Welcome to Vivi in Harmony
I inherited my cooking and baking skills from my mom who, in turn, inherited them from my grandma: coming from a typical Italian family, I grew up seeing them in the kitchen all of the time, preparing all of our lunches and dinners (going out to eat isn’t something a typical Italian family does, at least back in the days) and baking goodies that were traditional recipes of our northern Italian cuisine. I started off learning how to cook our traditional dishes but, as I was growing up, I started to become more and more health conscious and concerned about what ingredients I was using for cooking.
It was in my early twenties when I started experimenting new dishes and I particularly developed a passion for baking new and healthier desserts than those I was used to eat for every birthday or special occasion. By the age of 25, I started collecting all of my recipes, meticulously saving them on my hard disk: “sooner or later” – I used to tell myself – “I’m going to open a blog and start sharing them with the world” … but it looked like it was going to be more later than sooner, as I was always so busy in my everyday life that the idea of the blog always remained just an idea.
Until summer 2018 when, in early August I took a trip to the east coast and I stopped in New Haven, CT to visit Virginia.
Virginia and I have been friends since childhood: we are both from Torino (I’m actually from Chieri, a smaller city belonging to Torino’s suburbs) but what made us so close friends were our second houses in Rinco, steps away from each other. For how well you know Italy, I guarantee you have never heard of Rinco: a tiny, pretty village with a big castle in its main square, located in the heart of Monferrato and surrounded by fields and nature. Monferrato is home to some of the best Italian wines, truffles, hazelnuts and so much more. My grandparents used to live in a side of the house that is currently still there and in my mom’s caring hands. We used to have vineyards right by us and we used to sell our precious wine that was the pride of our family and the best I can possibly recall drinking. Our yard was filled with fruit trees giving us, every summer, peaches, apricots, cherries, figs, hazelnuts and apples; we used to grow vegetables, to have our own chicken and eggs and our special grandma, who had a full lunch ready every Sunday for the whole family and bags of food to bring back home for the week. My heart is filled with emotions when I think back of those days, that I truly miss.
And, as I said, steps away from our “summer house” was Virginia’s family house: we used to spend most of our summer holidays playing together with a bunch of kids of our age making memories, that are among the best of my entire childhood.
A funny memory dates back to 18 years ago, when myself, her and our other friend “big” Erica (we had to somehow distinguish the 2 Ericas in our group and she happens to be a year older than our other Erica) decided to play “the big sister” in Virginia mom’s Giardino d’Inverno (literally: Winter Garden). That was the year in which the very first Italian edition of “The Big Brother” was on everyone’s mouth and TV, big thing. We were in our early teens (not kids anymore!) and that summer we spent most of our days in this sort of studio/storage where her mom and dad used to keep gardening utensils, old furniture and any other sort of things (literally anything you can think of!). We really wanted to make that our house and simulate the reality show we were watching on TV, although our parents thought that wasn’t really a great idea and we should have probably returned home at the end of the day at least for sleeping and eating. We still managed to eat a few lunches and dinners in that storage that to us was so attractive, but yeah, we gave up the idea of moving there for a month 🙂
As we grew older, each one of us took her own path and the “big sister” game, along with all of our other summer adventures, remained a sweet memory of our young years. We kept in touch here and there and, when both of us left Italy to move abroad, we reconnected again. Virginia was in Canada for quite a few years and then moved to the US East Coast in 2017; I was in China for a couple years and then moved to California in 2011; “big” Erica moved to Australia and is still there, not on our side of the planet (yet). The “big sisters” are now spread out all over the world but they are all still in touch, they all love yoga and essential oils and they all have the same problem: when they talk to each other, they squeeze in some English here and there because they forgot how to say that word in Italian and they complain about how they’re losing their Italian! Oh yes… the days when Virginia was in elementary school (I just started junior high) and I used – on her parents’ request – to teach her some English and help her out with her English homework are REALLY far away.
We all reunited in California in 2015 and went together on a road trip to the Grand Canyon, making more (older) memories and who knows…a new “big sisters” reunion may be on the way 🙂
Virginia and I actually met in summer 2018, as I mentioned above. I was taking a trip to the East Coast to meet my parents (they were on a road trip from Canada to Boston) and I decided to stop in New Haven for a quick visit.
It was a super-hot and humid Saturday afternoon of early August and we were chilling and chatting with a beer in front of us, on the outside patio of Stony Creek, a cute little brewery in Branford, CT. It was right here that the idea of opening a website together was born. I have to thank Virginia if this website has finally become real: if it was for me, it would have probably taken another 10 years to happen (being optimistic!) and it would have most likely been a blog, not a website.
So here it is, our little creation, that puts together my passion for healthy cooking & baking, our unconditional love for the essential oils, my workout and fitness experience and her long-term dedication and expertise of the yoga practice. We both still have a lot to learn, experiment, try and discover but, as we go, nothing stops us from sharing what we have learnt and experienced so far.
The main concept behind Vivi in Harmony – and in which we both strongly believe – is that an overall healthy lifestyle is not just a result of healthy eating rather than a crazy workout routine alone. None of them will ever work alone if you do not dedicate some of your time to nourish your mind. Body and soul both need to be taken care of: we are made of both and they’re so closely related to each other that we couldn’t just feed one and not the other.
You can eat as healthy as you want but if you have a stressful lifestyle, the benefits of healthy eating kind of vanish.
Nourish yourself, choose the best for your body, move it, exercise it, love it and do these same exact things for your mind and soul.
Yoga, meditation, clean eating, exercising, essential oils, daily use of natural products versus those containing harsh chemicals are all essential ingredients for a truly healthy lifestyle and Vivi in Harmony wants to guide you to reach this lifestyle and go even further.
We are not teachers, we are not doctors or chefs, we are not omniscient, we are not experts in anything and we are not here to tell you what is good and what not: we just want to share what we have come across in our lives, what we have experimented on our own selves, what we have achieved, discovered and found out working great, at least for us.
If it worked for us, it may be working for you too, it’s just a matter of trying 🙂
Alessia