I Dare Myself Too!

I seem to be on a 24/7 dash, to revamp my B&B website, so not a great deal of time for guilt free blogging or blog browsing. The winter refuses to cooperate and happen, so instead of winter antics and activities to blog about, I thought I would finally write about a challenge that Ilva over at Lucullian Delights put forward way back on the 3rd of January. "Lucullian Delights, An Italian Experience" is where I first discovered the fascinating world of blogging, and discovered the power of blogs to draw me in regularly to not only savor her incredible droolable food photographs and moody Tuscan landscapes, but I found myself away on a trip to all sorts of culinary adventures and beyond to all sorts of places and people, thanks to My Blog Log. I no longer felt like I was in such a remote part of the Italian alps anymore. Well we're not so remote, just not so close to town up a small twisty road that seems like you're very remote. I love her inventiveness and courageous approach to cooking. She uses a lot of spices and food combinations that I haven't been so freely adventuresome with myself. I'm a different kind of inventive that has found a renewed courageousness when I find myself trying to make cuisine other than Italian without the proper Asian or Mexican ingredients. I have become very brave with forging on with local ingredients with interesting and usually very satisfying results. Anyway, She had started a meme one year previous called "This Year I Dare" to come up with 5 things she had not made before and didn't get thru all the list so has brought the challenge forward again for this year. I've been contemplating and it's not too late to put one forward myself. Ilva's is already in her archive for Jan 06. You might want to put one together also, feel free to do the same. We'll see how we get on by next year.
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?

Oh and one last challenge to myself.
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