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All about.. Rewild

After three weeks in Rome me and Matteo finally had the chance to go to Rewild, the only vegan restaurant in Rome. It's said to think that a 5 million people city has just one vegan place to eat. Well, better than nothing. They open just for dinner and it would be too late to go with baby boy - and we're still fighting to get him a new routine after the moving out of Ireland - so we asked them if we could go earlier and they agreed to open the doors like two hours before to have us ;-)


The place is not that close from city center but you can get there by subway, so it's all good. It's a nice and big salon and people are the nicest. Their menu is huge, from starters to deserts and they have the classic Italian way of eating: starter, primo, secondo, dolce. And we wanted it all!


I have to apologize for not having good pictures but I only had my phone and it was dark there. But I'll go back - as many times as it's possible - and I promisse a good photo shoot in the future.


First me and Matteo ordered two sandwiches, with different types of burgers. Both delicious (and huge!). Than for primo(usually some kind of pasta) we ordered lasagna and raviolli (and these pictures aren't nothing close to show how good they were). We could stop here and just ask for dessert but we asked for secondo (usually meat). I asked for a kamut seitan and vegetables medallion and Matteo got a sliced seitan thing. I didn't taste Matteo's one cause it was time to breast feed little boy but mine was a piece of heaven!

To close the night - yes, we had more - we asked for the veganisu, or vegan tiramisu, of course. It was great that I could order it for two reasons: it's made with orzo and not coffee (and I'm not having coffee) and it doesn't have liquor (to attend their straight edge audience)! I have just one thing to say about it: I could it a piece of this veganisu every day of my life.

So, if you come to Rome - better, when you come to Rome - don't worry about seeing the Pope but go to Rewild!

When in Rome

I'm probably not doing as the romans do for most of the time but I'm eating pizza bianca and pizza rossa everyday and gelato three times a week, so life is good!

You can find ice cream in every supermarket 

Gelarmony - My favourite place in Rome

 From the local market

 Mother's Day lunch

my first mother's day with a lovely lunch cooked by Matteo

 Brunch at Il Margutta RistorArte

 Not even close to coffee but I really like it

Baby boy enjoying the sunny days (L)

Sweet end to (vegan) Sweet

Sometimes we see the end of things like a bitter end but this is not the case. Since baby boy was born I decided to not take orders to Sweet for a few months to dedicate myself 100% to him and I was happy about that. And then life gave me a few surprises which took me to a decision: it is the end of Sweet in Dublin.


I'm not saying I won't bake sweet treats anymore but I have no idea about when I'll be able to get back on taking orders and making other vegans happier. Sweet last 3 years and I'm very happy about all the cakes and cupcakes I've baked but life now has other plans to me and my family.


I'd like to say THANK YOU to everyone who ordered from me, enjoyed my cakes and spread the world about Sweet all this time. It was a pleasure and I'm happy that I could find in vegan baking something great and inspiring to do here in Ireland.

(Pic by Greg)

We are the vegans

Posted this at my Facebook page and thought it was worth it to share also here.

Making your house cleaner

Here I am after many weeks of my last post. It's not that as a mother of a 2 months baby boy I don't have time to write here, it's just that it's still being hard to organize my time. I should be sleeping when baby sleeps (doesn't happen at all expect for the nights). And now that I'm recovered from the emergency c-section I have tons of things to do at home too.

I am still not cooking that much and making a good use of all the pre-made meals I can find in Dublin. And I'm extremely grateful for all my friends that are visiting us and bringing us food or cooking here, it's the best help we can get. But today I won't write about vegan food but about vegan cleaning products. I always think that cruelty-free and vegan house products and personal care products are harder to find than vegan food. And I'm always trying everything I can find in the market. So today I'm doing some free publicity for Bio-D, an UK company.

We've being using their product for a few months now and I'm really happy with them. Quality products with a decent price. I'm using even their Nappy Fresh for baby dirty clothes and it's great.


In Dublin it's possible to find their products at Nourish (Wicklow Street). And if they don't have something you want on stock you can ask the staff there and they will order.


Which are your favourite house cleaning products?

New life. More love. Less cooking

Our Italian-Brazilian baby boy arrived on the 28th of January and we couldn't be happier. We're now adjusting to the new life, filled with the biggest love ever. 

Of course there's not too much cooking going on and Matteo is doing most of it but this week I ate Amy's Dairy Free Rice Macaroni and Cheeze and it was an amazing surprise. Matteo got it in the health store at Dundrum and the only thing I wish is that it was cheaper (it's imported), but it's worth to have it from time to time and it's really practical.

And now that I'm a vegan mom, any tips of good blogs to follow?

Getting practical

If you were wondering if I already had my baby the answer is not ;-) But I'm not cooking or doing anything special in the last weeks besides trying to get as much rest as I can before the big day and that's why I'm not blogging too.


But today I'd like to share two Redwood products that we'd bought recently and are really good:


Celebration Roast: this is a Cheatin' Turkey Roast with Vegetarian Rashers. Matteo bought it thinking about Christmas but we ended up eating it a few days after and it is really good. Easy to prepare, soft and tasty.

Mixed Meat Free Sausages: this set is great for snacks and part of it was gone during a football (soccer) game last week with my mum here (she's staying 40 days with us). Once again, soft and tasty - and you can also eat with your favourite sauce (we've eaten them just with mayonnaise).

We found both products in The Health Store (located at Dundrum Shopping Centre). One more useful tips for vegans in Dublin.

Yesterday night we had friends coming over for dinner and Matteo prepared his almost famous cotechino servito con polenta e lenticchie (sausage served with polenta and lentils) and pizza and the guys brought chocolate and vanilla Swedish Glace ice cream and chocolates. It was a funny night and it was amazing for me to have friends around before the baby arrives.

Vegan job? I wish!

As you can read in my bio here I love to cook and to write and it's great when I can do both. Lately I'm not cooking that much (well, I'm cooking basically everyday but nothing special or fancy, just regular meals to give me energy and everything I need in the end of the pregnancy) but in the last months I've started to write more.


Having a vegan job is like a dream to me but it's not my priority now considering that soon I'll be a full time mom for a while! But from time to time I write articles to vegan or vegetarian magazines about vegan subjects and this really makes me happy. In December I got my first freelance article for the biggest vegetarian magazine in Brazil (called "Revista dos Vegetarianos") and I wrote about vegan paradises around the world (not places to eat, but new initiatives such as supermarkets). I was pretty happy with the final result, it's a four page article mentioned in the cover and I was even happier when the editor said I could keep sending suggestions. And now I'm finishing the second one, which will be published in their February edition :) I really hope I can find time and energy too keep doing this even after baby is born.

Also, a while ago I've written an article for the Canadian vegan magazine T.O.F.U. and the issue came on line a few days ago. It's an article about how to be vegan in Brazil and where to eat in Sao Paulo (the biggest Brazilian city), with tips from my last trip there, in May 2011. You can download the magazine here!

Let's see if 2012 brings me more writing about veganism ;-)

The simple life

Happy 2012 everyone! I hope you all had an amazing end of 2011 and are ready for this brand new year. I was always a big fan of New Year's Eve and I'm not sure why. Maybe because it's summer time in Brazil and I always celebrated it with friends and family. But since I'm in Europe I'm not going to big celebrations anymore (went one year and that was it) and this year wasn't different. But this year I've made a very conscious decision to spend the NYE at home with just Matteo and his mother who is visiting us. And this decision has all to do with my only resolution for 2012: to live the simple life. I think the most important thing pregnancy have taught me is to take it easy and enjoy simple things. And it worked pretty well for me in 2011 so I want to do it more and more in 2012.


For our NYE we decided to have simple (here ya go!) food and not any kind of complicated meal. We'd have just appetizers and alcohol free drinks (both me and Matteo don't drink alcohol at all). Matteo would help me with the preparation and we'd play cards. We ended up having Tomato Rosemary Scones from Vegan Brunch, Sun-Dried Tomato Dip from Veganomicon, pistachio nuts, hummus (this was the only thing we didn't make ourselves) and a lovely Capers Dip which Matteo came up with the recipe from his mind while he was preparing the other dip. Everything was delicious and 2012 arrived just like that: simple and bringing us happiness.

Here's the recipe of the Capers Dip:

Ingredients:

1 cup white beans, drained

1/4 cup capers

2 tablespoon olive oil

1/3 cup nutritional yeast

3  tablespoon water

salt

1  tablespoon French's mustard

Put the white beans, capers, mustard, olive oil and water in the food processor or blender and mix it until smooth. Add the nutritional yeast and salt and blend it again. Check if it's salty enough to your taste.

Cover and chill for at least half an hour. Serve it with crackers or slices of fake meat or vegan cheese.