Believe it or not, some people want to know what the insides of my fridge and cupboards look like. So here they are… and sorry to disappoint as is it is not quite as exciting as some might think!

After almost proudly showing how empty my fridge was to a friend who came to visit my apartment, he reminded me of an old saying that goes, ‘in the house of a steel maker, the knives are made of wood’. This is so very true especially when it comes to my fridge, which is probably one of the saddest ones in Ibiza. And it has been like this for almost the last three years! Since I opened my second restaurant and then the third and then the forth and so on, I have totally stopped eating at home. I could easily be storing shoes in my oven too. This is how much I use it.

So my fridge is really not impressive, but you may say my cupboards are. This is when people who are peeking at what I have in my kitchen go, ‘wow’! It’s like a nature supplement pharmacy in there. I have so much stuff that it is not humanly possible to consume it all of it in its recommended doses in a week, let alone in a day.

 

 

When I have the pleasure of owning a blender (I say this as I have so far ‘lost’ six Vitamixes and three Nutribullets to my cafes – it’s always my own blender that saves the day when the others break down due to so much use!). Right now I am without one so instead of bedtime cookies or superfood elixirs, I’m sent to bed with a couple of handfuls of pills. But hey, it’s all good stuff. A few healthy pills a day keep the wrinkles away!

Right now I’m ‘on’ Pearl, He Shou Wu, Schizandra, Krill oil, Turmeric Formula, Magnesium and my favourite, Mega Hydrate. When it comes to supplements, superfoods and protein powders I really try to source the best ones, made with integrity and by companies I trust.

 

 

All these superfoods and superherbs do is provide me with complex nutrition on a cellular level but they don’t stop my cravings or hunger very often, so when I get home I’m often cursing myself for not bringing a take away from Passion or in the very least an apple or something! There is seriously NO food in my house, almost ever! Every time I think of picking up something from my cafes that I can eat at home later, I’m like ‘nah, I won’t be hungry’. Then I get home and the typical scenario happens: me opening my empty fridge for the 20th time hoping a quinoa salad will show up by some miracle.

My brother always jokes with me, “People would think you are this perfect domestic goddess but you are a total fraud”. Ha ha ha… Don’t you just love how family always tells you things directly as they are? He also always tells me, “Whatever you do within at least the first month of dating a guy, if you manage to date someone for more than a month, [thanks bro again!], do not bring him home and to your kitchen.”

But at least my coffee situation is now well taken care of. I’m the proud owner of super swanky home coffee machine that every morning makes me a mean Americano with Passion’s own coffee blend. This makes me so happy and sets up my days just fine.

And if I cannot impress a guy with my ‘homey’ kitchen, I can always impress him with a good espresso… yes or no?

Peace, love and everything else!

 

 

Before you proclaim me a real party pooper, hear me out. It’s kind of not my fault I ain’t keen on Christmas!

You see, I was born and raised in the communist country of Yugoslavia. Apart from my grandparents, who were born before the First World War, all of my family members were sucked into communism. Nothing too extreme but we were not churchgoers or religious holiday obsessed. Yes, we would have a Christmas tree but we didn’t get into the habit or make the effort to have all the family meet around the dinner table for that ‘magical time of the year’, nor did we buy presents for each other or anyone else for that matter. Even Santa Claus, when translated from Djed Mraz in Croatian, means Grandfather Frost – there’s hardly anything saintly about that!

My Christmas present or shall we say the sock (and I mean not any fancy stocking, just my own plain sock) that would get filled by Djed Mraz, would barely have space for a chocolate bar and couple of oranges, which was all that my splendid Christmas presents ever were. I lived alone with my mum, and we were not well off, most of the time we were on the border of fridge poverty, so I would mostly enjoy any special Christmas foods at my grandparents’ house.

My favourite thing was my grandma’s homemade type of fettuccini lookalike pasta with ground walnuts and sugar and ‘Saran’, river fish oven baked whole with sweet onion and rice, with ‘Kajmak’ (something like crème fraiche) poured over it. Those were the foods that were traditionally made for Christmas Eve, a kind of ‘fasting time’ that actually meant one was not supposed to eat meat that day. And because my grandparents were religious they would give me extra pocket money at Christmas, which I would give to my mum on coming home to buy food for us.

Please do not think that I was so poor and hungry at any time! It is just that things were tight, financially very tight, my life was super simple and so was my mum’s. We had just about enough, but nothing more than that.

Upon leaving my country and moving to London, Christmases got to me hard. Christmas in the UK is a big thing – people started talking about it in August! You could buy Christmas decorations in August too. All the friends I made were buying plane tickets to go home for Christmas and others were planning to spend those dreaded longest three days of the year (for me personally) with their loved ones. Every Christmas I would end up alone, missing my family more than ever and there was no option to go back home, as after the war most of my family were accommodated in different places (my mum lived in a hostel and my brother in a city hotel for years before they were given an apartment to live in), and we did not have one big table we could all meet around. And this is when I would always think of my mum’s wish… to have a big table and to have all of us sitting around it together. I wonder why each of my Passions has at least one big communal table?

But from another point of view, the reason why I dislike this time of year – though not necessarily Christmas itself – is the consumerism that goes with it these days. It is horrible! Christmas is so bloody good for the Chinese economy! Such overspending on the most ridiculous level, so much waste from all the decorative wrapping, so much food, overeating, overdrinking and over-consuming in the western world. This is time of the year when you really feel the imbalance of people starving or dying of hunger and all the excesses of Christmas that others can afford. This is always a sad fact, but Christmas brings it to another level…

I have witnessed people stressing over how many presents they need to buy and getting into credit card debt that makes them even more stressed about repaying it. I am also a workaholic, we all know that, so having that length of time off from all of the institutions I need to be open and running to keep working myself seems like forever! Banks are closed, my gestoria is closed, my printers are closed, the post is not delivering, my masseur is out of the country, so are all of my staff and I cannot keep my Passions open for Christmas just so that I have something else to do other than think about how Christmas sucks for me. But hey… I’m being super honest with you as always.

Deep down, I’m slightly envious that you are flying home for Christmas and that you will be spending your days eating mince pies and being merry with your family. And I’m happy for each one of you. This Christmas my family is getting around a table together but I simply cannot make it due to work overload. Now that we have a big table, I cannot make it! The irony of it all…

Wishing you all wonderful holidays wherever you are, whoever you are with and whatever you do. Just go easy on all trimmings!

Peace, love and Djed Mraz.

 

As I’m writing this, Jack Sparrow is snoring his paws off after waking up and realising once again that a dog’s life is ‘too hard’ and thus he has gone straight back to bed. Not a virtue of The Boss but certainly one of the undisputed king of my heart – served, petted, adored, worshipped, cuddled, fretted upon and loved so incredibly much. There are very few Passion goers who do not know Jack and even fewer who are not enamoured by him.

His ‘Frenchie background’, that face, that look in his eyes, his permanently kind of sad face that wants you to do anything to make it look happier, his head tilted on one side like he is trying to hear what you are saying (but he will never be able to do that as my furball was born without the ability to hear), him positioning himself tight to you (or between your legs if you allow him too!), when you are eating your burger with look on his face saying ‘help, they never feed me’. The little bugger has been in the restaurant business for eight years and has perfected the art of begging for food!

It’s not that he is hungry. It’s more like he is bored of his prescribed hypoallergenic food as alas, his posh Frenchie skin is a bit sensitive and means he must be on a beauty diet. Mummy is the one who is most responsible for breaking this diet (just like her own!) by passing him crumbles of her croissants or buying him an ice cream cone while she munches on the stuff that goes on top of it. Hey, in Passion we always say life is too short for rice cakes, so we have to walk our four-legged talk now, don’t we!

I will never forget the moment I first laid my eyes on the 45-day old puppy Jack. Talking about love at first sight. As many dog owners think their dog is the best, prettiest, smartest and the most special, I naturally also think that about my Jack. You will always hear me saying ‘not because he is mine but because he is the most beautiful Frenchie I ever saw’ and by far the softest one! But this is also what everyone else who knows Jack says. And it’s not just his everlasting beauty that makes him so special, it is his good heart, his nature, his devotion, his friendliness and the endless love that he gives – not just to me but to so many strangers too.

He has this ability to make you fall in love with him before you can even say Sparrow. I have never ever seen Jack show his teeth or even the slightest amount of aggression. I have never seen him barking at anything unless he is upset with you because you didn’t come over and say hello to him – that is especially the case with people he knows. He gets really offended and is not going to hide it. You must go and say hello otherwise he will bark at you until you do. Bless. The coolest thing about Jack is that when other dogs bark at him or are not happy with his presence, unable to hear them, he just gives them a look and then lifts up his leg to mark something, giving his own unique point of view on that aggressive behaviour.

Writing a blog about Jack is super hard as there is an entire book that could be written about him! Yes, he is just a dog, but to me, he is more than I could have ever asked for. I have never loved anything or anyone with this intensity. It is a special kind of love (just in case my mother reads this!). To look at Jack and simply start crying (more like sobbing!) because I love him so much, to hug him so tight hoping that by some miracle he will stay with me forever, worshipping every minute I lay my eyes on him, burying my nose in his soft neck, and receiving his wiggly bottom of uncontrollable happiness because he saw me exiting the room and just ten minutes afterwards I’m back.

In the first year of Jack’s life, we shared it with his daddy and for the last seven years it has been just him and me. We are each other’s everything. I’m everything he has and he is the only 24-hour comfort, companion, friend, and therapy that I need. I have worked very hard for the things I do and have in my life, so luck does not have much to do with it, but if there is one thing I can say that I’m incredibly lucky and fortunate with, is that the Universe made Jack choose me to be his mummy. I couldn’t be more grateful. And I could not love him more than I already do. Hail to my furry King.

Peace, love and Jack.

 

Great news for many is that our Passion Café in Santa Eularia will not be closing this year for two weeks over Christmas, so you can still lounge around like two legged lizards on our sunny seafront corner while sipping your honey, lemon and ginger teas.

We are also about to launch our new winter menu and as always we have a few new exciting things for you, our regular customers, to eat, which means something new for our chefs to cook. They love that!

But the big shocker is… avocado is now off the menu entirely! Only a couple of dishes with deli-bought guacamole will remain. What? Why? How? Until when? Forever? Don’t panic! It’s just that avocado is seriously out of season –we’ve been throwing entire boxes of avos out recently as their normally beautiful green flesh has turned into nasty, veiny, brown mush. And we cannot feed you that now, can we?

At Passion we like to use as much as seasonal and local produce as possible, especially in the wintertime when veggie-wise there is an abundance of green leafy vegetables, Brussels sprouts, squash and wonderful root vegetables. In winter it’s also much nicer to eat beautifully roasted carrots, parsnips and beetroots than raw ones. I personally LOVE oven-roasted veggies, I could eat them three times a day, every day of the week. So as I’m the one writing the menus you’ll find them in quite a few of our dishes from now until springtime, when we’ll play with arrival of the next lot of seasonal produce.

For now, our raw beetroot carpaccio has been replaced with chunky oven-roasted beetroot; avocado and asparagus are swapped with sautéed Brussels sprouts, while raw carrots, and cucumbers and tomatoes make way for oven-roasted root veggies in warm brown rice and quinoa salads and bowls. Fruit-wise, it’s bye bye watermelon and strawberries, hello tangerines and kiwis!

Now is also the time to drink your oranges, grapefruits, apples and pears. I love everything apple-ish in winter, especially the hot drink we’ll have for you: warmed up, freshly extracted apple juice with a touch of cinnamon. Such comforting, sweet and feel good goodness in a mug. And then there are the baked apples stuffed with nuts that we serve with whipped coconut cream and of course our special apple pie that we love to make more like a crumble with its crunchy oat and almond crust.

In smoothies we have substituted avocado with chia seeds so you’ll still be able to enjoy your Superman smoothie and co. With all of these new yummy things we hope to be able to distract you well from the unfortunate absence of Mr Avocado!

Until end of this month however, you may still fulfill your avocado fetish in Passion Marina, that is, when the avocado boxes that arrive are having a good day. We are not changing the menu there, as we will be closing for the month of December for some renovation, painting and decorating after another busy season. As soon as we have dusted ourselves off, we will start all over again in 2016, welcoming you back to the home of health and happiness in Ibiza’s very own Beverly Hills.

The best news of all is that only two minutes from Passion Marina we are opening a brand new Passion concept this November that you will… LOVE. But that’s whole new blog! Until then…

Peace, love and Brussels sprouts.