Brunch with Friends and Turtle

I have been working much lately, and under a lot of time pressure. The other day was particularly crazy – stuffed with project meetings, work on my thesis corrections, piano lessons, and statistics tutorials, I ended up working 14 hours almost straight. When I finally crawled into my bed, I was shivering from exhaustion and freezing despite of two blankets, warm PJs, bed shoes, and a hot water bottle.

However, today, I was invited for a brunch with friends, and this was just what I needed to relax my mind and elevate my spirits. We gathered in my friend’s beautiful garden, where the brunch table was already waiting for us.

I cannot remember when I had a brunch like this for the last time. We indulged in goodies.

~ herbed water and sparkling wine ~

~ cheeses and cold cuts of meat ~

~ omelette, mango cucumber salsa, tomatoes and mozzarella, fruit ~

~ my friend made this wonderful dairy-free omelette ~

My friend has two turtles who live in the garden. You probably know that I love turtles, and can imagine how delighted I was! One of them is very shy and hid behind a bench all the time, but the other one is very nosy and was already sitting under the table when we arrived, because something was obviously about to go on there.

This is Kassiopeia – like the turtle in Michael Ende‘s famous children’s book “Momo“. He was named Kassiopeia before it turned out that he is male. He is also gay. Nevertheless, he felt strongly attracted to me and crawled around my feet all the time. He also enjoyed biting into my shoe.

I had to carry him to a distant corner of the garden to save my shoe, but a few minutes later, he was back again. This procedure was repeated a couple of times.

Finally, though, he turned towards the plants in the flower bed, in which he indulged with quite an appetite.

He gave me the side eye for taking so many pictures of him.

~ “You are annoying, Kath!” ~

But he forgave me my importunity when I fed him strawberries for dessert. After finishing off four strawberries, he was so full that he went to sleep.

We remained sitting in the garden and talking until afternoon. It was very peaceful and comfortable, and did me so good! By now, I am back home at my desk, and while taking a break, I have written this post to share these happy moments with you – and the recipe for the mango cucumber salsa I contributed to the brunch, which we all very much enjoyed.

MANGO CUCUMBER SALSA

4 servings

Ingredients

1 mango, peeled, pitted, and cut into small dices
1/2 cucumber, peeled and cut into small dices
2 spring onions, cut into thin slices
1/2 tbsp lime juice
1 pinch of ground chili
1 pinch of ground paprika
1 pinch of ground coriander
salt to taste

Directions

Mix all ingredients in a bowl and let the salsa draw for about half an hour, so that the flavors nicely combine. Serve cooled as a condiment with grilled meat, fish, tofu, or cheese, and enjoy.