Travel

Barley Chocolate Chip Cookies

I no longer remember why my friend Michelle and I settled on late November for our trip to New York. It seems a bit nuts looking back. Sure, the week of Thanksgiving is a great time to go to New York if you want cheap flights and low hotel rates. But you will soon discover why there are less than average number of tourists per square meter: it is bloody cold! Walking around all day in sub-zero temperatures while worrying about the forecast snow meant frequent coffee breaks were needed just so we could escape the cold for a bit, warming up with our hands wrapped around multiple mugs of coffee and our winter coats draped over our knees like woollen blankets. It also meant that a bowl of ramen for dinner one night at Ivan Ramen in Clinton Street totally hit the spot. The only reason I decided to wash down my steaming bowl of ramen with iced (!) tea

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Big News!

So I have had some news to share for a while but wanted to wait until things were finalized. Now that they are, I can finally share that I will shortly be moving to Brussels to start a new job. While neither Alessandro nor I are keen on going back to long distance dating (something we were hoping we had finally put behind ourselves when I moved to Rome in 2012), it was unavoidable even before I was offered this great opportunity in Brussels as Alessandro has to move to Turin for work this summer. At least we are used to the long distance thing already, having survived years of it when I was still working in London and Alessandro was working near Milan (and hopefully it is only a matter of time before we are back to sharing the same flat). I have actually lived in Brussels before, working there for six months a few years ago (back when

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Roasted Hazelnut, Sea Salt and Date Brownies

Alessandro and I are spending this week on the slopes. Such a ‘settimana bianca’ (a ‘white’ week) is by now a yearly tradition for us. After my first tentative steps on skis on a schooltrip to Austria as a teenager I am now able to tackle almost all slopes and dare I say, even enjoy myself a good deal doing so. While there are a few small slopes not too far from Rome, once you have mastered the basics, they are a bit short and boring. So our yearly ‘settimana bianca’ now takes us up to Northern Italy, to the Dolomites, to San Cassiano in Alta Badia to be precise. A trip we are now doing for the second time with a group of about 10 or so friends. While I feel sorry for anyone else staying in our small hotel given our inevitable loud chatter in the bar after a long day on the slopes (no doubt fuelled by

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Garam Masala Couronne

As much as I love Rome and love Italian food, something I do miss dearly from my London days is variety and decent international cuisine. Yes, there are some sushi restaurants in Rome, there is a very good Ethopian restaurant not far from our flat, we have located a Vietnamese that isn’t half-bad and a Thai place that is do-able, but still, restaurants offering international cuisine tend to be few and far between in Rome and most offer food that has been tailored to the Italian palate (a vegetable stir-fry I once had and that consisted of vegetables that had basically been cooked to death is a stellar example, or the many Chinese restaurants serving the rice or noodles before your meat or fish course – similar to the Italian distinction between the ‘primo’ dish of pasta or risotto and the ‘secondo’ meat or fish course). Similarly, for a country that starts its day with sugar-laden pastries, breakfast ‘cookies’ and

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