I give you my cookie if you give me your pickle

It’s probably my job that is making me so allergic to shopping, as I have to “buy” stuff everyday so a Saturday afternoon on Oxford Street is my idea of hell.
I wish I was consuming less then what I am and have a more clutter free existence, but I am aware that this is not going to happen so easily.

This post would have been perfect on the 24th on November this year, on the Buy Nothing Day, oh well it comes a bit late but just put the date in your diary as it’s happening every year on the last Saturday of November.

Well we have bought very little today as I was at the Good Festive food swap but we ate a lot!
It was so much fun, I brought some mini sourdough bread rolls, some focaccia, macro cookies (recipe below) and gomasio.

I brought back:
Vegan cookies, bread, pickled pumpkin, fresh organic rosemary and bay leaves, vegan lemon cake, a bottle of elderflower vinegar, some lovely dried pear rings and some seeds to make salad on my balcony!


There was so much passion in the preparation that each person put in what they brought, especially the girl that did the pickled pumpkin attached a little bag with the story of the pumpkin variety and the story of how it arrived to the UK!
Everyone was really friendly, some people had an allotment and some just a good recipe, all were willing to share and chat.

Mulled wine kept me warm, it was an awful rainy afternoon, and I can’t imagine a better way to spend it.


Very "swappable" oatmeal currant cookies,
adapted from an Oliver Cowmeadow recipe

2 cups oat ( I used normal porridge one)
1/2 cup wholeweat flour
2 tbs sesame oil
2tbs maple syrup
3 tbs dried currant
1/4 spoon seasalt
1/4 spoon cinammon





Cover the raisin with water (1/2 a cup) bring to the boil and simmer for 5 min.
Mix dry ingredients and add the oil, add the maple syrup and the currants with the cooking liquid, add more water if necesary to have a thick batter. Oil a baking tray and shape the cookies (1/2 cm thick).

Bake for 30 min/180 °C


you can now swap them with the neighboor, post them to your old friend or just eat them while you spend a lazy Sunday reading a book.

Food Swap 8 December Stoke Newington (London that is!)

What a wonderful thing to look forward to! On 8th of December i am going to parteciapate to: the The festive Good Food Swap-in Stoke Newington organized by growing Communities.

It is a idea that enables you to exchange any product that you can prepare yourself (baked, canned, picked from your allotment etc..) with other people from the community, something that I strongly believe in is exchanging skills and stuff and not just passively consuming.

You can drop off your produce either at the Farmers Market during the day on Sat 8th December 10am -2.30pm at William Patten School on Stoke Newington Church Street at St Pauls Church Hall (where the swap will be held) between12pm-4pm.

Once you have registered and labelled your produce and received your producer number all you then have to do is come back at 6pm for the start of the swap!

I was planning to prepare some gomasio with nori seaweed, some mini sourdough bread, focaccia some macrobiotic cookies.... any other idea?

If you are interested because you live locally or if you just would like to copy the idea click here


Photo:Children offer us pine nuts in Ulan Bataar (Mongolia)

your japanese cooking for my italian

It’s 11:30 when Kazu turns up at my flat, I am so excited and I am so pleased to discover that he is such a polite and charming man.
after a rather scary inspection of my fridge, Kazu decides we are going to prepare two simple dishes that I knew but that he thinks I am not getting right. The positive side of this embarrassing intrusion in my kitchen is that K compliment me for the ingredients that I have in both cupboard and fridge but he suggested me that maybe next time he will come with me to buy some things that I haven’t got yet (the labels are in English as well, but they don’t mention things like “organic” in the translation).

So what’s on the menu Kazu?
We made basic stuff, one was miso soup, and the other onigiri.

Onigiri are for the Japanese people what sandwiches are for the Europeans, they are cheap, you can buy them almost everywhere and you can obviously make them at home.
For Onigiri you have to buy far east origin rice (I bought sushi rice from Waitrose), I would have liked to have a brown rice but I couldn’t find it, but you can buy it in the Japanese shops.
The worst part of the day was when my new frend realized that I don’t have a rice cooker. For him it must have sound as if I was right out of the stoneage and he looked amazed by my confession.
Despite this we covered the rice in water (in a normal pot!) and we let it rest for half an hour. The rice becomes flawlessly white and then it’s ready to be boiled (but the Japanese say steamed).
The ratio rice water is something like 1 to 1.2. You have to put a lid on the pot and try not touch it till the rice is cooked.
At the same time cut in half a roasted nori sheet. When the rice is cooked you just need to dip your hand in water, make a little ball of rice in your hand and you can put in the middle just any sort of filling. We made them with umeboshi, and even a less traditional version with anchovy fillets and wasabi.
After this you just need to place the ball in the middle of your nori sheet and roll the seaweed around the ball, you can make it stick with a drop of water. My first Onigiri looked nothing like the real thing, they where a bit ugly but they tasted really great!

You can add toasted sesame seeds and salt to the rice but it’s not compulsory.