Green Gazpacho

I have been absent for quite a while, and I missed you. I missed being here, talking about food. And I missed cooking, too.
You might remember me talking about going to France for a while. And even now, what feels like a year after, I still owe you photos and tales from the land of fabulous food. I'd love to share, and plan to get back to it.

I have been away some more, though, keeping myself away from the computer for another week. I spent one week cooking for 22 kids at a camp, together with my boyfriend. It has been a exhausting but rewarding week.
And the days in between, those I did not spend working, were spent at my boyfriend's family's chalet, where the days are long and lazy, and the computers turned off, for the most part.

I am happy to be back, for now. And I'd love to share this recipe for a green gazpacho with you. I saw this recipe in Ottolenghi's cookbook Plenty just yesterday, and loved the concept of a green gazpacho. And I really liked how these different ingredients worked together to create a soup that tastes like gazpacho, but is still different. I wasn't too sure about the celery in the beginning, but it really blended in nicely. I changed quite a few things, though, some out of laziness, because a gazpacho recipe really should be easy to throw together. Most notably, I refuse to add more than one clove of garlic to a gazpacho, contrary to what you might believe me to do, considering the name of this blog. But adding four cloves of garlic, uncooked, and puree them into this delicate soup, it just destroys the flavor. If you do like your gazpacho to be garlicky, though, add more garlic to your liking. One more thing, last February in Spain, we were served gazpacho as a drink, to accompany the meal we ate. I love this concept, and if you want to try it, you should be adding more water than I suggest in this recipe, to make the gazpacho drinkable.

Vegetarian Paella

Lately I felt that I don't share enough of me here on my blog. I am rather shy and a people pleaser in real life, and I guess that is the way I wrote here, too. I am always reluctant to be open and to share my feelings and let people into my life because it makes me vulnerable.
This is life, I know it. Being vulnerable is a good thing. Only when we are open to hurt can we really feel joy, experience deep connections with the important people in our life, and express ourselves freely.
Today I want to share 10 things about me that you (probably) did not know about me.

1. I have said it above: I am a people pleaser, and I don't really like that about myself. Writing it out makes me cringe, I don't want this to be my truth. But I am, and I guess to some degree I'll always be, but I want to not care so much about what other people think of me.

2. I started this blog almost 1 1/2 years ago, but for the first year I only told my boyfriend about it. I told my parents this winter/spring, and shared it on facebook. But the girl I lived with, and shared a kitchen with, never got to know about it. I just did not tell her. I guess that relates to Nr. 1 above.

3. In my free time I enjoy learning about neuropsychology. This stuff is so fascinating, I get books from our university library and read them in the train, I listen to Berkeley podcasts while I work. I read a lot when I was a kid, but at the moment I prefer reading science books to novels.

4.  I lived abroad, in Barcelona, for 5 months when I was 16 years old. Then after school I lived in Galway, Ireland for 3 months, improving my English and just generally having fun. But never in my life have I left Europe. I love to travel, but somehow I always end up in Europe. This summer we are going to Turkey, which is technically between Europe and Asia, so this is going to change soon.

5. Sometimes I am too lazy to shave my legs. I just am. Until I want to go swimming or wear a dress.

6. During school, we were supposed to run lapses every year. I actually don't know how many because I managed to skip every single year. I was the master of skipping sport exams.

7. During all my teenage years I only wore long shorts. And not bikini or bathing suit. I just did not go swimming. I was hot all summer long. But I did not care as long as I could cover up my body.

8. I cut my hair myself. I have curly hair, and I always had troubles getting the cut I wanted. Why do hairdressers always think they need to give me 6oies hair?

9. When I listen to music I mostly just listen to one song on repeat, or the whole album on repeat. It drives my boyfriend half-crazy I think. But I usually just want to listen to something in particular, and if it suits my mood, over and over again.

10.  When I was a kid, I wanted to be a boy. Girls were so complicated, with all that discussion about who can be who's friend - I never understood it. I was always a boyish girl, and still today I am not really a girly woman.

And now I want to share a recipe for paella with you. I mentioned above that I lived in Barcelona, Spain for half a year. But while I lived there I did not once have paella. My guest mother did not know how to cook, the only thing she did was fry up some meat and open a bag of pre-washed salad. We cooked paella at school with our Spanish teacher, though, and later when I returned to Spain I did go out to eat paella.