

The cookies in the far right look modest, but they are so awesome as they are made from rolled oats, nuts and different types of dried fruits. On the photo below an idea of where my coffee house could be: in the courtyard of a former abbey like this (the towers are from the Spital am Pyhrn parish church, next to the former abbey, which is now a hotel and was some years ago sold for a bargain).