Every day we’ve got a glut of garden produce. Not that I’m complaining, mind you, but besides freezing and canning, I’ve been using them in various dishes. It’s nice to know where the produce came from and how it was grown. On one of his last trips out to the garden O brought back a [...]
Posts under ‘Flavors’
Polenta! Who knew?
When I was about 4 years old, we went to my grandmother’s house for dinner one night in the middle of the week. Once we sat down at the table, she spooned a lumpy yellow semi-liquid substance on my plate and topped it with a spoonful of tomato sauce. I won’t tell you what it [...]
Nature’s Bounty
Two days ago I spent hours doing some “down home” tasks and, while I know it sounds contradictory, it both allowed me to take my mind of things and gave me time to think at the same time. O brought home a basket of garden goods just in time, I guess. There’s something soothing about [...]
Buttery goodness
On a lighter note…. I’ve always been rather fond of cheese. Years ago, I remember my grandfather trying to change my mind by describing what cheese looked like under a microscope, but it was a futile effort on his part. Years later, when I spent a semester abroad in France, I think I tried to [...]
Pasta with Chicken and Grapes
This is one of the recipes I made for Luigi’s party. The mixture is rather unorthodox for Italians and some loved it while others wouldn’t even taste it. But, it’s a recipe that I found years ago in a cookbook and I used to make it whenever we had a potluck at work, where it [...]
Pasta with potatoes and speck
I know, it sounds like a starch attack, doesn’t it. But actually, in Italy you often find potatoes paired with pasta or even sliced thin and put on top of pizza. (White pizza that is, not pizza with tomato sauce). Pizza with potatoes does sound a little strange, but what could be weirder than pizza [...]
Decoction Concoction – Good for what ails you.
My latest bought with the cold, the flu, bronchitis, or whatever it was had me really worn out and tired. Coughing was an all-day, all-night affair and there were no medicines available to help out. I was “treating” myself by drinking hot honey and lemon and was stopping the cough with cough drops and hard [...]
Musical spaghetti
Although I don’t have a lot of time lately to indulge in some of my favorite activities, I still do manage to squeeze one in now and then. One of those activities is preparing and cooking traditional foods. Whenever I taste something locally made, I want to know how to make it and I want [...]
Festival treats
Festival season is getting started here. Just this past weekend we had the Festival of Saint Michael in Liscia and here in Palmoli we had a fair. That means that lots of vendors were here. Next to the peanuts, pistachios and candy, they also sell something called the lupine bean. These little beans are one [...]
Fish with herbs
In what seems to be a futile attempt to eat more healthily, I have decided to add more fish to our diet. Futile, I say, because it seems like whenever we decide to be healthy there’s a holiday or someone gives us baked goods or chocolate or the like. But, despite that, we can still [...]
