I had an amazing day yesterday! One of the best since leaving for this holiday.

I spent most of the morning writing and making some connections with work colleagues in my never ending agenda to fill my life with project after project. I had two little ideas sprout throughout last year, that have, given the space and relaxation of the holiday, germinated into full blown baby-ideas. The first is to start a Brussels'-based Veg Association. One that meets monthly, has a resource booklet and can support new comers to the transient-by-nature city. The second: I want to run an International Women's Day (March 8th) next year in Brussels. We'll see what happens!

For lunch I played with some beans that I had never worked with before, and had only barely seen in markets outside of China town, but that I noticed at a market stall the other day in Montalto. The Chinese long bean is a bit daunting at first, with a ankle's width and an elephant's trunk in its length (!) one hardly knows what to do with them.

Long Green Bean and Roasted Fig Salad

Ingredients:
-1 bunch of long green beans, cut into smaller bits and boiled
-4 roma tomatoes, cut into coins
-2 Italian cucumbers, cut into coins
-2 bunches of parsley, diced
-4 fresh figs
-olive oil
-juice of one lemon
-balsamic vinegar

After cutting them into 1/8s and covering them in olive oil and balsamic vinegar, I put the figs in the oven for about 30 minutes, while I prepared the rest of the salad. I boiled the cut beans, drained them and added them to the rest of the ingredients, topped it all with the figs and served it to a hungry K. Yummy! Next time, I might try something more daring with the long green beans, feel like I copped out with cutting them up. I want to note that covering the figs in oil and vinegar was inspired by Dreena at Eat, Drink and Be Vegan.

After our little lunch time snack, we hit the road for some afternoon fun. We went straight (though nothing in this part of Italy could be called straight - one hair pin turn after another) to Fermo and paid for a museum ticket that got us passes into the one room archaeological museum, which was amazing and full of little pieces of evidence from the lives of pre-romans, and the 'picture gallery'. This "picture gallery" had to be unlocked by someone working downstairs and felt more like the provinces attic, if that makes sense. It was filled with treasures that were dusty and valuable at the same time. We saw a Reubens, who K and I both really dig, and the biggest globe EVER in the municipal library, which is hidden behind a locked room on the top floor of the museum (loaded with books from the 14th and centuries).

The coolness did not stop there. We then had a guided tour around some 1st century BCE Roman cisterns. They were remarkable and made me marvel at the engineering ability of that civilization. We then wandered around the Fermo antiques and crafts market, which took over the whole upper town. There was some really cool mini-food crafts that were so cute, I had to take a photo of them. I couldn't stop being a geek and killed myself laughing at my lame joke: Femo in Fermo!!!!!!!! hahahahaha. Okay, lame.


K had spent the early part of his day researching health food/bio shops in the area and after our playdate in Fermo we headed for GreenBio and they had an amazing array of organic goods, most of them made and produced in Italy! We capped the night off with a dinner out at a great restaurant in Ortezzano, where, cooly enough, we were one of four tables of non-native Italians (Americans, Germans, and Dutch folks like pizza too!!). The vegan pizza was great, again really thin, but the pre-dinner green salad was gorgeous and, for me, the best part of the meal.




I want to end with a thank you to everyone who commented so kindly on my last post. It means so much to hear how other people have dealt with missing their families and being away from home! It means so much.