July 2007

Departure

July 30, 2007

original I feel so cosmopolitan! One day I’m wandering around London with my hair expensively curled, looking at shop windows where the price of a pair of underwear equals the bimonthly salary of some Indian whom I will see in a few days, on the streets of New Delhi. Aug 1, 2007 5:26 AM I’m [...]

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Packing

July 27, 2007

original Just me. Two suitcases*, max 20 kilos each. Since this will be a year in India, I was forced to discard low-necked shirts, miniskirts and short-shorts, high heels and wedge sandals: in other words, everything I usually wear! Put aside is the useless junk, the designer stuff that I’d be ashamed to show off. [...]

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She’s Leaving Home

July 27, 2007

What with all the preparations, end of the school year, and various family medical traumas, I have barely had time to dwell on the fact that our daughter is about to leave home. It’s just as well that I haven’t had that time. Ross will be away for a full ten months (yes, I will [...]

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Cartoceto: A Geometric Town in Le Marche

July 24, 2007

After the phenomenal dinner at Symposium, Susan and I shared a room at the Villa Cartoceto B&B. Though it’s a lovely place and I probably would have enjoyed it in other circumstances, I conclude that the old village houses in this part of Italy are built to withstand cold (or maybe invaders) rather than heat: [...]

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San Lorenzo Dinner at the Symposium Quattro Stagioni: Arrival

July 23, 2007

I was one of a lucky group of people to win a dinner offered by San-Lorenzo.com as part of its marketing initiative Il Vino Lo Portiamo Noi (“we’ll bring the wine”). So what if the dinner took place halfway across Italy in le Marche? The Symposium Quattro Stagioni is one of Italy’s top restaurants, and [...]

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Forgot My Password: Austin American-Statesman

July 23, 2007

Another in the ongoing series “one million ways to screw up a password reminder page.” This one’s from the Austin American-Statesman, a site I only registered on because a friend forwarded an article I might enjoy, and this is one of those (extremely annoying) sites where you can only read an article if you’re signed [...]

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San Lorenzo Dinner at the Symposium Quattro Stagioni – After

July 23, 2007

We sat around for a while and drank more wine (Alessandro, Enrica, and Ernesto shown above), and played with a new gadget that my boss Fabrizio invented (Carlo came up with the wine glass trick). I had brought along prototypes to give everybody, as a market test to see how they liked it. Rossella aka [...]

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San Lorenzo Dinner at the Symposium Quattro Stagioni – Dessert

July 23, 2007

Alessio and Enrico The dessert was also amazingly complicated and took a lot of time to prepare (the staff certainly earn their keep here!). The woman above filled little glasses with a coconut sorbet-and-liqueur. Lacy chocolate cups were filled with ice cream (I wasn’t quite sure of the flavor), and then warm little chocolate muffins [...]

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San Lorenzo Dinner at the Symposium Quattro Stagioni – Secondi

July 23, 2007

For the secondi (entree course), Sara had decided to challenge her guests with a Degustazione di Frattaglie. Degustazione means “tasting” or “sampler”. Frattaglie are… innards. (I believe in English they are sometimes called euphemistically “sweetbreads”.) This used to be considered peasant food: the parts of the animal left over after the nobles had taken the [...]

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San Lorenzo Dinner at the Symposium Quattro Stagioni – Primi

July 23, 2007

The starter was panzanella di pomodoro con scampi di Fano – tomato and bread with local scampi on a bed of arugula. As chef Lucio explained, this is a recipe inspired by the “fishermen of the hills” – those who, while owning a fishing boat down on the coast, live up in the hills, where [...]

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San Lorenzo Dinner at the Symposium Quattro Stagioni: Aperitivi

July 23, 2007

Much of the action at Symposium takes place behind the large, curved bar in the dining room, where patrons are welcome to lean over, watch, and ask questions. From the time we arrived, Danilo was busy preparing five different nibbles for the aperitivi di benvenuto. The spoonfuls shown above, designed to be reminiscent of “an [...]

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Italian Animal Idioms

July 20, 2007

In Italian, as in any language, there are many popular sayings and metaphors using animals, based on human perceptions of those animals’ lives and habits. Cats It seems that, in Italian culture, the distinguishing feature of cats is their greed for food. Non c’e’ trippa per gatti “There’s no tripe for cats.” This is used [...]

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More Reasons to Send Your Child to Woodstock School

July 18, 2007

I thought of a few more answers to the question: Why send your child to Woodstock School? The Natural Environment The photo above was taken from the top of the hill above school at dawn on a November morning. Need I say more? Look through the rest of the Woodstock section of this site, as well [...]

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Where Italians Go on Vacation

July 14, 2007

Someone asked on Frommer’s: "Where do Italians go on vacation?" The majority go to the beach. For at least a century, a seaside vacation has been considered healthful: during the Fascist period, ocean front "colonies" were built, where urban children could be sent to escape the grime of the cities. The month-long summer vacation is [...]

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Learn Italian in Song: Amo Tutte le Signore

July 14, 2007

I had never heard this song before (nor had Enrico) and I cannot find any references to it anywhere, so I have no idea who to credit for it. We heard it at a local festival, sung by a live band (a trio with lots of electronic and pre-recorded instruments). The song amused me so [...]

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Death by Waiting

July 11, 2007

Thanks to those who have written words of encouragement and kept me in your thoughts and prayers. Yes, even as an atheist I can appreciate prayers – if you care enough to intercede with your god for me, I take it as a sign of affection, and affection never hurts. Besides, I have so many [...]

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Papa Fan: A Satirist for the Modern Papacy

July 10, 2007

Thanks to a tip from Ross, I have for some time been following a very funny fotolog by Francesco Rabaglia, aka Papa Fan (papa is Italian for pope, differentiated from papà – dad – by the stress). It’s hard to see the humor unless you understand Italian well: basically the writer is putting funny captions [...]

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Italian Restaurant: La Quercia di Rosa

July 7, 2007

On our way down to Abruzzo for my mother-in-law’s 80th birthday, we stopped for lunch near Modena, the home of balsamic vinegar. Quite by accident (although this kind of accident is not unusual in Italy), we found an excellent restaurant, La Quercia di Rosa (the Rose Oak – ?). They make their own balsamic vinegar, [...]

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Italian Garden 2007: July

July 5, 2007

Unintended Consequences Here’s what happens when I leave my garden unattended: I get beautiful wild grains like the above – otherwise known as weeds. A weed I had been assiduously removing (but, obviously, missed one) turns out to have charming puffy purple blossoms. The insalata riccia (curly lettuce) bolted into meter-high stalks with delicate blossoms. [...]

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Biopsy: Digging to China Through My Breast

July 4, 2007

Well, that was extremely unpleasant. First there was the wait, from Thursday to Tuesday, going through stages from: “I certainly don’t have cancer, they’re just being careful” to: “Ohmigod I’m going to die!” I spent a lot of the weekend working hard in the garden – a very good distraction. Saturday afternoon Enrico and I [...]

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