Or, at least look at some pictures from this time last year.
This one is also India.
India, the land of vast spaces, incredible art and culture, and enormous social problems. I’m so happy I got to see its riches and the polar opposite.
Because when I looked outside at this beautiful view from my bedroom…
I thought to myself…I know!…
Let me hang my laundry outside! on the line just below my bedroom window!…
And I did! I dried my laundry outside my apartment wall for the first time ever.
And that’s when I knew the transformation was complete.
(oh, and p.s., last night I tripped the breaker by running too many modern conveniences in my apartment at one time. My landlord told me that I became officially Italian when I underwent that particular baptism by experience. It was all really just too damn funny!)
Yikes, this will give you vertigo! But I wish you could see and smell how fresh my beautiful laundry is!
At least she made it to the bookshelves at the local grocery store in Lucca. The incongruity of Martha Stewart teaching Italy how to cook is mind boggling!
This little beauty, Fiat Cinquecento, in what happens to be in pale yelllow which is one of my favorite colors for this car, needs no introduction. She is the stuff my dreams are made of!
I don’t think I can ever get over (and I don’t want to anyway) the delight if feel every time I see a lovely small clementine, hand-wrapped in tissue paper! It just makes me happy to see the care given to such a tiny, common, but still lovely, everyday object.
Is this one random enough for you? It is a handsome print of an elephant that hangs in my loft here in Lucca. I walk by it several times a day and it makes me smile and remember India. I love elephants. I wish they were cared for as well as the delicate clementines wrapped in tissue paper. Would that they were so lucky.
How I spend some of my days and even some of my evenings. But, I don’t work all the time. And, I don’t even think talking to handsome strangers in a bar (coffee shop here) should be considered homework, let alone work. I put it in the fun category.
Time does continue to fly, as we are reminded by this hour glass with marble wings on a church monument in Florence. Not even marble can slow down the flying of time. Carpe diem, people!
I had a lovely Valentine’s Day here in Lucca, thanks for asking! :-))))
Even though I am not at all religious, I still light a candle for certain loved ones lost, whenever I am in a Catholic church, which is actually pretty often. The churches are repositories of architecture, sculpture, paintings, silver, gold and other objets. This particular day I lit a candle for my mother, my dad, my two grandmothers, and for my too-soon gone sister-in-law Melinda, lost almost two years ago. I feel the sting of her death pretty much daily. The candles help me and if there is any possibility of such things, I hope they let my family know I am thinking of them. Even if it doesn’t, it is a nice way to show some love.
But, sometimes it is just too funny to not make a comment.
I’m in the Archeological Museum in Florence, just minding my own business and looking at art and artifacts and reading an occasional label, sometimes in Italian, sometimes in English.
And, for some random reason that I will never truly understand, I read this particular label, maybe because it comments on the path I’ve chosen for this lifetime of mine.
And, usually when reading English labels of Italian originals, my mind starts wandering while my eyes try to find the real information hidden amidst the tangled, mangled translation. But this time, I stuck with it through at least the first paragraph. When I got to the final sentence of paragraph one, I thought for a moment that someone would call a museum guard to pick the hysterical woman up off the floor.
Because, here’s the funny truth about not only the objets owned by the Archeological Museum, but indeed about everyone and everything on earth. In truth, we are all purchased or donated, and should be considered as a part of the collections themselves, while at the same time
“being of uncertain provenance and without context.”
Which I think will be the title of my next book. :-)
Then there is the whole discussion of ragu. The most popular and widely used sauce in all of Italy is simply known as ragu. Most foreigners think of ragu as a tomato-based sauce, but it is actually a meat-based sauce, with only a small amount of tomato sauce or paste added.
Ragu is usually served with pasta. It often begins with a soffritto, or chopped onions, celery, carrots, and typical seasonings of salt and pepper. Minced beef is added, browned and then the sauce is simmered slowly for several hours to let all the flavors marry, as they say. I’ve always thought that was a weird use of the word marry, but what do I know?
Italian cuisine is famous for its simplicity and variety with cheese and wine as major components of every Italian food recipe. It is also known for its pasta of different shapes, lengths, and widths and sauces with different ingredients.
Compared to other sauces it is thicker and made creamier by adding milk at the later stage of cooking. It has several different versions, and lamb, poultry, fish, veal, or pork can be used instead of ground beef. Other spices like chilies, peppers, beans, tarragon, and cumin can also be added.
Ragu alla Barese is prepared using horse meat; Ragu alla Napoletana has a lot of tomatoes and uses red wine; Ragu alla Bolognese uses white wine and fewer tomatoes. Ragu alla Bolognese or Bolognese sauce is the most popular version of ragu.
Bolognese sauce originated in Bologna, Italy and dates back to the 15th century. It is a pasta sauce that is meat based and contains a small amount of tomato sauce. It is traditionally served with tagliatelle, green lasagna, and other wide-shaped pasta instead of spaghetti pasta because the sauce holds up better with wider pasta.
Its ingredients include beef, soffritto, pancetta, onions, tomato paste, meat broth, white wine, and cream or milk. Like all other food preparations, Bolognese sauce has different variations. Pork, chicken, veal, rabbit, goose, and other meats can be used instead of beef.
The soffritto is made with celery, carrots, and onions cooked in butter or olive oil. Mushrooms, ham, and sausage are also added together with milk or cream to add more flavors and give it more creaminess. It is usually simmered for at least five hours.
First, the promise:
Then, the kiss:
And why not throw in a few colorful, sweet promises? Perche no?
Hope your day was sweet!
to “my life as a sherpa.” I am becoming an expert in a kind of mountaineering, like it or not. :-))
I’ll not address the fact that it is necessary to descend and climb Mt. Everest at the beginning and end of each day, and sometimes many times in between.
I’ll not address the fact that are a lot of steps on a very steep incline.
I refuse to address those issues and deflate anyone’s idea of la dolce vita. In particular, la mia.
But here’s what I will address: the idiot canadese couple who said, oh sure you can come to live in Italy without a special Visa! We do it all the time! Who cares as long as you don’t get sick or file for social security.
And then I, after 10 weeks in Italy, can still be gullible said, seriously? You can? Posso?
And then il marito della due mi parla, “Si, e che non solo scopo, ma uno supermercato grande e meraviglioso e molto vicino la tua casa” and you can walk there faster than you can say “likety split.” Ha ha. I am still walking.
E e vero e non divertente a me. Seriously.
get back, lauretta! 
You must be logged in to post a comment.