This was like two hours ago, we turned off the light, brought in the birthday cake, mom blew the candles, we all had a slice and it was wonderful :) With the light off, you can’t really see the cake, with the light on:

You see? There is frosting. Yes. FROSTING, my worst enemy. Making the cake was quite straight forward, but I really struggle with the frosting for hours! My friend Ivan even gave me a call, worrying about by frosting crisis this afternoon. But I did not give up, and finally: One birthday cake for mom, made all by me :) Yes, it looked abit childish. Yes, it was uneven. Yes, it was imperfect. But It was beautifully imperfect, loaded with love. (more…)

Ahhhh…a rather small victory today, making my first tortina in Indonesia. Everything is local ingredients, except the butter which is exported from France (still can’t believe I only can find margarine in Indonesia, no local butter, but will keep looking).

I woke up at 8 today, with an URGE to bake :) and I finished at 12. A rather long time for baking…errrrr…NOT only baking… this included chasing the chicken for eggs (not me, my tata…cracking, grating, squeezing coconut for the milk, looking for rolling pin and ended up with bottle…you know what I mean :) but if you have ready made coconut milk, some organic eggs and ready-to-use pastry sheet, then you can make this much faster. But in my small village (no supermarket, no organic grocer), if you want the good things, you just could not get them fast, but I am not complaining, for example, I needed fresh eggs, so my tata went to some old women who had hens at their house, and you just can’t get as much as you want, it all depends how many eggs the hens lay that day, we could only get three (they came not in plastic bag, but wrapped in banana leaves :). There is not organic chicken farming here, except those ‘industrial’ chicken and eggs (meaning poor chickens trapped in small cages with zillion other chickens), there is not even organic term here in my village, but there is kampung food (means village), and they are good food…Oh, I can go on and on about this, I will stop now and just tell you more about the urge :)

It is started yesterday by having some ripe podang mangoes on my table, with wonderful aroma that tempted me to turn them into something. That something happened to be tarts. I started to make the dough last night, leaving it in the fridge overnight, woke up at 8, and started baking the process:) (more…)

And I am saying it with an un-frosted vegan cupcake, with stained little flag..ha! I woke up early to experiment with this vegan cupcake recipe…that worked just fine, but I could not figure out the frosting…and I found out that frosting and decorating are my cooking weakness…*doh! Perhaps frosting+cupcake=cute…and I can’t be categorised as cute :) I am more…minimalist, no-deco-kind-or-girl…perhaps…in the mean time, I am happy enough with sugar dusted delicious vegan cupcake (already ate my third)…will share the recipe with you once I make peace with the frosting :) Merdeka! :)))

Finalmente! A food post! Can’t believe how much I miss cooking. The thing is, when I move to a new place, it takes me a while to start cooking again, I need to do ingredients research before I start. Unbelievably, it is hard to find good ingredients in Indonesia, let alone organic produce. I thought living in a village, most of the fruits and vegetables are (almost) natural, but they are not. I have been trying my best to find ingredients here, and if I really could not I have to drive 1,5 hours to the nearest city where they have organic vegetable shop or drive 4 hours only to get a bag of miso. It is that hard here. But during this ingredients research period, I found some good things around me that I will share with you soon. First let me tell you what made me cooking after this long long pause: baby tuna, catched by my father’s friend, Pak Rukun, delivered in a huge ice box to our house, directly fron the sea. (more…)

The finale :) It was fun, relaxing, jazzy, loads of laughter, meeting many many people I have not seen for years. It was how it meant to be: a lunch arranged by my parents to announce and be grateful for our wedding back in february in Italy. We did not have chance to share it with all my big  big family (when I said big, it really is big, something like 30 aunties and uncle, 100 cousins) and my parents’ business friends, my parents’ friends, and few of my friends (could not really organise the invitation, the fever ruined everything, sorry friends). Anyway, we did it! Uffff…four days of parties and dinners is killing, but we did it :)

I was very doubtful I could wake up at 6 am for the make up, but I was woken up by hunger pang at 5 :) This was in our hotel, a small boutique hotel in Malang, peaceful place, very nice. I will definately stay here again in the future. (more…)

After few days of fever, me and Marco managed to arrived to the first party on the 7th of August, at my village: Wlingi. Such a small village, without cinema, shopping center, no supermarket, only loads of rice fields and few traditional markets and people go to sleep at 8 everyday :) Marco was amazed how come I ended up in Milan and meeting him and all :)

This arrangement of fruits and vegetables is meant for blessing and bring us luck and happiness, for example this long and green pisang raja is for happiness, the longer the banana stalks, more happiness there will be, that is what I was told (pisang means banana, raja means king…don’t know if it means banana king or king of banana or banana for king :) there was also a couple of young coconut, black sugar cane sticks…some leaves and many things I could not really understand, but all have good meaning :)

My side yard was transformed into a huge party tent, so there was lots of activities going on. Everyone looked tired but happy, except lula, my funny cat, who protested by making sad and annoyed miaws and refused to go down from Mom’s warehouse :) I guess he did not like too many people coming to his place. (more…)

It has been a while, I know. Really did not have time to write here. We are in Indonesia, my parents are preparing parties for our marriage. It is very hectic, me and marco had fever of 38,5 C yesterday, everyone panicked, we started today, will have a mass and first round of dinner today. Tomorrow lunch the whole day in my village, big big family dinner the day after and the last big big party on Sunday. Ouffff….I am not so used with so many people :) Can’t wait to get back to normal life. Be right back with you all. Love. e.