Scrumping oranges in Sicily

We had a day out in Agrigento to visit "Temple of the Valley". It has ancient Greek temples (now ruins) , and apparently bigger than one in Athens. Wow! Yes, the site was massive and blew me away! Tell you more later. Also we enjoyed visiting was : "Secret Garden--Il Giardino della kolymbetra" www.fondoambiente.it for more info. We were walking around the temple and following a stray dog(she was cute and very friendly). Where we ended up? In front of the gate of this secret garden. It was quietly situated between the vallies, really, secret garden. As soon as we walked into the garden, we found orange trees and lemon trees. There were hundreds of them... The lady at the gate lend us a guide book for plants etc so that we could see all different kind of orange trees and taste them. There were benches to sit down and chill out, bins to put orange peelings.... We ate and picked loads. I never ate so many oranges. Blood oranges were the nicest, thick skin oranges were bitter and lots of pips. Clementines/mandarin(?) were also lovely and sweet, big oranges were also full of flavour and juicy. It was really lovey to sit down, chilling out after walking around the temples. It was paradise. The photo shown how many oranges we ate, only lasted a few days. Big round oranges were came from Maurizio and Ivana, so as grapefruits and few lemons, rest of them were what we picked that day. Maurizio and Ivana told us big oranges were good for eating, blood oranges were for juicing. We did both. We juiced ones we picked from the garden and some of theirs made lovely juice. We had it with our dinner. Felt really being spoilt... After we finished them, we bought (more!) a carrier bag full of oranges from a old guy with van on the street in a small town( I don't remember the name...). No-one spoke English, we didn't speak Italian, but we managed to communicate. Bag full of yummy oranges and 4 beautiful tomatoes costed us €3(can't buy fab oranges like that here!). They were well worth it. This is one of things I love doing, shop from locals like local people do. Taste the same food and experience! Wonderful! It's exciting.

We also sprouted some chick peas and lentils for our salad.

Close up of chick peas and lentils! After 3days, they started sprouting. They look cute and delicious! Yes, they were fantastic and made yummy salad. Sprouting is for me, ideal food for especially summer/spring holiday self-catering food. Cheap, nutritious, easy to grow and gives lots of energy. Excellent source for carbo and protein.

I just spoke to Marcus, somehow, more we eat cooked food in winter(especially), more hungry we feel... I feel still hungry after 2 bowl(big!) of salad...When we eat raw food, don't feel hungry much...Is it psychological? or there's reason for it?

Oh, one sunny day( it was sunny to start off with, then went cloudy...), we went to the nature reserve near by for a walk. Beautiful woods. It was right next to the orange grow. There, we met an Sicilian couple in their late 60's picking something. When we walked passed, I looked at what they had in their hands, they showed me and explained to us what they were and how to look out, and how to cook. All in Italian though! Guess what, they were wild asparagus. The lady even tried to give them to us. I just could not accept them, I felt bad receiving them they were their dinner! So, after we parted, me and Marcus were on our mission to pick some. We were very concentrating! After picking a few asparagus, finally understood what the lady said, I learnt how to look. They were quite rare items in the nature reserve. Still, this is how many we picked and of course, they went into our dinner that evening. Taste? they were bitter. So, I blanched, mixed into lentil pasta sauce. 

I mustn't forget to mention, Maurizio and Ivana's  green olives! They were yummy, this jar was full when it was given to us, as usual, didn't last long. I was pinching it every time I had a cuppa! (Actually reminds me of my granny, my mum's side, did. She used to put out pickles with soy sauce and rice crackers with roasted rice green tea, called genmai-cha.  Something salty and Japanese tea somehow go really well together. I'm not sure if some other part of Japan do the same...) Those olives were from their olive grow, and they cured themselves. They were in brine(very very salted water), soaked for more than 1 year. I didn't know that was one of  ways to cure olives. Learn something new everyday!

Our Italian Snacks! --Sicily Feb/March

Happy Holiday! I was waiting for loooong time(?) for this break since Greece.... Here in England, it's been grey and COLD. We all now want the sun to come out and warm spring... It hasn't happened here yet (We had a few days sunny and warm days, but didn't last). So, we decided to head out to Sicily. We'd never been there, it was the ONE of many places I wanted to visit. All I could think was Sicilian lemon and cakes... I'll tell you more later about our trip there on my other blog.  Now, food!

Sicily was wonderful, and foods we bought there were very reasonable.  A box of oyster mushroom was €1.50. And they were packed in the punnet, very fresh and chewy. I cooked with lentils and made fantastic sauce!

We found lovely little supermarket in small town, Revera(South west Sicily, near Agrigento). We stayed in Piana Grande, by the peaceful beach, not far from shops. This supermarket was called "Todis". It had wholefoods section including gluten/wheat free products, sugar free products, lovely selection of lentils, of course, they were stocked up with lovely organic fresh vegetables and fruits. People there were friendly and helpful. The lady there spoke good fluent English, Marcus reckoned she was an Italian-English. Anyway, this was what we bought (part of):

We even found organic tamari, and tasted fine.  The chocolate spread was organic and sugar-free, but later we found out it had milk-powder in it. Shame, it tasted just like Nutera, or even better. Hazelnut and chocolate spread on rice cakes. Yum Yum, it didn't last long, I think only lasted a few days. We didn't buy anymore after that. Too nice!

Avena was oat powder, we made oat milk( this packet of oat powder was made to make milk at home!) smoothie.

The products I absolutely adored were: Sicilian pesto and lentils. This cute lentils was ever so nice, we had them with corn pasta. Tell you more later. This Sicilian Pesto was very suitable for vegans. It had no cheese. Also no nuts, no gluten, instead, lots of herbs and chili. 

This is the ingredients:

Pesto Siciliano

25% Flat parsley

20% Basil

20% Oregano

5% garlic(thinly sliced)

5% chili (seeded, cut into 1/4 or even whole)

80% Extra Virgin Olive Oil

20% Sunflower oil

This is how, I think, was made.....

Chop all ingredients roughly, not blitz to paste. Gently heat sunflower oil in a pan. Remove from the stove or on the very low heat. Add herbs, garlic and chili. Let slowly cook till nice and crispy. When it cools down completely, add olive oil. Put into sterilised jars... That's it!

Nothing naughty in it, it did tasted, and looked home made. Just little bit of that gave food lovely flavour. 

I must not forget to mention, we loved eating this "crisps" for our snacks almost every day. We were gutted we never seen them in England. They were  small corn cakes with olive oil flavour/ sea salt and rosemary. Same as Greece and Spain, where olive oil countries make such a delicious "crisps", why can't we have them here? So, decided I'm going to do it myself. Watch the space.....

home made oat milk smoothie

I haven't done any blogs for a while, I thought I couldn't upload photos. Google told me I didn't have anymore space! Then, this morning I found out I got plenty! So, I'm now back to blogging again! To be honest, I missed writing, it doesn't mean I don't have friends to nutter about, I do talk on face to face basis IF there's not many people around...

How did I found out??? O.k, I'm Japanese, but I'm not a techno(not dance music!) person, I even don't understand fully how to used my laptop! My friend Russel, IS a techno person, we had early morning meeting in the town with coffee and pancake breakfast. I had lots of question as usual, how to set up websites, resizing photos, etc... This morning lesson was resizing photos on mac. It was good learning, I feel good when i lean something new and actually understood it. Feels I achieved something. We spend 2hours in weather spoon pub in Bury St Edmunds town center. I wish small independent cafes here serve good decaf coffee, good breakfast(and healthy), good Wi-Fi, lovely atmosphere and comfy chairs and sofas, OH, more importantly fabulous home made CAKES with good price, I will defo be there all the time, I'm sure so as my friends. (Unfortunately, I still haven't found my ideal cafe yet...) ANYWAY, that was how I found out I had plenty space. We went through web albums as well as iphotos on my mac... at the same time that's how much dumb I am when it comes this sort of thing. 

My breakfast...our breakfast was "pancake with maple syrup" with americano. Initially I ordered decaf, but they didn't have it. So I had regular coffee instead. I couldn't finish all of it, then I had caffeine rush( and sugar from pancake and maple syrup), I felt myself starting to get hyper! ☹☹☹

When I have my breakfast at home I usually have smoothies. 

Sylvia gave me huge bag of organic oat groats. She said she was sprouting them for her breakfast as cereal. I had a suspicious mind. Sprouting oat grouts???? My question was: "Are they really sprout?" Anyway I accepted her offer and took them home. Of course, when I got back, I tried to sprout them. Waited for 2 days, 3 days, 4days.... nothing. I asked Marcus why they hadn't sprouted. He did asked  me though, he knew they weren't guanna sprout.  I thought because they were slightly out of date. But that wasn't the reason. We searched on web, AND found out once heat treated, they don't sprout. I tried to do with rice, they didn't sprout either. Every time I read raw books, they never mentioned the most of grains were heat treated for shelf life and prevent from going off etc. I must say, although rice don't sprout (unless non heat treated, from specialist wholesalers/online shop), soak a few days(not red rice, they are too hard. wild black rice has nice texture after even 1day soaking), mix with some salady stuffs with hummus make lovely healthy dinner. 

So, go back to the oat groats, what I do is now that soak them overnight, blitz with spring water to make past. Add more water, top white liquid is oat milk. Taste lovely. Much nicer than packs. Then, I add my own protein powder mix, fruits and blitz again. If you have a bitamix, it'll make fab smoothies. I don't have it, so l use hand blender. Still, it makes lovely thick smoothies and fills me up. It usually last till lunch time. I sometimes soak  and blitz lots and leave some for next day. Day soaked oat milk gets smooth paste and makes even nicer smoothie. Of course, have it as it is with fruits or add some cereals use it like "yogurt"! 

"Oats and banana smoothie with dates"

Soaking oat groats and a few almonds.....

I quite often make naughty smoothies in the morning which is banana and date. This has lot of sugar(natural) contents, If I have it, I don't have anymore bananas that day. Dates??? I do have a few more after my dinner, I love them! Well, I cut down on my cake intake, I'm allowed! ☺☺☺