I have an everlasting love for Paris. I discover something new every time I go there and fall in love with it all over again. Click over to my wanderlust blog and read about my last trip to Paris. (Sorry for any inconvenience, but my Wanderlust blog doesn’t send emails to notify you of new blog entries.)

As a treat, I will give you an iced coffee drink that was my absolute favorite when I was a young student. This was long before the era of Starbucks & today’s coffee culture. In those days, Europe had café-bakeries. A good cup of coffee was considered a luxury, so many people drank fake coffee (chicory) because the real stuff wasn’t available, especially in East Germany. Giving someone a pound of good coffee was a great gift. At that time, I wasn’t much of a coffee drinker, but I always loved to have an Eiskaffee (cold coffee with ice cream). As a young student, I was living mostly on french fries with mayonnaise (I switched to ketchup when I came to this country) which was sold from stands on every corner. You could also get currywurst, a sausage topped with ketchup and sprinkled with curry and paprika. However, when I had some extra money, I would treat myself to an Eiskaffee in a fancy coffee house. Whenever I am in Germany in the summertime, I revive memories by having this delicious drink. On my last trip to Europe,  my friends from Switzerland took us to Lake Konstanze, which borders Switzerland and Germany. We had a lovely outdoor lunch with a view of the lake, and for dessert we ordered Eiskaffee. What a fun afternoon with good food and good friends. I know the hot weather is mostly over, but enjoy this treat anyway with a friend or loved one. It’s a great way to use up leftover cold coffee. Think of it as a coffee milkshake, only better. 

All you need is :

a tall glass
1  scoop vanilla ice cream
1 cup or cold coffee 
½ cup or less whipped cream 
1 tube-shaped wafer cookie (Trader Joe’s has some good ones).

​Scoop the vanilla ice cream into a tall glass.
Poor the cold coffee over the ice cream.
Top with whipped cream and a cookie. 

 You can sweeten your whipped cream or coffee and add some shaved chocolate to garnish.

Guten Appetit, my friends 
recipe by ©sunnycovechef.com

I love different flavors in my main dishes, and there is always some sort of sauce in my fridge. Whether it’s a Romnesco or a green sauce, vegetables are usually the main ingredients. I love trying new flavors and ingredients. I don’t like my food to be boring.
Click here for my Schnitzel bonanza 

Every year, I make apricot jam. It is a recipe from Alice Waters' beautiful book Chez Panisse Fruit. I tweaked the recipe for the jam, which I use when I bake, over ice cream, and perhaps a spoonful all by itself.
​It is absolutely divine, click here for the recipe 

With my surplus apricots, I made a delicious galette using my blueberry galette recipe. It uses almonds in the dough and for the bottom of the crust. This is an easy recipe that can be made with different fruits such as plums, peaches and more.
I happened to have some olalliebeeries that I added to my apricots.
Click here for the recipe.

My German apricot cake (Aprikosenkuchen} has always been well-liked and will be a real treat with the roasted apricot sorbet. The added marzipan in the cake really does the trick.
​This is apricot bliss!
​ Click here for the recipe.

If you are looking for a light but very tasty meal, this apricot, shrimp and jicama salad is for you.
​ Click for the recipe here.

You all know the special love I feel for the Hawaiian Islands, with their turquoise warm Pacific Ocean and beautiful beaches. From my home in California the islands are within a relatively  easy reach. You still have to get on a plane, but for less than five hours, which is enough time for a good read and a little snooze. My goal is to post about all the islands I have visited over the last 30 years. Click here to continue reading about my trip to Wakiki and some new eating places I discovered.  

This farro salad is perfect for any picnic, barbecue or a healthy lunch for work. Enjoy ! 
Click here for the recipe
​ . 

This is one of my favorite salads that I have made for many years. If green asparagus is no longer available, you can use roasted eggplant. The recipe is from the original  Greens cook book from the restaurant of the same name in San Francisco's historic Ford Mason. It has pioneered vegetarian cooking since the 1970s. I love it. It's a real treat and so is this salad. Click here for the recipe.

If you want a meal that is ready in 20 minutes, this frittata is it. It’s a simple dish, yet full of flavor and somewhat elegant. Serve this with your favorite salad and you have a light, healthy meal for brunch, lunch or dinner. It makes a great leftover to take to work, as you don’t even have to heat it up. Frittata is arguably better at room temperature or cold. I just had the last piece for breakfast.

Click here for a link to an older  post for savory crustless muffins .

For weeks, I have been obsessed with rhubarb and have been using it in different recipes (as evident in my last post). The more I play with rhubarb, the more fun I have. As a finale for this year's rhubarb season, I am posting my recipe for roasted rhubarb and strawberry ice cream. It took me several tries to come up with this recipe. The strawberry flavor dominates the ice cream, but there there is a hint of rhubarb when you eat it. It has a rich, refreshing taste full of flavor as it melts in your mouth. I hope you enjoy this special treat as much as I do. Just remember, it is not as sweet as most ice creams. 

I roasted the rhubarb following a recipe from The Spruce Eats. It only calls for 2 tsp of brown sugar and 3 tsp orange juice for each pound of rhubarb. I increased the amount of orange juice in my recipe to about ½ cup and ended up with a delicious tart compote, perfect for making ice cream. Here is the link to the recipe and some more information on rhubarb.

Over the years, I have made ice cream and sorbet in my old, noisy ice cream maker that I bought 30 years ago. We keep it in the garage where it does a marvelous job of churning out special treats year after year. Homemade ice cream tastes best when it comes fresh out of the machine, but it is still good after several weeks in the freezer. Just let it come up to room temperature before eating it.

​Here is a recipe I posted a couple of years ago for lemon sorbet made with buttermilk and lemon juice. It is easy to make and a refreshing treat after a heavy meal.

Here are some more rhubarb recipes from my previous posts click on the images for the recipes 

This  Rhubarb  Strawberry Hazelnut Crisp is easy to make and I love it, especially with ice cream.

And  last but not least let's not forget Robert's delicious Rhubarb-Strawberry Pie

I hope all of you are well my friends and get to sit around the dinner table for a meal to share wherever you are.  

The first week, I stayed at our old family farm in my niece’s pied à terre. I went to all the old familiar places, like the farmer’s market in the town of Northeim, 6 miles away from my village. Göttingen is an old university town 10 miles away where they have a cute Easter Market at the center square by the Gänselisel (a girl named Lisel herding geese) fountain.

While in Göttingen, I always have a currywurst at a 40-year old kiosk that is known to all the locals. Whenever possible I have a cappuccino and some sweets at the konditorei Cron& Lanz. They have the best home-baked goods I have ever tasted. (Read about them on an older blog post.)

I took my girlfriend’s daughter out to lunch 7 miles from my village. Located below the ruins of a 1000 year old old castle, the Hardenberg Burghotel has a nice restaurant and hotel with  beautiful grounds to wander around in. They have an equestrian facility and dressage training and competition. As a child I often hiked around the castle grounds. I even had my first kiss there. 

The Kulturbraueri is a former brewery that was not destroyed in the war. There are eleven   large brick buildings converted into museums, several theaters , restaurants and office space.  It is  located in the electic Prenzlauerberg district near the Mauerpark. This is a great area to explore and eat good food. 

On my last evening, back at my hotel, I had dinner at Lutter and Wegner , enjoying the Gerdamenmarkt  and the warm weather. 

Special thanks goes to my friend, Herr Lindner, the concierge at the Westin Grand Hotel in Berlin, who not only got me two tickets for the opera, but always helps me with my two girls. He makes my life very easy when staying at the hotel. I even called him from the airplane shortly before takeoff for the US and he gave me the number for the hotel in Frankfurt, so I could cancel my reservation. I hope the Westin realizes what a special person Herr Lindner is. He goes above and beyond the call of duty.

Hopefully I get to visit my friends and family again. In the meantime , if you are looking some good food, try my roasted halibut with butternut squash coulis , edamame and mushroom sauce. It's a great light meal for warmer days.

Kohlrabi is one of the most versatile vegetables around. My husband likes kohlrabi raw, thinly sliced. You can easily add it to any salad or soup. The leaves can be steamed like most greens, although I have not tried that. I was super excited when I found out that “Route 1,” a local organic farm, was selling kohlrabi at the Westside farmer’s market (on Saturday morning) here in Santa Cruz. I bought several  bunches last week and two more this week.

My favorite recipe for kohlrabi is the one I made with my mother when would visit her in Germany. Basically, it’s meatballs cooked with kohlrabi in a white sauce. Here’s the link to one of my earliest posts:

I found a vegetarian recipe using kohlrabi on a German website that I liked. The kohlrabi is hollowed out and stuffed with a mixture of spinach and feta cheese. The kohlrabi stays firm and crunchy and compliments the soft stuffing. The sauce is made from the hollowed out kohlrabi meat mixed with the cooking water and some cream. This dish makes an impressive lunch or dinner. I ate it  for lunch for a week since I had to work on the recipe and enjoyed it while losing a couple of pounds. 

I am on my way to Germany to visit friends and family for two weeks. I hope you all have a wonderful Easter holiday. Here are some previous posts where I celebrated Easter in Germany  and some ideas for you to make something special for your loved ones. 

These elegant crepes filled with salmon and fennel make a great brunch or dinner. Add a salad and you have a great meal. 

Here is a recipe for a nutty lemony cake using whole lemons.
Happy Easter
​Frohe Ostern

This apple or cherry cake is not overly sweet with only ½ cup of sugar but is full of fruit and flavor. I have baked this cake many times and have never gotten tired of it. The recipe is from an old Dr. Oetker cookbook that I brought with me when I came to this country in the seventies. The Dr.Oetker brand is a 100-year-old family-owned business where you can find products like vanilla sugar, puddings or baking powder here in the United States.

My very first cookbooks were three Dr. Oetker cookbooks. For my 16th birthday, my girlfriend Gabrielle, my mom and I made a cold buffet from the title picture of one of the books. I had promised my dad some leftovers, but there was nothing left at the end of the party. To this day, I wish I had put some food away for my sweet, hard-working dad, who will always be the love of my life. He was a gentle and loving man who was born into a horrible time in German history. He loved visiting me here in California and would have stayed longer if my mother hadn’t been homesick for her village.

If you want a richer and pie like German  apple cake try my Apple Strudel Cake