Welcome!

Hi!

I'm Mia, a German who loves going on virtual journeys through the world's cuisines.

My maternal grandfather was a "Konditor", pâtissier - or confectioner - how you would say in English. He owned a beautiful old fashioned little café and confectionary shop ("Konditorei") until he retired in 1964.

That was quite some time before I was born, but the café lived on in the stories which my mom told me. So I kind of grew up living in a virtual café.

This, supposedly, is the root of my senseless love for cafés and coffee shops. Yeah, I managed to adapt to modern times, and developed an equal love for places like Starbucks.

Unfortunately, I happen to be gluten and cow's milk intolerant.

No problem for drinking coffee. Not even for cappuccino or latte, thanks to said modern coffee shops which offer soy milk variations of their beverages, too.

But then there is cake.

And cookies.

Which is not offered in gluten free versions. At least not in Germany.

There's no place like Starbucks close to my small village at the Dutch border either, so visiting a café has its limits: Black coffee.

Sure, I could have waffles with hot cherries instead of cake, as my dear old mother-in-law suggests, not quite getting the concept of "gluten"... It still ends with me saying: "Naa, don't worry, I'm not hungry anyway. Black coffee is great, I'm perfectly happy, really."

That's true, I'm perfectly happy with black coffee. I'm even perfectly happy with plain water. Life would be miserable, if happiness depended on cake.

BUT you still can increase happiness, can't you?

To increase happiness in the gluten free world, I decided to create a blog with gluten, guilt and cow's milk free desserts and coffee drinks.

I'm neither vegan, nor vegetarian, raw, paleo or anything. On my way to figure out the perfect diet for myself, I found that no single diet perfectly matched my needings. So, with a lot of trial and error, I made a patchwork quilt of diets to suit my body's requirements, and the only thing which I have mostly banned from my menu, apart from gluten and cow's milk, is processed food. I'm making nearly everything I eat from scratch, and I love doing that! It's so much fun.

My final conclusion: Educate yourself about your body's basic requirements like carbohydrates, proteins, fatty acids, vitamins, minerals, trace elements and phytonutrients, and then Listen to your body.

A completely raw diet may be good for one person, but not for another. The same may be true for a vegan or vegetarian diet and so on.

The ingredients which I use usually are organic. You may do so, too, but you can also use conventional produce. It's up to you.

I don't use white sugar because that's something we definitely don't need in any diet.

Also I don't use cow's milk. Even though I can have goat and sheep milk, there won't be recipes using them.

For fat, I use virgin coconut oil, organic canola and olive oil, and non-hydrogenated margarine.

And that's about it.

Welcome to my virtual café!