Hi friend ❤️
I felt it was time to switch up my monthly newsletter updates a bit. One brainstorm session later & here we are!
💡 Monthly Newsletter Changes
I have wanted a place to share more personal updates with you in addition to recipes for a while now - but at the same time felt, that sending lengthy newsletters to your inbox every month is not the best option. After all, some subscribers are here for the food, and others love to read more personal updates. I hope this new "setup" gives everyone the best of both worlds!
Moving forward, you can find both exclusive recipes & personal updates conveniently on the blog - with new updates coming every month! And in the monthly newsletter, I'll continue to share seasonal recipes & a summary of what's on that month - and I'll link to the "Behind the Lens" section for those that want to find out a little bit more.
Let me know if you have any comments or feedback on this exclusive content "setup" - in case you didn't know, you can reply to any of my newsletters and it will land straight in my inbox. I'd love to hear your thoughts 🙂
I really hope these updates help you find exactly what you are most interested in reading ❤️
📆 What's Been Up in April
There's been a lot going on this month (& you can read more below!):
- My cousin's boyfriend on German Pop Idol
- Meeting my 2nd cousin for the first time
- Family Visit over Easter
🎤 David Leischik on DSDS
I briefly posted about this on my Instagram and maybe you've seen it there - My cousin's boyfriend David applied to Deutschland Sucht den Superstar (Short: DSDS) last year - it's basically the German version of 'Pop Idol' (UK) or 'American Idol' (US). The show has been on every year for the past 20 years! He made it through numerous rounds of castings in Germany, flew to Mallorca with the Top 40, then on to Thailand with the Top 20, and finally got into the live shows as one of the Top 10 candidates!
This year's episodes were shown on RTL in Germany since January, going through all the casting episodes & jury challenges - and the live shows finally started on April 1st. During the first live show 2 candidates were eliminated leaving only the Top 8 - including David! Only 4 candidates could get into the final on April 15th, and sadly David's name didn't come up in the selection of the final 4.
Getting into the Top 8 out of tens of thousands of singers that applied is such an awesome achievement! He's such a genuine guy with a fantastic voice and deserves all the support 🙂
If you want to hear David's amazing voice, you can listen here:
🌳 Meeting my 2nd Cousin
In the previous newsletters I mentioned that I'm working on my family tree at the moment. This all got triggered after being contacted in February by someone that's apparently related to me - but we have yet to find the connection 🤞
One of my aunts said to me I should reach out to their cousin last month, as he would potentially be able to help recall names & dates of our previous generations - and that's how we got in touch.
As fate allowed, his family already had a UK holiday booked over Easter and we managed to meet up in London one evening. It's been fantastic getting know him & his family - but also crazy to think it's taken 35 years for us to finally meet for the first time. We spent the evening at Ragam, an Indian restaurant in Fitzrovia that offers plenty of vegan options - can only recommend!
🐰 Family Time over Easter
Easter was definitely a family-loaded time for me this year, with a lot of firsts! My aunt and cousin came to visit me in the UK for the first time. We had spoken about a visit for years - but somehow the timing was never right until now.
We've had a fantastic time and squeezed a lot into 3 days. We had a lovely and only-semi touristy walk through London and were actually so lucky with the weather on Easter Monday! I always love squeezing my Harry Potter fun facts into these walks and point out all the film locations around Central London - luckily they both like Harry Potter 😅
One day of London was definitely enough, so I took them to one of my favourite places on the coast: Seven Sisters! It's always a fantastic choice for a scenic walk, and if you get there early enough, you can even park on a hill that gives you beautiful views of the cliffs.
In the afternoon & as the weather took a turn for the worst, we headed into Brighton. Luckily, Purezza wasn't too busy on a Tuesday afternoon, so we managed to dig into some divine vegan pizza, and followed up with the best vegan doughnuts at Crosstown Doughnuts Brighton - the Lime & Coconut is one of my all-time faves, and their Strawberry Cheesecake Doughnut + Cinnamon Scroll is also worth trying!
Sadly, our 3 days together went by really quickly, and before I knew it, I was dropping them off at the airport again ✈️
Here are some photos from our trips:
📷 New Photos
This month my friend Han from SugarYums also visited me - she also writes a food blog and works freelance and this is the second time we've co-worked together. This time around, we took some photos of each other at work.
I was definitely long overdue some updated pictures for my LinkedIn profile and my work with me pages on the website - and Han's visit was the perfect opportunity to help each other out with some behind the scenes photos. Can you believe we took over 600 photos of each other in just one afternoon? 😅
Thought I'd share a few here that made it into the final selection, so you might see them pop up on my different profiles over the next couple of weeks 😊
Anyway, these were my April highlights! There's lots coming up in the next couple of weeks - including a little street party concert with my choir & my best friend will be visiting in May (yay!)
Have a fantastic month of May ahead - with hopefully a little more sun ☀️
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