how many Mister Joes can there be in Italy?
This week there was some paella and a trip to a street fest somewhere in Liguria…best description of the location I can come up with 🙂
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- Paella!
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- click and then read what’s on the van!
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- Two old men and the sea.
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- Random performer guy.
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- Kids at the street fair. I was bored with the show.
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- another Mr: Joe
soap with food
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- When one has never used a dishwasher….One should never use a dishwasher!!!
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- Or is there some logic that says if there’s a container for soap, then the container should be filled 🙂
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- pasta with meatballs!!!
I can’t even spell gnocchi…
well, hang on kiddies…this will be a good one….
How to make Gnocchi like an italian grandmother.
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- mash potatoes…
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- find old italian lady to give you pesto…
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- Mash potatoes…
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- knead….Two parts potato and one part flour….
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- roll into snakes…
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- cut them!
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- use your thumb and the back of a cheese grater to make a shape that holds the pesto. There is no picture of that 😛
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- cook in water.
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- walnuts and parmesan!
Tuscan weekend!
So Leo invited a few friends to his country house somewhere above Florence. I rode up with Leo and Daniele after work on Friday, and just go back (Sunday). I have not showered for two and a half days (I just wanted to share that).
Saturday we BBQd for lunch and then had proper pizza from a proper pizza oven for dinner. Cheers Daniele!
After he left the kitchen I decided to make my own…yeah that went well.
Today went to some little restaurant out in nowhere…I’m learning there’s nothing comparable to the tuscan experience of driving up some single lane (yet two way) road, twisting, turning and honking your horn on every blind corner only to come to a wide point in the road where 34 cars are parked. You have arrived!
The food shots below are all from the restaurant (cept the pizza oven which is in Leo’s house).
I’ll put more countryside pics on my Italian pic page (link on right – or just http://www.joesquires.com/viva-italia/)…
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- The proper pizza oven.
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- Pomegranate?
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- Polenta with mushrooms…Polenta is sorta like cornmeal, but always made from scratch. Sometimes served soft like a soup or cream corn, and in this case cooked to a solid.
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- Andrea and Simona
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- Giulio
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- Enriqo and Daniele
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- a picture next to a picture of a famous footballer…Leo!
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- Georgia…
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- I’m lost…
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- from a car in Tuscany
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- from a car in Tuscany
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- from a car in Tuscany
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- from a car in Tuscany
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- from a car in Tuscany
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- from a car in Tuscany
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- from a car in Tuscany
seldomly…
I tried to use seldomly instead of occasionally last night…as in “I seldomly have a whiskey”. Instead of “I occasionally have a whiskey”. The whole premise of this entry was that I wasn’t sure if seldomly was a word…I see that WordPress is telling me that is it NOT…
So there you have it. Seldomly is NOT a word.
I’m glad we had this conversation!
I had Octopus twice on Thursday. In a soup at lunchtime and for dinner as well. I guess I’m sort of getting a taste for it. The Italians are fond of their seafood.
I think I felt a small earthquake tonight about 8:30. Just a small weird shaking…Noone in the street was screaming or anything, but I’ve been through a few small quakes. This is what it felt like.
Considering I’m about 1 meter above sea level I was hoping for a tsunami…alas…niente!
13 does not equal 30
I had dinner at the pub tonight and as I was leaving and paying the guy said tredieci (13)…I thought he was saying 3o (trento) and quickly (I thought) corrected him (thinking he was charging me for 3 bottles of wine) said I had 3 glasses (bichieri)…the price went from 13 to 15 immediately…
this is why being an immigrant sucks…I think the waitress was being nice to me by charging me for a bottle 6€ and instead the boss man charged me for 3 glasses (9€)…ok it’s a minuscule difference, but this happens all the time. The immigrant gets hosed!
OK…I have another complaint!
I tried to buy 2 tomatoes last night to finish off my cheese and salami, and I ended up with 8 tomatoes cuz the bird didn’t speak english and she just gave me a bag full of tomatoes…so now that I’ve used up all my spaghetti, salami and cheese I have 6 tomatoes left…cooking for oneself is a viscous cycle…
I guess I need to buy more food to use up the tomatoes…
food
I think I’m going to cook tonight…This is a monumental experience. I haven’t cooked alone for a few years (no…literally…years) as I find it a bit depressing to cook alone.
However, I have olive oil, salt, and spaghetti. I’m gonna go buy some salami, garlic and cheese and see what happens. 🙂
<update> I just invented pastucci…it took an american to bring Italian cooking out of the dark ages… 😉
That is sarcasm…
Cleaning out the camera…
Just food pics for the last month…I’m fond of taking pics of italian food…
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- I’m not sure I can spell collonata…
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- Leo, can I put this on facebook 🙂
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- mushrooms…
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- seriously…this is like June rain in germany…
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- it’s raining in Italy
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- that’s how the italians roll…
Under the tuscan sun!
So busy few days…went to La Spezia on Thursday for a lovely dinner.
Friday met Leo in Florence to go to his parents country house and a small party…So I’ve never actually been to a “country house”…The first thing I’ve learned is that there are many many many insects, bees, spiders, etc (are spiders insects?)…always check your pillow cases for wasps ;)…This was how I woke up on Saturday morning…to a wasp buzzing inside my pillow…I may have possibly screamed like a little girl 😉
But it was a good time…good group of people and friends.
A frenchman told me I seemed quite European…I took this as a great compliment 🙂
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- Thursday night…paddys day!
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- Daniele!
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- Daniele, Jenny and me
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- and then there was Leo!
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- and Leila…
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- first attempt at carmelizing sugar without butter…we used whiskey instead.
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- Betty Crocker 😉
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- I don’t even know what to say…Enriqo and Andrea! Dance on fellas!!!
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- Two old men on Sunday morning!
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- Sunday morning!!! The survivors…
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- I’m not going to say “worst beard ever!!!”…I’m not…no I didn’t…NO!
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- The cake before we ruined it :)…I mean fixed it!!!
