Dark and Dreary months During these dark and dreary months here in the Pacific North West it was like a ray of sunshine when I opened my copy of Provisions a cookbook with roots in Caribbean cooking. Written by sisters Michelle and Suzanne Rousseau, very successful restaurateurs in Kingston Jamaica with their groundbreaking restaurant Ciao Bella, fusing classic […]
Panificio Di Gesù and Altamura’s DOP Bread
Half-asleep or half-cut I awoke to the sound of the shower running. Nat was already up but it was going to take a lot for me to get out of my envelope of comfort and warmth in our cozy hideaway in Altamura. The rain was still pouring down but the weather was expected to improve […]
Tales from the Table: Hostaria La Vecchia Fontanina
Reading menus I love reading menus. Whenever we travel and are staying in town to eat I make it a habit of reading as many menus as I can when walking passed restaurants. Just about every town has at least one dish that shows up on every menu. In Verona, it’s bigoli pasta, one of […]
Gorgonzola, Protected Designation of Origin
Otherwise occupied Getting up early, I check the train schedule, grab some fruit and head to the station by myself. Tim being otherwise occupied with a virus that is draining his body of all fluids. The train to Novara is on time and as it makes its way towards the mountains, I notice the frost […]
Picturing Bologna
Picturing Bologna La dotta, la grassa, la rossa (the learned one, the fat one, the red one) Bologna gets called all three because of its university, its delicious food, and its red roofs. We spent two wonderful weeks there in early November, met some wonderful people, found some great restaurants, great markets, wonderful wine & […]
Tales from the table: Drogheria della Rosa
Drogheria della Rosa “It opens at 8:30!” I said to Nat with a look of desperation. We had left our dinner plans way too late to cook anything and were scrambling to figure something out. Checking Google maps the closest restaurant to the apartment was 700 metres away, called Drogheria della Rosa. I was so […]
The Extraordinary Italian Taste
The extraordinary Italian taste Have you ever returned home from the grocer only to discovered that the expensive bottle of what you thought was Italian olive oil is actually not Italian at all? The label sure looks Italian and the name sounds Italian, but what’s in the bottle has never set foot in Italy. It’s not […]
Kombucha and the scoby
Making my own kombucha With my water kefir reliably producing two quarts every forty-eight hours now, I turned my attention to making my own kombucha. Kombucha is very similar to water kefir in that it is a fermented sweetened liquid but in this case, it also includes tea as its main source of food. The […]