Mellonade!

So yesterday, because my budget is relatively limited and I had nothing else to do, I decided to go to the turkish market at Kotbusser Tor. You can get fabulously fresh produce there at prices my beloved vietnamese greengrocer can only dream of. It's also the only place I know of in Berlin where you can get a whole lamb. I'd just been on Friday, but in a fit of summery gluttony all my mangoes had disappeared...and, like I said...there was nothing better to do.

One of my favorite things about summer has always been lemonade. Delicious, refreshing, not at all nutritious...I used to drink it by the gallon. I started out with Countrytime, then moved on to Paul Newman's virgin lemonade. However, due to either its complete lack of health benefits or it's inherent American-ness there is no lemonade to be found in these parts. Although products like Fluff and Oreos and Swiss Miss cocoa have long since started to deck the shelves in forward thinking German supermarkets, lemonade remains an outsider. So on my way to market, I thought to myself, in addition to buying mangoes and figs...why not get a dozen lemons or so and see if you can make good on that old English proverb?
...And that's exactly what I did. A friend of ours is doing an internship at a clinic outside Berlin and came over yesterday afternoon to help me out. Considering that I don't even have one of those hand-juicers, things went pretty well...albeit a tad on the sting-y, citrucy and sticky side. Marleen, who is studying medical biotechnology explained to me in great detail why this combination of citric acid, water and sugar pretty much created the fatal trifecta of doom for my teeth (btw--does anyone know a good dentist here in Berlin?) but the end result tastes all right.

My problem is that the longer I live here, the more subtley German my tastes become. I HAVE a little plastic package of the Countrytime lemonade powder in my cupboard here. I've made it several times...and every single time I think to myself 'Dear GOD, this is disgustingly sweet.' So the home made stuff is ungodly bitter in comparison, but I'm happy. It's far more refreshing that way...and at least it's citric acid gnawing away at my tooth enamel and not sugar. Because that's better...right?


Anyway, that's the view from here. I should hang up the laundry before it starts to stink in the washing machine...and translate my driver's license...but that's a story for another day.

Play safe guys, and fight the good fight.