Logbook: 3/10 days low sugar challenge – completed!

Day 1.

First day, as expected, I feel hyper motivated and am not missing anything. Even though my team was not really cooperative in this sense and bought an extra package of mini Snickers, I feel determined.

Instead I bought bananas, grapes and apples. These fruits are actually also very sweet, but, first, it is good sugar and if I eat one banana and a bunch of grapes during the day, I am sure to have my sugar intake lower than 25 g.

Result: 1 banana, 100g grapes. I feel good, the first day after a long time, I had no sweets. Easy! 

Day 2.

Second day, It’s getting harder. I feel like fruit sugar is not quite the same as sugar in sweets, well, I am sure you know what I mean. On my way to work I catch myself starring at the bakery shops. I am passing by. I must admit, today the look of Snickers on table does not leave me as unemotional as yesterday. But I manage to keep my fingers away from them. Sugar is everywhere. And is if it was not already difficult enough to abandon all the desserts, it is so much more than that. We had an indian curry, very sweet. But my sugar hunger is on the rise and I eat banana immediately afterwards.

I have my first very simple and important learning:

Out of sight – out of mind. It works better than I ever thought.

While we are having a team meeting a bowl of sweets is in the middle of the table. And I am continuously keep starring at it. It is more than simple to grab something. But since my dear team is not really supportive, believing I can not really abandon sweets, I find my inner strength to prove they’re wrong. Haha 🙂 I take those Snickers and put them behind the vase so that I cannot see them. And it works immediately, as if my brain forgets about their existence. Nice one!

Result: 1 banana, sweet curry and lot’s of thoughts spent with snickers and Co.

Day 3.

Third day. Already in the morning I feel tensed. The moment comes when I strongly feel like rewarding myself for 2 previous days. Remember, I signed for a low sugar challenge, not for a „no sugar“ one.

Rewards.

We do a break and around 4pm go to a coffee shop. I already know that my reward is there! I can hardly wait for it – the one and only Chai Latte. I can almost feel like sugar is injected into my blood and I feel so much more relaxed. I feel like reward model does really work for me. And I think that “no rewards” for too long is the reason for the yo-yo effect with the most of diets. It is all in our head when dieting you abandon so many things your brain is craving for and than you start rewarding yourself massively for all the sufferings. It is not a surprise diets do not work in a long-time perspective. So giving myself small rewards would hopefully would hopefully give positive results. 🙂

It would have been all totally fine, but we spontaneously decide to have a team night out at the legendary burger place “White Trash” in Berlin.

First issues: ordering sweet potato fries instead of usual ones was probably the right decision in terms of taste, but not in terms of sugar intake. And the bbq sauce is pretty sweet too and alcohol… to be precise beer, 2 beers. For today I feel like I’ve lost the battle.

Sugar and alcohol.

That’s why when coming home I immediately google for „sugar and alcohol“. Surprise-surprise. Beer has lots of carbs, but it has no sugar, meaning less then 0.5 g per serving! This is so cool!

I find also that red wine has only around 1 g and white wine – 1,5 g sugar per serving. But cocktails like my favorite Pina Colada are even more sugary than a glass of Coke. A 4-ounce (112 g) pina colada contains 28 g of added sugar, though from ingredients other than the alcohol!

What about sweet potatoes? Green flag again! Sweet potatoes is a really misleading name! Two things: it has a lot of calcium in it (which is great) and it is also not having lot’s of sugar, what’s more it is even good for people who have diabetes. Good to know!

I feel relieved and great about making right decisions and rewards 🙂

Result: 1 Chai Latte and bbq sauce. I think I am slightly above my limit because of the bbq sauce but it is not nearly as bad as I thought. Even though it was not a lowcarb dinner, but it was not my goal anyway! 

10 days low sugar challenge. How come?

A couple of weeks ago I spotted a new issue of GEO with a main theme – Healthy Nutrition [in German]. Curiosity is one of the biggest drivers of my daily decisions, the reason why I constantly try new products. The proud price of 9,00€ almost shocked me at the cashier but curiosity did its job. It was my premiere, I have never bought any magazine that expensive. I assume the price is too high to reach the broader public. Unfortunately. While 2-3€ cheap women magazines are usually full of cheap diet tips. You can hardly call it quality journalism.

25g sugar suggested, 3x25g consumed.

I enjoyed this issue, many interesting articles, but one did caught my attention the most. „Sugar” article made me rethink my sugar consumption. The most eye-opening fact for me was: suggested serving of sugar per day for an adult is 25g! Only 25g! While an average adult in industrial countries consumes daily more than 3 times as that. Overweight and obesity are developing as epidemic. And although I am not a victim of any of those (yet), nothing is forever and I felt I have to think.

Sugar cravings

People who know me, also know that I have an extreme sweet tooth. I like eating sweet food badly. I am not a big fan of soft drinks or fruit juices though, but I adore fruits, cakes, chocolate, pastries, ice cream, cookies, should I continue?… Recently I became an absolute addict of Chai Latte – which btw is very sweet and creamy. Mango Lassi is a must almost every time I have an indian meal.

I had an honest talk with myself and became very conscious:

Mornings I have a croissant, sometimes plain sometimes with chocolate.

Coffee-break When coffee-drinkers have a coffee break, I tend to grab a Chai Tea Latte. Sounds healthier, but is not actually.

Lunch After lunch I am crying for something sweet. So, it is officially “cake time”, some packaged sweets from the sweet box at work are generally fine too. In the best or worst (it’s how you see it) case it can be even both.

Dinner When I come home, cook a dinner, I would also eat at least a small piece of something for dessert. Usually plain yoghurt with honey. But being from Ukraine and having a very strong relationships with “tea”, I usually eat cookies.

Sounds like I have really sweet days, ha?

Shocking

When calculating all together, I could easily come to 75-90 grams of sugar per day! Don’t think I exaggerate: one glass of apple or orange juice contains around 25g of sugar. If you don’t believe me, google it.

Halleluja I neither drink Soft Drinks nor I eat fast-food or other hyper-processed foods like ketchup, ready-made dressings, supermarket-pizzas, lasagnas or other trash such as industrially made fruit yoghurts.

No “no sugar” – Yes “low sugar” Challenge

That’s why I am up for a „low sugar” challenge. I challenge myself to eat the max of 25g sugar per day, counting both natural fruits and industrial sugar. I would not do and not suggest doing “no sugar” diet, since we all need sugar as a source of energy, but I want to learn how to control my sweet hunger.

My goal: For 10 days I will eat the max of 25g a day, while cutting on my desserts.

Not my goal: Losing weight is not my primarily goal, but if it happens even better. 

Efficiently what does it mean. If I have a Chai Latte for lunch, I will not eat a cake afterwards and vice verse. If I don’t have a cake for 2 days, I am allowed to reward myself with one, since the challenge is not about abandoning sugar, but about learning how to consume it consciously.

I will share here my logbook, what I eat and how I feel about it. Who wants to join or support me, please do! I do not know what I should expect and how it ends, but I am excited.

“Frisch auf den Tisch” magazine review. Random thoughts on gardening.

These rare early hours when you wake up surprisingly earlier than your alarm clock was set and you have time for breakfast in bed with a new magazine. Priceless.

I adore flowers, but you can barely call me a person who has a green thumb and my home isn’t a green oasis. The only green plant in my apartment that managed to survive inspire of my non-disciplined watering for 6 years!!! is a money tree. Just because it is really not demanding in terms of watering.

I have tried. But it didn’t work. R.I.P.

A couple of days ago a new magazine about gardening?! caught my eye – “Frisch auf den Tisch“.  Does it mean I am a grown up now? The claim did it’s job to catch my attention: Grow it – Cook it – Eat it. 

In my urban life there was no time and no space for gardening.  After skimming through a magazine, I find myself pretty „wowed“.

Maybe it was a lack of motivation and not me? Maybe I still have a chance to get better if i have a motivation of not only looking at my plants – but also eating the results of my work!

I have my favorite stories in this first issue:

First one is an interview with Alys Fowler, those gardeners between you, may already know this urban garden lady – she used to be a part of BBC-broadcast „Gardener’s World“. Wild red hair. Red wool jumper. I already like her.

She got me with her down-to-earth attitude and her, from my opinion, provocative saying: „gardening relaxes me“. Till now I could say this only about painting, but gardening is supposed to be a hard work, isn’t it? Or maybe it is an attitude.

Alys doesn’t want to save the world, not being altruistic. she just wants to have freedom of eating homegrown veggies, herbs and fruits. Agree on that! Her garden is rather chaotic, just like an artist’s workroom and it makes me like her even more. I start considering of having a garden myself… but stop, I live in a tiny apartment in Berlin, with no balcony. Too bad.

But the idea of gardening is becoming more and more attractive with every single page. On page 21 I read the headline „Gardening with friends“. The story is about three young guys who have a collective garden. Working on weekends is also only half as bad as it sounds, cause at noon they open a bottle of wine and enjoy this new green urban freedom. I assume, gardening with friends is just like jogging with friends, brings more fun and consistency.

For people like myself who just want to give it a try, rather start with a modest garden with pots, you’ll find some helpful infos about various pots on the page 24. And eventually to give it a real try – start for example with a herb garden in pots. Everybody loves fresh herbs! Read some tips on the page 64.

All in all, starting from the cover and ending with some DIY tips, I seriously enjoyed the magazine. Now I am thinking of planting cherry tomatoes on my window bench. Give it a read.

Food Tech Event with KptnCook in San Francisco

Go Cook Yourself!

With outstanding food-tech companies like Sprig (on-demand healthy meals delivery), Instacart (same-day grocery delivery), Foodily (social recipe engine), Love with Food (all-natural snack delivery) and Feast (online cooking school) to name a few, San Francisco has proven to be the capital of food-tech in the past decade.

The good news is: “The trend is on the rise” as Krysia Zajonc, Local Food Labs, said.

Food is something everyone is confronted with almost on an hourly basis. As a Cornell University survey reveals people make more than 200 decisions on food and beverages everyday. Seeing that, food-tech comprises enormous business potential.

It’s no surprise that we had to close the event registration in less than a week, since we were fully booked.

Food-tech is simply a tasty topic.

Even Hollyfood, oh I mean of course, Hollywood agrees with us on that. 

Food is one of my favorite parts of the day. Jennifer Lawrence

Thanks to the friendly support from Capital One 360® Café and awesome  Lindsay Thornton, we gathered 250 food and tech inspired people in the very heart of San Francisco to share new trends in food-tech and to have a possibility to introduce KptnCook and two other brand-new food startups who are making a positive difference in the way people are buying, cooking, and consuming food:

KptnCook is launching its mobile App this August in the U.S. and is following in the footsteps of HotelTonight, that made hotel discovery instant and enjoyable. KptnCook solves the choice overload problem and adapts recipe discovery to the afterwork weeknight needs. KptnCook equips you with a portion of daily inspiration, a smart shopping list with real products and prices, as well as step-by-step pictures. With this 3-in-1 approach, KptnCook aims to build the habit of daily cooking!

TalkToChef (Cookstream.tv) is a San Francisco based startup, proclaimed to be the world’s first “culinary 911” platform for all desparate home cooks who were not successful with recent culinary experiments. TalkToChef provides you with the possibility to have a real-time chat with a chef any time you need it. You can take a look on my interview with Daniil, CEO of TalkToChef.

 

Found Eats is another startup from San Francisco providing customers with an online, social marketplace for artisanal food. Customers of Found Eats can follow friends and tastemakers to find amazing new foods made in small batches by artisans across the U.S. and be at the front of the line to take advantage before small producers sell out. The launch of the platform is highly awaited in October, but first samples are arriving everyday.

Panels with food-tech enthusiasts and experts provided various perspectives on the emerging food-tech space.

A big thank you goes out to our guest speakers who made the discussions extremely interesting:

Jean-Paul Bulow – food evangelist dedicated to fighting for good food as part of FullSpoon, Whole Foods Market and currently Blue Apron,

Chef Clare Molla – a Michelin restaurant trained Chef, published food stylist and recipe tester for SF Chronicle Food & Wine Section,

Krysia Zajonc – dedicated social entrepreneur, CEO of Local Food Lab, a platform for innovation and entrepreneurship in local food systems,

Nicole Szanto – the heart and soul of the Sprouts Cooking Club – organizing cooking camps in cooperation with various restaurant chefs for school children in San Francisco 

Ron Rodrigues – a native San Franciscan and a long-long time foodie supporting the new restaurant Kinfolk – “a great neighborhood restaurant with Michelin quality” currently crowdfunding on Kickstarter.

All in all event was full of networking, free drinks and many inspiring stories and has the potential to be organized again soon.

New guest in my kitchen

Eventually, I have spotted something I wanted to taste for months now. I am quite a big experimenter in terms of food, from one week to another I almost do not have standard grocery items I buy. It doesn’t make life easier, but it makes it more fun.

I have a history of trials and errors, one of the recent: beetroot soup, I have cooked for KptnCook, which we have never published. It looked too awesome to be true, but tasted so awkward, that we could not believe that the same dish can be so perfect and the opposite of tasty at the same time:)

Ok, back to my discovery.

E-Center is the closest grocery store to my home and also the largest one, that’s why except of a standard range of goods, they also surprise me from time to time with some exotic fruits.

Discovery of the last week were cooking plantains:) as Wiki just revealed to me, this is the official name for cooking bananas! I was so curious and grabbed a bunch of them immediately.

These were my expectations:

• cooking banana is sweet
• it is a little bit harder than a usual banana

I wanted something sweet for a breakfast and decided that it is time for my cooking bananas.

It was extremely hard to pill and I would not suggest you eating it raw. I have heard that green banana can be compared with sweet potatoes and should be cooked before eating:) It was also pretty hard to cut them.

I heated some olive oil in the pan and put the peaces of banana into it. And fried until they became gold brown.

One of my first discoveries was: Wow! This banana has nothing to do neither with sweet bananas I was used to nor with sweet potatoes. It was a bit weird and since I was home alone I had to deal with this experience by myself:) That’s why I decided to share it with you, maybe you have ideas, maybe I have done something wrong?:)

What I’ve got was something like fried potatoes, not sweet at all and somehow even harder than potatoes.

That morning I was not so much into savory breakfast, that’s why I decided to save the situation with something sweet. Thanks to my husband, we had a jar of apple sauce at home! I have mixed it with some sour creme… and it was interesting:) It was tasty but was absolutely in conflict with a picture I painted in my head.

I would not say, that it was the best breakfast in my life, I would rather go for some pancakes instead:) but it was worth a small experiment and I hope it was somehow helpful for you too! Now the stereotype of the BANANA in my head is broken and I know not all bananas are the same:)

A Night to Remember

Seit einigen Wochen haben wir eine Praktikantin bei uns! Und was für eine! Krass, oder?! Wer hätte das vor 6 Monaten gedacht:) Ich habe unsere liebste Franzi gebeten aus ihrer Sicht die Launch Party zu beschreiben und das ist was sie schrieb:

Die letzten Wochen waren für uns vor allem eines: aufregend! Denn gleich zwei große Ereignisse sollten in einer Woche stattfinden; der lang ersehnte Release der KptnCook App und… da uns das ganze noch nicht nervenaufreibend genug war, kurz darauf die Launch Party, mit der wir die erfolgreiche Veröffentlichung unserer App gebührend feiern wollten.

Der Plan stand und auch die Umsetzung verlief überraschend reibungslos: App bei iTunes eingeschickt, Apple hat schon nach 3 Tagen das Go! gegeben, App released. Na gut, so ganz unkompliziert war es dann doch nicht.

Doch letzten Montag war es dann endlich soweit: Die KptnCook App enterte den App Store und lieferte uns damit den Anlass für die erste KptnCook Party, die dank der freundlichen Unterstützung der Circus Apartments Berlin einer einmaligen Location stattfinden sollte.

“I’m moving in!”, war der erste Ausruf, den Tine machte, als wir mit unseren Taschen voller Kochutensilien und Lebensmittel das Apartment ‘Kaiser’ betraten. Und der Name des Apartments hielt, was er verspricht. In der weiträumigen offenen Küche machte das Zubereiten der verschiedenen für den Abend geplanten Gerichte doppelt so viel Spaß. Diese Super-Küche war wie fürs Live-Kochen mit Freunden gemacht.

 

Zudem machte die stilvolle Einrichtung des Apartments jegliche dekorative Verschönerungsmaßnahmen überflüssig. Drei einfache Körbe gefüllt mit frischem Obst und Gemüse waren alles, was wir brauchten und so konnten wir uns ganz auf die Vorbereitung des Menüs konzentrieren.

Mit vier simplen, aber dennoch köstlichen Rezepten wollten wir unseren Gästen den Abend versüßen; Auf die fabelhafte Tomaten-Senf-Tarte von Fritze&Fratze folgte die exotische Spinatsuppe mit Hähnchenstreifen der talentierten Chefin Tine , die uns den ganzen Abend über tatkräftig unterstützt hat.

Als dritten Gang wurde ein Schälchen Kürbisrisotto mit Cashewkernen und Serranochips gereicht von unserem befreundeten Koch Ben und die fantastischen Lachsbuger, deren Rezept ebenfalls Tines kreativem Kopf entsprungen ist, bildeten den krönenden Abschluss.

Kurz nachdem das letzte Blech Tarte in den Ofen geschoben wurde, klingelten auch schon die ersten Gäste, die mit einem Glas des wunderbaren Weins von Sommelier Privé begrüßt wurden, der eine perfekte Ergänzung zu unseren angebotenen Gerichten bildete.

So abwechslungsreich wie unser Menü waren auch die zahlreichen Geladenen, unter denen sich neben alt Bekannten vom Startup Weekend Berlin, auch viele neue Gesichter der Berliner Food-Szene barcoo und Coffee Circle befanden. Anwesend waren u.a. die kreativen Köpfe hinter den Food-Blogs Berliner Küche, smámunir, Wurstsack sowie 2 junge Berliner Studenten, die mit ihrem Projekt Über den Tellerrand kochen alle begeistert haben und und und….

Sie alle waren der Hauptgrund und das Highlight des Abends, denn der Gedankenaustausch mit solch interessanten und kreativen Menschen gibt uns Kraft und inspiriert uns immer wieder aufs Neue. Außerdem stellten sie ein ausgezeichnetes Motiv für die beiden begabten Fotografen von Mister & Misses Do dar.

Zum stimmungsvollen Ambiente hat auch die Live Musik von Mr. Toby Stock einen großen Teil beigetragen.

Am Ende hat Polina eine Live Präsentation der KptnCook App gemacht, durch die auch die vielen Android-Fans in den Genuss unserer App gekommen sind:)

Alles in allem war es ein Abend voller anregender Gespräche und neuer Rezeptideen, an dem viele neue Freundschaften geschlossen wurden.

Und auch wenn die ein oder andere Pfanne verloren ging, bleibt unser Motto:

EssPress news – for all foodies in Berlin

After waiting for the S-Bahn for only 17 minutes, yes, it’s winter in Berlin, i am eventually sitting and it’s warm.

In my hands I have the brandnew second issue of the EssPress newspaper – new press for and about the Berlin Food scene.

I must say I already enjoyed the first issue, but this one is even better.

So, all Berliners you should take a look on this one. And i really mean All, cause the newspaper is both in German & English.

On the second page I am happy to see a familiar name Gewürzkampagne. I got to know one of the founders Chris Goebel last year in the Cooks Connection and was inspired by their idea. The team is doing a great job for fair- and direct trade of spices, which can be bought in big batches online. The most important is not the huge variety as it is common in supermarkets, but the story of origins  behind each spice.

What’s next, Berlinale is coming! Well, I knew that, but what i didn’t know is that there will be a so called “Kulinarishes Kino” – Culinary Films! Actually for the 8th time already, shame on me I did not know that. The program sounds really interesting with focus on films from Asia.

However, there is also something absolutely new this year: “Berlinale goes Kiez” in cooperation with Markthalle 9 and Slow Food Berlin on the 14.02.2014. After watching “I Cavalieri della Laguna” in Eiszeit Kino in Kreuzberg you can go for dinner (35€) in Markthalle 9. I think I’ll be there.

Moreover, Berlinale goes Streetfood! Instead of Fastfood, you should expect Streetfood trucks! I already love it!

The main Topic of this issue is the asian food in Berlin. If you immediately think of asian bistros looking as clones of each other with somewhat tasteless food, forget it. Rather take a deep look on the new generation of asian chefs, i can already smell the food by just looking at the pictures. Two pages long report in this issue.

Furthermore, if you want to try something new, you will definitely find some cool ideas in EssPress: new openings for every taste!

My personal suggestion, which was not listed, maybe not yet, is Kochu Karu in Prenzlauer Berg. This great Korean Cuisine in asian Tapas Bar style, i try to visit every time I am in PBerg for a lunch.

Although the recipe of the month is way too high-end for me, I am more into “KptnCook-size” portions, I am really looking forward to the next issue of the EssPress in March.