Beneath My Feet | Valentina Cirasola | Author and Designer

Beneath my feet usually there is a beautiful floor. I am one of those designers proposing clients stone flooring instead of wall-to-wall carpet. I tell them about the versatility of stones, the easy care and low maintenance stone require, how easy it is to live with stones and how much more hygienic stones are versus carpet.

In my home I have a warm, beautiful terracotta tiles floor, but when I go out to my garden, I walk on grass, gravel, weeds, stepping-stones and around all of that there is the food I grow. I cultivate many vegetables, fruit and a variety of tomatoes, which are as sweet as candy. Some years my tomatoes come in a great abundance and I make a ton of sauce for the winter, turn them in sun-dried tomatoes, I use them for salads, or eat them off the vines like fruit. In fact tomato is a fruit and not a vegetable.

One of the foods I have eating since my early days of life and keep on eating to these days is bread and tomatoes. Some people call it bruschetta, but the type I eat is really bread and tomato. Bruschetta is a toasted or grilled sliced bread, with a garlic spread and a lot of toppings. For my bread and tomato, I only need a fresh crusty bread, type of ciabatta or Pugliese style, basil leaves, olive oil, sea salt, fresh chili pepper and of course tomatoes. I open the bread roughly, not even with a knife, split open the tomatoes on top of the bread allowing all the juices to penetrate the bread. I season it with salt, chili pepper, basil leaves and a generous swirl of extra virgin olive oil. Done! I eat it open face and not as a sandwich. Next to it, a piece of Italian Gorgonzola cheese is always welcomed. This is often my breakfast or lunch.

Sometimes, I spend hours creating gourmet food that have appearance and taste of a five-star dish and guess what? To me nothing will ever compare to bread and tomato.

I always wonder why such a simple type of food with so few poor ingredients taste so divine and it is so filling? The answer is in the land, the sun and singing to the vines. Ciao,
Valentina
http://www.valentinadesigns.com

This is my participation to WordPress photo challenge. https://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_photo_challenge/beneath-your-feet/

Valentina Cirasola is the designer who cooks. She has a deep interest in food that led her as an autodidact in the studies of food in history, natural remedies, nutrition, well-being and learning food of the world. She wrote two books on Italian regional cuisine and one book on color theory, in which she included one recipe for each color. Get your copy of Valentina’s books on
Amazon: http://goo.gl/xUZfk0
Barnes&Nobles: http://goo.gl/q7dQ3w