Homemade Jewelry 2014 part 1

The last few days I have dived into my pearl and bead storage. Many I have bought myself and many are sent to me from LS. A few are picked up on my travels, in Bologna, Italy, in NY, USA and on local markets in Sweden and other countries. (I have some black Icelandic lava from the past summer trip, but it has not revealed itself yet, I don't know what I will make out of it.)

So, beads are made of clay/ceramics, shell, plastic, acrylic, wood, minerals and glass. These shown in the pictures are mostly glass, colored jade and colored magnesit (often called synthetic turquoise) and metal alloys.

 Turquoise-colored magnesite

 Citrine (?) earrings and painted (plastic) seashell

 Owls from NJ, US and Russian dolls from Stockholm

 Rose quartz and hematite

Sometimes my handmade jewelry have names. This one is called Blue China. Another one is called Gone fishing.....I´ll show it some other day.

Bologna, Italy in April

I went on a short journey to Bologna, Italy last week. Here are a few pictures from the city, a shop with cheese, pasta and sausages, dinner plates and plants (for LS). The Muscari is probably a wild flower.

Spring green

A find outside Bologna, Italy. Beautiful, like little trees. Even the most common things are worth your interest. Enjoy life!

A wonderful meatball dinner

meatball dinner, originally uploaded by Vilseskogen.

Some dinners are just simply amazing and simple.  Tonight my husband (PP) made these giant meatballs (from local beef from Jane et al and local lamb from Harry & M). He cooked them in olive oil and served them with some pasta, my homemade tomato sauce from last summer, and cooked broccoli rabe with cannelini beans on the side.  It was incredibly delicious.  Wow, those meatballs were to die for.  I wish all of you friends and family could have been here to share this meal with us.  And thanks Jane and Harry for excellent meat.

As per request: Homemade pizza recipe

We have a Friday night tradition since the last couple of years - homemade thin-crust pizza.  After maybe 100 times of making pizza dough, tomato sauce and toppings, I think we have it down to near perfection now.  So, dear readers, as per request from several of you, here are the instructions.

Our dough was initially based on this recipe by Barbara Kingsolver, but we have modified it slightly.  Look for the heading for the part of the recipe you need.

TOOLS
As for tools, we use a KitchenAid mixer to mix the dough (optional), a rolling pin (just regular wood), and a ceramic pizza stone (you can use a regular cookie sheet, but a stone makes a big difference if you are going to make pizza often).
Our stone is as large as possible and round, and so light that you can lift it in and out of the oven easily.  I wouldn't recommend those superthick real stones. I can see a lot of crushed toes and achy backs from using those in a regular kitchen. Our stone is made of ceramics, very durable, started out as white but is now black (which is normal), and less than 1/2 inch (1 cm thick).  It is very easy to lift the stone out of the oven with the pizza on it, so no need to fiddle with wooden paddles or peels and other things you don't really need. Just get a thin stone and use your regular tools to lift the pizza over to a serving plate or serve it on the stone. And of course you can bake bread on the stone of you like too.
A pizza slicer is good, but think about what is below the pizza.  Soft aluminum might get scratched, and I don't really know if you can use it directly on the stone (we use heavy-duty scissors to cut our pizza mostly).

The recipe below makes 4 wonderful 16-inch pizzas (30 cm).

PIZZA DOUGH (partly whole-wheat, healthier style)

Time (active): 10 min.   Time (waiting): 2-10 hours.

Ingredients:

• 1.5 cups of hot water (not boiling, about 42 degrees C, so varm but not superhot - I just use it out of the hot water faucet)
• 1 package of dry yeast
• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 1 tablespoon dried basil or other Italian herbs
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 tsp ground flaxseed (totally optional, just adds fiber)
• 1.5 cups whole wheat flour
• 2+ cups white flour (organic bread flour is good, but any regular all-purpose flour is OK)

Environment:  Yeast is a living organism and it lives and works best when the temperature is not too hot or too cold (about 68-80 degrees F, 20-25 degrees C).  During the winter, since we have a kitchen that is colder than 68 degrees F, I help the yeast along by warming the dough bowl first in hot water, and then by putting in the finished dough into a slightly preheated oven.  I turn on the oven at 100 degrees F, then turn it off and put in the dough in its bowl.  You never want to put the dough in the oven if the heat is on, then you cook it, you just give it a little extra warmth and less cold drafts.

Time: Most often I just make the dough in the morning, leave it out on the counter the whole day (8-10 hours), and when I come home for dinner the dough has risen and is ready.  You can of course make the dough 2-3 hours before you want to make the pizza, that is fine too, but then you might have to put the dough in a slightly warmer place than we do.

Using a standing mixer or not: This is totally up to you.  If you don't use a mixer, just mix by hand and knead the dough very thoroughly.  No clumps here.

Making the dough:

1. Put the hot water in the bowl. Add the dry yeast. Let sit a minute or two.
2. Add olive oil, salt, and dried herbs. (And flaxseed if you use it). Mix thoroughly.
3. Add 1.5 cups of whole-wheat flour.  Mix thoroughly.
4. Add white flour 0.5 cup at the time and mix in-between.  How much you need to add depends on how dense your flour is.  So go slowly and add enough so that the dough becomes soft and slightly sticky, not dense and not sticky at all (=too much).  You should be able to lift up the dough in one ball without it falling apart, and the dough should not stick to the wall, but it should still be slightly sticky.  Most often I add about 2 cups of white flour, sometimes slightly more, sometimes slightly less.  
5. Let the dough sit in peace in the bowl under some plastic wrap and or kitchen towel for a few hours (up to 10 hours is OK).  Don't put it in the fridge.  The dough will double in size, so make sure your bowl is big enough.  Some people spray or coat the dough with olive oil, I put plastic wrap over the bowl instead to avoid it drying out during the day.

TOMATO SAUCE (homemade from canned tomatoes)

Time: 1 hour

We like chopped or strained, fire-roasted, San Marzano, plum or any other kind of Italian tomatoes for our sauce. Pomi is a good brand.  Watch out for canned tomatoes with a lot of salt or other things added to them - you just want plain tomatoes (with none or a little salt). Fresh tomatoes in the summer are wonderful, but need to cook down a bit, since they are quite watery, so add cooking time then.  Don't even try making this from flavor-less tomatoes from the store in the winter, then just use canned tomatoes.  Your own sauce will be better than store-bought pizza sauce, but if you don't have time, buy a good brand of good sauce without funny things in it. 

Ingredients:

• 1 large can of tomatoes (28 oz or so, or use two small cans)
• 3-6 cloves of garlic
• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• fresh basil (chopped, as much as you like)
• black pepper
• salt (maybe)

How to make the sauce:

1. Chop up the garlic into tiny pieces.
2. Add the olive oil to a pot, heat it up a bit, and then add the garlic.  Stir and let the garlic become yellow (not brown!), and then add the tomatoes.  
3. Let it all simmer on low temperature for a long time (the longer the better), but don't let the sauce become so thick it burns at the bottom, then just turn it off.  You start out with a thinner sauce and the simmering will make it thicker.  
4. After simmering for a while, add cut up fresh basil leaves and black pepper, to taste.
5. When the sauce is done, check if you need to add some salt. It all depends on how much salt was in the canned tomatoes.

Hints:  If you use chopped tomatoes, then your sauce will be chunky.  If you don't like that, run an immersion blender or use some other tool to smooth the tomatoes first (blender, etc.).  If your sauce is too runny, just let it cook longer. 




TOPPINGS

All our pizzas have some kind of cheese on them, and this layer is added last, on top.  Mostly it is grated mozzarella, sometimes parmesan, and sometimes ricotta or goat cheese.  We never use other kind of 'regular' cheeses, like cheddar, jarlsberg, etc.  They just don't act the same good way on top of a pizza and are only emergency-cheeses.
For all ingredients (except the sauce), try to make them as dry as possible.  Remove wetness by draining them or blog away fat with paper towels.

• Italian sausage, hot or mild.  Cook this in a frying pan before adding to the pizza (this also gets rid of a lot of fat). (Swedes: this is NOT hot dogs.  This is ground up meat sold as fresh sausage, uncooked.  If you want to imitate this in Sweden, buy ground meat, add lots of spices and herbs, and then fry it up so the meat is  all in little chunks).
• Pepperoni sausage or chorizo (cut up, not cooked)
• Thin-sliced onion, raw, or cooked so it caramelizes
• Thin-sliced mushrooms, fresh (we NEVER use canned)
• Fresh basil
• Fresh green or red peppers, thinly sliced
• Roasted red peppers, canned, drained and dried on paper towels
• Olives, pitted and cut in half, drained. (Black olives are best)
• Artichoke hearts, canned, cut in half and drained
• Shrimp, thawed and shelled, dry on paper towels (you cook these on top of the pizza, so you add them raw to the pizza)
• Anchovy, drained on paper towels
• Very thinly sliced eggplant
• Arugula leaves, fresh (to add at the end)
• Spinach, cooked, or fresh spinach (which can be watery)
• Tomatoes, fresh from the garden in summer, great, but watery :)
• Asparagus, fresh or slightly cooked

Let your fantasy go wild, there are many more options here. 

Here are some of our favorite combinations (all have tomato sauce):

• Margarita:  tomato sauce, basil, and mozzarella.
• Prosciutto special:  Bake a pizza with tomato sauce, basil and mozzarella. When 2 min are left on the baking time, take out the pizza and add large thin slices of prosciutto over it, and a little parmesan.  Then back into the oven for a minute, then take out and add fresh small arugula over it. 
• Mushroom, sausage and onion:  This is just what it is called.  Yum!
• Anchovy and onion heaven:  Add lots of sliced raw onion and then anchovy and parmesan plus mozzarella. 
• SAR combination:  Shrimp, artichoke and roasted red pepper. 
• Burger pizza:  Instead of sausage, cook burger meat and add to pizza with some onion.  Then the pizza is cooked, add fresh, chopped lettuce on top.  Eat. Good. Food.

MAKING THE PIZZA AND COOKING IT
(Start this at least an hour before you want to eat.)

1. Put the pizza stone in the oven.  It needs to be put into a cold oven, not hot (this is important!), and needs to heat up for at least 30 min.  (Skip this step if you don't use a stone)
2. Turn the oven to highest temperature (450 F for us).  [This is why you should NOT use baking paper for pizza.  It might ignite at these high temperatures). We have a convection oven, if you don't, just use the regular setting for overall heat.
3. On a large clean surface, add some white flour and put the dough on top of it.  If the dough is very loose, you can knead in some more flour now, but usually you don't have too.  It depends if it sticks or not.  Cut the raised dough ball into 4 pieces, and put three pieces aside.  Take one of the balls and roll it out into a round area with a rolling pin, use flour underneath and flip it over now and then so it doesn't stick.  When the size is right, stop. The dough is thin, this makes thin-crust pizza (so, much less carbs than thick crust pizza.)
4.  When the oven is hot and the stone has warmed up, take the stone out of the oven. It will be very hot.  Put the rolled out dough on the stone, let it sit for 2-3 min to cook on the lower side, then flip it over with two spatulas so the other side can cook a little.  Add tomato sauce and all the toppings.
5. (Note for people that don't use baking stones.  Add your dough to a floured cookie sheet, and cook the dough by itself in the oven for 5 min or so, than take the dough out and add the toppings, and then back in the oven.)
6. Put the pizza in the oven, cook it for 8-12 min (this depends on your toppings and your oven).  You want the edge to be a little brown and the cheese to have started to brown on top.  If your pizza is done but still very wet and saucy, that is probably because you used very wet ingredients (shrimp, fresh mozzarella, fresh peppers, etc.).  Don't worry about it, just eat it with fork and knife. 
7. Take the pizza out, slice and eat. Enjoy!
8. If you want to make more pizzas (you have 3 doughballs left!), just remove the pizza you made from the stone, put the stone back in the oven to reheat for 5 min, and make one more.  We eat and make 3-4 pizzas every Friday night and make them as we go along, since they only need to cook for such a short time.  

What about leftover pizza slices?   Save for next day lunch or freeze. We put baking paper between our slices so they don't stick together.

You can freeze the dough, just put it in a plastic bag and seal.  To use frozen dough, remove from freezer, thaw at room temperature or slightly above in a bowl with some flour.  Remember that the frozen dough has already risen, so it will not get bigger than the piece you have.  So roll it out, and make the pizza bottoms as usual.  I find that fresh dough is better, because it is slightly fluffier when you bake it, but frozen is OK too.

The dough is also perfect for flatbreads, pierogies, and other small pockets of food. 

RESULT


 

OK snapshot food review: Pizza Anonymous

[LS is blogging this restaurant report on behalf of OK, just to make you all confused. A while ago, OK found this note below stuck to a door, without a sign, but somehow indicating that there probably was a pizza place behind that door. Now the place has been visited. So, here is OK's snapshot report from the anonymous pizza place in Stockholm, Sweden.]

Menu (in Swedish. tomat = tomato; oliver = olives; skinka = ham; surkål = sauerkraut; champinjoner = mushrooms; sardeller = anchovy; aubergine = eggplant; lufttorkad = airdried; ask about the rest in the comments if you want to know more)

So JU and I went to that nameless pizzeria with the strange sign tonight, and it was very good. Unfortunately they were out of the sauerkraut and timmerman sausage-pizza, so I ended up with the buffalo mozzarella and dried entrecôte pizza.

 JU had the buffalo mozzarella, bayonne ham and mushroom pizza. 

JU also had the dessert pizza with apples, jam and stuff... You can have a three course meal there, all pizzas!

 

 Some say that you can judge a place by their bathroom. I'm not sure what this tells you...hehe. 

Another interior pic from the bathroom. Nice lightning.

So all in all, I'll say it was an e on a scale to pi. 

pizza landscape

pizza landscape, originally uploaded by Vilseskogen.

Edible gourmetic formations.

Stamp of the Day: Espresso

In honor of our new machine in the kitchen! Swedish stamps of Italian espressos.  Yummy!

It is a tumultous world recently...

In Egypt the people won over the dictator, and there are some great stories and photos here, for example. Dictators are falling like dominos, finally.

In Italy, the prime minister has to go to trial for having sex with an under-age prostitute and then trying to influence the police work. 

In Sweden, temperatures are back down in the minus 20 Celsius (that is 0 F). Keep warm!

In Ecuador, an oil company is fined 9 billion dollars for destroying parts of the Amazon rainforest through oil drilling. (The company, Chevron, says it won't pay and that the courts are corrupt).

and,
what was the headline on Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet today?  "New parasitic worm found in foxes in Sweden,  now you can't be licked by your dog and pick mushrooms and berries in the forests anymore" (paraphrased, but true).  Come on, Aftonbladet - it is like you are turning into the left-leaning fear-mongering Fox News of Sweden... (link to story in Swedish - it is no longer on the top news, but it was in the middle of today)

A white day in New Jersey

I woke up to a quiet world in white, just with some windy drifts of snow, but otherwise white, white.  Schools closed, and not many cars out.  Went for a walk down to the old bridge and met a few cars, otherwise just me, bluejays and some woodpeckers, and the sun on the snow and wind shifting snow off tree branches.  Here are some photos of our winter wonderland in New Jersey.

Even the mailboxes were snowed in.

Round barn.

Rock Brook bridge.

Fences and fields.

 

Just plain snow.

And right now, 49 of the 50 states in USA have snow at least in some places, even Hawaii. Over 70% of the land is white. The loner without snow is Florida, so it is an amazing winter.

In Europe, it is hotter, because Etna, the volcano in Italy, decided to start to spout out lava today (EH has web cam photos, hat tip to her for finding out first.)

Pizza poetry is cheesy

American Life in Poetry: Column 302  (posted here with special permission)

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006
In Iowa in the 1950’s, when we at last heard about pizza, my mother decided to make one for us. She rolled out bread dough, put catsup on it, and baked it. Voila! Pizza! And inexpensive, too. Here’s Grace Cavalieri, a poet and playwright who lives in Maryland, serving something similar and undoubtedly better.

Tomato Pies, 25 Cents

Tomato pies are what we called them, those days,
before Pizza came in,
at my Grandmother’s restaurant,
in Trenton New Jersey.
My grandfather is rolling meatballs
in the back. He studied to be a priest in Sicily but
saved his sister Maggie from marrying a bad guy
by coming to America.
Uncle Joey is rolling dough and spooning sauce.
Uncle Joey, is always scrubbed clean,
sobered up, in a white starched shirt, after
cops delivered him home just hours before.
The waitresses are helping
themselves to handfuls of cash out of the drawer,
playing the numbers with Moon Mullin
and Shad, sent in from Broad Street. 1942,
tomato pies with cheese, 25 cents.
With anchovies, large, 50 cents.
A whole dinner is 60 cents (before 6 pm).
How the soldiers, bussed in from Fort Dix,
would stand outside all the way down Warren Street,
waiting for this new taste treat,
young guys in uniform,
lined up and laughing, learning Italian,
before being shipped out to fight the last great war.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2010 by Grace Cavalieri from her most recent book of poetry, Sounds Like Something I Would Say, Goss 183 Casa Menendez, 2010. Reprinted by permission of Grace Cavalieri and the publisher. Introduction copyright ©2010 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.
 ________________
How often do you read a poem about pizza and Trenton? Tomato pie (photo here) is not exactly like pizza and it is a Trentonian invention (I think I read that somewhere, but who knows if it is true.  Trenton is the capital of New Jersey and only about 40 min away from where we live. Tomato pie has thicker crust and you put the cheese on first, and then pour tomato sauce over it (someone needs to correct the Wikipedia article on this).  Upside down, kind of.  Thanks all Italians for pizza, we are having some tomorrow night.  This photo from Little Italy in 1900 is amazing, click on the photo and check out the details like the kids with napkins on their heads and all the guys' mustaches.

I love funky, gorgeous, easy, silly, beautiful poetry, and you get a lot of that if you subscribe via e-mail the series American Life in Poetry.  You can sign up for free and get one poem per week sent to you. The poems are selected by Ted Kooser, one of our favorite American poets.

I am in favor of Italian shapes

At least shapes like these.  And now there is a whole book about them. Pasta shapes, that is.  Someone should make an evolutionary tree showcasing the evolution of pasta morphologies.


Update: Go to the Amazon page for the book and check out the amazing video at the bottom (under Related Media) - how to cook farfalle with cream sauce and prosciutto!

Perfection in an oven

The best homemade pizza ever, originally uploaded by Vilseskogen.

The last year we have made homemade pizza most every Friday night so we have now reached near-perfection (see photo).

It started with that we bought a pizza stone, a must for thin crust pizza. Then we made dough, partly whole wheat and often with dried herbs in it, made tomato sauce (usually not from a can, but cooked or blended by us), sliced up some mozzarella and added other necessary things (onion, olives, anchovies, artichoke hearts, shrimp, clams, fresh garlic, roasted red peppers, parmesan, basil, mushrooms, pepperoni, capers.... not all at once but in different combinations). One set of dough makes about 4 pizzas, and since each cook in 8-9 minutes it is easy to make them and eat them immediately. Yummy!

Another result of this is that I no longer eat pizza at restaurants (well, Nomad in Hopewell is an exception), because ours is so much better.

(If you want the dough recipe, make a comment below or send me an e-mail. It works great for pizza on the grill too, as well as flatbreads.)

Stamp of the Day: December 7 and Hawaii

Today is the 341st day of 2009. Are you ready for 2010? I am not, it feels like 2009 just started and I haven't even picked up speed yet. I need two-three months more to finish what I had planned for this year, both at work and home.

Today' date is the day Pearl Harbor was attached in 1941, Cicero was assassinated in 43 BC, Delaware was the first state in 1787 to ratify the US Constitution, US declared war on Austria in 1917, the stea locomotive Norfolk & Western 611 ran for the last time in 1994, Galileo (the spacecraft) arrived at Jupiter (yes, the planet), and the birthday of Louis Prima. And finally, it is the Cotton Candy day in the US.

Cheese shop

Tonight we had some amazing cheeses including a BOSIAN one (no, not Bosnia, but Bosia in Italia) called Langherino (read link for funny English). OK, try to find that in your cheese store. Mmmm! Cheese is really one of the most incredibly good foods. I wonder who made the first cheese? Someone that by mistake dumped some acid (wine, vinegar, lemon juice) in boiling milk? Scooped out the curds and then forgot them, and voila' - aged cheese? When I can't sleep I think about these things. The first bread, the first meatball, the first chile relleno - how and when did it happen? Except recently, after reading the book Catching Fire - How cooking made us human, I guess I mainly have been thinking about the first steak and baked sweet potato. I wonder what the hominid was thinking when he ate a baked tuber the first time, don't you?

PS. Kids and PP - thanks for all the firewood work today, you are all amazing.

Torta is never wrong (Tårta är aldrig fel)

This is an Italian torta. It fills the whole baking sheet, and it is not a cake but a real big Italian vegetarian dish filled with heavenly greens. This is how you do it - make piecrust of olive oil, not butter, enough to make a bottom and a top. Cook leeks, onions, garlic, zucchini, kale, swiss chard, mustartd greens, beet greens, whatever you have until soft. Dump in ricotta cheese, grated parmesan, and an egg or two in the greens mix, sprinkle with hot pepper flakes, and mix. Roll out the pie dough bottom, large, put it on a large cookie sheet (with edges), dump the greens mix in the center, roll out and put the top on, fold up and seal. Bake 45 min or so, then cool. Slice in wedges and eat! It is great lunch food, and you can freeze it and save. I also made this in little muffin tins as individual tortas, yum! Oh, you want the exact details for the recipe? :) I have to dig that up...

Alcoholic leverage?

Photo from OK, seen in Sweden:
Vinberusad salami (= "Drunk on wine salami")
Morellino di Scansano turns out to be a red wine from the southern part of Tuscany. The salami doesn't look too wet, maybe the wine was injected?

(note, the words 'vinberusad salami' has no hits on Google yet, but soon it will.... right here on the blog)

Things you actually can eat

Near us in Princeton is a fantastic little European-style food store (Bon Appetit) that sells the most unusual things (in USA, that is). PP and I went there a few weeks ago to look for licorice candy for my class (you need handouts when you talk about beans, ie., Fabaceae, to undergraduates and to keep them awake on Monday mornings). We also got some other goodies, such as oil-cured olives, some great cheese, mints made locally in Hopewell, and then we found.... black squid ink spaghetti. 50 cm long! We just had to get that too. A week later PP made this fantastic dish of this black pasta mixed with creamy tomato sauce with shrimp, scallops, lobster, and squid. Oh, it was yummy! This is how it looked (I think it really looked better than this, my camera was acting up).

I don't think I am ready to try the squid ink pizza yet, though.

Book reviews: A different type of travel

This book, Heat by Bill Buford, got quite a lot of press when it came out, probably because it is written by a former editor at The New Yorker. The book is long and with small text, so it lasts for a long while, too long in my opinion. This is the true story of Bill quitting his job to go and work in superfamous Mario Batali's restaurant kitchen (at Babbo, superfamous place in New York), where he describes a million details and happenings in minuscule tidbits. After a year he is allowed to make some pasta, the most important station in the kitchen, and after that he decides to go to Italy and learn the real thing - pasta and butchering in Tuscany. The book is full of great portraits of people, and descriptions of scenery and interiors. But it is too long, too long-winded, too scattered, and several times I could not get the timeline right. A lot is written about Batali of course, not always in a friendly way, but not mean either. More observant, standing outside it all. The book detours into story dead ends (or maybe just distractions) of why there is egg in pasta, if the French cooking all comes from Tuscany, why not to become a chef, how to slaughter a pig in New York City (including how to get it up the elevator), and the good and bad of being a cattle and winegrower in Tuscany. There is not one recipe in the whole book, but you might want to read it if you want to know a recipe for restaurant kitchen disasters. It was an OK read, but maybe unfortunately nothing I want to read again. For great food writing with a real feel in fewer words, pick up Ruth Reichl, MFK Fisher, or Julia Child's biograph My Life in France. We have a good expression in Swedish that I thought of a couple of times when I read this book " full av ordbajseri och svammel", but I don't know how to translate it.

And then there is a completely different biographical book. A book full of life, of love of people and places, a book that makes you think, believe and trust in the common good and people's goodness again. The book is Tales of a Female Nomad, and is written by Rita Golden Gelman. It is the story of her life when she in upper middle age is faced with a divorce and realize that she wants to learn Spanish and visit foreign countries. She takes off on a whim and end up in Mexico for a few months and lives with local families, learning their way of living and their languages. Rita is a children's book writer, and by writing a few books a year and her royalties she has a small income, but enough to live abroad for months at the time. She lives in Central America, Bali, New Zealand, Canada... The book is a description of her travels, but more so a description of her fears, loves, adventures, and life - in a very realistic and colorful way. I strongly, strongly recommend this book. I loved it - read most of it on the plane to Africa (17 hour flight... ). Rita is still a nomad, she moves around and you can read more about her on her blog. After you have read this book, it is like you found a new friend.