Planting New Vines

There is no rest for the strong here! Once we completed pruning the vines, we moved straight onto digging up dead vines and planting new ones. Some of the young vines planted last year didn’t quite make it, so we marked them earlier in the fall when they were still green. That way we knew …

Winter in Italia

Brr. It is flat out cold here these days. Ironically enough, it seemed warmer in the Himalayas than it has been here, in Cupramontana. With the steep and rolling hillsides, it’s been interesting to see the diverse climates around the lands. Our work varies depending on the weather, but we’ve mostly been finishing the winter pruning. This …

Homemade Tibetan Food – Momos and Thupka

First off – you won’t really learn how to make Tibetan Momos from this blog. This is just about my experience TRYING to learn. With that said, enjoy the story telling, photo story, and yummy looking goodness. As some of you know, I’ve been teaching English with a program called Lha, and one of my …

Review: Mama’s Kitchen

Traveling through Asia has made me a little homesick for my mom’s food, and when I saw a small curtained shop that said “Mama’s Kitchen”, I walked right in without any hesitation. It seemed like a small ma and pa type shop, and I couldn’t have been more spot on. After months of eating out, …

Naan Alley

Almost needless to say, Tina and I did not enjoy our time in Delhi. It’s louder, dirtier, crazier, and sketchier than any of the other cities we visited. We tried our hardest to get in and out as fast as we could but because we couldn’t access wi-fi to arrange our next set of long-distance …

An Indian Homestay Experience

You know that scene in Cinderella when goes to wake her stepsisters and they have the vaulted ceiling rooms and she has to go clear across to room to draw open the ginormous drapes covering the windows? Ok, the guys have no clue what I’m talking about but I know at Leslie knows what I’m talking about. Well …

Chiang Mai Sunday Market – Mr. Kai’s Restaurant

When Nathan and I ended up at a new hotel called La Bateau Ivre (good deal 350-500 baht rooms, recommended if you are just stopping by or need a central place to start your exploration), I didn’t realize it was literally on the street where the infamous Chiang Mai Sunday Market is held. How lucky for …

Ing Doi Farmers Market

Waiting around all week to help Mink at the local farmers market wasn’t so terrible considering how much I loved Pai. I was so excited I even got up before the sun came up. It was the first morning I wasn’t woken up by the quacking ducks underneath my bungalow. I later found out it …

Siam Thai Cookery School

I’ve had my fair share of full day feasts. I started practicing how to survive these events while growing up at any kind of Chinese family gathering. Copious amounts of food was required just as much as your presence. I thought I had perfected this skill while I was in Italy during the many – …

A One Stop Shop

As Nathan and I made our way to Chiang Mai we made some quick one night stops. The first was Lopburi, also known as monkey town. You can see monkeys roaming the streets everywhere and there’s even a monkey temple for them. It’s like watching ants on an ant hill…except with lots of old bananas …

Train Travelin’

I have always been a big fan of trains. There is something about riding the train that makes you feel like you are actually travelling. You can see everything that goes by you in between destinations and you feel like you’re covering more ground.  When you fly you’re basically locked into an uncomfortable box with stale …

Tailing Chan Floating Market

Nathan and I wanted to check out a floating market, however we didn’t really want to make a whole day of it and since most of them were further out of town, we decided to check out the one closest to us. It was still an hour+ bus ride from our hotel, but we made …

Khlong Toei Market

We stumbled upon this market our first night in Bangkok. It is quite possibly the most massive market I have ever seen. Rows upon rows of every type of ingredient used in asian cooking available. Fish filleted upon like they’re ready to be plattered shashimi style, still breathing, and fish still trying to make their …

Cauliflower Pasta with Arugula

If you don’t like cauliflower, I strongly suggest you give this dish a chance. Personally, I’m not a big cauliflower fan. To me it’s a crunchy, tough, flavorless vegetable. I’m much happier with it’s sister: broccoli. But this pasta dish gave the vegetable a second chance for me. The key is slow cooking the cauliflower to …

Review: Maiale Volante…(The Flying Pig)

I haven’t been quite up on my restaurant reviews in Italy since I’ve been so fortunate to be able to have homemade Italian food twice a day. I haven’t explored the fancy places to dine, and for the most part restaurant Italian food doesn’t have the same warmth and comfort as the simple pasta or risotto dishes …

Valeria’s Wine Bread in 5 easy steps

For lack of a better description, we’ve dubbed Valeria’s recent breads as “Wine Bread”. We call it wine bread because it’s made with yeast collected from wine. I know you’re probably confused, so read this short previous entry about the process. Now that you have your mother yeast, when you are ready to bake all …

Creating a “mother yeast” (natural yeast) for baking

Did you know you can bake bread without commercial yeasts? You can cultivate your very own yeast at home, and it’s easier than you think! They call it Pasta Madre, which at first translated sounds like Mother Pasta. But Valeria calls it a Mother Yeast, a natural yeast base created by combining collecting the must …

Corrado’s Carbonara – AKA Real Italian Carbonara

Next to lasagna, one of the many Italian dishes I came to discover in my teenage years was Carbonara. However, since I’ve been living in Italy, it occurs to me that the Carbonara that is served all over the US that we’re used to picturing is not truly the way Carbonara has been traditionally made. …

Sagra Dell’uva Round 2

Experiencing my second wine festival was for lack of better words: great. Having Jordan around gave me a chance to really show someone from home all the wonderfulness I love about Italy. Jordan decided to drive a motorcycle from Rome to Cupramontana, which sounded like a great experience, but like all Italian travel experiences, it came …

Vendemmia 2012

This year’s harvest was much different than last year’s. With a hot summer, we began the harvest much earlier this year (before the end of August). And while we had a couple long haul days, overall we kept to a regular day schedule. The weather was MUCH cooler than last year’s so we didn’t get …

Traditional English Food by Tim

Pork Scratchings and beer I felt like a disaster my first night in London. I didn’t stand on the right side of the escalator, I fumbled through my coin purse trying to figure out what the difference was between my pounds, euros, and turkish lira, and apparently had to sample nearly ever beer on tap because English beers …