Month: August 2020

Several times this summer, I’ve literally dreamt about owning a pig. The reality of my home is, however, very different. I love, love, love to cook up regenerative agriculture produce in my kitchen but I live in a 1-bedroom apartment in a town close to the hubbub that is Florence, Italy.
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Still, as my gorgeous new-found IG friends:
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@farmandhearth
@untamed.nourishment
@thebyefamilyfarm
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…keep telling me: You don’t have to live on a farm to be farmish!
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So, the four of us have cooked up:
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The Very Farmish Challenge.
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Some fun sharing for the month of September. The checklist is above, see what takes your fancy, no order necessary, interpreting the prompt in whichever way you like. Follow the hosts and use the hashtag #veryfarmish when you post!
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I’m excited about seeing and reading and learning from everyone who wants to join in.

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Breaking food habits has often been very revealing to me. I don’t want to give something up, but when I do, I notice what life is like without it. Sometimes, I never go back to it.
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Not true of sourdough pancakes though. Me and them will go a long way I think! I’ve just got back from 3 days away, at lake Trasimeno, 2 hours on the train, with my hubby and son. It was wonderful. I lake swam (I miss swimming since ditching chlorine), I ate lake fish (my idea of local food!) and I sat around a lot.
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And now I’m home, I get to cook up a breakfast pancake again. Yum.
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I’ll try to get some pictures off my camera and share the glorious lake – aka My Happy Place – with you in my stories 🙂

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The first time I’ve grown beetroots. This is our harvest: leaves and roots. Is one a turnip?!
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I’ve learnt a lot. That hailstones the size of massive olives can ruin most of your leaves and that beetroot seeds are actually a cluster of many seeds and should be thinned out when they shoot (whoops). Here’s to next year’s growing season. Maybe I’ll get enough for a jar of beet kvass then?

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When I looked through the lens and saw my pizza and this empty seat, my heart ached. I love, love, love sharing my food – in all its local, seasonal, sourdough gloriousness – with my two boys, but I want to share it further.
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For now, that’s where #ancestralcookup comes in. I share my most-loved dishes with you, holding your hand through the process. I know, you’re not at the table with me, but you are cooking, eating and sharing food with other wonderful people. And I hope that comes with lots of love and smiles.
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This month’s cook up is my Wholegrain Spelt Sourdough Pizza. The recipe is in my profile. It’s super good and a wonderful way of celebrating food together. Give it a go and let me know how you like it.

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I’m determined to get supermarkets out of my life. I was almost there in the UK, but moving to another country set me back somewhat! I’ve managed it for meat, some flour and a lot of our vegetables, but I’m not there yet.
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Over breakfast, I got super-focused on my next food moves. They are:
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1/ Go to the Florence Fierucola bread festival and scout for locally-grown and milled wholegrain spelt and rye flour.
2/ Visit our local co-operative store and try to find a super local organic vegetable grower.
3/ Get on it with fish! Go visit Fabio Gallerini at the Sant’Ambrogio market in Florence and see what local fish I can find.
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And my general foodie plans also include:
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4/ Finding a butcher to teach me how to cut up a pig and how to make the wonderful Italian sausages I see all around me, and
5/ Getting more offal next month from Flavio at @lavalledelsasso, maybe even cooking some brains for the first time?
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I’m very excited about all of this. That’s what keeps me going when I find dead ends and my language skills fail me. I will get there!

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Garbage Pail (or if you’re English Rubbish Bin) Pasta is a thing: Sicchie d’a Munnezza, Neapolitan dialect for the kitchen waste receptacle and a pasta dish! 
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This is more of my homemade sourdough wholegrain spelt pasta (check out my stories if you want to see it coming to life). I got a little carried away with the toppings, so let’s just call it Rubbish Bin Pasta! If you’ve never put walnuts on wholegrain pasta, it’s a good match.

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Sometimes, just sometimes, I get breakfast by myself. This morning was one of those times. Oh. How. Wonderful.
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This is what accompanied me: A local soft-boiled egg, a thick slice of sourdough rye slathered in butter, a tomato, still warm, from the garden sprinkled with salt and my teapot filled with roasted chicory.

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Milk kefir-leavened wholegrain spelt sourdough nestled in my wonderful Emile Henry ceramic loaf tin.
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For me, baking bread takes priority over comfort in the heat of August in Italy. Still, I try to time the baking for first or last thing and have two fans provide relief.
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Taking the lid off the tin and seeing this makes it all worth it.

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Here’s the non-egg garlic mayo (aka allioli) in progress! I’m reading from ‘Honey from a Weed’, a book I have completely fallen for.
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It goes on to says this precise method is also used in Languedoc as a sauce for snails.
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We didn’t eat it on snails, but atop home-made burgers and I roasted the garlic first to soften its flavour.
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There are more adventures afoot with this sauce as a base. Perhaps capers or some anchovies? And apparently it’s traditional to fry some bread and then pestle (is that a verb: to pestle?!) it in with a big bunch of parsley.
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My arm muscles are going to get a workout!

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Local strawberries in a #waterkefir second ferment give their beautiful colour to the liquid, making for such colourful, fun and tasty bubbles.

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