Looking on the Ookie Dough side of life, 2017 was a good year, a great year. Even though I only managed six of my twenty-one blogging goals from 2017 – oh boy, that’s even much less than I thought – I had many other achievements and fulfilling experiences. Those make up for the incomplete to-do list.
Achievements outside of Ookie Dough:
→ European Coffee Trip
I became a contributor for European Coffee Trip. This is a website I have long used to find the best coffee shops when planning city trips in Europe. Never did I dream of becoming an author for them. Through this opportunity I keep learning more about the specialty coffee scene, but even better do I meet amazing coffee roasters and baristas from around the world. So far I have written a city guide for Hamburg, Bordeaux and Toulouse. More about the coffee scene in Montpellier, Lyon and Lübeck will be coming soon.
→ City Brief Hamburg
I started working together with City Brief Hamburg. This is a minimalistic, free city guide that assembles a new issue every season. The curated tipps range from cafés, restaurants and bars, to shops, individual services and other cultural highlights. After having found new tipps, I used to appreciate City Brief by displaying it as my “couch table mag”. Now, after working closely together with the local director, I can’t but share my love and passion for this amazing, dedicated project. Every issue inspires me anew.
→ Interview with Femtastics
I had an interview with Femtastics! ♥ This online-magazine is written by three Hamburg-based journalists. They interview other female entrepreneurs, write home stories and publish inspiring blog posts – all around #girlpower. The Femtastics girl gang also assembled Hamburg for Women Only. Besides City Brief, it is my other beloved guide that proves me wrong, when I think to know my city by heart already.
→ Typisch Hamburch
Lastly I started writing for the blog Typisch Hamburch. This was an own initiative of mine. I had long been reading their short and fun articles about my hometown’s hotspots. When I saw that they were looking for authors, I immediately applied. Now I am gaining writing practice (in German), and improving my SEO knowledge. It also gives me the chance to share many tips, that I haven’t gotten around to on my blog yet. Official deadlines prove to work better than personally set ones. Amongst others I wrote about Scandinavian design in Hamburg, my favorite concept store Winkel van Sinkel, and how to easily make granola out of old christmas cookies.
New Posts on Ookie Dough:
Six out of twenty-one sounds like nothing. But fact is that about half-way through the year my new favorite cafe, Kropkå, and ice cream shop, Eis & Innig, decided to open. Afterwards I jetted off to France. Bordeaux distracted me there. Still, the first part of the year, I managed some guides and posts for Hamburg, as well as some surprises from abroad:
- Flat White Guide: a specialty coffee shop guide for Hamburg
- Milch: an often overlooked and unpretentious specialty coffee shop near the harbor
- Ombak Bagus Bowls: an açai/poké bowl shack, with true surfer’s vibe
- Alpenart (Val Thorens, France): a cute café with sophisticated local dinners at night
- Alpine Cuisine: a guide to Alpine comfort food, Knödel and Spätzle
- Ti Breizh: an authentic Breton restaurant with mouth-watering galettes
- Nord Coast Coffee Roastery: specialty coffee, amongst luscious and beautiful breakfasts
- München: “Italy’s Northest Town”: ice cream shops, pizzerias and italian delis
- My first time in Bordeaux: my two-day-being a tourist impression of Bordeaux
- Kropkå: rustic and cozy café serving the best open-faced sandwiches in town
- Eis & Innig: a clean, playful ice cream shop with natural but flavour-bursting ice cream
- Veg. Burger Guide: a guide to Hamburg’s vegetarian/vegan burger scene
- Playground Coffee: a stylish playful show space for specialty coffee in St. Pauli
- Adventskalender: a giveaway before Christmas with local treats and café certificates
Distractions in France:
Most of the second half of 2017 I spent abroad in France. There, I wrote just about as many posts as I did about my hometown.
- The first month I volunteered on a vegan surf and yoga camp (at which I gave myself a four week digital detox). Here you can read more about my experience at the camp.
- My next destinations, where organic farms. There, I worked a few hours daily in exchange for food and lodging (aka wwoofing). I learned the French language and culture. Apart from that I was encountered with permaculture, milking goats, making goat cheese, eating chayotes, processing chestnuts (into creme de marrons) and discussing different theories about “healthy eating”.
- In between my wwoofing farms I toured the cafés of the biggest French towns that lay on my way: Bordeaux, Bordeaux, Bordeaux, Bordeaux, Bordeaux . . . Toulouse, Montpellier, and Lyon. Obviously my favorite was Bordeaux I’m not joking that I fell in love with this city. A big part is thanks to their personal specialty coffee shops. You can understand what I mean here and here.
Ookie Dough Goals for 2018
Thirteen of my sixteen not-accomplished goals from 2017 will go straight back on my list. Even though I’m writing for more websites now, I want to use the free-time in my gap year to pretend as if my blog were my job. Hopefully one day, Ookie Dough will become a more well-known and frequently used café guide.
Below you can find my main blogging goals for 2018. In contrast to 2017, I won’t except to finish all of them this year. If I do, I’ll know where to treat myself to the doughiest cinnamon rolls, flakiest croissants and most delectable ice creams in town 😉
Please comment below and share your feedback, ideas, or preferences what you would like to see on Ookie Dough!
Hamburg Food & Coffee:
- a Hamburg page with a sorted overview of all my recommended eateries → January
- Bräi (porridge pop up till February in Hamburg) ✅ January 12th, link here!
- Public Coffee Roasters (specialty coffee roaster with three shops in HH) → January
- Less Political (specialty coffee shop and roastery in Sternschanze)
- Black Line (neighborhood specialty coffee shop with amazing pastries in Eimsbüttel) → February
- Törnqvist (the most ideologistic, minimalistic, and mind-blowing specialty coffee shop I have been to)
- Marktzeit in der Fabrik (indoor breakfast market every Saturday in Ottensen) → February
- Moki’s Goodies (personal, casual, hipster café on Eppendorfer Weg) → February
- Herr Max (dainty patisserie in the Schanze)
Hamburg Guides:
- “Twists on Cinnamon Rolls” (guide to my fav. cinnamon rolls, Kanelbullar and Franzbrötchen) → February
- Homemade croissants
- Artisan ice cream shops → Mai/June
- Gluten-free Eateries and Grocery Stores → January
- Neapolitan Pizza
- “Hamburg By District”, describing Hamburg’s districts and their hotspots
- my favorite local shops (interior, scandinavian design, local products, urban plants . . . )
Food Guides from Abroad:
- Montpellier (from my visit in November) → January
- Lyon (from my visit in November) → February
- Amsterdam (trip planned in April, tipps welcome!)
- Madrid (trip planned in April, tipps welcome!)
- Berlin overview (overview of my favorite eateries and coffee shops/suggestions which blogs to read for more)
- Berlin Wilmersdorf (a guide to cute, unhyped cafés in Wilmersdorf)
Recipes:
- smoothie bowl: tips and tricks, my favorite ingredient bases and toppings
- “huevos”: our most common dinner at home, every friend despises the look but loves the taste
- persimmon-goat cheese-radish salad: a quick and easy recipe that I improvised at a beach house
- porridge recipes: miso-tahini (inspired from the Vegan Surf Camp) and spirulina porridge (inspired from wwoofing)
- making creme de marrons (on a wwoofing farm in France)
Off-Line Blogging Goals:
- design and print business cards
- design and print stickers
• • •
A competition towards death – or an excuse to savour cinnamon rolls?
Now I don’t know if you’re the person to set New Years intentions or if you find them ridiculous. Why do we actually celebrate big time and make resolutions from what Caeser said some thousand years ago? If they even were years. Their biggest function is the countdown towards death. Plus, we seem to compete against one another doing this, only as slow as possible. Everybody wants to become old, but stay young. Maybe move to Japan or become a buddha? Skip the doughiest cinnamon rolls, flakiest croissants most delectable ice creams?
. . .
Or . . . are years just a framework to organize life? So that everyone “knows” when one is allowed and supposed to do something. Well maybe I’m expected to know the best bars (alcohol not clif) in town, or be in the middle of my studies. But for the moment, I like writing my blog about cinnamon rolls and stuff. If I wouldn’t do it in literal form, the ideas would still be spinning in my head without resolution.
So here you, or I, go 🙂
Wow… what an interesting entry. I like the rumination about years and how that leads to cinnamon rolls… Ruminating, was that something you got from your goats?! 🙂 … well ending in a twist on cinnamon rolls is brilliant because if HH is anything it is Franzbrötchen land; good thing the Hamburger tradition didn’t use these types of Brötchen for what we now call buns. So you see my list: CinnFranz (reasons given above); Hamburg Page (makes all your great posts more readily useable by others), BlackLine (because they are so cool and no other coffee place feels so neightorhoody); and Brai (because there is not enough information about porridge, and I like good porridge, even with xmas cookie crumble). … okay, if I had to add one more it would be Berlin Wilmersdorf as blogging territory not covered by others makes your blog more interesting.