It has been a two month love affair. California swept us off our feet with all its friendly people, organic food markets, beautiful beaches and warm weather. And now we are sitting here in an airport hotel room, trying to recall our favorite memories and put them in writing. Tomorrow we are going back to Sweden. We will spend a couple of snowy days with our family before continuing on to Asia.
We could describe at least 50 things that we love with California, but to keep things short we settled for three.
1. All the small conversations that we’ve had with complete strangers on the streets, in parks, on buses and in stores. It seems like people here are genuinely friendly and social. It often starts out with “Oh, what a cutie, how old is she?” and 10 minutes later it ends with “just let us know if you need any toys for her, we’ve got too much lying around at home”. Seriously. Wow. In Sweden people only talk to strangers when they are drunk. We expected to spend most of the time on this trip just the three of us. But night after night, city after city, we met new people to walk, talk and eat with.
2. We have been visiting countless amounts of farmers markets, whole foods markets, henry’s market, birite market … Trying numerous new to us vegetables, been drinking various kinds of plant milks every week, and indulged ourselves with all different kinds of fresh and organic fruits and berries. Eating healthy has never been as easy as here.
3. For someone who hasn’t grown up in northern Europe it might sound ridiculous, but living in a warm country changes your whole personality. You start to walk slower and smile more. The warm weather has made all our morning walks with Elsa in her stroller amazing, in Sweden they can be quite harsh (specially this time of the year). I’m sure the climate has a lot to do with why people are so friendly here.
Here are some random snapshots from our trip + a recipe on how to do your own Açai Bowl, one of the best things we’ve tasted here. We’ll see you next time in Sweden!
Meet our latest obsession, the Açaí Bowl!
Açaí (“Ah-Sigh-EE”) is a Brazilian superfruit berry, it grows on palm trees in Central- and South America. If you live in California you’ve probably seen/tried this kind of bowl before, since you can find Açai cafés in most big cities, but you might not have tried to make it yourself? Don’t try to chase down fresh or frozen Açaí berries, like I did, you won’t find it (except for in the amazons). They only come as frozen pure, juice, dried or powdered. In this recipe it’s probably easiest to use the frozen pure. It tastes like a mix between bitter chocolate and blueberries and is the fruit on earth with the highest content of antioxidants.
We pimped this bowl with some extra hemp protein. It’s perfect after a workout, as breakfast or dessert!
Açaí Bowl
2 bowls
4 pk Açaí berry pure (we used unsweetened from Sambazon)
2 cups milk, water or juice (we used almond milk)
2 bananas
1 cup frozen strawberries
2 tbsp hemp protein powder
Topping:
1 cup granola
2 handfuls fresh strawberries and blueberries
4 tbsp hemp seeds
Combine all the ingredients in a blender and blend thick. Top it with granola, fresh fruit and seeds. Ready to eat and to become your new obsession!
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