INSPIRATION

My personal favorite souvenir is a piece of jewelry but bags, shoes, shirts can also be original and good reminders of your trip. While I was traveling through Thailand I was overwelmed by the thousand of tourist focused stores selling the exact same dusty touristy things. Think cheap copied t-shirts, inexpensive Thai memorabilia and things like funny hats or glowing sticks. It is this kind of stores that make me think twice about the tourist industry. Do your best to look beyond these store and go hunting for the geniune and orgininal pieces. Be on the look-out for the sellers that are selling something authentic, making their own products or are collecting several small local brands.

Traveling with gadgets can be a bit of a headache. We all know that travel and gadgets often don’t mix since our technological helpers can be very fragile. Everyone has their stories. I once sat in a little wooden boat frantically protecting my Ipad from the waves. I broke my camera while falling and injuring my foot in Thailand and my phone later that year while celebrating New Years. I also get a little bit paranoid about walking around with expensive equipment and prefer to have a safe everywhere I stay. Consequently I’m always on the look-out to best protect my gadget so I get them home safely. I haven’t found the holy grail against water, breaking and theft just yet but in the meantime I refuse to leave them home enjoying my travels. Talking pictures and documenting my travels is just part of the whole experience.

Sitting outside with my laptop and hearing the up and coming thunderstorm approaching, I wanted to share yesterday’s dish. When I’m on holiday I love to experiment with food as I finally have a little bit more time and a couple of extra mouths to feed. I love to play around with whatever I can cook on a BBQ. Baking a pizza one day is a dream of mine, is that weird? Anyway, back to yesterday’s dinner. At least once while staying here, I need to eat scallops, this is simply not up for this discussion. This year I decided to combine it with a fresh tasting risotto, a lemon-zucchini risotto with scallops that is.