Today I am happy to introduce you one of the Italian blogs that I love the most: Pentagrammi di Farina. Pentagrammi di Farina is animated by two passionate and determined young women: Daniela who lives in the Marche region, in Italy, and Alessia who is currently living in London. They write and work on the blog long distance with one clear objective in mind: share the culture of happy, healthy, gluten free eating. Here it is my interview to Daniela to discover more about their project.
Chiara: Why gluten free?
Daniela: I discovered I was intolerant to gluten 4 years ago. I decided to take it as a starting point to discover a new way of eating. I have always looked for quality foods, I want to know where the food comes from, I am used to read the labels carefully but from that moment on, it became even more important for me to eat well and stay healthy.
I started to experiment and try new ingredients. I learnt about gluten free pseudo-cereals and how to use them in the kitchen. Today I enjoy making gluten free bread, pizza, pancakes and cakes at home.
Chiara: What is Pentagrammi di Farina?
Daniela: Pentagrammi di Farina is a food blog that we started one and half a year ago. It’s a virtual space where we share recipes and advice. Today we are working on making it grow and we want people to get to know better our beautiful Italian region: Le Marche.
We always look for the best possible ingredients, that are locally produced and often at Km zero. Today we want to show who is producing them, how they are making them grow. We are collecting interviews to local producers and farmers that we will publish on our blog afterwards.
These interviews are leading also to beautiful encounters with people who share the same values. They tell us about their stories, their challenges and achievements. It is inspiring!
Our objective is to make people become more conscious of the food that eat and take care of themselves starting from it.
On the blog we will continue to share recipes, participate to food fairs, organise cooking classes, showing places where you can eat great tasting, gluten free food.
We like creating events where we cook with other people and share common experiences.
Chiara: The gluten free food that you love the most is…
Daniela: I have recently discovered a true passion for quinoa. It’s healthy, full of proteins and good energy. It’s great in Summer salads mixed with vegetables or in soups during Winter. It is so versatile. I also love making quinoa burgers.
Chiara: Gluten free is…
Daniela: Opportunity, creativity, patience.
It’s an opportunity to grow, to discover new flavours and improve our life style to better respond to our body needs.
It’s also about the creativity and the curiosity to experiment new ingredients in the kitchen, discover new ways of combining them together.
And then patience…patience, lots of it because cooking gluten free is not ‘that’ easy. Patience also where you are not home and you are looking for gluten free foods you can eat because here, in the Marche region, it is still not easy to eat gluten free at coffee shops or restaurants. People in general don’t know much about it. I know that there still work to be done to improve the life of people eating gluten free.
Chiara: What’s your next challenge?
Daniela: Our next challenge is the most exciting one because it responds to our curiosity and desire to make this blog grow.
We would like Pentagrammi di Farina to become the flagship of a healthier, more conscious way of eating. We want to support food that is locally produced, in the respect of nature and people. We will focus on our beautiful region, Le Marche. To achieve this, we are also going to organise events, social eating with the help of local associations and producers. We will continue to propose new recipes on the blog. Cooking is what binds everything together. Will it be difficult? Maybe but we are determined and we strongly believe in it: according to us, it is important to build strong roots in the present for those who are coming after and thanks to them, to these roots, the new generation will experience a better future.
pS To see which gluten free, vegan recipe Daniela and Alessia have shared with Baci di Dama, click here.