Author Archives: Melissa | Growing Green Nutrition

Looking back at [vegetarian food in] Rome

Despite lots of great potential content, I didn’t write much about our fabulous trip to Europe last spring.*  Over the next couple of weeks, I  will rectify that by sharing snippets from my travel journal in the “Looking back at  . . . ” series.

If you’ve read the other posts in this series, you know that I talk as much about what we ate while traveling as anything else, hence the slightly altered title of this post.

Rome, April 3-7, 2011
Sunday (4/3): On to Rome for the last bit of our journey, with panini ingredients for lunch on the train.  We arrived at Termini Station, and, after a bit of hunting, found the Roma Pass desk, where we bought the passes that would cover all of our metro and bus trips for the next three days.Continue reading “Looking back at [vegetarian food in] Rome”

Garden to table

Although it’s a rather frequent occurrence around our table, I love it when I sit down to dinner and realize that a majority of the food came from our garden.

In the kitchen, we transform plants . . .

. . .  into dinner.

Leek and sun-dried tomato risotto with broiled asparagus

—

Mixed greens with roasted baby carrots and beets

Of course, some of us start eating the plants before they make it to the dinner table (ahem, Sir).

Plastic wrapped plastic crap

I went into the store the other day intending to by one plastic item (ice cube trays) and somehow left with two additional items.

The ice cube trays were a necessary evil.  I freeze my pumped breast milk in the trays before transferring to freezer bags (yes, I know, MORE plastic).  I don’t like Sir’s milk coming in contact with plastic (we use glass bottles and I store refrigerated milk in glass jars), but I just don’t know of a better way to store the milk.

My previous trays, which I’d had for years, but rarely used, finally gave out.  Age and repeated freezing broke down the plastic — I waited as long as I could, but their condition forced me to face the inevitable.  I found this stainless steel ice cube tray, but I just couldn’t swallow $33 for one tray (I needed two).

As for the other plastic crap, I’d been looking for some kind of tray that we could attach to the table — something with a lip to help Sir pick up food, but that he wouldn’t be able to pick up and launch across the room.  (We don’t have a high chair, just a baby seat that attaches to the edge of the table.)

Online searching had not yielded much, so, since I was already at the store I headed to the baby section to peruse options, not expecting to find anything.  I spotted the Tommee Tippee silicone mat (orange item in picture) that adheres to the table top and features a suction cup in the middle, which holds a variety of plastic dishes made by the same company.  I doubted their utility, but I’d been searching for a solution for quite awhile, so I purchased a mat and a 2-pack of plates.

The verdict?  Yes, it’s plastic, and it came in plastic packaging, but the mat is quite useful.  I’m not sure about the plate.  The mat’s suction cup actually works fairly well on our glass plates, so the main advantage of the plastic plates is the low (but not too low) and straight lip/edge to aid picking up food.

If you already had a plate or bowl (be it plastic, glass, or metal) with that feature and a smooth bottom for attaching to the suction cup, you could avoid purchasing their special dishes.  As it is, I use the plastic plates when serving food that I think he’ll have trouble grabbing and glass at other times.

Could we have avoided the plastic here?  Yes, but I’m learning that raising a baby (and not going completely insane and/or broke searching for the “perfect” green and healthy solution for every little thing) involves some compromises.  On the upside, I have not generated the waste involved with formula feeding or buying prepared baby food, which would make these purchases look inconsequential.

Coming soon: The “Green Baby Strategies” post

Looking back at Siena

Despite lots of great potential content, I didn’t write much about our fabulous trip to Europe last spring.*  Over the next couple of weeks, I  will rectify that by sharing snippets from my travel journal in the “Looking back at  . . . ” series.

Siena, April 1-2, 2011
Friday (4/1): Up at 5:30am to make the first train out of Vernazza on our flight to reach Florence while the guaranteed trains were still running.  [There are some trains that run during the morning and evening rush hours, even during train strikes.]  Three trains later (Vernazza to La Spezia, La Spezia to Pisa, and Pisa to Florence), we arrived in Florence a bit after 9am on one of the last trains running.

Fortunately, the best way from Florence to Siena is actually bus, and not train.  Next thing we knew, we were on the “rapida” bus to Florence.  The driver took the “rapida” part very seriously, which made for an interesting ride, especially through the narrow, crowded streets of Florence.

After a stressful, but still surprisingly smooth, morning of travel, we made it to Siena before noon – masters of navigating Italian train strikes.

In Siena, our B&B (Casa di Antonella) came with kitchen access and was conveniently located next to a nice market, which provided a delicious, affordable, and veggie heavy lunch (plus delicious pears and kiwi, grown in Italy).

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Our time in Siena was pretty low key.  We discovered and thoroughly enjoyed their secret botanical garden (Orto Botanico: very nice, with carpets of flowers and moss steps), walked around the top of the fortress and viewed the city (La Fortezza), walked through the campanile, and viewed the Duomo from the outside.

We found a decent pizza place for Friday night dinner, and were planning a splurge dinner for Saturday night at Da David, but were turned off by their attitude and the smell of smoke when we stopped by to make reservations.  We ended up dining at Osteria da Cice, where I enjoyed a nice pasta dish with kale and we found our first menu with a non-meat secondi, grilled vegetables with smoked cheese.

We also added to our souvenirs in Siena, purchasing some of the extra fresh dried porcinis (Consorzio Agrario, also place we bought pici), truffle-infused pici (a regional pasta), and a pretty wooden soup ladle and baby spoon, locally carved from olive wood (Il Casale).

The best ricciarelli came from Nannini bakery (also good pastries), and we had a great gelato combo: dark chocolate (chocolate fondante), vanilla cherry, and pistachio (Gelateria KopaKabana; we also liked Gelateria Mascellano).

Other: Pizzicheria Wine Bar (for Panini ingredients, on way to Orto Botanica), moist citrus ricciarelli & good whole wheat baguette (Il Magnifico SRL), skipped dinner at Antica Osteria Da Divo, pizza at Pizzeria Di Nonno Mede

Read the previous post in the “Looking back at  . . . ” series.
Read the next post in the “Looking back at  . . . ” series.

T minus two months

The countdown started on Sunday — we now have less than two months until our lease is up.  The good news is that in less than two months, we’ll be living somewhere new, somewhere with a bit more breathing room than we have in our current set-up.  The bad news?

We have less than two months to find somewhere to live.  Which doesn’t sound like a big deal, except that we’ve been looking for eighteen months without finding the right place.  To make for a more relaxed move, I would ideally like to sign a new lease that overlaps with our current lease by at least two weeks, which means we really only have SIX weeks or so to find something.

Two weeks ago we looked at a great 2-bedroom flat: second floor, garage (for our bikes + baby trailer), smoke-free building, good layout, walkable/bikeable location, three blocks from an awesome park, wood floors, nice sun porch, amazingkitchen, and . . . lead paint on the windows (which landlord was unwilling to address).

Unfortunately, lead paint on windows + baby = No Deal.

Yep, I’m still mourning that one (oh, that kitchen) and dispairing that we’ll ever find anything.

It’s not like we’ll be homeless in two months or anything, I’m just worried that we’ll have to compromise on a lot of what we want in an apartment.

We’ve actually started glancing at For Sales, but I think that is a bit belated, and it’s pretty unlikely that we’ll find something that meets our requirements for both a big lot AND a central, walkable/bikeable location.

And so the search continues  . . . .

Other apartment-search posts: