Wednesday 20 November 2013

Olive oil time!



You could be forgiven for thinking this is another one of my homemade liquors, but no, it is in fact olive oil pressed less than 24 hours earlier, at one of the best restaurants in our Area. Beautiful peppery flavour mopped up with crusty Italian bread - and that was before the meal! And yes, that is, of course, a glass of local Montepulciano d'Abruzzo sneaking in in the background.

The food at Il Torchio in Pettorano sul Gizio is really good, the wine is good and the price is good, what more can you ask for...our own little bit of Abruzzoheaven!

Thursday 14 November 2013

The Coriander movement!


As coriander is really difficult to find here and I love to cook Asian food, I was sooo pleased when all my plants flourished (thank you Donna for the seeds...I have finally used them!)

We had fresh leaves for a couple of months to use in Chinese, Indian and more recently some Guacamole then I allowed them to set seed with the intention of collecting them to grind.


So, I managed to collect one full jar of seeds, but just as the rest of the seed dried out, I hadn't quite got round to collecting them we had a MASSIVE thunderstorm. Result: all the coriander seeds were blown off the plants. I came out in the morning to see my cherished plants stripped bare - I was not a happy lady.

Now though, I can happily say I have several randomly placed coriander plants sprouting up in the garden!! And you never know, from the amount of seed that blew away, if all the seeds germinate I might be starting up my own coriander market here in central Abruzzo!!

The Boys' Veg Patch

Back in February I blogged about Getting Going in the Garden. Looking back now at all the things I enthusiastically wrote about, we have achieved a huge amount, and yet not really many of the things we wanted to concentrate our time on back then!



The area designated for the pizza oven became reassigned as the boys veg patch because we were finding it difficult deciding how to organise the space. It was 'temporarily' planted out with lettuce, rocket, spinach, watercress, melons, tomatoes, courgettes and coriander.







The boys helped us plant the seeds in only the way a four and six year old can. Throw a handful of seeds in my nicely made rows and then announce 'We're bored now' leaving mum and dad to finish all the work!



















Everything but the watercress was a resounding success (not enough water I think), we have been creative with courgette salads and I am loving the courgette crisps (recipe here for anyone who wants it). Scroll down for the photos.