plasticmadness

I’m a hopeless cook disaster.

I don’t think I ever made anything in my life that was’t noodle without failing terribly (ok, I confess I made omelete, but overall I’m not only bad but dangerous at the kitchen).  Anyway, for whatever reason (as in “there was no yogurt to eat with my cereal” and “the house ran out of fruits”) today I decided to make pasta (surprise…) with whatever I had laying around in the kitchen. And the thing is:  miracle or not, it actually ended up tasting really good. And I had a Casillero del Diablo 2008 Carmenere wine that went just perfect with it.

Cutting the chit-chat, here’s the recipe to my…

Olivian Fettuccine

Chop in slices a few leaves of Treviso Radicchio, lettuce and  half a grated carrot, and leave it there waiting.

Fill a pan with water, add salt and put it on the stove. It’s  a good idea to light the stove so, you kow, the water will boil.

In another pan, pour a bunch of olive oil; drop a proportional bunch of  herbes de provence; drop a proportional bunch of coriander (actually you can exaggerate a little here); pour (ok, careful here) a few bunch of drops of traditional Tabasco; pour a bunch of acetobalsamico di Modena (equivalent to 3 soup spoons). Do all this with the stove off. Fine. By now the water in the other pan must be probably already boiling, so you add the desired ammount of fettuccine to the first pan. After that you light the stove in low heat and with a wooden spoon you keep mixing all the spices for 3-5 minutes. Then you turn of the fire a little, add a bunch of mayonese and mix it all together really well. Then you add the chopped vegetables that I mentioned in the first line of this post, turn the fire on again, low, and mix it all together for like 2-3 minutes.

Well, at this point the fettuccine is probably al dente, so you drain the water from the pasta, and add all the fettuccine into the pan with the spicy sauce, and mix it really well.

Put it on a dish, and eat it with a fork and a knife, and a good glass of Carmenère wine.

2 Comments | In: Food and Nutrition, Health, Olivia, Personal | tags: carmenere, cuisine, fettuccine, food, gastronomy, Health, italian, pasta, recipes, vegetarian, wine. | #

The Brazilian presidential election is starting to heat up, and it’s with great joy that I announce this: out of the three main candidates to President of Brazil, two are women.  I will present them in different posts. Today I’ll introduce you to Marina Silva.

Marina Silva (@silva_marina, PV – Green Party) was the first to officially register her candidacy with the Electoral Supreme Court. Marina’s vice-president is Guilherme Leal,  co-founder and director of  Natura, a Brazilian (and Latin American) cosmetics giant. Leal also takes part in the Brazilian WWF, Funbio (Brazilian Fund for Biodiversity), Abrinq Foundation and Arapyau Institute (an organization for education and sustainable development).

Marina is currently a Senator for the state of Acre, in the Amazon. She used as well to be President Lula’s Environment Minister. She left PT (Worker’s Party) to join the Green Party as she strongly disapproved Lula’s environmental and agrarian reform policies. A child of the Amazon, born in poverty and victim childhood labor, Marina learned to read only when she was 18 years old, and was persistent enough with studying to get a college degree in History and post-graduation. She’s a winner, a hard working exemplary Brazilian citizen.

Marina Silva has conservative opinions about gay marriage and abortion (which is illegal in Brazil). She is a religious person, nearly became a nun. Her statements about creationism and teaching religion in schools have been a recurrent cause of embarrassment, as reporters and TV anchors love to misquote her by making out of context citations.  It’s an irony that her vice-president is the owner of the biggest cosmetics company in Latin America: Marina Silva wears zero make-up. “I’m too allergic”, she says. Religion again was the cause of a recent Twitter polemic involving her followers, when Marina’s tweets about José Saramago‘s death were largely misinterpreted.

Make no mistakes though: her religiousness doesen’t get in the way of her politics. She’s no zealot. In Brazil religion and politics don’t mix. The easiest way to lose an election in Brazil is if you appeal strongly to religion. The latest polls indicate her popularity is growing, and she went from 8% to 10% of vote intentions. Two percent means a lot for the underdog with a low budget and virtually zero space in the media, when compared to the main opponents. Dilma Rousseff (PT) and José Serra (PMDB), the topdogs, lead the polls technically tied, with percentages that vary from 34% to 40% of votes (for both of them). Debates have yet to take place, but it’s likely that Marina will be present since her candidacy has been gaining popularity.

Official website: http://www.minhamarina.org.br/blog/

1 Comment | In: Brazil, Olivia, Politics | tags: brazil, election, feminism, Politics, women. | #