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



The Small Steps | By: Valentina Cirasola | Author and Designer

07 Mar 2011 Leave a Comment

by Valentina Author in Design, Marketing, Uncategorized Tags: , ,

In my life I had many things to achieve and many spaces to fill. It is true that in order to be successful, we must be balanced in five areas of our life, love, family, financial, health and work. But most people forget that the Roman Empire was not made in one day.
God took even seven days to create the Universe and on the seventh day he rested.

The thing about making it big in this life and doing it fast is that invariably the first steps will be small and slow. Which oddly, for many, is the same reason they don’t take those small steps.

Picture you taking a trip in-car for 3,000 miles. You get in the car, but you don’t see all the 3,000 miles in front of you, you barely see 500 yards and a night you see even less, you see only as far as the car beams show you the way. So what does it mean? It means you are taking your 3,000 miles trip in small steps. Now picture your life. We all have been instructed to do resolution at the beginning of the year, but most of the time life gets in the way and after a month or two we have completely forgotten about the new year resolutions.

My vacation is my first resolution at the beginning of the year and the first thing I put on the calendar. By doing that, I know not to schedule anything around that time and I know I will tone my brain and regenerate my energy during that resting time, which will allow me to come back to my work strong as ever. Then I take my baby steps with my formula of the four 10′s: 10 days, 10 weeks, 10 months, 10 years. My goals of the first 10 days will take me to my goals of 10 weeks; my goals of 10 weeks will take me to my 10 months and to the 10 years goals.  I am a person who lives in the present, I am not good in seeing ten years in front of me, but by taking the small steps I have reached all the goals, I have done everything I said I was going to do in life and I am continuing planning more this same way.

I love my profession, before I became an interior designer I was a fashion designer and owned my fashion company: Atelier Valentina.
Two of the things I wanted to do and did them. At the beginning of this conversation I said I had many spaces to fill in my life.
In 2008 the economy suddenly changed and so did client’s thinking, all of a sudden I was surrounded by negativity.  I didn’t want to be part of any negativity and I said to myself it was time to create my economy.  The moment to publish that book I had in mind had arrived, the time was right and I was ready.

At the end of 2008, about November I started to organize my thoughts,  photographs, drawings and I started writing the text. Once I had the title of the book in my head, I also had the full book plans. I decided the book was going to be about my grandmother simple and healthy way of cooking. I wrote every day, a couple of hours a day for 5 months. I thought that if I wrote one chapter a day I would have had  365 chapter by the end of the year. I didn’t want an encyclopedia, but a smaller manageable book was a doable goal. Once I choose the publisher, I sent text and graphics to them and went on vacations. The next six months were spent communicating with the editors, editing, formatting and printing the book. In Nov. 2009 my first book of 152 pages was published; a year later in Dec. 2010 my second book was published. I am working on the third book on the subject of colors and it might be published at the end of 2011.

As you see my formula of the four 10s and baby steps has helped me becoming a published author.
In the meantime, I am working with my clients and doing what I love:  designing and remodeling their homes.

Making baby steps and taking action means you must believe in your abilities, you must be sure everything in your mind is doable and attainable in real-time and you must put an end date to all your goals. At one point in my life, I must have dreamt of becoming a princess, that’s right it was just a dream and not an attainable goal. Instead I became the Queen of my book,  Sins Of A Queen , that was a real and attainable goal!

You might ask  where do I take all this energy? I take it from my good food. Good food will produce good energy, junk food will produce junk energy, it cannot get any simpler than this! In my book I say “the red on the cheeks come from the mouth” for a reason. If you have the right elements in your body, you will function like a Swiss clock work. Good food is fuel to my brain, so I eat everything in moderation and everyday I can lit the whole city with the energy I get from it. 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. Author of two Italian cultural regional books:
Come Mia Nonna–A Return to Simplicity
Sins Of A Queen – Italian Appetizers and Desserts

Both books are available in this site at the Books page and at these locations:

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

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