Living alone is proving to not a big deal. I mean, when I was still in Genoa I was used to help with the housework, I can do almost everything on my own. The real big news has been in the kitchen.

Don't think that I cannot cook, actually people say that I am a good cook. Infact, one of the thing that I enjoy most is cooking for my family, for my boyfriend and for my friends. Staring at their smiling faces while tasting my dishes makes me happy, proud and satisfied. So the kitchen work was the thing the worried me less when I decided to move alone. 

I was definetely wrong: cooking for one person, especially yourself, could become harder then you expect. 

First problem: the portion. I usually cook for at least two people; you should say, "ok, cut the portion in two, where is the problem?" The problem is not the preparation itself. You could not do a risotto for one, or you can, but it is still difficult to cook the right amount of rice, as you would do for a dish of pasta. So you will have to eat the risotto the day after, when, cold, won't be the same as the dinner before. 

The first days I was here I promised myself to be creative, to plan different menu for my weeks... but this challange is getting harder. Lazyness, lack of imagination, shortage of variety of vegetable in the austrian supermarket, took me to do often the same thing. 

But I'm trying to get out of this monotony, experimenting new recipies or preparing dishes I used to make in Italy.

Today a new "column" sees the light. I will weekly share a recipe, neither created by me or found on the internet.

The recipe of the day is the "Spelt vegetable salad". 

I first tasted it when my mother cooked it instead of the classical cold rice salad.

Actually there isn't an official recipe, you can do it with every vegetable and ingredient you want or you have at home. 

My version is very light, and it could be turned into vegetarian dish, only taking out an ingredient.

Wear your apron, we have to cook now!

Ingredients (for one person):

80 g of parboiled spelt

1 tomato

1/2 savoy cabbage

1 small courgette

1 small can of tunafished in olive oil

salt as required

pepper

olive oil 

Wash the courgette, the tomato and the cabbage. Put two pots with water on the cookers, and bring water to boil. In the meanwhile cut the cabbage in slices, not too thin, and the courgette, in small cubes. Do the same with the tomato. When the water is boiling, put a fistful of salt in each pot, and then put the cabbage and the spelt inside of them.

Take a pan a with a little olive oil and cook the courgette.

Open the can of tunafish, remove the oil excess, and put it in your plate.

Drip the spelt and the cabbage, and put them in the same plate. adding the corgette as well. Stir-fry for 3 minutes the tomato in the same pan where you cooked the courgette, than put it in in the plate, too.

Mix everything, add salt, a little olive oil and some freshly grounded pepper. 

The dinner is served.

And what about you guys, do you share my problems? What do you usually cook when you are alone?
Let me know, and stay tuned!