One Year In Europe Vegan Feast.....

This past week was my year in Europe celebration and part of me still can't believe that I quit my job, left Toronto, packed myself into an airplane and started something totally new in Brussels. I has all gone by so quickly, I worry that I have missed the chance to really think about all the things I have seen in the 11 countries I have visited this year, and all the amazing people I have met, the new challenges I have faced. Wow.

Maybe the great meal we made last night can stand in as a celebration of sorts? Sure, why not.

We had a great day at the sea yesterday, just lounging about and recovering from the hectic pace of Rome. Went to a great bio shop that I had been wanting to check out since we got here. It is called Bio Marche and a veg*ns heaven if they are vacationing in this part of Italy. I picked up some stuff that I am going to take home with me. We also nabbed some tiny and super hot peppers, which we grilled up at dinner, but plan to use for our supper on Thursday night.

I made three new recipes last night, well, one brand new and two that were revisions of previous goodies.

I made my very first focacciabread! It was pretty tasty, the consistency wasn't right, but I think I needed to give it more rising time and...maybe read a recipe or two. Kevin mentioned at the last minute, that he would like some bread with dinner...and since Lynnie ate the last of the bread the night before, she offered to wing it with the remaining flour.


First Time Focaccia

Ingredients
flour
yeast
rosemary
oregano
water

I can't give precise amounts because I really just eyeballed it and played around until I thought it looked acceptable. I let it rise for about 20 minutes and then shaped it into a little square and popped it into the oven.

I also reinvented the soyziki sauce of the other evening into a Creamy Cucumber Salad Dressing by reducing the cucumber and garlic, keeping the yogurt and adding a little oil, lemon juice and balsamic. It was delightfully refreshing as the topping to the Basil, Cucumber and Tomato Salad I served.


The protein component of the evening was taken care of with 2 marinated Tofu Steaks. Not the most innovative of recipes, but a good standby that has been serving me throughout these long vegan years. To marinate the 'fu I used: balsamic vinegar, the juice and bits of one garlic clove, olive oil, lemon juice and lots of love. We stuck them on the barbecue grill, along with another eggplant (I swear we have been eating other things) and enjoyed a great evening meal with each other.

Tonight is our LAST night in Italy, and then we head back to a new apartment that is in shambles and still needs us to take a few more trips to various furniture shops before it is totally ready. It has been a much loved holiday, full of adventure and explorations and great food. I feel that we have both relaxed and recovered from work and are ready to hit it again until the next big trip, which will take us to Canada in October. I am glad to be heading home though, my muscles ache for the gym and I miss my little home comforts and I am dying to get back into that new kitchen of mine. We are heading off to a day trip in London next weekend though...whoppp, whoopp. Looking forward to the British Museum and the shopping.

Wowed By Rome

We had a spectacular day trip to Rome on Tuesday, made possible by K's stellar driving skills.
(If you grew up and learned to drive in Canada, it is more than a little difficult to drive 130 MINIMUM as prescribed on the Italian highways, but luckily, K is from Britain...)

We left for Rome after a quick, as predicted, Beanie Buddy breakfast and were standing outside the Coliseum by 10 30. We spent pretty much the whole day on our feet, minus a couple of trips on the metro and a great lunch at Miscellanea: International Student Pub, which you can find quite easily at its alley address of Via Pastelle in the Pantheon Area. We saw sights in abundance, to the point where I found myself feeling a little overwhelmed; literally every turn of the head offers the tourist (and there were many) another ruin or sign post of the cultures whose feet walked before us.

We prebooked a trip to Nero's palace, which is buried beneath a series of additional buildings that were consciously built atop this once opulent house of the emperor. I was struck by the sheer size. Well worth the few extra euros. (I promise to post a Flickr link when I get back to Brussels, in case anyone is interested in seeing some of the sights)

I am still continuing to find the relative cheapness of eating in Italy fantastically refreshing. Brussels, though, with good cause, boasting a boat load of top notch and diverse eateries, they are all so very expensive, and lack the street food that China, Toronto and Italy (with its pizza and stuffed olives) has in no shortage. Perhaps I should find myself a caravan and start dishing out fresh vegan road side dishes!

We got home around 10 30 with the worst sunburns we have experienced thus far.....and were wiped, barely able to nourish our exhausted bodies - settled on some warmed up tomato sauce on bread and a bowl of popcorn. Yikes - not the best food. But we made up for it today. We had a great day of good eats....

I am going to save that post for my (habitual) early wake up tomorrow. Until then may all your vegan cookies be scrumptious!

Soyziki and (more) Bean Buddies

In the swelter of today's heat we traveled to Loreto, where, thanks to the efforts of a rescue effort in 1290, we walked through the house of the Virgin Mary (though, myth has it that the house was actually lifted up by the wings of angels) and saw some of the most breath-taking frescoes I have ever seen. Really spectacular, and well worth the trek.

I was feeling inventive at dinner time tonight, but also, after reading a post by Kamutflake Girl, wanting to perfect my Beanie Buddies. So, I did a little of old and new to satisfy both urges. And, I was lucky enough to meet with success on both fronts. The bean patties I put together this evening were great baked in the oven, (versus the grill of the other night) and the Vegan Tzatziki that I made was eye poppingly awesome, and uber easy. I encourage you to give it a try, it is well worth it, especially when compared to some of the store bought vegan tzatziki dips I have experimented with in the past.

Soyziki
1 cucumber (1/2 if you are using a longish English Cuke) slice and dice as thin as possible, or grate.
3 cloves of garlic: crushed and then diced
I used two different types of mint from the garden
1/2 cup (or more) of soy yoghurt
salt to taste

This was the perfect creamy topping for the bean patties, offering a light, almost sharp flavour to the deep bean & sage flavour.

For tonight's bean patties, which in my opinion were even better than the others I used the same method, but instead of black beans I used canned borlotti beans. Although the taste and texture was loads better I defintley had to pull out my pipes to squish these bad boys. But, the arm work out was well worth it, they baked up delightfully well in the oven and I even saved one for a nice protein breakfast before my trip to Rome tomorrow.


I am so excited to see all of the positive feedback I have had about the Brussels Vegetarian Network! Whoop Whoop.

Special Guest Post

I have things cooking. Ok, I have lunch to make and I am currently baking up a fresh loaf of The Brussels Vegetarian Network's website - which, I have officially launched (crowds cheering), so, in this busy afternoon I have recruited the styles of one Mr. Kevin Healey, who will now, share with you his master cooking (and super killer bean burgers I made last night). If the British accent is too thick for you, just let me know and I will rewrite the post this afternoon.

Over to K!

After a hike up the Little Hell Gorge (Gola del'Infernaccio) in 30+ degrees, a barbeque seemed the only choice. And, of course, it fits the age-old stereotypical "man make fire" approach to cooking. Our ingredients almost all came from the front garden, with the exception of a yellow pepper and a couple of beautiful purple aubergines (that's eggplant in Canadian, eh?).

So, once I'd indulged my cave-man instincts and had achieved a fire even hotter than the gorge, we plonked the veg (peppers green & yellow, aubergine, garlic) over the coals and settled into a beer and a good book, pausing only to turn the veg occasionally and to deal with the odd escaped animal. After 20 mins or so, we had some truly squishy garlic and several incinerated veg, burnt outside but succulent inside. At this point, I handed the hot coals over to the bean-burger queen (a new fast food chain?) and headed for the kitchen, catching the juices from the veg in a bowl.

I washed the peppers under the tap to remove the charred skin, leaving a soft, sweet pulp. (I'm reliably told that a paper bag is a better method, but the burgers were already grilling, no paper bags in sight in our little holiday flat...) Then I sliced the flesh, removed the seeds and added a little of the smoky veg juice and some chopped mint from the garden.

The aubergine/eggplant (maybe it should be melanzane since they were Italian?) got halved and the soft flesh scooped into a bowl. I popped out the softened, sweet garlic from the skins and added a bunch of chopped basil, lemon juice and olive oil. Mash thoroughly, taste, add oil, add lemon, taste...it's up to you, through I must admit the when the oil is a good and cheap as it is here, there is a strong temptation to go overboard. The result - a fresh, smoky, puree that nods its head to the Lebanese moutabal but is much lighter.

For a smoke-free option, we chopped up some tomatos (trans-atlantic pronunciation issues fortunately avoided online) fresh from the vine and added a little oil/lemon/mint dressing.

Back at the grill, the burgers were perfect. All that remained was to grill up some bland bread, rub the toast with garlic and add the tomatoes for perfect bruschetta. Some local wine, the slowly setting sun and a chorus of hounds (of the farm, not stragglers from the hell gorge) accompanied our meal.


As my mother will tell you, I have a problem not getting the last word (there is a great 'good night' story that goes all the way back to 1980 when this vegancowgirl was only a baby in her crib...)

A big thanks to Kevin and his sexy blog post. I wanted to get the bean burger recipe out there, because it was so killer easy, and they grilled better than any veg burger I have ever made (from a recipe or otherwise)

Lynnie's Bean Babies

Ingredients
1 tin of black beans
1 tin of chick peas
3 tsp of flour (your choice...I think)
1 tsp of yeast 2 tsp of olive oil
3 garlic cloves - diced uber tiny herbs to your taste


I simply washed the beans and added them to a bowl, whereby I went to town squishing them between my fingers. I added the remaining ingredients in this order: oil, mix; flour, mix; yeast, mix.

When everything seemed to be glued together I went to work on making 4 patties. They went on the grill for about 10 minutes on each side, and were thick without unpleasant density, and I vote the combo of black beans and chick peas five stars!

One Vegan Pizza Please

I didn't eat much for dinner last night, some applesauce and raisins is about all. But, I think that might have been a result of the great pizza Kevin and I cooked up for lunch. We have had pizza a couple of times since arriving, and they have been great, really yummy. But, for the most part, they have been a little sparse on the veggies - nothing like the much loved pizzas at La Pizzeria in Brussels. So, not to pull an "I can do better than you can" or anything, but just to please my tummy, we made our own dough yesterday and ended up with a great result.

Dough
-500 grams of flour (to be honest my Italian is less than adequete. I did think I was buying whole wheat, but it appears to have been more on the whiter side of things)
-1 package of fast rising yeast (the kind you do not need to feed sugar or honey)
-warm water - although I used to use something remarkably ingenius, called a measuring cup, Kevin decided to break with tradition and suggest we just pour it in until 'it feels right'. (he's lucky - it worked)
-2 teaspoons of salt
-2 tablespoons of olive oil


Topping (of course you can do whatever you liked but we used)
-eggplant
-baby tomatoes
-red onion
-red chili pepper
-3 tablespoons of canned tomatoes
-fresh garlic
-basil
-oregano

I actally let the dough rise twice, and I am unsure if it was the double rising or the mystery dough that made it a bit denser than usual. Either way it was delicious and the toppings, which we roasted up before landing them onto our pizza, were bursting with flavour despite the double broiling. As you can see from the 'action' shot, we are a little low on the baking supplies in our paradise-away-from-soggy-wonderland, and I found myself making the dough inside a largish-pot. Fun, fun, fun.

I used to make pizza dough ALL THE TIME when I lived in Oakville. It was a weekly event, and it usually involved my nieces (on K before K's side) Kate and Sarah, and I would always infuse the dough with fresh herbs and olive bits. I think I might give that another whirl when I am back in my own funky little kitchen, because, it makes such a delicious difference.



There are some great vegan pizza recipes out there, including the Vagrant Vegan's Pizza alla Puttanesca, the music on this YouTube video is not pizza-making friendly (in my humble opinion) but the visual is there for you, and Half Pint Pixie reports of an interesting pizza shop that does a vegan pizza with refried beans.

Living in Belgium we have been quick to note that almost every pizza shop in Italy that we have walked past or popped our heads into has a french fry pizza option. Interesting, but not one that I am up for trying. There are alot of vegan choices for pizza here, though you aren't likely to get them loaded with veg (and there is no chance of getting one covered in refried beans), but, I think having that expectation is taking away from what seems to be the cultural place of pizza in this part of Italy - its uber-light crust and minimalist approach to ingredients make it appear as more of a snack or as one of the many courses at a set meal.

Today leaves us with but one week left in our Italian holiday (we are spoiled brats) and we still have a few things on our holiday check list that we want to get done before pilling back in the car for the achingly long trip home (but all is well, we get to enjoy the stunning views of Switzerland on the ride back).

K & L's still to do list:
1. Rome (Tuesday)
2. Tilentito
3. Waterfall/gorge hike and tofu picnic (Today!)
4. Super Steep hike (maybe Wednesday)
5. Loretto
6. About 10 more recipes.........

Something funny that I noticed last night in the garish bathroom light - this vegan (who is usually the colour of soy milk and despite all attempts to stay out of the sun) is BROWN and covered in more freckles than there are sunflowers in the fields around. Yikes! My kids aren't going to know me when I get back to work in the fall. Yikes.

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.

An Ode (or Shell??) To My Mom

When I was a little girl, growing up in the big city, my mom always used to wistfully talk about Italy and escaping for a good holiday. (In fact she used to say the same things about Greece....probably just a symptom of winters in Canada). This year, it was my turn to head to Italy, while she and my family back home went to Cape Cod for their summer break (and were super sweet, celebrating my birthday with a cake and fun in my absence, but making a video of it so that I could join in the family birthday fun!).

Needless to say, it has been 8 months since my last trip home, and my feet won't land on Canadian soil for another 2 months (yes, I am painfully aware of the huge carbon footprint made by my trips home, something I try to atone for with biking and tramming to work), so, I thought that while being in one of her favourite spots, that a way to cure my case of "I miss my mom" I would make one of her best recipes that she always does vegan for me when I come home: Baked Shells.



Now, with the absence of tofu ANYWHERE that I have looked so far, and with me lacking in any real urge to munch on the soy product, I substituted some of her ingredients and made a dish that was just as wickedly delicious as hers - but soya free. .

I cooked the shells, the stuffing and the sauce separately from each other and then baked the shells for about 20 minutes at the end. All of the ingredients are local, and all but the tomatoes and pasta shells came from the market in the next town over.

Claudia's Soul Soothing Baked Shells
(way to have an Italian name mom!)

Ingredients:
2 tiny eggplants - diced
2 tomatoes - diced
1/2 of a white onion - diced
4 of the biggest white mushrooms you have ever seen - diced
1 red pepper diced
oregano
rosemary
Sauce
1 can of diced tomatoes
1 red chili pepper
4 cloves of garlic
Pasta shells

Shells pre-saucing

I cooked down all of the stuffing ingredients in a pan, while cooking the shells, and K tackled the sauce (he had actually offered to make dinner, but I felt like I had to tackle this one). When the shells were ready, I gave them a good stuffing and lined them up in a baking dish. I covered them all with the yummy sauce and popped them in the oven.

So that helped get rid of the 'I miss home' blues, but I am still missing my mom - probably will until I get home in October. This stretch will mark the longest time I have been away from home. I am so thankful for everything that moving to Europe has given me (espeacially the proximity to the love of my life), and I do love being here, it is a great continent, filled with amazingly unique countries, languages and cultures. But, I do miss Canada - with all of its lovely rules and driving expectations. I miss the friendly people and the social services. I miss the country's (attempted) commitment to the environment and the communities of people who work together to fight oppression, poverty and to uphold the rights of women and refugees. I am sure that a lot of this stuff is happening in Belgium, in fact, I know it is. But, being an expat all of those things are a little further away from me.


I did more than miss my mom yesterday, we also made it down to the beach (though we didn't hit the sand or the water, just wandered around looking for a vegetarian restaurant that was closed) and found a really yummy pizza for lunch...it was HUGE. The plate that they served it on wasn't even capable of holding the whole thing. They had two vegan options (cool!) and it was the thinnest crust ever, which left room for other treats later on.


We also made another batch of baked fruit....found some peaches at the market in Montalto and couldn't resist pairing some fresh walnuts with them. Another great day in the Italian sunshine.

This little vegancowgirl is going to crank up her CBC and read the Globe and Mail online! Thank heavens for the internet. I love you mom!

Does the backgarden count as local?

Stayed put at the farm all day yesterday. Read, ate, wrote, ate - that was the order of the day, and I can say it was all quite fulfilling and I never once felt lazy. There are some massive zucchini in the kitchen garden that beckoned to me - it seems that since coming to Italy, the zucchini family and I have made amends (we had been on the outs since a soggy stir fry situation). I wasn't entirely sure what we would end up with, but I knew it was going to be stuffed, and that I wanted to use up the mushrooms that were in the fridge. K set to work making a potato and tomato sauce dish, while I went to work on my stuffing. The result was delicious - I baked the skin of the zucchini while preparing the stuffing, resulting in a juicy little number. We also decided that the barbecued figs of Saturday couldn't go unchallenged, so we baked up what proved to be some pretty descent competitors by making a batch of baked pears that were scrumptious.

Big Green Yummy Monsters
1 massive zucchini
1 white onion - diced
2 tsp of olive oil
5 oyster mushrooms - diced
pepper, oregano and sage to taste

I cut the zucchini in half and hollowed out the middle, reserving the insides for the stuffing, and set them to bake in the oven for about 30 minutes. The stuffing was quite simple, and included dicing the remaining ingredients into small chunks, adding them to a warmed up and oiled pan and letting them brown through. Finally, I added the stuffing to the zucchini 'skin' and baked the whole big delicious party for another 20 minutes.


Baked Pears

8 tiny Italian pears
a handful of walnuts
2 tsps of maple syrup

Again, as simple as the recipe from Saturday: slice the fruit, add it to a pan, cover in maple syrup and bake for about 40 minutes. I added the nuts half way through this time, rather than right at the end. They were a bit more caramelized and much tastier.

While I was upstairs grabbing the desert, K decided to go for a quick walk around the animal lodgings that are adjacent to our outdoor dining spot. He said hey to Hootie, talked to the chickens and then noticed that one of the black cats was looking at him with that "oh crap, I have been spotted look". K's lensed eyes noticed that a little yellow streak was dodging clay pots and newly transferred plants in the nursery beds that the cat was sneaking around in....an escaped duckling, not even 36 hours old, was being harassed by this big black feline. Kevin alerted the proper authorities and has now been crowned the patron saint of ducklings (we are in Italy thank you). How much more can a vegancowgirl ask for than have a future husband who goes around the Italian countryside saving the lives of ducklings?


*Please note that I am by no way ignoring my pledge to use local products in my use of maple syrup. I bought it on Saturday and have no intention of letting it go to rot. I think that might just be a bit too antithetical to my whole reason for being a vegan in the first place.

Flaming Figs

This is Hootie. He is a Hungarian Long Haired Pig. He lives on the farm we are inhabiting.

I had impressions of being knocked over by the sights in Italy; the paintings, the sculptures, the churches. And I admit, everything, from the squares and the gelatto, to the cute little towns and the ancient roman ruins has been wonderful. But, tonight, after a fantastic picnic lunch on Fermo's hill top, I almost died and went to vegan heaven due to the meal that we pulled off in a joint effort of indelible proportions.

Fermo is a beautiful little city, with a story similar to most of those in and around the Marches. Pre-Roman history, a variety of attempted and successful takeovers, a number of unlikely hero-myths and a whole slurry of sunbaked skin. Prego. We wanted to see if the market was something to write home about, and even if it wasn't, we did manage to get some big fat peppers.

We also found a cute shop that sold us some yummy lunch-time fare that filled us up for our afternoon of more mundane holiday fun: shoe shopping (...hey, a girl needs more than one pair of vegan hikers thank you very much), and finally triumphing in a hideous supermarket in the week long hunt for soy milk.



After winding our way home, I split a free hour of time between painting and reading my new bookclub-book: Gunter Grass's Peeling the Onion, which I can not get enough of.



And then....we made the most brilliant dinner ever...and I mean EVER. It wasn't just the aubergine and parsley salad, it wasn't just the grilled peppers, it wasn't just the barbecued figs for desert or the homemade, homegrown wine, it was that all of these dishes were brilliant AND the food was local, mostly organic and all of it cooked over an open flame.


I implore everyone across the world to try the barbecued fig recipe. I could have risked not fitting into any pairs of lululemon pants ever again if it meant that I could just keep eating the juicy erotic looking maple syrup drenched goodies.

Flaming Figs

6 fresh figs (picked from the tree on the lawn) - sliced down the middle
2 tablespoons of Maple Syrup
3 tablespoons of walnuts - crushed

Add the figs to a tin foil pan (or wrap them gently in tin foil) and stick them on the top of your barbeque after it has already helped you make a wicked meal (so it will be a bit cooler and won't overcrisp your figgies). We let them sit on the grill while we ate dinner. Top with desired creamy goodness.

Topping of your choice: I went with a vanilla soy pudding type 'thing' due to the scarcity of soy-esque products and the total lack of silken tofu.

I had the chance to meet all the animals on the farm last night, and had a full tour of the grounds. Stunning. This is a wonderful way to spend a holiday stretch - I highly recommend it. Last night I made an eggplant and chickpea stew using herbs from the kitchen garden, which satisfied me after a longish day of exploring the most brilliant of little towns I have yet to see on our trip.

The town, Riptrasone, has been inhabited since prehistoric time, and has a satchel full of interesting stories about invasions from the Spanish. One of the most interesting tales is of a woman in the 13th century who managed to rally the citizens of the town against an encroaching army of Spanish, getting them to defend their little piece of heaven. They boast, amoung other bits of curiosity, the tiniest lane in all of Italy, measuring a whole of 43 cm. I had a fleeting moment of Niagara Falls fun house type fear as I made my way through the alley, making it out alive to head back to the coast for yet another soy treat.

When we made it home, we sat in the garden for a while, K with his beer and me with my paints. What a great day.

My Eggplant Exegesis:

1 medium eggplant - diced
1 white onion - diced
1 chilli pepper - seeded and slivered
2 cups of chick peas
2 cups of tinned tomatoes
fresh rosemary, basil, parsley and oregano
2 tablespoons of olive oil

I simmered the onions for a wee while and added the rest of the ingredients, leaving it all to simmer away for about an hour. Yummy.


For desert I watched 1 episode of my (not so secret) dirty secret - The Tudors. I know, I know. The writing isn't that great, and there have been some ridiculously silly moments, but, hey - give me a break.

I have found some quite well done resources for vegan/Italy - mainly this little search site: VeganHome (which provides links and contact info for a whack of vegan resources by region) and Vegetariani, which is a little heavier on the 'what is a vegan' side of things, but has some useful links as well. Tomorrow night, if all goes to plan, we are hoping to check out a vegan restaurant/house in our district. Today - we head for the ancient city of Urbino, which boasts a number of bio shops - fingers crossed for finding some fu. I was on a real asian spree before I left belgium, and I don't think the desire for stir fry has been quenched by my recent tomato and eggplant binge.

I also want to share my salad from Wednesday night. We used up the rest of the Betolli beans, mixing them up with some fresh parsley, lemon juice and white wine. We had the salad with some oven baked vegetables - a mixture of peppers, eggplants, onions from the markets and the garden.

Birthday Update

So K managed to make us a brilliant dinner last night. I have honestly never been so impressed with his culinary skills. The two dishes were both divine - simple, satisfying and the flavours were spot on. K has a couple of things going for him in the kitchen: 1. He has quite a remarkable sense for flavours, and 2. He is patient. Unlike this vegancowgirl he really takes his time with everything in the kitchen (which is why HE is stirring the palenta right now and I am writing this post).


The beans were to die for. The taste was deep and rich, and yet the beans didn't hide the light flavours of the herbs or tomato sauce. He used a mixture of berlotti beans and chickpeas. It was magnificent. I couldn't recommend it more.

The tomato salad was a mix of tomato and parsley with a liberal sprinkle of dried Rosemary. We are currently undertaking the task of making a mushroom stew for some polenta we picked up in town last night.

We spent today hanging out in Ascoli Piceno, the ancient city in the southern most tip of the region we are currently inhabiting. A nice little spot steeped with history and some beautiful art. Lunch was a bit of a disaster...ordered stewed spinach and got a mouthful of bacon. But, after a bit of a cry in the art gallery for the piggie I accidentally swallowed, I did what I did in my trips through China: accepted it as a part of the culture and got over myself.

We had a great drive home, finding a number of organic vineyards in the region. Lots to drink and enjoy tonight!

Turning Thirty in Thirty Degree Temperature

What a wonderful birthday. I woke up about two hours before K and had my green tea (brought all the way from Brussels in the fear of not being able to nab any) all by myself while staring out the window at the most stunning of views. While I was watching the birds, a little sheep popped its head out to say hello, and a cat wandered by on its way to some sort of evil excursion. Who could ask for a better start to their birthday? When I finally roused K from his slumbers I was a little hungry and opted for a fresh fig from the field below, and some slices of the 10 kilo (!!!) watermelon that I picked up yesterday.

We set off not long after breakfast to check out a weekly market that was in a town a drive away. I was surprised with the abundance of cheaply made clothes and the scarcity of food stuff. We did eventually, after fighting off some taffeta dresses and beating back some attacking plastic shoes, find some amazingly inexpensive fruit and veg. We grabbed some beautiful looking beans at a stall where I was spoken dramatically and emphatically to by a woman who wanted so badly for me to understand her. But, I could do nothing more than look ignorantly into her eyes and plead for her forgiveness.

After the market we headed straight for the coast and stopped for lunch. The menu was limited for me, but that didn't stop me from enjoying some roasted veg. After a trundle on the sea shore, which was surprisingly vacant for an Italian seaside, we found our way to my birthday gelato. I was so excited to see the THREE different soy flavours that were at my picking. What a luxury. I admit to sampling every one of those suckers and loving them all - vanilla, coffee and chocolate. Fantastic.


K's cooking something for dinner....great I am sure, but still in the works. He has polenta, dried mushrooms, white wine and all of those beans!!! Who knows what will be in store for this now-30 year old vegan.