flaneuse

Italia!

We have been in Italy for the past week and a half! We had a great trip over and our casa was just as we left it...but dustier! Thankfully we arrived during a cold front and I was able to enjoy cleaning and airing out the house in 70F weather. Unfortunately that gorgeous cool weather did not last long and we are back to a blazing Italian summer.

I have been enjoying cooking with the local ingredients so much! Lots of fresh vegetables, trays of perfectly ripe peaches, and some great cuts of meat. Our cherry and fig trees put out some delectable fruit as well.

We took a short trip over to Italy's west coast to the Cinque Terre. It was fantastic!! We hiked to four out of the five villages. Not an easy feat with a 4 year old, and not something I'd recommend doing, but the views were SO worth it. As soon as I find me SD card reader I will upload some photos to flickr. I think my favorite towns were Monterosso and Manarola. Monterosso for the fabulous food and ocean views, and Manarola for the gorgeous hike along the vineyard and for the farranata--a kind of chickpea pizza.

Tomorrow we are going to Verona for a dinner alone and then to the Arena to see Aida. We both have not been to the Arena for an opera before so that should be a treat.

This weekend we go to Rhodes, Greece, for more adventures and some well deserved resort time. I think we are planning to rent a car and drive to Lindos if the mood strikes us.

I hope everyone has a fun fourth of July weekend!!!

Goodbye Summer

We are finally into Autumn now at the Villa Flaneuse. Cold winds and rains whipped through this weekend, leaving us with a cool, blustery Monday. The refreshing change of weather and the lack of biting insects brought us outdoors to throughly inspect the yard and garden area. We ended up harvesting the rest of the tomatoes and peppers from the garden, then pulling nearly all of it up, save the carrots. More apples (hopefully the last batch) from our three apple trees were collected, and the persimmon tree was dully cut back, taking most of its fruit off. You'll see we had over a gallon of apples, some carrots, quite a few cherry tomatoes and green peppers, and four pomegranates from my vicini.

I took the buckets of apples and turned them into apple pie filling, which I froze. I made enough for 2 pies. The filling is quite easy to make, the difficulty lies in peeling, coring and slicing the apples. Particularly if the apples are of the home-grown varieties, where the shapes and sizes are not uniform. It makes it a little more time consuming to prepare them. And if you have recently had a surgery to your hand and you think it's suddenly a great idea to peel acidic apples and to constantly be washing your hands of apple goo all day, well then I really must advise you against it. Because after you have finished, two hours later, you'll suddenly notice that your hand really kind of hurts. And that your carefully stitched incision, done just over a week ago, might be looking rather angry. 

But anyways, to make the apple pie filling I use a mixture of red and green apples doused with lemon juice while peeling/chopping, enough flour to fully coat all the apple pieces, about half a cup of sugar, and whatever spices you like. I usually add in a large teaspoon of cinnamon, some cardamon and maybe half a teaspoon of ginger. Then I put the mixture in a gallon size ziplock bag, label and freeze! To cook I just transfer the frozen filling to an unbaked pie crust, dot with butter and top with another crust, cut vents, and then bake it at about 350F. Super easy!

We also had a ton of green peppers from the garden. I chopped them up and transfered them to ziplock bags for freezing as well. 

Things I learnt from 2009's garden:

• don't plant 6 cherry tomato plants unless you have about half a football field of garden space. Just for them.
• don't plant the carrots so close together, unless you really want baby carrots for 3 months.
• marigolds do work to keep bugs out of the garden and they look nice. 

carrot harvest

small but sweet!

end of summer harvest

to be part of our dinner tonight. I started both the carrots and the cherry tomatoes from seed, so I'm particularly proud of this year's crop ♥