This Feeds Me Hungry Musings of a Gastronomic Gypsy – NC-based freelance writer Victoria Bouloubasis

Brains, kidneys, intestines: They’re all on the table.

Goats and I share a complex history. I wrote about it for Indy’s Front Porch last week. Every Greek Easter, I’ve relished in the crispy skin peeled straight from a roasted goat’s flesh. Until, that is, I witnessed the birth of a baby goat on a farming stint in Portugal. My indulgent, borderline barbaric behavior [...]

Taking part in a small society, which lives more or less self-sufficiently of sustainable agriculture, was my only alternative draft of a place where you can actually live a life at peace with you and the rest of the world. This isn`t always true, but to a great extent it worked

“The composting toilet and I weren’t always on good terms. Indeed, we gave each other shit regularly. But at the end of the day, my time there was always well spent, and I always emerged a better man than when I had entered.”

Chen also has a comfortable air about her that lets the world know she’s taking it all in.

” I ended up spending the most time with the goats, and I’ve enjoyed just about every minute of it. I took them day in, day out for a week and also got to milk them. Walking with the goats in the valley afforded me a little peace, or something. I thought the time with the goats was very peaceful.”

Constantly smiling with eyes wide open, Rosana has a keen understanding of her surroundings in a way that makes her seem completely at ease wherever her wanderlust takes her.

This is the first in a series I’ve dubbed “Why we WWOOF”, profiling volunteers I met while farming at Casa do Burro. WWOOFers can be a strange breed. I presume I only have a handful of close friends who would summon their inner Kerouac to skip town for a while; even less who would plunge head first into outdoor labor, working in exchange for a mostly vegetarian meal plan and stiff, rural, caravan accommodations. Personally, I would do it all over again in a heartbeat.

…on my 28th birthday, surrounded by great food, laughter, goats and farmers, the Casa do Burro felt like home.

On a calculated whim this past summer, I set off for a three-month stint to volunteer on organic farms on Portugal’s Algarve coast. My wanderlust needed a fix and my mind needed a stimulant. In covering local NC sustainable agriculture for the past couple of years, I craved the first-hand knowledge to really understand the movement.

Like any wildly nostalgic Greek-American tourist, I sipped, slurped, nibbled and devoured everything I could in four weeks.

While staying in Andros, my Theia Georgia (aka Georgette Irene Mandarakas) spoiled us by whipping up tasty traditional Greek meals and side dishes nearly every day. She keeps many of her recipes secret; the rest you can find in her three-part Greek cookbook series: Golden Cooking. Currently only in Greek, this is her first published [...]

The recent issue of Saveur draws the hungry reader into a lair revealing Greece’s most prized possession: her food. For this trip to Greece, that magazine has since become my most coveted travel possession. Through delayed flights, a two-day London stopover, a creepy hostel stay,  train troubles, baggage malfunction and countless hours in airports, that [...]

We zig-zagged our way through tube transit and were spit out a couple of miles from Brick Lane, the famed Indian restaurant row of London. Our walk led us through less bricks and more cement. The industrial-looking area seemed barren, yet a couple of hours later became flooded with young hipsters looking for a party. [...]

After sampling Camden Market’s food stalls my first night in London, I sipped on a Pimm’s lemonade, completely satisfied. I figured we were through eating. “Ready for dinner?,” Danny asked. He took me off guard, but I didn’t have the heart to deny the boy a real, full meal. And once we settled on Chinatown, [...]