It's Raining. Still…….

We've has a brilliant winter up the hill this year. All the people down below Cortona have been covered in damp fog and were miserable for weeks on end, while up the hill we've had bright sunny days. 
But now it's raining and raining and raining! All outside activities have ground to a halt and we're holed up in the house next to the fire.
It's perfect sewing weather! After dusting off my sewing machine I set to work producing primitive style teddy bears. 
I sell these little creations to friends and guests who come for the summer. 
They certainly wouldn't make me rich but I like the idea of knowing there's a little boy in Paris with one of my foxes, a girl in the States with a teddy and twins with matching teddies in Australia!
I regulary scout the second hand store here in Cortona for little old ladies winter coats which I then cut up, wash and use to make the teddy-bears. 
The equally old ladies who work in the store always comment on the quality of the coats that I'm buying. I know they're wondering why I need so many coats but I have a feeling that if I tell them I'm cutting them up, they wouldn't give them to me!

Hatch Day

Last Monday we woke to the sound of muffled cheeping. It was "hatch day", which, even for the kids, comes in as a very close second to christmas day!  
We know of-course that we're going to get baby chicks and not chocolate kinder surprises out of the eggs but it's a miracle to watch the tiny little chicks break their way out.
From the 10 eggs that went into the incubator we got 10 strong little baby chicks.
Elliott has decided that one of them is called Geoffrey. We don't know which one is Geoffrey because they all look the same. 
I guess it will turn into one of those in-house family jokes every time we eat chicken!

Ravioli Fatti a Mano………. or DIY Ravioli

Just as there are stories and faces to my risotto and gnocchi, so too for my ravioli. 
La signora Monguzzi turned up one day at our house in Milan to show me how her grandmother had taught her how to make ravioli. 
With a sure hand and calm patience she produced beautiful smooth uniform hand made ravioli that looked like little candies.
With great enthusiasm I set to work the next week to produce the same, only to discover that I lacked calmness and patience!  
My shiny new imperia pasta press was relegated to the back of the cupboard where it lived for 10 years only to be resurrected a month or so ago.
I'm not sure why I decided to give it another go but my pasta press now lives in the kitchen within close reach.
Last night I made ravioli with fresh spelt pasta and artichoke. 
I can't pretend that I'd give a Nonna from Parma a run for her money but they were as good as any restaurant.
Perhaps just not as pretty!  

INGREDIENTS                      
(for 4/5 people)

• 350g spelt flour 
• pinch of salt 
• 2 whole eggs
• 1 egg yolk
• 1 TBL Olive oli
• half cup of water

DIRECTIONS:
Throw everything in your kenwood in the exact order and mix with bread hook (add the water gradually). 
You want a dough that's so tough you could be forgiven for thinking it belonged on a building site!
Cover the dough with a cloth and rest in the fridge for at least an hour.

THE FILLING:

• 1 onion finely chopped
• 300/400 gr of frozen artichoke hearts finely chopped
• 250gr ricotta
• handful of parmigiana or grana padana
• 1 egg
• salt & pepper

DIRECTIONS:
Sauté the onion and artichokes, add salt and pepper. Remove from heat and puré 70%  with hand mixer. Add ricotta, egg and parmigiana. Mix and chill if there's time.

MAKING THE RAVIOLI:
Roll out the pastry using the pasta press until you have "pasta a velo"  (super thin). Place walnut sized balls of filling on the flat pasta, cover with another sheet of pasta and cut with a biscuit cutter.

Have salted boiling water ready to go in one pot and melted butter and olive oil, garlic and sage in another.
Gently place the ravioli in the water for 2 minutes.
Once cooked put the ravioli in a warmed bowl and drizzle with the butter mix .
Serve with extra grated parmigiana.

BuonAppetito!

The Rooster

I love large chicken breeds, so last summer I ordered some barred plymouth and australorp eggs  for my incubator.
I liked the idea of having australian chooks scratching about in the yard and I thought the beautiful black and white zebra plumage of the plymouths would compliment the australorps rather nicely!
I managed to hatch 3 australorp hens, 1 barred plymouth hen and a very impressive barred plymouth rooster.
And here's the problem.  
The rooster is a wee bit scary.
I think he knows I'm scared of him, because whenever I pass by him, he stands his ground, puffs up his beautiful feathers and cocks his eye at me.
Rationally I know he's a 10th the size of me and has a brain the size of a pea, but I've taken to carrying the broom down to the chook yard with me.
The other day, Tom my eldest son questioned me when he saw me coming back with the eggs in one hand and the broom in the other.  I think he knows I'm scared of the rooster too!
My need for fertilized eggs, does however outweigh my fear of him for the moment.
Two out of my four chooks are laying. To be fair they did reach maturity as the days started growing shorter and I really didn't expect any of them to come on the lay until Febuary or March when the days start to get noticeably longer here.
So on the first of January I started collecting their eggs to incubate. Of-course, one of my girls decided to start laying somewhere else and I wasn't able to find her hidden stash, so I only managed to get 10 eggs.
They are now in my  automatic incubator and should hatch on the 28th of this month.
Zero km meat production!

New Years Resolution

This is my new years resolution.  

I promised myself that I would start a blog and share my little world on a hill in Tuscany with friends and family. I'm not sure where this blog will take us, but it will no doubt include lots of cooking and food and thoughts on our journey as a family to be a little more self sufficient.

I am constantly writing lists on scraps of paper. It's such a pity that I haven't kept them in the 8 years that we have been living here. I could have filled a wall by now with my lists of "things to do".

The problem of course is that it's winter right now and it just seems a whole lot easier to stay indoors out of the cold. 

However, the big job that I'm about to tackle with my multi tasking Polish friend Kristof is to finish making my pizza oven which needs a roof and lots of insulation. 

My oven has turned into one of those never ending jobs.  Kristof laughs every time he comes over, asking me when I'm going to cook him a pizza. I think he thinks the whole thing is going to fall in on itself because I made it without his help. 

To be honest, I have a few doubts as well, but I'm not about to tell him that!