It has been like…zillion years ago since I wrote my last post here. Not that I have not had anything to say, I have been having a lot of things in my mind, may be a bit too much…and the thing is: I think my MIND got CONSTIPATED. I could not get these things out of my mind. Everything I do feels so wrong. Everything I do could not express what I think.

I don’t like my own cooking.

I don’t like my photographs.

I don’t like my design.

I don’t like my…things

Just not good enough. Everything I do. Just not what I have in mind.

Ugh.

And then I got to this point where I could not see any point of letting it out. And it has been 2 months. 2 long months.

This week: We have just returned from a whole month in Jakarta trip, Jakarta is a stressing city for me, Charlie made a mess of our house. I cleaned like a crazy lady for the whole week, and suddenly I did not like anything here anymore, so I started moving the furniture around like mad hatter. Turning our house into one big mess.

.

.

.

This morning.

I woke up at 6. Marco was still sleeping. It started to rain slowly. I made coffee in my kitchen. Turned on my computer. Charlie sleeping on the blue cushion next to me.

And the world just seems…quite right.

Yes.

I took some photos.

It is just a beginning. It is just me. It might not look nice. But it is okay.

I want to take more.

Sloooooooooowwwwwwwwwwwllllllllyyyyyyyyyyyyy….

No recipe? No…just some random shots of my life lately. It has been good (even there were moments I want to scream when it rained outside-IN! Yeah, our roof needed fixing, but it is ok now :) oh, plus a neighbour who play cheesy music all day, but that is ok too :)

I have a moody sky here, it is amazing how many times he changes in a day (I always feel sky is…a boy hehe) I might even called him BOY! Ha! Now I have a sky named Boy! and  So, what I cook is all depend on Boy, if Boy is happy, then sunny, then salad and light sides it is, if Boy is sad and crying alot, then a hearty risotto it is…you know what I mean. All I have in my kitchen is a bunch of good ingredients and no plan. It is how my life is now, and you can take a tiny peek of it through my lens :)

No, that’s not my foot, that’s marco’s, mine is much smaller :)

And yes, that is moody Boy, from my bedroom’s terrace

Butter+pan fried+salmon+black sesame seeds = quickie delicioooouuuuuusssssss :)

Silk smooth chocolate pudding with cream and fresh strawberry or coffee of top? Oh, can I have both please? :P

And say hello to some cute micro creatures around us :)

This is marco’s favourite! Tiny butterfly with white and purple wings!

This tree just had a haircut, but I still like him :)

And moody Boy is suddenly feeling happy, giving us some sun :)

And that is all for today…oh, are you leaving? So soon? Then please don’t forget to close the door…yes, it is pretty but no, my door is not a magic door that could bring you anywhere like doraemon’s…but, may be, if you really REALLY make wish and taping the heels of your red shoes three times…may be… :) xx

After reading Keiko’s post for Live Strong with A Taste of Yellow, I wanted to participate too, and the first dish coming to my mind was nasi tumpeng. People don’t eat nasi tumpeng everyday in Indonesia, they usually eat it for blessing or celebrating, I think it is perfect to share this with all of you fighters!

As nasi tumpeng is rather complicated to make, I turn to my beloved tata, who has been cooking for us for almost 30 years. We did not have the tools and it was too late to go to the market, so we just make a simple one, and without the distinctive cone shape. This is like the base, you can add anything you like to eat this with. People commonly eat this with assorted ‘dry’ dishes like this shredded fried egg that I made, kering tempe (sweet and salty fried tempeh) - I made this too, abon sapi, empal (salted fried beef) or Indonesian fried chicken. (more…)

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…)

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.

Last day in Milan, it is like 01.33 am and I am still packing, our flight will leave in few hours. It has been very very hectic these weeks, I wanted to post many things like my favourite places in Milan, the cute exhibition I saw the other day, some salad recipe, some snap shot I took when I was doing my photography project outside in the sun…but too little time.

I will be travelling for a while, but I promise to keep posting, I am sure there are zillions of things to share from other parts of the world. So, see you again soon, on the other side! Hugs!