San Servolo is a well renowned independent craft brewery in Buje, in northern Istria, producing excellent beers and pale ales. I'm not a beer fan, but have been known to have a bottle or two of the gorgeous red beer, so that's a recommendation in itself. As well as...
Our renovated kitchen is small, but with everything we need, and is painted in a soft grey to maximise the feeling of space. Worktops are kept largely clear of clutter, again to ensure that we don't feel hemmed in. We carefully worked on the design of the room, to...
Although it seems like no time since the long, heady days of summer, we're well into October now and only a week away from the clocks going back an hour. Usually, we've had the wood-burner lit by now, and our logs delivered. But not this year. Since early April, we've...
We're not short of places to buy food here. Istria is stuffed to the gills with supermarkets - Lidl, Spar. Kaufland, Konzum, Studenac, Eurospin, Tomy, Plodine, Butiga Ultra. They come in all shapes and sizes from the small convenience store (think Tesco Express) to...
As summer has passed, so too have overly summery dinners. Gone are the cool, green salads and light dishes and in come the more hearty recipes. Eating outdoors isn't really an option any longer - although we still have sunshine, there's a chill in the air and it all...
Like a lot of our garden, since autumn - and the rains - have finally arrived, after a very long, hot summer, our vegetables seem to be growing at quite a pace. From seeds, we've got a bit of a bumper crop of courgettes, so having done a few soups, we decided to try...
For such a long time, I've been trying to find glasses like the one on the right of the photo, above. We seem to smash our "every day" wine glasses on a regular basis in our house and never seem to have an even number, so the quest was on to find something that was a...
I say this is an Italian Potato and Ham Pie, because I found the recipe on an Italian website - and I used mozzarella and parmesan cheese - but apart from that, I don't think there's anything specifically Italian about it. What it is about, is a recipe that is so...
Making a soup is definitely not difficult, especially a veggie one. I've made variations on this recipe before, usually making it up as I go along - because how difficult can a soup made of courgettes and tomatoes be? But I decided this time, I wanted something a...
Not too far from our house, but a little off the beaten track, along a country road, through beautiful scenery, to the end of the village of Medici, is the last of the closest restaurants to us, which we're ashamed to say we only investigated recently. We've always...