Menu di oggi (today’s menu):

- Primo: Cannelloni con ricotta e spinaci (Spinach & ricotta cannelloni)
- Secondo: Bistecca e ruccola (Steak on a bed of arugula)

We didn’t actually have a salad, but it was too much to eat already.

The recipes are truly simple.

For the primo: We got a box of cannelloni from the supermarket (250gr). We also found a plastic box of spinach all cleaned, cut and ready. Now that’s convenient
On top of that, a 200gr pack of ricotta cheese actually costs less than Labneh. So put that with the spinach and mix, then stuff it all in the canneloni (do not pre-bake those) Pia: season with salt and pepper to taste, also some extra virgin olive oil here to bring the mix together.

Now for the “hard part”, make some “roux”, mix with milk a bit of mascarpone (we had this laying around) and season with salt and pepper.
All in the oven for about 20-30 minutes. Wow! We had half at lunch and I finished off the rest earlier in the evening.

Pia adds: Abdallah missed the fact that I added some grated Parmigiano Reggiano to both the sauce, and on top of the dish before sending it to the oven. It gives a nice color and a wonderful extra taste.

As for the secondo: well, it’s a piece of steak. Season it with some salt and pepper. Put some extra virgin olive oil in the pan (no idea why!) and put the steak there for a couple of minutes. Done!

Of course, just doing the above may give you the worse meal ever. But with my wife, it tastes and looks great. She makes it sound so easy. Heh!

Check out the pics below. And let me know how lucky I am.

“When it rains, it’s definitely time for soups and stews!” says Abdallah.

Today it rained in the morning,  so I decided to cook something special for my dear husband.
It’s been three weeks now that I am cooking almost everyday. The COOP is near, and I ‘m managing with the ingredients here.
So far we’ve had: Tawouk, Mjaddara, Riz w Fasouliah, Balila, Fasouliah Bzeit and Tabbouleh (without mint & bulgur). But we were still craving for stews with rice, and Abdallah had mentioned earlier craving for ‘Aleb Khodra’ (Lebanese vegetables stew).  I had found earlier in the frozen section of the COOP, a bag of frozen mixed vegetables for Minestrone*, and I thought  I could give this traditional italian dish a Lebanese twist

Meat, onion, tomato sauce and paste, pepper and oregano… and cooked rice.

Minestrone: Thick Italian soup made with vegetables, often with the addition of pasta or rice. Common ingredients include beans, onions, celery, carrots, stock, and tomatoes.

The weather has been very hot in Italy this summer. Rome, Florence, Venice, no matter where we go the weather is hot and humid.

August has ended and September seems to be breezy.

This morning the sky was cloudy and it suddenly started to rain, it only lasted 3 minutes though.
An hour later, it started raining again, and this time heavy rain. I went out to our  small balcony and took some shots.

“Galleria degli Uffizi” or The Uffizi Gallery, is one of the oldest and most famous art museums of the Western world. It is housed in the Palazzo degli Uffizi, a beautiful palace in Florence, Italy.

Today, I was very excited about visiting the Uffizi Gallery! It was a dream coming true.
For an art lover, seeing the works of the Grand Masters (Michelangelo, Da Vinci, Caravaggio, Donatello…) is actually a big deal. And I have to thank my husband for that

We went in the afternoon, not worrying about the long lines in front of the museum, because of our membership in “The Amici Degli Uffizi”. We went to gate number 2, a nice lady handed us our tickets and directed us to the entry.
I was a bit mad because it was forbidden to take photos, and despite that, many couples were taking out their small point & shoot digital cameras and snapping shots secretly. I couldn’t do the same with my 0.703 Kilograms Nikon D90!

We wandered around the rooms and corridors of the Uffizi, amazed by it’s grandeur and beauty, the ceiling frescoes and the large collection of roman sculptures and paintings.

The most popular paintings housed by the museum:

• Sandro Botticelli (Primavera, Birth of Venus,  Adoration of the Magi)
• Leonardo da Vinci (The Annunciation, The Adoration of the Magi)
• Albrecht Dürer (The Adoration of the Magi)
• Michelangelo (The Doni Tondo)
• Raphael (Madonna of the Goldfinch, Luigi de’ Rossi)
• Titian (Flora, Venus of Urbino)
• Caravaggio (Bacchus, The Sacrifice of Isaac, Medusa)
• Rembrandt Van Rijn (The two selfportraits [young & old], and a portrait of an old man)

After checking all the floors and rooms, we were exhausted. Abdallah wanted to check the “Bar” and the terrace. We took some nice pictures of Palazzio Vecchio and had two Espressos and prepared to leave.

We walked back to where we started still admiring the artwork while trying to find the “Uscita” (Exit). But you couldn’t go out the same way you get in. Instead, we had to walk all the way back to the second corridor… Getting out of the museum, however was not going to be that easy. We went down to the seond floor (Abdallah thought that floor was deserted because the windows were all shut from the outside). There we were lead through a maze of more artwork. We found Caravagio’s Medusa shield there for example. We were out of time, so we had to rush out. But after 15 minutes we were still there!

The ground floor wasn’t easier to get out of either. Every time you think you found an exit there would be yet another sign telling you to go to the next room. We went through a maze of gift shops, bookshops, etc, until finally there was the exit taking us to a backstreet somewhere in the center of Firenze.

Here are some photos taken from the Piazza Della Signoria, near the Uffizi Palace.

Do we really live under the same sky? That’s what I kept asking my husband since we came here!

It’s really amazing how different the sky looks in Italy. It’s huge, vast, enormous… amazingly beautiful!
Lebanon is surrounded by the Mediterranean from the west, a series of mountains from the east… so the sky is always bound no matter where you look. Here it’s different, wide spaces with mountains in the far horizon and plains extending as if forever. Maybe that’s why the sky looks larger (to me at least)!

Here are some photos with beautiful Italian skies
I should take a few more to show you what I mean.