Wednesday, January 31, 2007

Important facts happened in January

My New Year started with a busy month.
As you know, I went to Dublin with Shane to visit his family and did a lot of shopping, especially books and shoes (what a surprise eh?!) and also had the chance to spend some time with Isabel and Arthur.
Well, after coming back I've been busy studying for my last exam which will be in mid February. It's a Linguistics exam which can be sometimes interesting, but other times extremely boring!
Let me summarize a few important events that occured during this month:
Isabel and Arthur welcomed a new little brother, Linus Seàn, on the 19th. He was born at around 9am;
we celebrated Shane's 28 birthday on the 20th ;
I made a Strawberry and cream cake for my mum's birthday which was on the 28th.
Phew! It makes me tired just thinking about everything we got up to.

Tuesday, January 30, 2007

Courgette, Speck and Saffron Pasta

This evening's dinner comes from here and is entitled "BUTTERFLY with ZUCCHINI, SPECK AND SAFFRON". Our take on it was as follows:

  1. 400g Short pasta - recipe calls for Farfalle (Butterfly shaped pasta) but we used pipe rigate
  2. 3 courgettes sliced in discs
  3. 3 tsps olive oil
  4. 1 small onion chopped
  5. 150g speck thickly sliced into strips
  6. salt and pepper
  7. 1 packet saffron (approx 1 tsp)
  8. Paprika (optional)
  1. Boil a pot of hot water, add salt and then the pasta. Cook until al dente.
  2. In a large frying pan, add 2 tsps of oil and the courgettes and some salt.
  3. When they are cooked and golden, remove from the pan
  4. Add the last tsp of oil to the pan followed by the onion and speck for 2 - 3 mins
  5. Remove from the heat, then add the courgettes, pepper and saffron to the speck and onion in the pan
  6. Drain the pasta and add it to the pan. Mix and add the paprika if desired.

Low Fat Banana Muffins

Here's a recipe we found and made the other day with a few modifications. They turned out quite nicely and we ended up filling 8 muffin cups rather than 12.


There's a link to the original recipe below.

LOW FAT BANANA MUFFINS OR BREAD
1 3/4 c. white all purpose flour
2 1/4 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt
2/3 c. sugar
1 egg or 2 egg whites
3 tbsp. corn oil
2 tbsp. skimmed milk
1 tsp. vanilla extract
1-2 bananas, mashed

Mix dry ingredients. Mix liquid ingredients. Combine. Fill greased (Pam) muffin pans 3/4 full and bake 350F/180C for 20 minutes. If making a loaf, bake 45 minutes to an hour. Serve warm. Makes 12 muffins or 1 loaf.
Cooks.com - Recipe - Low Fat Banana Muffins Or Bread

Wednesday, January 24, 2007

Farfalle with courgette pesto

Since I have been on Weightwatchers (home version) for 2 weeks now, I though that it might be nice put up some recipes which I have been experimenting with in the last few days.

Farfalle with courgette pesto (allegedly serves 4 - more like 2 big portions, or 3 medium ones if you ask me)

400g courgettes
250g (uncooked weight) short pasta (recipe calls for farfalle, but I didn't have any)
some vegetable stock
1 clove garlic
Handful of basil
1 tbs oil
2 tbs grated cheese (I used Parmesan)
salt & pepper

Bring your water to the boil, add some salt then put in the pasta.

Chop the courgettes in wedges (0.5 - 1 cm thick). Heat a pan then add
the courgettes, a bit of vegetable stock (about 1 - 2 ladles) and salt & pepper to taste. Cook until al dente. Towards the end of the cooking, chop the basil and the galic clove and add them in.

Put this all in the blender and blend slighty, so you get a chunky paste. Add in the oil and the parmesan.

Drain pasta and mix the pasta and the pesto together in a box, then serve and enjoy!

I didn't add the oil and parmesan to the pesto until it was on my plates, that way we could tailor the meal to as many points as I wished :) 250g of pasta is about 5 points in total.

I added 2 tsps of parmesan and 1 tsps of oil, had about 150g of uncooked pasta (about 225 cooked) so that worked out at 3 + 1 + 1 = 5 points. The only points in the pesto itself are for the oil and cheese.

It makes a lovely fresh tasting pesto, so would recommend it!

Saturday, January 06, 2007

Touristy Trials and Tribulations

On the 3rd January I went to Viterbo, a town about 100km north of Rome in order to take an exam to get a licence to become an official Tour Guide (Accompagnatore turistico). The exam took place on the morning of the 4th in a public school in Viterbo. There were about 560 people taking the exam. The questions about laws and regulations were quite difficult. Due to other study and work priorities I didn't really study much for this exam...but I decided to go anyway to see what it was like. There was a huge diversity in the people taking the exam, aged from 20 to 60. Most of them had already sat the exam a few times previously.

Anyway, it was good to spend almost 2 days away. I managed to do some good shopping in the sales just before I got the train back to Rome on Thursday. On the way back I wrote a letter to Santa to stick on the "Albero dei desideri" (Christmas Tree of Wishes) in Termini station in Rome.

As well as a picture of the tree, I also took one of an old man trying to look up information on the train timetable. I took the photo as I thought it was a good spot of daily life. Not everybody has good enough eyesight to see the new signs.


On the morning of Friday 5th Shane and I tooka flight to Dublin in order to go and visit his family and have a late "Christmas Lunch" altogether with his parents, sisters and their families.

I plan on doing some more shopping here!

While we are in Dublin, my friend Maika will be moving to Bruxelles in order to start a new job. I'm very happy she's taking this opportunity, but at the same time I will be sad to see her go as I will miss her a lot. Good luck Maika!!! See you soon on Skype.

That's all for now.