Then late this afternoon we had a fire break out at the end of our road about 5 km behind us and the helicopters and firefighters rushed here and put out one small fire and seem to be getting the bigger one under control Thank goodness to the dedicated people that help out in such an emergency. We hear the trucks going down now so it seem they have put it out. If only it would snow and help us all out.
21 January 2007
A Strange Winter
Then late this afternoon we had a fire break out at the end of our road about 5 km behind us and the helicopters and firefighters rushed here and put out one small fire and seem to be getting the bigger one under control Thank goodness to the dedicated people that help out in such an emergency. We hear the trucks going down now so it seem they have put it out. If only it would snow and help us all out.
19 January 2007
I Dare Myself Too!
My list
- 1) Fresh Ideas for some of my favorites veggies that I hadn't really made before coming to Italy. Fresh Artichokes and Cauliflower(the ones in the picture below are called Roman varieties) and fennel. Love em and want to expand my repertoire.
- 2) Sardinian Ravioli. Rowena from over at Rubber Slippers In Italy made some awhile back and I have been wanting to try them ever since, as they are an upright dumpling type affair that looks like they take a bit of patience and practice.
- 3)Dim Sum ok, so they aren't Italian, but I've never made any and I'm always curious to build on my somewhat weak repertoire of Asian food
- 4) Scary flat fish. Turbot I think. Fish has never appealed to my adventuresome side but they always make it look so easy on our local version of "Ready Steady Cook",(La Prova delle Cuoco) that I think I must pick up the gauntlet. I was inspired by a picture of one I found on Toraa's, Norwegian site, after he stopped in the other day.
- 5) Carnival Bugia, like the ones pictured at the top of the post. I've made one variety of filled ones that are sort of like sopapillas, but the flat lasagne strip types ones are so yummy and light, that I must discover their secret. Anyone have any ideas?
I would like to occasionally add some recipes and photos, but I'm not so hot with writing precise measurements especially now that I tend to do a combination of metric and American measurements, if I'm measuring accurately at all.
We shall see how I get on with that challenge.
Just had to tidy up my spelling and grammar errors, as I wrote this very late last night! Mg
13 January 2007
Universiadi Flame Arrives, Snow Hasn't
Today the University supporters were handing out Red Bull to the crowd.
But I digress.
The flame arrived in a little lantern carrier, the torch was lit, and paraded thru town by a variety of flame carriers, but unlike last year instead of walking or running these torch holders were paraded about in a bevy of antique Fiat cars by a local motor club. The cars were stunning. The weather clear and lovely, the mountains pretty bare of snow, but there is still time for a bit of snow to save the day. Perhaps the act of parading the torch around will have the desired effect. We shall hope so.
Pinerolo is the birthplace of the calvary in Italy, so any chance to bring out another type of horse power is welcomed and attended. The horses were amazingly calm and impressively beautiful.
Update> RenneyBA"s Terella latest post talks about their lack of snow in Norway also. Not sure if that is reassuring or not, but Renny's blog is an interesting read anyway.
11 January 2007
Outing to Val Thures and "La Tana Degli Orsi"
It was a welcome sight, La Tana Degli Orsi, (or Bear cave) upon arriving to the restored cantina with it's magnificent stone arches that now serves as the dining area and is the heart of the B&B. The "bears" (Claudio and Faustina) have been running their B&B in this remote little mountain area for the past 5 year and have become a welcome spot for all the people that love the tranquility and splendor of these magnificent mountains. There is always a warm welcome for all, even for the people that just drop in need of a warm up to keep them going. They, of course, don't get to enjoy the quaint rooms of the "bear cave", ot the genial hospitality and the gentle humor of the "bears" hosts themselves. What a pity. During the season, Mama bear, Carla (Faustina's mother) comes up to lend a hand and round out the family. La Tana Degli Orsi in Val Thures, is just another reason to make some tracks to Piedmont and our alps to discover more hidden gems that aren't on a topography map!
06 January 2007
La Befana has arrived!
So when I asked Fabrizio what La Befana means to him, he says that if you're good you get chocolate and small gifts, but if you're bad you get coal.
So we both got a bit of chocolate today!
He also said that she's mean, so she takes Christmas away with her. Hence the tradition of taking down the Christmas decorations on the 6th, is away with Befana (which looks a bit like a derivative of the world epiphany)
Here's an excerpt from "Christmas in Abruzzo" about Befana and another by the About site. Fabrizio sang me the little ditty when he saw that I had included it. It seems to be a childhood rhyme. And tomorrow, well...it's back to work for everyone and the yuletide season is over and put to bed for another year, Bye bye Befana!
The Befana
(Italian) La Befana vien di notte con le scarpe tutte rotte col vestito alla "romana" viva viva la Befana !! Porta cenere e carboni | (English) The Befana comes by night With her shoes all broken With a dress in Roman style Up, up with the Befana !! She brings ashes and coal |
The name Befana appeared historically for the first time in writing in a poem by Agnolo Firenzuola in 1549. She is portrayed like an old ugly woman, dressed in dark rags who during the night between 5th and 6th January flies over the houses riding her broom and entering through the chimneys (in modern apartments through a keyhole). Into the socks that children left hanging near the fireplace she leaves candies and gifts for good children, black coal (actually black sugar today), garlic and onions to the bad ones. Parents of course would always include some coal over the gifts, to cheat their children. And the night before the family leaves some wine and cakes for the old lady."
Another version from About:Italian Language"La Befana: Kindly old witch who brings children toys on the Feast of the Epiphany, January 6. According to the legend of la Befana, the Three Wise Men stopped at her hut to ask directions on their way to Bethlehem and to invite her to join them. She refused, and later a shepherd asked her to join him in paying respect to the Christ Child. Again she refused, and when night fell she saw a great light in the skies.
La Befana thought perhaps she should have gone with the Three Wise Men, so she gathered some toys that had belonged to her own child, who had died, and ran to find the kings and the shepherd. But la Befana could not find them or the stable. Now, each year she looks for the Christ Child. Since she can not find him, she leaves gifts for the children of Italy and pieces of coal (nowadays carbone dolce, a rock candy that looks remarkably like coal) for the bad ones."
04 January 2007
Another Day another Beautiful Skyline
01 January 2007
New Year, New Adventures and most of all New People!
As one of our guests put it, the internet works. Which brings me to to the original point of this blog, which was to send some cookies to some people I have "met" on the internet. What an incredible experience to have virtual friends as well as live guests too. Keeps me busy trying to keep up. I'm still a bit new and amazed by the world of the internet having only started using a computer when I started working in Europe a few years ago and wanted to try and stay in contact with my family in the states. I have met so many incredibly accomplished and inspiring, ordinary people, whose passionate lives and writing border on extraordinary. So much that I find it's hard to get some of the things I need to get done sometimes, as I am drawn into other peoples lives and expertise in my desire to discover more and more and more. I'm sure many of you must feel the similarly? Perhaps being an ex pat and struggling thru rapid Italian and Piemontese conversations all the time, I am even more drawn to the fountain of the internet.
Anyway, along the way I have discovered an amazing group of ever expanding food bloggers and a quite diverse network of people with an incredible depth of interest and expertize thru My Blog Log.
I felt compelled to send some cookies to a few people that have shown an interest about what I'm doing for a variety of reasons. A fellow expat here in Italy has been decorating Ginger people in her native Hawaii for a few weeks for the holiday season. Rubber Slippers in Italy
She has some great stories and amazing food. Particularly inpressed with her Sardian ravioli amongst many. Lora of the Power of Trinity asked me which cookies I made and so the picture above depicts a few of the ones that I have pared down the list to this year. Josh of The HOV Lane mentioned that he might like to stop by and have a few cookies if his tour included the Alps. Perhaps when gets thru all 50 states, he'll hop the pond and visit with us over here.
For many years when I worked for the ski resort of Copper Mountain in Colorado, my colleagues and I use to make hundreds of cookies for the holiday season. My particular favorite time of the baking year is the yule time, even though it was the busiest time. We made ginger houses for various units around the village and many various cut out cookies with little bags of colored frosting, sprinkles and draggees for the village and visitor children's cookie decorating party hosted by Copper Village. Most personally satisfying, was the employee party where our cookies were a prominent feature and always a topic of conversation later on. I still am unable to resist having a few decorated cut out cookies around every year. Also on the pictured plate are the traditional Butter balls, which go by many names, a pasta frolla coin, and Hazelnut sables. Missing from the line up are a few of my favorites, like occhio di bui (Ox eyes), local Baci Dama(lady kisses), linzer hearts, stain glass cookies, and English toffee bars just to name a few. Perusing some of those food blogs I keep mentioning, they had a lot of great ideas that I think might become my new favorites. I always try to have some type of cookie here as we have a fair amount of guests stop in and it's nice to have a home made cookie to go with that expresso or tea when the time comes. One other thing I miss, that I hope to some day start up here, is the cookie exchange. One of my dear friends use to have us over for a girls night and usually we kept it to 12 women. Everyone brought 12 dozen of one type of their current favorite cookie separated into 12 plates. So that everyone left with 12 different kinds of cookies. You sometimes found some new favorites and didn't have to make so many different ones yourself. That worked for a few years until everyone decided that many cookies were sometimes too much, so they then it turned into a food exchange and all sorts of interesting things got exchanged. One of my personal favorites was cranberry chutney. So there's an idea for you next year to have a bit of fun with. Perhaps I'll have a go on the internet with some of the food bloggers and see how that goes. In the mean time, new year, new adventures and always a reason to come to Italy and visit with us in the alps .....
Blessed Be to all of you known and all of you that I've yet to meet.
Marla (aka Pasticciera)