I always love a good sunset ...

... And I never get tired of the New York City skyline.

Thanks to the lovely Chu-Vitale famiglia, I was fortunate enough to spend this past weekend at a beach house in Baiting Hollow, Long Island, in the company of good friends. The weather was perfect, the wine was chilled, and the beach was gorgeous.





As Vicki, Nina, Debbi and I all approached the beach, we gasped and exclaimed, nearly in unison, "it's like Europe". This particular beach really reminded me of Reggio Calabria - a shallow shoreline, lots of rocks, calm, clear waters - all of these things evoke a Mediterranean feel to me.


the beach at gallico

But perhaps what really did it was the fact that everyone on the beach was from the surrounding little bungalow village where the beach house was. One of the main reasons Chiara and I went to the beach every day was to meet up with friends, or see some of her family, or just make an appearance to have a gelato and talk with the other people from Gallico. I really miss that aspect of summer.

baskets

I stopped by the farmers market today and was overwhelmed by the amount of foods in baskets. Everything just looked so quaint. Luckily I had no money on me, otherwise I would have bought everything. Instead, I just took pictures:









Spoiler alert: figs are almost in season. Expect at least one post dedicated to my love affair with figs+prosciutto+balsamic reduction. Mmmmmm.

Bed-Stuy bound

Moving day!
A visual summary of my new neighborhood:




B. I. G.


gourmet donuts

Guess where I am ...

Spring!

Early spring surprise! Rooftop margaritas!

La Festa Delle Donne

Last year I was in Milano for March 8th (my favorite holiday of the year). I was greeted at work with a bouquet of mimose and some baci di Perugia at my local bar with my morning cappuccio. This year, in an attempt to keep la festa delle donne as well as I could, I tried to incorporate some of italia into my everyday routine. I documented it as well as I could:



My dream vespa.



The bag I bought at La Feltrinelli last year that I love for it's delightfully commie nature.



Sitting in a cafe having a cappuccino and enjoying my book (much of what I did in Milan).



Olive bread (yumm) from Caputo's bakery in carroll gardens that I broke pieces off of on my walk home.

Happy International Women's Day, ragazze!

tart.

At this point in the year, I'm generally uninspired by the season's offerings of fruit. Give me berries! Give me color! However, I refuse to pay $5 for half a pint of blueberries, or invest in giant, flavorless strawberries. So when you have some over-ripe pears, but you can't bear to see the inside of another beige fruit, what is there to do? Why, add it to some frangipane and make a pear and almond tart, of course!



This thing got gobbled up in minutes at a dinner party a few weeks ago. I just might have to make it again.

So usually, these winter days yield endless cravings for hearty soups, lots of carbs, and - let's be honest here - many glasses of red wine. But some mushroom risotto, kale and farro soup and half a bottle of malbec later, I'm beginning to crave something fresh and summery - something to shake me out of the mid-winter blues when I wake up to a day like this:



Enter a delicious salad of the slaw persuasion with red cabbage, crunchy romaine, shredded carrots and perfectly ripe avocado. All of a sudden, the day is looking a little bit brighter.

grazie Rachel Love

I've been listening to James Blake's self-titled album non-stop all weekend. The first time I listened to it, I cried at four different times. The entire album is beautifully constructed. This song especially gets to me:

time travel

Milano made me feel glamorous the same way NYC does. Except right now, my beloved city is covered in disgusting grey slush piles. Even the classiest of black-and-white photos could not remedy this.

ragazzi

I got on the train the other day and was immediately greeted by a group of loud Italian teenagers. They were so undeniably Italian, in fact, that I froze up and was momentarily convinced that I had teleported back to Milan instead of boarding the R train as I had meant to do. To me, there is something so recognizable about Italian teens (at least the ones in Florence and Milan). I knew I would fail at describing it, so I took a secret picture instead.

bad vegan!

The transition from omnivore to vegan was pretty easy for me, mostly because I have never been a big dairy eater. I don't even like butter (except in baked goods). And I like eggs, but mainly in a scramble to hold together a mass amount of leftover vegetables. So giving them up was pretty much just like any other day.

This doesn't mean I don't love cooking with eggs and butter. In fact, I relish it. And now that my 19-year-old cousin is staying with us, I have an enthusiastic recipient of all things I decide to bake and cook him. I had to lure him out of bed with something the other day, so I decided to make him the mother of all breakfast sandwiches, with ham, pepperjack cheese, and a fried egg on sourdough bread, which had been grilled to delicious, melty perfection in vast amounts of butter.

Recipes for 2011

I got seven (7!!!) cookbooks for Christmas, and it reminded me that I really need to start making lists of recipes I want to try. These are a few of the ones that I've come across online recently that I really need to make*.

Green Olive Gnocchi
Roasted Eggplant Soup
Linguini with Tomato-Almond Pesto
Rustic Winter Stew with Polenta
Fig and Olive Tapenade
Farro Salad with Mushrooms
Farfalle with Golden Beets
Vegan Pot Pie

*Note: All of these recipes are either vegan or easily adaptable to a vegan diet, which is part of why I'm so excited to make them. Yay veggies!