I was going through my old journals today and found this random piece of text…
“Take my hand and be young with me; don’t rush; be a beginner; weave pearls in your hair; grow potatoes; light candles; keep the fire; dare to love someone; tell yourself the truth; stay inside the rapture.”
Looking for your good deed of the day?
The Barilla Celebrity Pasta Lovers’ Cookbook celebrates the 130th birthday of the Italian brand and features recipes from celebrities like singer Delta Goodrem, chef Darren Simpson, Socceroo Marco Bresciano and food writer Joanna Savill.
To download the book, just head to Barilla’s Australian website and click on the pdf link.
For every person who downloads the 35-page book, Barilla will donate $1 to the Children’s Food Education Foundation, an organization which aims to help children make healthy food choices.
I officially received Italian citizenship last week. Woohoo! All that hard work and years of collecting documents finally paid off! I see video rentals, salary increases and health insurance in my future. yay. Thanks for all your help!
Today, millions of Jewish people around the world are celebrating Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. I was wondering about the tradtions of this holiday and so did a little research…
Apparently there’s a trumpet made from a ram’s horn called shofar which is blown in traditional communities every morning of the month before Rosh Hashanah. According to wikipedia, “the sound of the shofar is intended to awaken the listener from his or her ‘slumber’ and alert them to the coming judgment”. I wonder if Frances has one of these…
Like most religious holidays, there are special services and prayers that are recited, but during Rosh Hashana,there are also special poems (called piyyuttim), which I found interesting.
There are traditional greetings for this special day: “Shana Tova” (Hebrew for ‘A Good Year’) or “Shana Tova Umetukah” (‘A Good and Sweet Year’).
During the afternoon of the first day occurs the practice of tashlikh, in which prayers are recited near natural flowing water, and one’s sins are symbolically cast into the water. Many also have the custom to throw bread or pebbles into the water, to symbolize the “casting off” of sins.
And my favorite part–food! Rosh Hashanah cuisine often includes apples and honey to symbolize a “sweet new year”. Various other foods with a symbolic meaning are served as well, depending on local custom. Some of the more popular are:tongue or other meat from the head of an animal, or fish head (to symbolise the “head” of the year), dates, black-eyed beans, leeks, spinach, gourds, and pomegranates. Often, round challah bread is served to symbolize the cycle of the year. (I love challah. I remember when I was in culinary school I saved all the parchment paper that we baked challah on and used it for wrapping paper at Christmas-hotness!) Epicurious has a mouth watering array of Rosh Hashana menus if any of you are interested in getting in on the festivities.
Luca and I have been eating peaches like there’s no tomorrow. Seriously, between the two of us, we probably consume on average 3 peaches every day. They’re SO good right now.
The nine pumpkins I planted a few weeks ago are doing great! This week I took down the protective tent (aka bedsheet) that I set up to give them a little cover from the hot Italian sun. They’re growing like weeds! Okay, so there aren’t actually any pumpkins yet, but the leaves are really big.
In other news, my Lancia is on the way out the door. Luca has been doing load
s of research on used cars (because personally I don’t have that much interest in doing used car research) and has almost decided which one we should get. (I say “we” because, as sometimes occurs, he will probably be financing the initial purchase and I’ll pay him back in a few months). The muffler on the lancia fell completely off last week. And curiously enough, the insurance also expired. So, we’re looking into a car that costs less in insurance, uses less gas and has a muffler. The most promising choice so far is a 1998 Ford Fiesta, metallic grey with 42,000km and both summer and winter wheels! Ding.
I’ve been preparing lots of interesting things for dinner recently. The other night I made Sarah Moulton’s Asian Steak Lettuce Wraps from her Weeknight Meals book. They were so good. I went foraging for mint for the wrap sauce after work, but couldn’t find any anywhere in Verduno! (This baffles me because in Sinio I was practically the queen of finding wild mint). So, I used basil instead and it was still great.
We’re going to the Aosta Valley for a week in August. We’re staying at the Agriturismo Le Bonheur. Luca’s cousins go there every year and rave about it, so we thought we’d give it a go!
I’m a little concerned about how my pumpkins will fare in my absence. I’ll have to see if I can find someone to water them for me. Maybe the Zio (those are his tomatoes above) would do it…The tomato crop this year is great. No bug infestation like last year. However, it’s a bad year for squash. (Figures! Last year I planted tomatoes, this year I planted members of the squash family).
As you’ll notice in the picture, I installed tall stakes next to my plants. A lot of people train their veggies to grow upward instead of outward to save space. Since I only cleared about 3 feet of land, I figured I better do the same!
My green thumb must have really developed this winter, because I’m also keeping FIVE grassy plants alive by our front door! And four of them were Luca’s grandma’s plants that were left outside to die for three years and I miraculously managed to bring back to life. One of the girls I worked with at AlbaBarolo gave me a beautious pink-flowered plant as a going away present. It’s so cheerful!
One of the girls I worked with at AlbaBarolo gave me a pink-flowered plant as a going away present. It’s so cheerful!