Shira, Etc.

I haven’t even finished getting down my thoughts about Halloween and am already getting excited for Valentine’s Day!  Luca reminded me that Valentine’s Day is usually a day not to spend with friends but rather with one significant other person.  Well, I can remember only three or four February fourteenths that I celebrated with just one other person.  And though I’m sure they were lovely, I remember having tons of fun at group Valentine’s Day parties.

 So, I’m gathering ideas for VDay 2008.  If you’ve got some good ones–leave a comment!!  I’m still deciding whether to go the romantic or erotic route, so all ideas welcome!

Tonight we tried peanut sauce for the first time.  Nastiness!!  It was about the grossest thing I’ve ever tasted in my whole life.  Thank God I tasted it before slathering it all over my chicken!!  Eww.  Definitely added to the list of things I don’t like.  Perhaps there is a tastier version out there somewhere.  I imagine it must be better if you make it yourself–this was a store bought version, so maybe that was the problem…

This was definitely one of the less eventful new year’s of all time, at least, for me anyways.  No fireworks or ball gowns this year.

Dad did however make a scrumpscious lasagna which he served with a green salad (red peppers, bleu cheese, nicoise olives) and really garlicky garlic bread.  Timewarping back to NYE 2005 I’m reminded of the dinner menu at Bouchon Las Vegas:

Seared foie gras with crepe Suzette and cranberry confit

 Escargot with Bouchon bakery puff pastry

Smoked salmon terrine, Osetra caviar and champagne vinaigrette

Sweet butter poached Maine lobster, French lentils, chestnuts, chanterelle mushrooms and black truffles

Salt baked fish for two, wilted spinach, potato ragout and bearnaise sauce

Whole-roasted pork rack, mushroom fricassee, baby leeks and onion ‘jus’

Red wine-braised short ribs, Brussels sprouts, bacon and pomme puree (fancy mashed potatoes)

“Banana split” – banana financier, vanilla and chocolate ice creams, strawberry sorbet, creme chantilly, chocolate sauce and brandy cherry

Baked Alaska

Trio of souffles – chocolate, grand marnier and hazelnut souffle glace with sauces and garnish

Dinner this year was followed by a valiant attempt to watch Gone With the Wind (old-school VHS version).  Attempt because the second tape was slightly smashed and even after an hour of taking the tape apart and trying to insert the insides into another VHS, we were unable to rescue the movie.  *sob* So we watched the first half of GWTW and then watched Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (another classic).

In the afternoon, Mom and I went to see The Kite Runner, which was great!  For once a movie that follows the book–it was very well done.

“Games lubricate the body and the mind.”
       –Benjamin Franklin, American statesman and inventor, 1706 – 1790

I’m looking forward to a good, healthy dose of Scrabble when I go home next week.  I’ve found that many Italians are not big game players.  Luckily I was able to trick Luca into opening his mind to the world of games during our trip to Aosta, where there was no TV.  He’s a big fan of the double deck card game “Scala 47”.  In this game you basically have to get cards that add up to 47 and you win.  Not all that challenging (though for the mathematically disinclined it can occasionally be rather frustrating.  Couldn’t they at least have picked an EVEN number?!)

Anyways, I’m sure you can appreciate the fact that during this TV-less week, even Scala 47 got old pretty quick.  So I made a mancala game out of stapled together plastic cups and random pebbles and bean pods found around the farm.  Mancala: now there’s an exciting game!  We used to make them in Girl Scouts with egg cartons and buttons.  Hotness, folks, hotness.  If you’ve never played, I reccomend you make yourself a mancala game and find a partner lickitysplit.

If you have played mancala, try out one of the alternatives: there are hundreds!

By the end of our trip, Luca was addicted to Mancala, and now it’s he who’s asking me to play.  In the meantime, we’ve aumented our game collection to include UNO (which we two refer to as “colors”), Jenga and one stupid puzzle of a cat trying to eat fish (yet to be completed).

As for my homemade mancala game, I gave it to a group of kids who were staying at the same TV-less B&B with us and were bored out of their minds.  (I even threw in the pebbles I collected and their sophisticated container: a plastic Tums bottle.  They thought it was cool that the rocks smelled fruity.)

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Diana, Jon and Nicky gave me an amazon.co.uk gift certificate for Christmas last year and I finally got around to using it.  Woohoo!!!  I love buying stuff I don’t have to pay for.  Ding!  I bought the DVDs of Anne of Green Gables & Anne of Avonlea in Region 0 (so I can watch them both in Italy and in the US).  Woohoo!!  It’s been at least a year since I’ve watched them, so I think it’s high time.  (They even have Italian subtitles!)

I also got Pierre Herme’s Chocolate Desserts book–an old standard that I’ve read a couple times but never owned.  Yumm.  Can’t wait to make everything! 

In addition I got a balance ball workout video which I think I may just try out today too.

I love getting packages in the mail!

In other news, Brenda and Gerry came to visit last week and we had a great time!