Why hello there everyone, it's me, Aya. It's not a name you read often on the blog these days because my posting speed is about as rapid as a sloth strapped onto a turtle walking towards a fan blowing in the opposite direction. But I also understand that you guys are not waiting in front of your laptops all day, waiting to hear word from me (although you guys could lie and tell me you are anyway to inflate my ego because my ego loves that).

Lately I've been obsessed with this red smoothie. I'm usually a green smoothie kind of girl but I started buying beets every week and now I can't get enough of this stuff. It's a drug, it's an addiction, it's real life. For fun and because Halloween is right around the corner (in 2 weeks time to be exact), I'm also calling it blood juice though it tastes better than blood and is cruelty free!

Healthy Appetite's Blood Juice
Serves 1

Ingredients
1 large banana, sliced (ripe, with spots)
1 medium large pear, diced (I use two here but they are very small and had many bad spots that I cut off)
80 g cooked beets, diced (about 1 small beet)
1/2 cup frozen or fresh raspberries
1 teaspoon acai pulver (optional)

Place all ingredients into a blender and blend with 3/4 cup of water or coconut water. Pour in a glass and enjoy!

Blood Juice a.k.a. »my« Red Smoothie

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Hello everybody, it's Aya here and I am officially back from holidays in Japan! Actually, it's been a few days since I've been back and all I've been doing is eating cake and playing this Tsum Tsum game on my tablet that I downloaded off of the Play Store in Japan. I think I'm officially in denial that I turned one year older while I was away.

To make the transition even harder, I'm importing all of my photos and videos onto my computer and I realized that it would just be an awful shame not to bombard you all with post photos of my beautiful vacation in Japan. Sorry that it won't be a recipe post this time around but I hope that some of the food shots here will be enticing enough!

I went to Japan with Oli and we terrorized 3 cities together: Tokyo, Osaka, and Kyoto. I'm going in no specific order here with my photos so let's just jump over to Kyoto and see what we did there.

We stayed in a residential part of Kyoto and the area was very quiet.

On our first day, we decided to rent bikes into the city. What was supposed to be a ride to this vegan restaurant I found on happycow.net ended up being a crazy adventure into unfamiliar territory. That is, until we found out the restaurant was closed that day but nearby there was something familiar after all.




I normally like to stay away from food I already know when in a foreign country but I basically couldn't resist the coincidence of finding a German bakery in a random part of Kyoto. Also because we walked inside and realized none of the goodies were German.




But who says no to a Japanese pastry? I'll tell you: nobody.



I thought I was tired of Japanese bread but looking at this makes me want some again.

After a short trip into an area that we thought looked cool (which ended up being an incredibly popular area near the famous Fushimi Inari Shrine), we found one of the purposes of our trip: a cat cafe.


Many Japanese residences don't allow pets so the cat cafe is the perfect place to come, drink a coffee, and enjoy being in the presence of adorable furriness.


She was my favorite: a calico by the name of Ringo (it means apple in Japanese). Unfortunately, she was also the shyest and didn't really want to play, but she watched us all through a little house she went into later.

Cat cafes require you to pay a certain amount for your time there. From there, you can choose to order drinks or pay for snacks for cats. It can get a bit pricey but if you love cats or are missing your cat back home (as we were), it's worth a visit. The ones here were very friendly and even finished my tea as we were leaving.

Neko Café TiME
Fukakusa Ichinotsubocho, Fushimi Ward, Kyoto
Kyoto Prefecture 612-0012, Japan

German (?) Bakery and Cat Cafe in Kyoto

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Hey guys, it's Aya. I've been a bit distant from the blog due to a bunch of life happenings, which I wanted to address in this blog post today. Even though this blog is mainly focused on food, there is an actual person behind it, writing all the words and creating content. I thought it was only fair to clue you guys in.

I initially started writing this blog as a creative outlet to post what kind of food I had been enjoying whilst living on my own in another country. The experience of settling into Berlin was daunting but this blog made it fun and it was an excuse for me to constantly cook and try new things. Unfortunately in real life, it wasn't that easy. New experiences were scary and I was avoiding them constantly. It wasn't like trying out a new dish that turned out to be a flop, because when that happens, you just chuck it out and make adjustments for the next go-round. Failing at real life things meant accepting consequences and taking a longer time to deal with them.

These past few years in Berlin have been a whirlwind experience and along the way I realized that I'm definitely not perfect, despite what wish I have to be and how hard I push myself to achieve this image. I also know that I am way too concerned with pleasing others and use up a lot of energy trying to do so. A combination of these things have hindered me (way before I even moved) from stepping out of my comfort zone to try new things that I actually wanted, not just things that I was okay with doing because I knew that I could already be good at them.

This year I decided I wanted to try my hand at attending university again. I've been talking about going back for so long, and 4 years flew by with me just telling myself I wasn't ready to do it yet. This year I applied. I applied for a spot in the Visual Communications department of the University of Art in Berlin. Yesterday I got the response.


I've been rejected.


I know I just built all this up as a "work hard, take chances, and you will be rewarded" type thing, but it's not always like that. Sometimes you take a chance, you try, and you still end up empty handed. And I'm actually okay with it.

Pretty much all my life I sat back waiting for things to happen for me and when I went for something, it was always just a few steps below the thing that I wanted. I was okay with a happy medium that I could achieve rather than a greater task I almost knew I would fail at.

If living abroad has taught me anything, it's that you should take chances anyway, no matter how hard you may fall. The pressure heightens sometimes because it seems you already took a chance by moving out of your nest, but if you don't continue to take chances and accept the outcome, good or bad, you won't ever learn. It's the same with relationships. Always stick to your guns and everything else that goes against it isn't part of the puzzle to begin with.

Finally, you might be wondering what my next step is. First of all, I haven't given up on the idea of becoming a university student. Rejection just means working on where I lacked this time so that I can improve the next time. Also don't worry, the blog will continue to be my creative outlet for cooking and eating. I guess it's a bit too soon to make drastic changes, but as time goes by, I'm sure I'll slowly find my way.

Food for Thought: Where I've Been

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I'm not gonna lie, I put this blog on the backburner. Let's be real for a second: how would you react if you yourself were a spectator to the slow decline of your foreign language skills not to mention your roommate is an unfinished portrait of Jesus that seems to just stare and judge you if you even think about having fun on the weekend?

Oh hi there, it's Aya, a drama queen and sometimes writer of this blog Healthy Appetite.

Many mornings are spent eating breakfast and poring over my German workbooks lately. Mainly because I developed a serious[ly bad] habit of doing all my school work the morning of the day that it's due. Funnily enough, I had a conversation with a 10 year old who just stared at me and told me, verbatim "What's the problem? It's so easy. Just take 10 minutes after school, get a glass of water, and do it." I say funny because the answer is so simple that even a 10 year old could figure it out.

I also recently got incredibly sick, so I took a good amount of time slicing up fruit to make a fruit ombré, because you know, YOLO.

Do you guys know the book? Well here's the game version! I picked it up to better my German skills and to play with my friends. I actually shockingly won the first go-round because I am incredibly good at guessing and one question was about shopping (no, I'm not fulfilling a stereotype, I am merely enhancing it).

Oh, and breakfast? I'm pretty much obsessed with smoothies nowadays. I'm gearing towards less green ones and more dessert type ones because I've subconsciously cut back on baking and thus need to replace the sugar with smoothies (I'm an energizer bunny). Here's a quick recipe for a super energizing, naturally sweet, pick me up smoothie!



Vegan Vanana Smoothie
Serves 1

Ingredients
2 medium ripe bananas (the riper the sweeter)
1 in/2.5 cm piece of vanilla bean
4 medjool dates/6 deglet noor dates (you can soften them in hot water 30 minutes before if hard)
1 cup almond milk (or whatever milk you desire)
ice (amount depends on the preferred thickness)

Place all ingredients into a blender (no need to scrape the pod for vanilla beans--just put the whole piece in) and run until smooth (a full minute or 2). Pour into a glass and enjoy looking at all the tiny little vanilla flecks in your smoothie.

Variations:
If you want to get creative, add 2 tbsp of carob powder for a slightly chocolatey flavor.
If you miss Christmas, add 1 tsp of cinnamon and a dash of nutmeg.
If you want to feel refreshed, add a few mint leaves to the blender and blend away!

Die deutsche Sprache and a smoothie

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Yes, I did in fact hashtag my title. Actually, I used two hashtags which warrants each one of your eyes rolling into its socket. Hello, it's Aya, the writer of Healthy Appetite.

Before I begin this segment of my blog, I'd like to apologize for the lack of updates in the past few months. It's true, I've been a bit busy trying to get my life together (I'm talking like my life is in shambles--it's not). I've enrolled in German language courses to better my understanding of the language. Is it helping? I suppose. Do I understand German now? I'm going to counteract that question with, do Germans even understand their own language?

The one thing that's been getting me through this strange and hectic time of my life is breakfast. Since my classes normally start in the afternoon, I've been really into making breakfast that looks ultra fancy and instagram worthy. Let's be real--we eat with our eyes first. A breakfast full of color is a lot more appealing than just milk and cereal! So today, since I am sorely lacking a recipe post (I do have some coming!) you will have to take a peek into the kinda stuff I've been posting on Instagram.


Simplicity is best sometimes. Soy jogurt and a ripe persimmon can really hit the spot. If you haven't tried persimmons, I really recommend it. It's a pain in the butt sometimes to wait for it to ripen but then you are rewarded with orange lusciousness!


Fruit is natural energy waiting to be consumed! I always go full force with fruit in the mornings because I know I'm going to need it to fuel me until lunch rolls along. Get creative with the combination and topping. Here I added some homemade granola.


I'm pretty much a chia pudding addict. First of all, one serving (3 dry tablespoons or 28 grams) is already a third of the amount of fiber you need in a day. One serving also has 10% of your recommended daily protein and omega-3 fatty acids that promote brain health! That's pretty convincing, isn't it?
Chia seeds can soak up more than 10x their amount in liquid so it's best to consume as a pudding (recipes to come) or used sparingly and mixed in (I also use it in granolas and oatmeals).


Then when you have no time, you can spoon the pudding into a jar with your favorite fruits and nuts and you have a portable meal!


An oldie but a goodie: oatmeal. This is my apple cinnamon oatmeal that I posted in my tips and tricks about oatmeal post, just with an added grating of lemon. Guys, lemon literally takes foods to another level. I think I need to do a solo segment on lemon one day.


Just posted this the other day after taking too long organizing the fruit on my chia pudding. Decided to nix the glasses and go with a square bowl. Change is the spice of life people! Been filling my new notebook up with some casual pen work so this is how my mornings are looking like now.

Hope you guys enjoyed seeing the kinds of food I eat for breakfast. If you'd like to see more, you can follow me on instagram under the name burikkoxp! Until next time~

#instagram #breakfast

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Winter is definitely the oddball season in Berlin. I can never tell when it begins, how long it's going to last, and when it's finally over. I learned to deal with it over time, but once in a while when I am walking around in leggings and summer socks, I realize that a. I am insane, and b. I am freezing. So you understand why I still need a bit of work adjusting to this strange time that is Berlin Winter.

Well I've been a bit busy this Winter, mainly with school, partly because I'm actually a witch at Hogwarts and I have a lot of potions to catch up on, so of course I whipped this one up in a flash in my magic cauldron. Oh wait, you muggles call it a blender. Okay, well, whatever you call it, it's MAGIC. Seriously, this persimmon pudding has the consistency of a pudding without the gelatin (not even vegan gelatin-substitute agar agar). Just wholesome, good for you ingredients. Did I not say I was magical?

Persimmon Pudding
Serves 1

1 persimmon/kaki, ripe to the point of bursting (I used a medium sized Hachiya variety)
1 apple (medium size)
3 dates (I used deglet nour)
2 teaspoons flax seeds
5 walnut halves
1/3 cup water

Put everything into a blender and blend until smooth. If not thick enough, add more walnuts. If too thick (or your blender has difficulty blending), slowly add a tablespoon of water at a time until desired consistency is reached.

It's perfect for breakfast and super filling! Guten Appetit!

Persimmon Pudding (raw, vegan, refined sugar-free)

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