1929, Hot Chocolate, Autumn, and Soup

In the morning I knew that we were out of cornflakes. So rather than go with anything more typically 1920s Britain, I made coffee, porridge, and boiled eggs for breakfast. Mama is off travelling in Thuringia, and Ge. was working an early shift, so it was just J. and I who ate, drank and chatted.

Afterward, I read a Beatrix Potter story and read a page or two of The Age of Innocence; then came a shopping trip; then it was time to prepare an afternoon tea.

Today the tea was simple: scones, lemon curd, sliced cucumber, and French breakfast tea.

Then it was time for me to meet with three colleagues to go to a nearby café.

Once we'd gathered and had begun walking to our destination, we glanced in the windows of a bookstore and a children's toy shop, lingered near a flower shop, and made eye contact with one or two stooped ladies in headscarves and cloaks who were making their way along the generally busy sidewalks.

We ended up sitting outside in an invigorating (one might also say chilly) breeze that swept from the east. Few of the other guests lingered, probably encouraged to keep things short by the temperatures. Mei. justly commented that lately it's been summer in the sunshine, autumn in the shade, and winter at night. The first burst of brown leaves has appeared in an oak tree near the apartment, for example. Three of us drank hot chocolates from sturdy white porcelain cups, stirring in a paper tube's worth of sugar if we wanted to, while the fourth had coffee.

We ordered crème brûlée, too. The dessert was served atop a coal-back slate: crumbly bits of walnut that had been freshly cracked (little flakes of husk were amongst them) and a thin, dark caramel-coloured rolled wafer that also looked housemade were laid beside a large and low brown ramekin that held the crème brûlée itself.

I took a moment to bask in the happiness of having so many good restaurants and cafés in Berlin, where the people who make the food take a delight in their productions and don't just dish it out apathetically. The custard was a lovely consistency and the crust was warmly flavoured and nicely crackly. —

Admittedly I'm not the hugest fan of using flat slates as dramatic dishware; but, as one of the colleagues might say, it's very aujourd'hui.

We chatted. I felt a little verstimmt because of apparent emotional exhaustion from the last week or two at work (and a renewed onslaught of passive aggression that I'm trying to dig myself out of). But hopefully it didn't come across too much.

Afterward, Ge. and J. were on their trip to Tempelhofer Feld. They had left behind the teapot over a tealight to keep it warm, and plopped our tea cozy over two scones for the same purpose, which was touchingly thoughtful. Before they returned, I made supper. It was a 1929 cauliflower soup recipe from Philip Martineau's Cantaloup to Cabbage cookbook: the water that cauliflower had been cooked in, oats, fried onion and bread, parsley, egg, and (in the original recipe) the sour cream that I had forgotten to buy.

For dessert we had raw figs, passionfruit, and agave syrup: a historically inaccurate salad. It was accompanied by leftover lemon curd from the afternoon tea. Besides we ate the vanilla ice cream and chocolate-covered popsicles that Ge. bought. For the purposes of the 1920s experiment, we agreed to pretend that the ice cream was from an ice cream truck.

The plan is to eat pancakes tomorrow.

I feel lazy in my execution of the 1920s Saturdays lately. I ignored the stock market crash because it only happened late in 1929 and people still seemed to be heavily in denial about it at the end of the year. Maybe I could have gone for a ride on the Die Welt balloon in honour of the Graf Zeppelin circumnavigating the globe, however. Seeing a film in a local theatre, or attending a performance of the Threepenny Opera, ... that would have worked too. To be fair, I did watch an entire Clara Bow film on YouTube in the preceding week: The Saturday Night Kid. But once the 1930s begin next week, I will hopefully be more inventive. I wonder how challenging it will be to figure out what good things happened in that decade.

As for the weather, there have been beautiful red and pink and yellow sunsets lately; my siblings and colleagues have been sharing photos of them often. We have a full shipment of coal bricks in our hallway, so we are well prepared for maybe half a winter, once it arrives. In the meantime: Canadian Thanksgiving is on Monday.