Italian Kiwi – Recipes, Travel, and More!
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Beef Roast Simmered In Red Wine (Brasato Al Barolo)
Getting ahead of the holiday panic Thanksgiving and Christmas are stealthily creeping up on us, and are about to jump from behind a door and scream, “BOO!!!!”. I thought I’d head them off at the pass and get you thinking about an idea to make for the holidays already, so you won’t be so…
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Fave dei Morti – Cookies For All Saints’ Day
What are Fave Dei Morti cookies? I decided not to translate the name of these biscuits in the title, Fave Dei Morti, as I’m not sure how many people would want to read about cookies called “Broad Beans of the Dead”. They don’t sound very appetising in English! The almond cookies are traditionally…
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Tomato Passata: Saving The Taste Of Summer
So many tomatoes! What to do with them all? My lovely neighbour grew a whole lot of tomato plants from seed this year. He had so many, that he gave me piles of seedlings to plant in my vegetable garden. Usually, I care for the tomatoes night and day for months, then we…
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Crispy Roast Potatoes
One of the best roast potato recipes I have ever eaten Potatoes are one of my favourite foods to eat. I’ll eat them any which way, except raw….though I would probably even eat them raw if they weren’t bad for you! And one of my favourite ways to eat my favourite tuber is…
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Concorde Grape Sorbet (Sorbetto all’Uva)
Waiting for grapes in the Fall Fall is fast approaching. The mornings are cooling off and, at least where I live, the olives are swelling on the trees and the tomato plants are starting to go brown. I love this time of year as all sorts of fruits and vegetables are coming into…
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Mrs Rawnsley’s Sponge Cake
Discovering history through an old recipe book Who is Mrs Rawnsley? Where did she get this recipe for sponge cake from? Did she make it up herself? Did she get it from a friend or a neighbour? These are questions that I’d love to have the answer to, but unless one of Mrs…
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New Zealand Life: The Farm
This post is very different from my normal ones. It’s not a recipe, and it’s not about traveling or hiking. This one is more personal. I grew up on a sheep farm in the Northern part of the North Island of New Zealand. To get there, you turn inland at a town called…
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The Mercantour: Hiking To The Refuge De Nice
In the Summer we do an annual pilgrimage to the Mercantour National Park which straddles the border between France and Italy. If you click on these links and you can read about our adventure with army jeeps and cows that blocked bridges, and about the time we went to Allos Lake high in the mountains and…
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Aperol Spritz: The Aperitif That Has Taken Italy By Storm
It’s always time for a Spritz With all the Summery weather going on, I’m finding it very difficult to pack for our upcoming trip to New Zealand when it’s hot and Summery sunny here in Europe, and freezing Wintery cold down there. The kids have been complaining bitterly as I keep getting them…
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Potato Salad With Green Beans and Bruschetta Bread
What to do when your vegetables die and the mosquitoes arrive in force The heat has suddenly arrived with a vengeance. I went from dodging thunderstorms and procrastinating about sowing seeds to grow some vegetables to realizing that suddenly, just in one day, it is now way too hot for them to survive.…
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The Drôme: Exploring The Magical Saoù Forest
Hiking In The Drôme As promised, here is Part III of the fabulous trip we took to The Drôme recently! To catch up on the previous ravings about the area, you can click on these links to read about the villages we visited and the wine festival we bumped into while we were there.…
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The Drôme: On The Clairette Trail
Discovering the bubbly beauty of Clairette wine Last week I introduced you to an incredible area of France called The Drôme. If you missed it, you can read all about it here. When we were there, we discovered a wonderfully bubbly wine called Clairette that’s produced in the region. I’d never heard of…
