Tag: days

Coronavisrus: reasoned shopping list for 14 days – Italian Cuisine

Coronavirus aside, shopping for a week or two is a convenient and functional way to save money, plan meals and not waste. Here is the reasoned list of indispensable things, to avoid waste and thinking that we are not alone in having to stock up

Supermarkets stormed throughout the past weekend in Milan (and beyond). The fear of contagion or a possible quarantine, or even the need to have to stock up a little while having the children at home for several days, has made Milanese people unleashed on the shelves, and this could also happen in other cities. The first signs in this sense come already from the rest of Lombardy, but also from Veneto, Piedmont and, paradoxically, also from cities and regions where there have been no cases of positivity to the Covid-19 coronavirus.
But, apart from the quarantine hypothesis, it can be convenient at times to organize for a slightly more important escort than usual, so what does it really make sense to buy for about two weeks of meals at home? Here are our tips and our shopping list with basic necessities and conveniences to be able to stock up without exaggerating and without risking wasting.

Spending for two weeks: advice

1. Needless to panic. Before shopping, two basic operations are necessary, which in the normal course of our existence we would do: check what we already have at home and prepare a list of what is missing. Simple isn't it?
2. Think about a weekly menu and rely on it, but be prepared to choose products for a healthy improvisation.

Shopping list for two weeks (for 4 people)

The inevitable at home

Extra virgin olive oil

salt

sugar

Flour 0

00 flour

Dry yeast

Baking powder

Coffee

Bitter cocoa

Basic list

Pasta: 8 kg;

Tomato sauce 3 liters

Ready-made sauces, including Genoese pesto, 4 jars

Cooking cream 3 small packs

Olive

capers

Dry biscuits (min.2 packs)

Eggs (3 packs of 6 eggs)

4 packs of 1 liter milk

Bread (if you can freeze you can take 4-5 kg), otherwise choose the bread in the box

Dried legumes (4 half-kilogram bags of chickpeas, cannellini beans, lentils, etc.)

Tuna in oil

lemons

Potatoes (2 bags, to be kept in the dark)

Dehydrated fruit (apricots, plums) and / or in syrup

Fresh ingredients

Sliced in bags (1 kg)

Grana Padano or Parmesan cheese

Mozzarella (2 packs of 6)

Other fresh (ricotta, stracchino) or semi-aged cheese (2 packs)

2 packs of smoked bacon

2 rolls of puff pastry

8 slices of chicken breast

1 whole chicken

1 roast

8 burgers or slices of veal / beef

seasonal vegetables: right now therefore cabbage, cauliflower, broccoli are perfect, be careful to consume the most perishable ones, such as broccoli and salads first, and to keep beyond that cabbage and cabbage, which resist more (from 6 to 8 kg)

parsley (deteriorates quickly, but you can freeze it)

apples (2 kg)

pears (1 kg)

oranges (2 kg)

bananas

water

In Milan (and in general in Italy) water is drinkable and in any case not transmits viruses. Water supplies are sensible only in places where that of the Mayor – as they say – is not drinkable.

Frozen foods

Frozen peas (1 pack)

Frozen minestrone (2 packs)

Frozen spinach (1 pack)

Cod or other frozen fish (2 kg)

Other things needed

Toilet paper

Sanitary pads and / or diapers (for babies and the elderly)

Liquid soap (and more for personal hygiene)

Toothpaste

Household cleaners (good surface disinfectant, dishwashing detergent, washing machine detergent required)

What about our pets?

Don't forget about it. Dry and wet food for dogs and cats, land for litter, feed for canary, hamster, red fish, turtle …

Obviously, feel free to add to this list the kinds of comfort that you feel you need most, but remember that you are not the only ones who have to do the shopping.
Ah, and common sense cannot be bought.

Children: the importance of food in the first 1000 days – Italian Cuisine

Adult health starts from conception – indeed, from before. And the food plays a key role. From good food standards when trying to have a child (did you know, for example, that? does eating fish help fertility?) to the rules for pregnancy, lactation and weaning. But above all, in general, we understand how and why the food of the first thousand days is so important. The initial imprint defines our relationship with food in the future and much more: it is a determining factor for physical, emotional and psycho-intellectual development individual. Interview with the Genoese doctor Stefano Gandus, mspecialist in pediatrics and homeopathy, expert in allergology and neonatology.

First of all, let's clarify: the 1000 days of life are intended from conception to the second year of age: 270 of the pregnancy + 356 of the first year +3 65 of the second year.

"Today's scientific literature has definitively confirmed the importance of the first days of life as a period of foundation formation for the health of the individual"- begins Gandus -"power pre-pregnancy, in pregnancy and the child up to two years is perhaps the most relevant factor among those that interact in modulating development. And it is the one on which a person has more leeway for its practical impact (while it is more difficult, for example, to manage the impact on our bodies of environmental molecules such as air pollutants, electromagnetic waves, or drugs and even emotions, as they produce even toxic neuromediators (positive impulses – serotonin – or exciting – adrenaline).

Quality and quantity, what are the basic principles?

Food principles are divided between macronutrients (proteins, carbohydrates, lipids) and micronutrients (vitamins, minerals and their salts.) These principles do not provide us calories: we need to replace this old concept with that of energy (which is formed in the mitochondria). What quantity should I take? It is identified by guidelines, but we must increasingly alongside the concept of quality.

What are the fundamental factors for the quality of the child's nutrition?

They are two: acquire good eating habits (from the parent), which must grow in harmony with a positive relationship between the child and the food and the child e the adult who takes care of his diet. In fact, a serene psychic situation favors the digestive and assimilative processes If not, the absorption of the nourishers is disturbed. Forcing is never good, as well as the non-respect of taste. Forcing the child to eat more or less or different from what he wants is wrong: you have to offer food in the right quantities and leave a margin of choice to the child, which has a sort of internal regulatory mechanism. Growth tables they make sense to follow growth, but they must not be taken in a constrictive sense, like a roadmap to follow.

What are the tips to get to conception?

First of all, they relate to the lifestyle and nutrition of both parents and will also apply to the mother during pregnancy and breastfeeding. For the woman the amount of food should be slightly higher in quantity than what it has always eaten (moderately hyperenergetic), because it will have to form new body inside his. IS don't vary the diet, on the contrary: that it respects its tastes and habits, with prudence and common sense for the food at risk.

What are the foods at risk?

Since pre-conception, must be abolished i chemical sweeteners (toxic) and lo white sugar (sucrose). Eliminate as much as possible also i pre-cooked foods, preserved for a long time (like cans of tuna or meat rather than ready-made sauces) and refined (including salt and sugar, which should be consumed whole). During pregnancy and breastfeeding alcohol must then be reduced (half a glass of wine a day is already the maximum limit and it is better to be red) and in particular during pregnancy game, sausages and offal (hepato-renal overload); the crustaceans and molluscs (risk of gastroenteritis, allergies, hepatitis – a unless they are super-cooked) and to a great extent le Solanaceae (solanine, present in potatoes, eggplant, tomatoes, etc, it is a little toxic to the central nervous system).

Let's get to breastfeeding: what are the right rules?

The breast milk and the the perfect food for the newborn: try to keep it at least six months, for the following reasons: The macro and micro nutrients of breast milk are growth factors and invaluable immune stimuli; it is not a contaminated food; has the right temperature and generates a unique, unrepeatable relationship in life between mother and child.

And who can't give their own milk?

In the absence of breast milk, formulated milk represents a valid alternative. I'm products derived from a modification of cow's milk and are made with updated nutritional criteria and therefore they are balanced.

Advice for feeding the mother during breastfeeding?

They are the same as in pregnancy but less rigid, especially on crustaceans, molluscs, game. THEsupply must be varied, because it enriches the milk with tastes that the child learns to recognize and therefore it is educated to the taste of substances that it will find again at weaning. Scientific research today is showing us that foods promote the expression of genetic potential during the development of the first stages of life then the arrival to the cell of healthy micro and macro nutrients opens its chromosomes like a fan to express itself in the best way.

Here we enter the domain of epigenetics …

Yup: information brought by food, that promotes potential gene expression, it starts from conception and is maximum in the first months of embryonic life, but remains within the first 1000 days. Promote genetic expression it means that if your cells and genes are informed by healthy and diversified substances, they will succeed in turn to express a potential for growth up to to arrive at a development that is not only physical but also broader and more harmonious psycho-intellectual. This epigenetic concept is called "metabolic programming".

Let's talk about weaning: when and how is it good that it happens?

Between the fifth and sixth month the digestive and absorption systems are mature and there is the gradual introduction of food solid, which the baby will tolerate so much better, the more his intestinal mucosa has been prepared by breastfeeding. The window between 5 and 7 months it's the one where it's easier tolerating food and not creating allergies; delaying weaning more is not advisable. Need always respect the self-regulation of the child, because the one who does not eat today will eat it tomorrow. Waste which he will eventually show discovering new foods are not dangerous, they don't have to worry mothers and the dads: the important thing is a varied diet and a lot of patience.

Per regarding the vegetarian diet, if well conducted, eviscurrently with the guidance of medical experts or nutritionists, recent surveys say that it does not create problems for the correct development of the child.

And from weaning to the age of two, which is the end of the famous "1000 days"?

There are some rules that are best respected: never cow's milk before the year; fresh fruit and oilseeds after 9 months; no sugar and salt up to two years. But the main rule from weaning on it is this: what makes the text is the example of the parents, the child lives on on their model, so they are the parents in the first place who must take care of eating healthily.

Carola Traverso Saibante
June 2019

DISCOVER THE COOKING COURSES OF SALT & PEPE

Regional recipes for the days of the blackbird – Italian Cuisine

What do you eat in the three coldest days of the year? Here are the traditional dishes between luganega, cassoeula or polenta, ciccioli, cod or pork

We have entered those who are called in central and northern Italy the days of the blackbird. On 29, 30 and 31 January, identified by the popular tradition as the coldest of the year. When often, in Sicily, almond trees are already in bloom. A tradition, that of the days of the blackbird, which also gave life to numerous dishes at the table. As there are many legends related to this time of year. Starting with those related to the name. According to the best known, once the battlements were all white, and they became black only after a mother with her chicks took refuge in the cold in a chimney. From that day all the blackbirds became black. Second Sebastiano Pauli (1740), the "Merla" was actually a big one Cannon, which could be transported beyond the frozen Po only during the coldest days of the year.

Giubiana

In Piedmont and in Lombardy, especially in Brianza, in Varesotto and in the foothills, the gastronomic traditions linked to the days of the merlas are linked to the burning of the Giubiana. That is the puppet of a witch burned in the square, usually the last Thursday of January, to symbolize the progressive end of the rigors of winter and the slow warm up – after, precisely, the days of the blackbird – the days. According to legend, the Giubiana was a witch with long legs and red stockings, who lived in the woods moving from tree to tree. It was the terror of all the children. One day, on the last Thursday of January, a mother prepared a risotto pot with a luganega. The perfume attracted Giubiana, who began to eat it greedily. He did not notice that the day was coming: the sun kills the witches, and so the Giubiana died. So the first dish typical of the days of the blackbird is him, the risotto with the luganega, with or without saffron: a very simple dish, based on Arborio rice, onion, white wine, butter, vegetable broth, grana and the typical Lombard sausage, the luganega in fact.

Lodi and Cremona

TO Lodi the typical dish of the days of the blackbird is instead the polenta with ciccioli, made from the processing of pork fat with the addition of bay leaf, pepper, cloves and other spices, sautéed in lard and then poured into polenta. In Santo Stefano Lodigiano and in the towns of the cremasca dell'Adda side the days of the blackbird are "celebrated" instead with polenta and cod, fried or stewed. Codfish protagonist, therefore. While, among the desserts, traditionally linked to the days of the blackbird is also the sbrisolona Mantovana.

Piedmont and Lombardy

In Lombardy the days of the blackbird are, in general, a good opportunity to savor a little cassoeula, traditionally linked to the party of Sant'Antonio Abate (17 January), the date marking the end of the period of slaughter of pigs. The recipe, prepared with cabbage, pork (legs, musetto, ribs, sausages and rind) and a very long cooking in casserole (hence the name) is for this reason the main dish of Lombard winter gastronomy. In the same way, in Piedmont the days of the blackbird are perfect for the bagna cauda, even if the legend refers the birth of this dish to the autumn months, immediately after the harvest.

In Modena and in the Marche

In Modenese it is said that once, in the last days of February, the rezdòre (the housewives of Emilia) were forced to remain closed in the house for the cold, preparing only polenta, seasoned with a thick and fragrant sauce based on stewed birds. All (blackbirds included?) Stupefied by the cold and then easily caught in the backyard with small traps called "luvatt". But also in the Marche they have clear ideas: "If you gljorni de la merla fly, bread, pulenta, porcu and focu at will," says a dialectal proverb from the Marche. Then, polenta, bread and pork ribs cooked on the fire at will, maybe standosene in front of the fireplace when it's snowing outside.

Chickpeas in zemino, torcolo and beans to the flask

In Liguria, the typical dish of late January consists of chickpeas in zimino, which are prepared by preparing a mixture of carrots, celery, garlic, onion and dried porcini and then adding chard and chickpeas previously boiled. In Tuscany the days of the blackbird are perfect for the al fiasco beans or all'uccelletto. While in Umbria the typical dish is the Torcolo Di San Costanzo, a sort of very simple donut prepared on the occasion of the feast of the city's patron, on 29 January.