Food – Page 32 – Her Green Life

Looking back at Cinque Terre

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.

Cinque Terre, March 30-31, 2011
Wednesday (3/30): On to Cinque Terre. Due to slow service, we abandoned our plans for delicious looking pizza in La Spezia (at least we hadn’t paid for it yet) in order to catch our train to Cinque Terre. Given the sub par pizza lunch that we ended up eating in Vernazza, perhaps we should have just waited for the pizza and taken the next train.

After checking into our “hotel” (Albergo Barbara, identical to the B&Bs, but without breakfast), we filled our water bottles and headed out for some hiking. The high trail from Vernazza to Monterosso was beautiful, and I was glad I pushed through the challenge of the initial climb, which I took at an embarrassingly slow pace (maybe I DID qualify as a person of impaired mobility!).

After a great hike, including some thunder and a bit of rain, we arrived in Monterossa at a proper Italian dinner time, only to find most of the town, including the most interesting looking restaurants, closed. Turns out many of the restaurants and stores in Cinque Terre were still closed for “low season,” even though all of the lodging establishments were charging “high season” prices.

The day continued to be a food flop, with a dinner that consisted of pasta (the noodles themselves were decent) with the worst pesto we’ve ever had, plus some minestrone that was decent, but was likely a decent variety of canned minestrone. If the prices reflected the quality of the food, this would have been somewhat less painful, but instead we paid about 20 euros (~$28) for the privilege.

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Thursday: Found a bakery (Il Discovolo) specializing in local products in Manorolo, where we really enjoyed the farinata (chickpea flour savory pastry filled with cheese) and the lightly sweet chesnut bar. In Riomaggiore, we found a place to buy nice panini ingredients (buffalo mozzarella, sun-dried tomatoes, artichokes, eggplant, and olives) by the kilo, so we loaded up on lunch ingredients and set off on the hike between Manarola and Corniglia.

Another great hike, through terraced vineyards, and overgrown terraces that must have once been vineyards or otherwise farmed. For dinner, we headed back to the bakery and picked up a savory spinach pastry (similar to spanikopita), plus more panini ingredients, since the restaurants in Cinque Terre left us quite nonplussed.

We also found out that the train strike [that we’d heard rumors of all day] was ON, which put Friday’s travel to Siena in jeopardy . . . .

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

Looking back at Florence

Florence, March 27-29, 2011
Sunday (3/27): After a night at a smoky B&B on the outskirts of Rome (Ciao Ciao Roma), we experienced our first Italian “breakfast,” Matthew hit up an ATM, and we headed to Termini Station to find a train to Florence. We chose the 18 euro/person 4-hour regional train over the 48 euro/person 2-hour fast train, and, with an hour-and-a-half to kill, went in search of some lunch. Lacking time (or so we believed) to make it to the place we first planned to eat, we randomly ended up at a Chinese restaurant. First meal in Italy = Chinese food? Only slightly weird.

We returned to the station without much time to spare, only to discover that, surprise, Italy did the whole “spring ahead” thing last night, and the train we planned to take departed an hour ago. Welcome to Italy!

We made friends with a sister and brother traveling together on the train to Florence, and chatting with them helped the 4+ hours pass. We arrived to a rainy evening in Florence. Once checked in at our B&B (Residenza Betta, not smoky), we went in search of dinner. Being 8pm and proper Italian dinner time, our first choice restaurant was packed, with no sign of a table opening soon in the tiny space, so we headed to Trattoria Guelfa (recommended by the B&B hostess), where we ran into our train friends. We enjoyed a nice dinner there, including a “lasagna” with wide noodles and tasty porcinis, delicious bread soup, and complementary dessert wine and biscotti.

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Monday (3/28): The next day, we climbed the Duomo and stood outside on the top in a thunderstorm, while I thought about cathedrals collapsing, a la Pillars of the Earth (if I’d only read the book, it might have been okay, but we recently watched the mini-series on Netflix, so I was a little nervous, especially after Matthew helpfully pointed out the Duomo’s infamous crack – you couldn’t have told me about that before we climbed all the way up here?).

We found a very cheap cafeteria-line place to eat lunch and dry out, and by the time we were finished, the skies were clearing. We found the much-recommend Grom and thoroughly enjoyed our first gelato in Italy – the pear was particularly amazing.

We crossed the river to the Oltrarno area and followed the recommended walk in our guide book. We discovered a clothing boutique with locally hand-made clothing and narrowly escaped without depleting our euros.

After lots of walking, peaking into some churches, and watching the sunset at the Piazza Michalangelo, we dined at an all-organic, vegetarian restaurant in Oltrarno (Vivanda Gastronomia).

Tuesday (3/29): We spent the morning at the Uffizi Museum, and for lunch we found the panini place (Vinaino di Parte Guelfa) recommended by our friends. Continuing our museum blitz, we went to the Academia to see David. That night, we arrived early and dined at the place that was full on our initial attempt on Sunday night (restaurant name???). After dinner, we headed to the Pitti Palace, hoping to get to see the Boboli Gardens, but the gardens were not part of the special free late night. We caught the bus up to the Piazza Michelangelo so we could look down on Florence in the dark.

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

Making crackers

As you may have noticed, we make many items from scratch and buy very little processed food. However, crackers are an exception to that general practice. We don’t eat all that many crackers, probably in part because they ARE processed and involve a good bit of packaging waste.

Once a baby entered the picture, crackers went on my mental “things I could make from scratch, but since I’m not in the habit of doing so, and life is now crazy, I probably never will” list, along with making soy milk and a few other things that I don’t remember right now.

A few weeks ago, Matthew printed out this recipe for homemade crackers. I set it aside, assuming nothing would come of it. Shortly thereafter, he took a turn staying home with our sick little Sir.

When I returned home from work that day, I found a fresh batch of homemade crackers. (In case making crackers and prepping dinner while caring for a sick baby weren’t enough, he also made homemade croissants, ensuring that I would look like a complete slacker on my days home with the baby — just sayin’).

Anyhow, I tried my hand at the crackers over the weekend, giving them a multigrain twist, and making a double batch, because we noticed that a single batch disappeared very quickly. Continue reading “Making crackers”

From Dude to Sir

While I’ve continued to refer to Gabriel as “The Dude” in most of my posts, these days, we use the nickname “Sir” much more frequently.* I’m not sure where I picked it up, but there is some irony in addressing him as such:

“Would Sir desire a shit in the potty?”

“Is Sir ready for some delicious breast milk?”

Anyhow, at some point we’ll have to drop this “Sir” business, lest he get an inflated impression of his position in this family and society at large, but for now, it’s sticking.

The nickname is not the only change. Earlier this month, Sir passed the eight-month mark. One part of me feels like these life-tipped-totally-upside-down-because-of-baby days can’t pass quickly enough and the other part can’t believe it’s already been over eight months.

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Here’s a quick peek at the current state of things.

Food
While mama’s milk continues to provide the majority of calories and nutrients,
Sir enjoys his solid food. I had some doubts about BabyLed Weaning in the beginning and worried that several bouts of sickness that put Sir back on a milk-only diet would pose significant setbacks in the process, but things are going wonderfully.

He’s tried almost everything we’ve set in front of him thus far, usually displaying great enthusiasm for the whole process, proving that he is, in fact, our child. He’s also been exposed to most of the foods that are common allergens (peanuts, eggs, soy, wheat, corn) with no apparent issues, which is nice.

Movement
Over the past two months, Sir perfected the army crawl. He moves quite quickly and adroitly, especially when he spots a forbidden object, like the trash can.

So far, he’s displayed little inclination to pick his belly up off of the floor and actually crawl. I’m not particularly concerned, either he will, or he’ll go straight to walking.

Potty
Very hit or miss, much to my frustration, as I mentioned here. We continue to offer. These days, Sir usually consents to sit on the potty, but often with no results (despite waiting sitting for several minutes at times, looking at a toy or a book), only to make a big puddle on the floor a few minutes later.

Sleep
Do I dare to even go here? Most nights are actually pretty darn good, it’s the daytime sleep, especially at daycare, that’s killing me. This week has actually been slightly better, but I don’t want to get my hopes up.

Quick Facts

Number of teeth: 8 — no molars yet, but he’s working on it!
Hair: still brown, though lighter than before, starting to fill in the bald spot on the back of his head, shows signs of having a bit of curl
Weight: Somewhere over 20 pounds — a nice little chunker
Height: Somewhere over 27 inches
Other nicknames: Baby Bulldog (when teething), Little Lizard (when gassy)
Likes: Outsa! (how Matthew said “outside” as a baby), eating, putting everything in his mouth, exploring, my animal sound impressions, babbling with us, peeing on the floor shortly after we offer the potty
Dislikes: naps, holding still for diaper changes, parental limits on explorations

*I’m sure The Dude will still pop up from time to time. He was most definitely The Dude while sporting some sunglasses last weekend.

Potatoes for St. Patrick

Gardening lore says that you should plant potatoes on St. Patrick’s day. Matthew planted exactly one week early this year.

This year, we saved our own seed potatoes. This basically means we selected some of each variety from last year’s crop, set them aside (so they didn’t get eaten), and then, a few weeks before planting, let the eyes grow.

Seed potatoes ready for planting (a blue/purple variety)

They planted 25 pounds of potatoes in one morning.

Happy St. Patrick’s day [tomorrow]!

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