Valentina Expressions

Sunday is a day for rest and self-care, dedicated to the family if there is one, and seeing or call friends. My Sunday starts with video calls with my family in Italy and friends in the world. In the midst of my Sunday relaxation practice, I include exercise and food planning for the entire week. Although it is pleasant at times to go out to eat, be served and get to know international food, I hardly eat in restaurants for a variety of reasons, the most important one is that I cannot control my fat, salt, and sugar intake. Some restaurants totally corrupt ethnic food to cater to the American palate, e.g. making pasta soft and not “al dente” as Italian would eat it, just to give you a small example. Ethnic restaurants only make food that is commercially well-known. In the case of Italian food, restaurants make the usual lasagna, veal parmigiana, spaghetti meatballs and leave out an entire selection of interesting food in the Italian cuisine repertoire. I eat so much better in my home, I see no point going out to eat and this is the same for any type of restaurants, not just Italian. I have noticed the same trend in other ethnic restaurants, the food is never as good as it would be in the original homeland country.

Weekly menu – On Sunday, I make the list of the weekly menu and I stick to it. I buy fresh food once or twice a week and never have frozen food to rely on. On Sunday, I cook a few specialties for the week that can stay in the fridge for two-three days, the rest will be cooked as the week progresses. Some Sundays are devoting to making bread and pasta varieties, the only type of food I keep in my freezer.

(Click on each photo to view it larger)

Pens-Book-Lemons by ©Valentina Cirasola

Make cooking a fun moment – Cooking is not beneath me, it’s not a chore and I consider it a relaxing activity. I put my favorite music on, or my favorite TV program, pour me a glass of wine or prosecco and fly around food like a dragonfly, happy to extract the best out of raw food, just like a dragonfly sucks the sweetness out of the flowers. In the kitchen, I am the orchestra maestro composing “allegro” food and making sure the “alti e bassi” chromatic colors mix well with all the flavors. Leaving this beautiful creativity to restaurants and prepackaged food is like giving up the power of being healthy and allow someone else to decide for you. Cooking simple, colorful and satisfying meals daily is not that hard. Use a lot of colorful food, the eyes thrive on colors.
Clean up the kitchen as you go along, make it a new clean canvas for the next day.

Eating In the Rainbow Board by ©Valentina Cirasola

Organized shopping – As a designer, I create people’s spaces, by doing that their lives get organized and the quality improves. However, my abilities go beyond designing. Just like everybody else, I have a hectic life, but the food is my first priority. Knowing how to organize our life is important to eliminate stress. Between my appointments, I run errands and shop for food wherever I am. I look for small grocery shops, family-owned stores or street markets near or around my client’s places and shop for food in the hole of time I have on my agenda. We cannot manage time, time will run no matter what we do, but we can manage activities, that is exactly what I do and teach others. If something in the list was forgotten, it was not important for that day, don’t stress.

Don’t skip meals – At dinner time, I have always something ready, that feeling of coming home with hunger in my eyes and raid the refrigerator is not a feeling I know. Never skip meals due to lack of time. If there is no time to take care of your food and health, what is there time for? Our stomach requires attention, it is the center of all happenings in the brain and heart. Most people think cooking is a waste of time, I can assure you, often, I make a four-course meal in forty-five minutes. It all depends on what kind of nutrition one wants to follow, mine is simple, nothing I eat requires a lot of ingredients, an army of cooks, nor a great expenditure of time.

Organize your eating – I knew a person who ate every second of the day, she never ate a real dinner, only raw food, vegetable, fruit, nuts, and chocolate. She drank a ton of water daily, went to the bathroom and ruminated constantly.
Good digestion needs peace and quiet to process the food we ingest. Eating in the car while driving, eating in the street while walking, eating at the computer while working, eating at all hours of the day even in the middle of the night will not do anything good for the digestive tract, only will add stress to it, hence burning, reflux, bloating and more stomach ailments will happen.
I don’t care if you eat at a well-decorated table, or on the floor, decide where your eating will happen and do it in a relaxing way. Eating is a fun necessity, make it a pleasurable and colorful moment, even if it is for a short thirty minutes.

This photo below shows an easy specialty I eat often: boiled potatoes filled with baked mushrooms and raw cabbage strips as a salad.
It takes about 30 minutes to make it.
Bake at 375° F the mushrooms chopped in small pieces and seasoned with olive oil, S&P, parsley, and 2-3 cloves of garlic.
Boil the potatoes with the skin. Peel as soon as they become manageable. Scoop the center out. The center of the potatoes will be used for a frittata.
Fill the center with the baked mushrooms, add grated cheese, if you like.
For color and extra fibers, add strips of red cabbage, raw, seasoned with lemon juice, olive oil, S&P.

Boiled potatoes filled with mushroom and cabbage salad

An organized life starts with food, all your organs will thank you, your family will be healthy and energy will be high. Eat food for pleasure, indulge in a glass of wine, go ahead, have a chocolate bonbon if you have the desire, one, not the entire box, be moderate all the time and snack on nuts if you must. Ciao,
Valentina
http://www.valentinadesigns.com

Copyright © 2019 Valentina Cirasola, All Rights Reserved

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. Robert Taitano, a friend and business associate of http://www.wine-fi.com says:
“Valentina – an International Professional Interior Designer is now giving you an opportunity to redesign your palate”. Get your copy of Valentina’s books on
Barnes&Nobles: http://goo.gl/q7dQ3w
Valentina’s fourth book is a travel narrative, in which she mentioned food in her travel experience
https://tinyurl.com/y7tuyfh8