Even The Fastest Race Car Needs A Pit Stop | By: Valentina Cirasola | Author and Designer

19 Feb 2013 Leave a Comment

by Valentina Author in Culinary Trips, Italian Culture, Travel To Italy Tags: , , , ,

I read in a travel magazine that in North America 25% of the population never takes vacations and 37% will only take one week of vacation a year. Considering that North America is a highly productive part of the world, how can we keep our sanity and keep on producing our wealth if we don’t ever take a break from the daily grinding? We know that stress is the major cause of heart disease, high cholesterol and on and on, while our nerves are slowly being pulled apart as a rubber bend until they snap for good and become beyond repair.

Gargano

As we need restorative breaks in life, April 15, 2013 I am taking a group of curious travelers to Puglia, Italy, the region where I come from, South-East of Italy, sitting pretty on the blue-green Adriatic Sea looking at the white Greece and the Dalmatian Coast of the ex-Yugoslavia. Puglia is one of the many Italian regions not well-publicized to mass tourism, thus it is an area where the land is virgin, the air is pure, food is deliciously hand-made fresh every day, people are warm and friendly and prices are affordable. This is a place where you will reconnect with freedom, or will make you the protagonist of your own art of vacationing.

Trani

Traveling to Puglia is not about a super luxurious accommodation, but about finding new experiences and feeling new emotions. Puglia will teach you how to lose yourself in moments totally without the “hurry” word. I promise, while you are there, you will not want to see your electronics to connect with work back home!

Trulli

My father used to say: “Andiamo piano che abbiamo fretta” meaning “let’s go slow in order to go fast”. How true is that? If you don’t slow down, you will never be attentive to the details in your life and fall in love with them, or even appreciating the “unexpected” life brings.

Our private bus will take us to many places, however the trip is not a “tour de force”! At our leisure, I will take the group through beautiful landscape of orchards, vineyards and seaside views, art, history and shopping in markets. The group will learn to appreciate local traditions, the rhythm of nature and its sounds, healthy natural food cooked at home, colorful atmosphere and the pleasure of making your own food. Yes, perhaps, one or two nights we will cook with a local chef in the farmhouse where we will stay. Puglia will teach you never to eat alone. One a different day, we will have a crazy fun, dressing up in vintage clothes and ride in vintage cars along the Adriatic Sea, or perhaps you will want to experience a relaxing massage with olive oil, the “green gold” of this land.

PolignanoMare
Register here: http://valentinaexpressions.com/trips-2

I will take the group to an “unexpected” Italy through all the human senses, collecting memories or flavors and not material things. I will show you how simple food will change you forever, as it fulfills your soul and rewards your health. While we are on the subject, we will talk about Italian table manners and etiquette.

Eating in Barrels

Even The Fastest Race Car Needs A Pit Stop, you need to stop in Puglia! Please find price, all the information needed and watch the videos when you click on the link. Start packing and register here: http://valentinaexpressions.com/trips-2
Registrations will close March 20, 2013 and I want to see you on my bus. Ciao,
Valentina

http://www.Valentinadesigns.com
http://valentinadesigns.wordpress.com

Copyright © 2013 Valentina Cirasola, All Rights Reserved

Val:FarfalleStampValentina Cirasola will host three trips a year to Italy based on her three books with the intention of showing Italy with the eyes of a designer born in those parts and let people experience the ”wheel of emotions” in the non-commercial Italy away from beaten paths of massive tourism. Valentina is NOT a travel agency, but with the help of her Italian expert travel team, she will guide her tours through art, architecture, food, shopping and special adventures organized for people who want to live it up! Register here: http://valentinaexpressions.com/trips-2.

Find Valentina’s books on
Amazon: http://tinyurl.com/9agl5v9
Barnes&Nobles: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/c/valentina-cirasola

The Red On The Cheeks Comes From The Mouth | By: Valentina Cirasola | Author and Designer

29 Nov 2012 Leave a Comment

by Valentina Author in Culinary Items, Culinary Trips, Italian Culture, Italian Food, Uncategorized Tags: , , ,

I met a friend last night that has just returned from a month of vacation in Italy. She spent two weeks of her vacation in a kitchen of an agritourism to get some hands-on training on typical Italian cuisine. She is a personal chef and owns a catering company. Our catching up conversation was mostly centered on Italian food and table customs. She could not help but noticing the difference and making a comparison between her American eating customs and the Italian eating style. She noticed how properly people conducted themselves while sitting at the table and how she never spotted an Italian local person eating in the street while walking, an activity only foreigners and tourists engaged in.

At the restaurants and in the place where she was cooking for a few days, she went along with the flow of dinner and how her hosting friends conceived it. They ordered many dishes from antipasto to pasta, meats and vegetables to fruit, cheeses and dessert. The dishes arrived at table not in serving platters for sharing, as often is done in the States, but in single plates, each person got his/her portion of everything ordered. One time they ordered grilled fish and she did not expect to see the deboning process at the table, right before her eyes. That is a common practice in any respectable Italian restaurant. There was a considerable time space between each specialties, she told me. At first she was puzzled to why it took so long to finish the entire dinner and even longer to get the check, people lingered at the table, talking with espresso coffee and digestive drinks, but by observing how Italians carried on conversation and relaxed with wines and company, she understood right away that she was in the land of “Dolce Vita” where eating is an art and nothing else is important while sitting at a dining table. At some tables where business people gathered for lunch, talking about business, my friend observed, did not take place until after all the ordering of food and wines was completed and after people took interest in each other’s life, news of their families and the general happenings. Then during the second half of the dinner, business talk started.

She was all so surprised to see the freshness of food and its vibrant colors in both raw and cooked state. Fish was colorful and smelled like the sea, she said. Of course, she knows that in America supermarkets do not sell the entire fish stock in one day, thus the next day the store will re-propose old fish to the customers marinated in herbs or in some kind of dry rub. In Italy, nobody would buy the re-adaptation of fish. If I want fish, I go directly to the fishmongers. I am fortunate to live on a coastal place, where it is possible to go directly to the source.

My friend asked me why in Italy people don’t suffer gluten problems as people in the States do. You would think that with the large amount of pasta, rice, pizza and bread consumed in Italy, everyone would have gluten intolerance. Well, the answer is simple and crude: Italian food manufacturers do not stuff food with hormones, vitamins, sugar, sodium, MSG and other absurd chemicals. Read the labels of any American food and you will see that the majority of ingredients are unpronounceable chemicals and of real food there is only a faint percentage. In Italy egg yolks are orange, chickens are yellow and don’t eat corn; pigs are not fed with hormones but acorns, which makes our famous prosciutto (ham) so perfectly balanced; gelato is made with real milk and fruit; bread only contains flour, water, yeast and olive oil; vegetables are not sprayed with chemicals and fruit arrive at the supermarket with the dirt they grew in, not polished with wax. To this add the Italian life style. Italian people walk to stores, to work, to schools and most of the places they must reach everyday. In fact, my friend the chef, after all the commercial cooking she did for her own experience and the eating she did for her own enjoyment with daily wine tasting, lost 14 lb in one month and she could not explain how it happened. As I say during my books’ presentations: “The red on the cheeks comes from the mouth”. Eating real food daily will help release extra pounds and stabilize the weight. Most importantly, real food will introduce positive energy in the stomach, which in turn will exude from your skin pores and that is good enough to keep away for your system any food intolerance ever invented by the human mind. Ciao,
Valentina

http://www.Valentinadesigns.com

http://valentinadesigns.wordpress.com

Copyright © 2012 Valentina Cirasola, All Rights Reserved

Valentina Cirasola is an Italian Interior Designer with a passion for kitchens and cooking. She especially loves to design all those rooms with a “make me feel good” tag attached, such as kitchens and wine grottos, outdoor kitchens and outdoor rooms, great rooms and entertainment rooms. She is a public speaker and a mentor. She is also the author of two Italian regional cuisine books and a book on colors, all available here in this site on the Books page and on
Amazon: http://tinyurl.com/9agl5v9
 Barnes&Nobles: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/c/valentina-cirasola

Transformation Of A Flower | By: Valentina Cirasola | Author and Designer

24 Aug 2012 Leave a Comment

by Valentina Author in Culinary Items, Garden Design, Italian Food Tags: , , , ,

The more I read about all secret ingredients hiding in food and less I want to get closer to supermarkets. Becoming an urban gardener for me has been more a choice for keeping my good health than a result of having a large yard to turn into something beautiful. I could have added a swimming pool, designed a patio with flowers in pots, or I could have cemented it all to have a clean space for BBQ, outdoor cabana bar, umbrellas and lounge chairs. Instead I opted to work the land, make it fertile, get closer to Mother Earth, which in turn will gift me with a bounty of natural food and a lot of piece in my heart.

During the summer months I harvest zucchini flowers every day, they grow on top of the zucchini stems from which the zucchini will form, but to make zucchini grow healthier it is better to pick the flowers. Early morning is the best time to pick them, as they are wide open and in full beauty; they will stay open for about three days if kept in the refrigerator. Their size is huge, at time I have flowers as wide as 8-9 inches and 7-8 inches tall; they lend themselves well to get stuffed.

In Europe, zucchini flowers are a delicacy and sell at the open market for a high price. We use them in our food raw or we stuff them with anything we fancy and then we either bake or eat them stuffed and raw. All the ingredients forming the stuffing need a binder, such as rice, potatoes, or eggs; you can choose to stuff them with meat, fish, tuna, vegetables, or cheese, all finely chopped.

I stuffed the flowers in my photo with the Amaryllis in the background with white rice, tuna, olives, capers, onions, ginger and spinach. I stuffed the flowers in the photo with the green leaf plate with brown rice, ground meat (I buy a piece of beef, pork, or lamb and ground it myself, this way I don’t get the nasty pink slime added to the meat), chicory, cheese and garlic. Other types of stuffing to consider are cheese and eggs, or all vegetables with couscous, grains, or quinoa.

I find it is better to sauté the ingredients to allow them to become softer, malleable and easier to handle for the stuffing process, especially if you decide to use fresh meat or fresh fish.

Lightly butter a baking pan, align each stuffed flower tight (tops facing each other), lightly drizzle olive oil all over, sprinkle Parmigiano cheese, or any cheese for grating, add breadcrumbs and bake at 400° F. for about 45-50 minutes. The tops will be crispy, golden and the inside soft and delicious. If you like to freeze stuffed flowers to keep them for the winter like I do, wait they cool down, then box them up and put a label on the lid describing what’s in it. Three months from now, or when you decide to eat them, you will not remember what kind of stuffing is in the flowers.

It will take some time to stuff flowers, they are delicate, you can’t rush this process, therefore plan a good hour of your day to create this masterpiece. In my day there is always space for cooking and caring for myself. Find the recipe in full details in my book: Come Mia Nonna – A Return To Simplicity, on Amazon: http://tiny.cc/pkoo0
Ciao,
Valentina

Design Site: http://www.Valentinadesigns.com
Design Blog: http://valentinadesigns.wordpress.com

Copyright © 2012 Valentina Cirasola, All Rights Reserved

Valentina Cirasola is an Italian Interior Designer with a passion for kitchens and cooking. She operates in the USA and Europe. She loves to remodel homes and loves to turn unattractive spaces into castles, but especially loves to design kitchens and wine grottos, outdoor kitchens and outdoor rooms, great rooms and entertainment rooms.

Author of two regional Italian cuisine books available on this site on the Books page and on
Amazon: http://tiny.cc/pkoo0
Barnes&Nobles: http://tinyurl.com/6tqsu3o

An Italian Sunday | By: Valentina Cirasola | Author and Designer

27 May 2012 2 Comments

by Valentina Author in Holiday Decorations, Italian Culture, Italian Life Style Tags: , , , ,

In Italy not all Sundays are created equally. People dedicate Sundays to family lunches and the rest of the day is for leisure and social activities.
Meals are women’s best show on Sundays, they get up early in the morning, before everybody else to cook for the family and make sure everyone is treated properly from appetizers to desserts, from the smallest kid to the oldest person.  

This past Sunday was a different celebration. 
I am in Italy now, participating to my niece’s First Communion event. This is truly a treat, a day to remember and the first important mile stone in a Catholic person’s life. It happens every year in May. Boys and girls in elemenary school will go through a couple of years of religious school to learn how to become good Christians and get prepared for the big event of the First Communion. Some churches go as far as organizing spiritual retreats for the kids.
A wide range of businesses related to the First Communion affair are busy for the entire month of May preparing every details from cakes and sweets, to party favors. Restaurants, photographers, hair dressers, tailors and seamestresses work together to assure the event is successful,  parents and guests are happy and have something to remember. Jewelry stores are also very happy in the month of May, as the gold gifts for the First Communion are a must.

My niece was prepared as a bride for the altar. The day before,  all the women of the house including the First Communion girl got electrified with trying on dresses, shoes and jewelery, hairdresser appointments and making sure all the party favors were ready to go.  At night, nobody wanted to go to sleep, we didn’t really know where to put our heads made up so beautifully to keep them preserved  until the next day. And the next day was really special for the kids and the adults! Confetti and photographs greeted the little girl coming down from the stairs of her home, my niece, a 10 years old was dressed in white from head to toes. Her father was the only person allowed to accompany her to the church as her excort, the rest of us followed  later. The church isle was also made up with white flowers to celebrate all the 10 years old kids entering the Catholic World as faithful Christians while cheerful music filled the air.

What really intrigued me was the elegance of the Italian people dressed to honor their kids first mile stone of life. I am Italian and I should be used to see well-dressed people, but somehow I still manage to get surprised  when I see Italians young and old attending some functions. There was nothing out-of-place in their dressing up, not even a hair. Colors and proportions are always well-balanced. Of course, everything was “all’ultimo grido” of the latest fashion.  

The manners of Italian people at some formal affair are so affected and polite, but not disgustingly stuffed. I love to observe some youngsters giving up their seats to older people and helping them in getting up and down to follow the religious function. Certain things in my culture are still well-planted and are excellent foundations for generation to come.

The church of Maria Maddalena built in 1969 is an extravagant architecture considered very avant-guard for that era. A cement pagoda style, almost resembling a Japanese house was not well-accepted by the followers and much criticized by the public and the press. That church so many years later has seen a few funerals, weddings, births and joyous events in my family and in my friends’ families. To see Don Filippo again, the priest manager of that church, grey and older and remembering him young, with dark hair and just out of college, made me realize how much time has passed by and how deep my roots are in this land of Italy.

Ciao,
Valentina
http://www.Valentinadesigns.com

Valentina Cirasola is an author and a designer, writing about and observing Italian culture and style. Check out her books available on this site in the Books section and on Amazon.com.

I Met A Living Legend | By: Valentina Cirasola | Author and Designer

29 Nov 2011 Leave a Comment

by Valentina Author in Italian Culture, Italian History, Italian Life Style, Italian Music, Italian-American History Tags: , , , , ,

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Many out of the ordinary people have characterized my month of November this year. I have seen galleries of a few ascending artists all expressing themselves through an interesting painting language. I have met Nico Cirasola an Italian filmmaker whose dry story telling style is making his voice heard across Oceans. I attended the performance of The Interpreti Veneziani with their Baroque music at Le Petit Trianon and met the artists personally after the show reception. To talk to the artists is an impossible task when they perform in Italy. I spoke at the Rotary Club and met some marvelous people; some of my friends are helping schools planning for a better nutrition for their kids. These are extraordinary people who make a mark in the society and leave a sweet legacy, but I never would have imagined meeting a living legend, an Italian emigrant who made his fame playing country western music. He is the only Italian in this genre. I met him at the Capital Club in San Jose, CA when the delegation of the Patrons of Italian Culture from Los Angeles came to visit our organization the Italian American Heritage Foundation in the Silicon Valley.

The legend Giuseppe Quartuccio aka Shorty Joe, that evening received a lifetime achievement award from the Italian American Heritage Foundation for his contributions to the South Bay Musical scene in Country and Western Music.

The story of his beginning in the country western music was so fascinated that I decided to pull up a chair and sit with him at the table with his friends and wives. I let him carry me through times so far away from my age, places and famous people I had never heard until that night. Country western music is not known in Italy, it was mesmerizing to know that an Italian emigrant, coming from the land of “Bel Canto” had fallen in love with such a very regional American music and even made a famous name for himself.

The story goes that he was born in 1924 Monreale Sicily and immigrated to New York with his parents as a boy and slowly moved to the West Coast.

His parents worked as farm laborers and cannery workers. One-day Giuseppe’s father told the kids that if they would help him crack walnuts and almonds after work, he would save enough money to buy a radio set and so it happened. Giuseppe was 12 when he could finally hear his first piece of music on the radio set, but it just happened to be a country western music.  Young Giuseppe fell in love with that type of music and in that moment he decided his career, as an adult, would have been to play country western music, despite the fact he didn’t even know how to play one single note on the guitar, or any other musical instruments.

http://youtu.be/9SEDK6ImfOg

He created his first country western trio band called the “cowboy band”. Shorty Joe’s idol Dude Martin  and his music influenced him in the typical style of a country music from West Coast. After WWII the band grew in size and became an octet made of all Italian-American guys, called the “Red Rock Canyon Cowboys”. From then on the band recorded under the Bella and Golden West labels.

http://youtu.be/LKnCAXclg48

Shorty Joe and his music has accompanied famous singers in the world of country music as Hank Williams, Kitty Wells, Hank Snow, Ernest Tubb, Tex Williams, Lefty Frizzel, Roy Acuff and almost every other Grand O’l Opry singer of 1940′s and 1950′s.

I learned that his band’s records are housed at the Southern Folklife Collection at the University of North Carolina and they are now collectible items.
He donated his complete costume along with his original 79 rpm records, LP album and all of his printed materials to the San Jose Historical Museum where they remain on permanent display as a pioneer of Santa Clara County.

Shorty Joe, a delightful seasoned man, with pudgy face and square glasses, always smiling has been married to his wife Jennie Valenti for 65 years. What is your secret,  I asked? I didn’t get an answer, his wife shrugged her shoulders.

The evening was very pleasurable. I met, among many notables, Louise Canepa, the composer of Sicilians in Monterey  music CD and many of Shorty Joe’s friends too.

This, among many of my Italian people’s stories, is another successful story of lives of immigrants overcoming difficulties to realize their dreams. I cannot be any more proud of this Italian culture that has thought us to never give up and be the best in everything we do. Ciao,
Valentina

Copyright © 2011 Valentina Cirasola, All Rights Reserved


Valentina Cirasola is a trained Italian Interior Designer in business since 1990. Being Italian born and raised, Valentina’s design work has been influenced by Classicism and stylish, timeless designs.  She is a designer well-known to bring originality to people’s homes. As an Italian designer and true to her origins, she provides only the best workmanship and design solutions.
She is a guest writer with her column “The Good Life” on ThePMShow: http://thepmshow.tv/category/more/the-good-life/valentina-cirasola/
She also writes articles on designs subjects: http://valentinadesigns.wordpress.com/

She is also the author of two published Italian regional cuisine books, available on this site on the Books page  and in various locations: http://outskirtspress.com/ComeMiaNonna
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lnq8baaAq0M
http://outskirtspress.com/SinsOfAQueen

Why Kids Eat Food For Kids? | By: Valentina Cirasola | Author and Designer

09 Nov 2011 6 Comments

by Valentina Author in Culinary Items, Italian Culture, Italian Food, Kitchen Design, Self-Improvement Tags: , , , , , ,


Poor kids, they get to choose their food from the kids’ menu and eat junk stuff while the adults indulge in every possible delicacy of the world!

My girlfriend was complaining that schools serve junk food to the kids for lunch. They are so used to eat “useless” food that when they return home from daily school, don’t even want to hear about the “real food” their mom, my girlfriend prepares.
She was telling me that her girlfriend in Italy commented that when her kids are in school (Italian schools that is) eat as adults do and the school menu looks the same as a restaurant menu, but I think it has to do a lot with our culture.

In Italy food is an integral part of our daily life, we get up in the morning and already think of what to eat for dinner. That gives us plenty time for planning the daily meals, go to the market and buy the food needed for the day.
Yes, we go to the market every day as Italians eat fresh food daily and not from the freezer, or pre-made, processed food prepared a year ago and sold in styrofoam packages, with a plastic film on top.

In America, au contraire of Italians, I have observed a huge disconnection from food. American “real food” is good, tasty, nutritional, colorful, which says a lot when people eat food in all the colors, yet Americans have opted for fast food and for days empty of cooking, as if cooking is beneath them (sorry, but I had to say this).

In my circle of friends and clients, I know many people who don’t cook and don’t even know how to boil water.
I also know many people who take the time to get up at 4:00 am to go to the gym until 6:30-7:00 am before tackling their day.
They do find the time to exercise, but have no time for cooking and eating well. I see no point of working the muscles to a statuesque perfection when the stomach is full of junk food.
The first death happens in the stomach! Just so you know.

I am including a link to an interested article I read about the artificial preservatives and color dyes in many junk food.
http://blog.sfgate.com/sfmoms/2010/09/10/whats-in-a-twinkie-kids-favorite-food-deconstructed/

OK, enough of that!

Kids should be educated at home first. I don’t think it is a good practice to give in to any kids’ requests. Kids will try anything to bend the parents to a nice sculpture and most of the time they will succeed. Parents are their kids’ managers, but often it is the other way around in America.

In my Italian family, when I was in the age I had no say so about anything, as in many of my friends’ families, there was no choice of food. We ate all that our moms prepared and if we didn’t like it, too bad, we went hungry. There was no alternative, no other choice and no junk food either. Our parents did that for our good, not to be abusive. Food in Italy is perceived as our friend and not our enemy that makes us loses time. It is not just perceived, it is respected, it is loved, appreciated and not wasted. That’s why kids in Italy will never eat from a kids’ menu, not in restaurants, not in the family, not in the school.
I have young nieces and nephews, they are a different generation, but their mom, my sister, taught them the same as our parents taught us about food. Equally, I can say about the young cousins in my family, when we sit at the table, we all eat the same food.
Bare in mind, this is not only the Italian people’s prerogative; I have seen the same attitude towards food in many cultures too, except in America. Here people have embraced a fast culture and don’t have time for food and cooking, the most important fuel for our brain. My question is:  what do they have time for?

Unfortunately,  in America, due to this mentality of everything fast, kids are treated as a non-important class, when it comes to food.
Why do they have to be fed so badly with junk food in the growing stage, the most important time of their life?
Kids will be the future managers of our society, we have a responsibility not to grow sick flowers!

Schools are expensive. For the money parents pay to send their kids to school, they should be able to get at least one healthy meal a day in return, but they don’t.
Parents should be able to count on schools not only to educate on academics, but to educated their kids on nutrition and cooking to provide them with the knowledge that will contribute to their life time good health. Sport, cooking and nutrition should be obligatory subjects to take, no excuse and while we are in this subject, teach kids also how to get closer to earth and grow natural food.
In the future and I strongly believe this, people who know how to grow food from seeds, who know how to make breads, pasta and know how to eat with vegetables, people who know how to preserve food will be the  survivors.

Please, parents make your own battle against bad food in schools, let your voice be heard and if schools don’t have the right person with the right knowledge of food, find that person.
Remember when your kids get sick due to bad nutrition, you are the only one to pay for, not the school.

I am an advocate of good eating, please don’t mistreat our kids, they are our future heritage.  As a food author, I am available to be hired for speaking engagements, or any seminars in any schools. Ciao,
Valentina

www.Valentinadesigns.com

Copyright © 2011 Valentina Cirasola, All Rights Reserved

Valentina Cirasola is an Italian Interior Designer with a passion for kitchens and cooking. She especially loves to design all those rooms with a “make me feel good” tag attached, such as kitchens and wine grottos, outdoor kitchens and outdoor rooms, great rooms and entertainment rooms. She is a public speaker and a mentor. She is also the author of two Italian regional cuisine books, available here in this site on the Books page and in various locations:
Come Mia Nonna–A Return to Simplicity
Sins Of A Queen – Italian Appetizers and Desserts
http://outskirtspress.com/ComeMiaNonna
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lnq8baaAq0M
http://outskirtspress.com/SinsOfAQueen

Robert Taitano, a friend and business associate says: “Valentina - an International Professional Interior Designer is now giving you an opportunity to redesign your palate”.  


Calendimaggio | By: Valentina Cirasola | Author and Designer

20 May 2011 Leave a Comment

by Valentina Author in Culinary Items, Culinary Trips, Italian Culture, Italian Food, Italian Life Style Tags: , , , , ,

So much is happening in the world of Italy in the month of April and May. I have been there working, vacationing and taking notes.
Not knowing when work and play stop and start, I am considering myself lucky. The dilemma is what to write about first. Do I write about the Saint Nicholas celebration in Bari, which happens again in December, or do I write about Saint Francis festival, the “Calendimaggio” in Assisi, which happens only in May? I have seen both celebrations in the same month, they are unforgettable historic folklorist events and I don’t want to lose the opportunity to spread the words.

The “Calendimaggio” festival happens every year on the first Thursday, Friday and Saturday of May to inaugurate the arrival of spring, greeting the rebirth of life, after winter hibernation and hardships. During the centuries many northern European cultures have celebrated the arrival of spring with flowers and colors.

The Celts had two seasons in a year, the dark and the light season, the effect of spring did not come until the beginning of May.
The Romans during the “Floralia” celebrated Maia and Flora, two goddesses of Spring. Groups of young gaudentes in flowery dresses decorated with flowers in the hair and all over their bodies, sang, danced and charmed the people in the streets with their serenades.

During the Middle Age the newly adopted Gregorian calendar changed the name of the spring celebration to “Kalende di Maggio” (Calendar of May), but the objective was the same: to propitiate the abundance and good fortune at the beginning of the season transformation, when trees bloom and start producing fruits. This transformation of nature is the fundamental base of a better life. Good food means good health, which in turn means better spiritual life. Banquets, bonfires, songs and dances at the top of the hill celebrated the season transformation, while inevitably the so-called “honorable” citizens erupted in horseback fights.

Bitter and hard conflicts between various factions were the reason for creating Saints, symbols and flags in most history of people and Assisi’s history is no different. Today, the show of the skilled flag wavers is magnetic. The colors of the flags are blue for secular authority and red for pontifical authority, both temporal and religious powers in the Middle Age.

The spring celebration, a pagan custom, blends well with the religious celebration of Saint Francis, the patron of Italy, which happens simultaneously. Young Francesco (Francis) renounced his nobel and rich heritage, adopted a simple brown robe with a rope in the waist as his dress and served as the “poor of God” looking after the poor and sick people, spreading the Word of God. 

The beginning of the spring season today is celebrated much the same way with love songs, choral music and street dances accompanied by violins, guitars and lutes. There are competitions, games and events, without the bloodshed of the old Middle Age. Medieval processions and torch-lit parades will recapture the old charm.

The festival leads to the prestigious Palio with two districts of the town of Assisi competing against each other for a valuable prize. The districts are the ‘Magnifica Parte de Sotto and the ‘Nobilissima Parte de Sopra’, meaning the Low and High Districts of Assisi.

All of this fun and re-enactment of history happens while the aroma of the traditional porchetta and roast-suckling pig fills the air of the entire town.

It was worth going out-of-the-way of my designated path while in Italy. I had never seen the city of Assisi overflowing with a kaleidoscope of colors, flowers, adorned trees, various symbols, statues, altars, religious figurines, flags and gonfalons, as in this three days of celebration of life, peace and food.

People were so happy and proud of their Italian heritage and I am too. Ciao,
Valentina
www.Valentinadesigns.com

Copyright © 2011 Valentina Cirasola, All Rights Reserved

Valentina Cirasola is a trained Italian Interior Designer in business since 1990. Being Italian born and raised, Valentina’s design work has been influenced by Classicism and stylish, timeless designs. She will create your everyday living with a certain luxury without taking away your comfort. She loves to restore old homes, historic dwellings and she focuses on remodeling. She is interested in food in history studies and historical events.

Author of two Italian regional cuisine books available here in this site on the Books Page and in various other locations:
Come Mia Nonna-A Return To Simplicity and Sins Of A Queen
http://outskirtspress.com/ComeMiaNonna
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lnq8baaAq0M
http://outskirtspress.com/SinsOfAQueen

 

Silicone – Love Or Hate | By: Valentina Cirasola | Author and Designer

26 Apr 2011 Leave a Comment

by Valentina Author in Culinary Items, Design, Kitchen Design Tags: , , , ,

Silicone is not an invention of the last moment, it has entered our homes with hundreds of kitchen and bath objects and accessories to make our lives easier.
Thanks to all its properties silicone is a material that can be used in many ways. It offers all the solutions for cooking savory and sweet food, substituting the conventional cookware used so far.

The use of silicone went from commercial kitchens, pharmaceutical processing, and meat-packing plants into residential kitchens.
FDA grade silicone has been used in applications where food is present, it is guaranteed against toxicity and completely without odors.
Silicone cookware being lightweight and easy to manage are an ideal solutions for people with arthritis to the hands.

We can use silicone baking pans to make cookies, or bake a cake, to cook fish or roasts, we don’t need to use wax oven paper any more, nor butter or oils as non-stick techniques, thus eliminating some calories from our diet. Silicone cookware are flexible and bendable making the extraction of cooked food an easy process along with saving storage space without ever loosing its shapes. They are good to use up to 3000 times of cooking.

As a designer, I am supposed to report on new products. Silicone cookware is original, functional and very colorful, making the art of cooking a game even for kids. I am open to all new products and new opportunities, but I must be sincere about my own ways.  My kitchen is well supplied with the best chef cookware. The pleasure of my cooking is not only about the good aroma and good food I can cook, but is also about operating with the professional cookware and cutlery I possess. I don’t make it do, I have every possible solution in cookware for every speciality I prepare. Cooking for me is a serious matter and it requires professional equipment, but it is also a pleasurable game.


A lamb stew with beans in a clay pot as in my photo (right) could not taste right if it was made in an aluminum pan.
Each food need it own vessel.
I am still enamored of ceramic and clay pots and still love to cook in my stainless steel, all clad and Calphalon cookware. I am sure I will for a long time and that is the game I like to play in my kitchen. Ciao,
Valentina
www.Valentinadesigns.com 

Copyright © 2011 Valentina Cirasola, All Rights Reserved  

Valentina Cirasola is an Italian Interior Designer with a passion for kitchens and cooking. She operates in the USA and Europe.  She loves to remodel homes and loves to turn ugly spaces into castles, but especially loves to design kitchens and wine grottos. 

She is the author of two Italian regional cuisine books available here in this site on the Books page and in various other locations: 

http://outskirtspress.com/ComeMiaNonna
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lnq8baaAq0M
http://outskirtspress.com/SinsOfAQueen


I Like Them Bitter | By: Valentina Cirasola | Author and Designer

12 Apr 2011 2 Comments

by Valentina Author in Italian Food, Italian Life Style, Italian-Table-Customs Tags: , , , , ,

“Eat bitter vegetables, they will purify the liver!” This was my grandmother’s admonishment every time she prepared vegetables, which was everyday.

As kids my two brothers always turned their noses up at this statement, it sounded an awful punishment, but not for me. I was an experimenter, I liked to eat since a very young age and taste, taste, taste everything.

In the spring time, Cardoni, Cardoon in English, a very long hard stalk vegetable is available in any market, at least in those markets which caters to their ethnic clientele. The  younger shoots also called  Cardoncelli, not to confuse them with cardoncelli mushrooms, are very tender and less bitter. In any case, young or well-grown, Cardoni is not a well-known vegetable.
It looks like celery, it is very bitter, fibrous, medium green color and the short leaves have a powdery feel to the touch. They are delicious in every cooking solutions, but most people not knowing what it is, get discouraged and leave it on the shelves of the supermarket.

The reason some vegetables taste bitter is due to the presence of phytonutrients that act as powerful antioxidants including some flavonoids and polyphenols. Most of these antioxidant nutrients are bitter. Be prepared,  Cardoni are very bitter.

In my Italian culture, bitterness in vegetables is embraced wells for the variety of flavors components and for the perceived medicinal properties. In fact many of the Italian digestive and after dinner drinks are made from artichokes and/or many bitter herbs and vegetables, but please don’t tell me these particular drinks taste like cough drops, it is not true. To retain and enhance the bitterness of some vegetable, we Italians often use the sautéing method in garlic and oil, versus boiling or steaming them.

One way to cook Cardoni is with eggs:
Peel them with a potato peeler to eliminate the stringy fibers, cut them in small pieces, parboil in salted water for 7-8 minutes. Beat a few eggs, season with salt, pepper and Parmigiano cheese, set aside. Sauté Cardoni in garlic and olive oil until translucent, add the beaten eggs. Stir until the eggs become scrambled and well mixed with Cardoni. Adjust season to you liking. A robust glass of red wine is very appropriate.

Baked au gratin is another way to prepare them. Peel, chop and parboil in salted water like in the previous method. Butter a baking dish, arrange the Cardoni parboiled, add beaten eggs, season to your liking. On top add a lot of Parmigiano cheese, breadcrumbs and a few dollops of butter. Bake under the oven grill until the top is brown and the eggs are coagulated.

Of course Cardoni in soups with potatoes, or baked with hot sausages, or lamb are equally a delight to eat . They are fresh and light, too bad they only come out in the Spring.

The tongue has receptors, especially in the back side. Keep the taste buds active by exercising all 50.000 of them with sweet, salty, sour and bitter food.
Don’t try to overcook vegetables to take out the bitterness, Cardoni are supposed to do a good job for you, cleanse the liver and keep you young.
My grandmother was always right. Ciao,
Valentina
www.Valentinadesigns.com

Copyright © 2011 Valentina Cirasola, All Rights Reserved

Valentina Cirasola is an Italian Interior Designer with a passion for kitchens and cooking. She operates in the USA and Europe.
She loves to remodel homes and loves to turn ugly spaces into castles, but especially loves to design kitchens and wine grottos.

She is the author of two published Italian regional cuisine books, available in this site on the Books page, Amazon and in various locations:
Come Mia Nonna – A Return To Simplicity –  http://outskirtspress.com/ComeMiaNonna
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lnq8baaAq0M
Sins Of A Queen - http://outskirtspress.com/SinsOfAQueen

Planting Food, Beauty And Relax | By: Valentina Cirasola | Author and Designer

14 Mar 2011 Leave a Comment

by Valentina Author in Design, Italian Food, Italian Life Style, Self-Improvement, Uncategorized Tags: , , ,

Yesterday was a beautiful March day, I wanted to take advantage of the sun, the warm day and my good disposition. It was the right time to think of planting seed for new food. In many European countries is still snowing in March and is the same in Italy, but here in California, in the climate zone 7 and 8, March is the perfect month to plant. My family in Italy is getting jealous!

March is the right time to start feeding houseplants again and repot when necessary. Get the soil tested if you are planning to do some serious food and fruit trees planting. This is the month to start seeds indoor, prune trees and shrubs and get all the garden tools ready for your Spring planting. If you have wet soil in the garden, it is better not to walk on it, use stepping-stones. In my garden, I have many rows of them around plants and vegetation, they are  decorative and don’t get your feet wet or dirty.

I started with Turbo onions, which is a lovely round onion that stores well and the Red Baron red onion, strong-tasting which produces a heavy crop.
I planted shallots, a more delicate onion, which I use more for fish dishes and some other delicate dishes. I want some asparagus and started some crops indoor, such as aubergines the kind called Diamond, originated in the Ukraine. It crops relatively quickly from a sowing in March.

Started cauliflowers, cabbage and tomatoes. Tomato seeds also do well indoor. I got the gartenperle type, small, cherry size, sweet and tasty, grow in beautiful colors as pink-red, deep ruby-red, pink to rosy red. They are great for containers and even hanging baskets. I make a lot of fast and delicate sauces with them. Tomatoes are always a big surprise, they either come out in overwhelming large quantity, or nothing at all.

In mid March plant some early potatoes if the weather where you are permits it, I will.

I bought a few packets of mixed salad-leaf seeds, can’t do without salad in my garden, it’s so easy to grow and need not much care. Put a few seeds on to the surface of your compost and don’t cover them with a thick layer, they need to breathe.

Towards the end of March when the soil has warmed up, I will want to plant some climbing French beans. I have already prepared the soil and placed cane poles in place. Later I will make two holes at the base of each pole and a couple of seeds per hole. Then, I need to be patient.

Between my food I also plant some beauty. Some begonias, dahlias, dusty miller, geraniums, impatiens, marguerite daisies, marigolds, all annuals to beautify my crop.

While thinking of food crop, I was also thinking of cooking in the garden. I made a very simple outdoor cookery device out of a clay pot and bricks.
No cement or mortar, the bricks are just laid one on top of the other in a circle, the clay pot sits inside of the circle. Inside of the pot more bricks form a flat surface for the wood chips and a grill sits on top of them. Food will be placed on the grill. A clay cover with a whole in the center to allow the steam to escape will keep the food cooking for long time.

This is slow food at its best and I am prepared for relaxing weekends, a good time for writing more books and more blogs, or having some friends over.
I really don’t care what goes into my car, but I really care what I put in my stomach.
Please leave a comment below, I can help you with any of your design challenges, including landscape too. I now offer design consultations on-line and without going outside my office I can create an “outdoor room”  for you, or the most beautiful space of your dream.  Ask me for details. Ciao,
Valentina
www.Valentinadesigns.com

Copyright © 2011 Valentina Cirasola, All Rights Reserved

Valentina Cirasola has been in business as a designer since 1990.
She has helped a variegated group of fun people realizing their dreams with homes, offices, interiors and exteriors.
She designs architectural landscape as a complement to the residential design concept as a unity.

http://www.youtube.com/user/affluentliving#p/u/2/eC2LVXANG5U
http://www.youtube.com/user/affluentliving#p/u/0/kWuB7I8uJjg



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