Sicilian Pasta e Broccoli in Support for Sandy

Last week the New York area got hit by a terrible "hurricane" that crippled the city and the surrounding states. From this side of the Ocean, we couldn't help but feel the angst of the people getting ready for what was to come. Those who didn't have to evacuate were getting ready to live without electricity for a few days.
Being from Sicily, I am used to loosing electricity power almost at each storm that hit my town, but this never last more than a couple of hours. I can't imagine what it means to remap our life around camp stoves and charcoal grills with the fear that most of the food was spoiling away in a dark and warm fridge.
Furthermore, when trees fall not only the power lines are affected but also the telephone ones are and this is enough to send far-away siblings into fibrillation.

Cooking classes and my Tomato sauce

March is starting to look like a pretty busy month. Long time has passed since I had so many deadlines and possibilities to earn some money.
Those of you who follow me on Twitter will know that I have started giving cooking classes in my town, Bonn. It took some time for the city (represented by the Volkshochschule) to realize the need of offering public classes in English but once they started I was right there to offer my contribution.
Nothing better than some tasty Sicilian food, right? So I decided to offer two classes delving on Sicilian cuisine (one of them for vegetarians) and so far the answer has been excellent!

Healthy Sicilian spring-rolls

Two months have passed since I last shared something with you and last time it was actually Nelly who gave us a glimpse of her baker's (actually frier's in that case) creativity. In this period not much has happened except the visit of my family and a lovely trip to London. First things first, in August my family payed me a visit for almost the entire month while my sister was following a language course here in Bonn. We had a lovely time all together, sharing the daily rhythms. Between one shopping spree and a restaurant to visit, the days flew by fairly fast without much of the feared stress. All went smooth also because the weather was quite mild, though as every good Italian would do, we didn't stop complaining it was either too hot and wet or too wet tout-court and duvet worth.