Boots in the Oven

Bread Gnocchi in Broth

Ah, The Silver Spoon.  The Husbear got this book for Christmas from his ever-loving brother and his ever-loving brother's fiancee, and I think he may be obsessed.

Here's why.

Because the recipes contained in the book are crazygood, duh!

So, tonight, Husbear made Bread Gnocchi in Broth, or Brodo con Gnocchetti di Pane.  This seems to be another of those clear-out-the-fridge meals, in that it's a simple veggie broth made with whatever vegetables you have around (he used leeks, carrots, onions, garlic, and celery) and then tasty little bread dumplings made of yesterday's bread, with scallions and parmesan mixed in for flavor and then an egg to bind it together.  Serve all this topped with olive oil, some of your own pepper oil, and grated parmesan, and you're good to go.  (Last night's leftover braised peas and lettuce were added also - worked really well.)

The recipe calls for all of those tasty cooked vegetables to be strained out, which always causes us some consternation - I mean, they look so good, all cooked and tasty!  The book therefore points out that these leftovers can be either eaten cold in a salad, or cooked au gratin in the oven.  Huh.

Husbear decided to go cold.

He took all that veg, threw it in the freezer for a few, then tossed with balsamic vinegar and a little olive oil.  Simple, and a lovely side dish.

I could get used to having this cookbook around.

girlie

One More Reason Italians Kick Ass

I have had the recent good fortune to receive several choice cookbooks from my loving family. The largest and most imposing is called The Silver Spoon. At least that’s what it’s called in English as it has been only published in Italian for the last fifty-five years. The thing is immense and intimidating and of Biblical proportions, but man it sure looks fun.

It is a virtually inexhaustible repository of traditional, family-style, basic, delicious, Italian dishes- weighing in at two-thousand recipes and change. It seems to cover every vegetable, meat, fish, pasta, and grain and throws in a few that I’ve never heard of for good measure. It’s almost as if Italians have had a multi-millennial long history of cooking and cooking well. Wait. Anyway, it’s an amazing cookbook.

For my first foray into its’ deep and imposing innards, I chose two dishes; a simple but intriguing combination of braised lettuce with green peas and a nifty number called Eggs in their Nests.

The peas and lettuce are pretty much just that. Sauté a little scallion and then add a chopped lettuce and four or five cups of peas. Pour in enough boiling water to come about halfway up and season to taste. Simmer for 20-30 minutes. Delicate and yummy. Lettuce, much like flat leaf parsley is way under appreciated.

Eggs in Nests are just as easy if more on the cute side. Basically, you make some loose mashed potatoes of whatever flavor you want (we went garlic, thyme, and parmesan) and mix in an egg. Then use a pastry bag or zip lock minus one corner to pipe the mash into a spiral base with a few higher supporting rings on top. Geez that sounds kinda complicated, but trust me it’s easy.

Pop the potato volcanoes into the oven at 350˚F for about 20 minutes until they’re brown all over. Just before you take them out, scramble up some soft, savory eggs and use them to stuff the hollow spud receptacles when you pull them out of the oven. Top it with pepper or pepper oil or regular olive oil or any herb or sauce of your liking.  Eat!

All in all I was quite pleased with the outcome. Next time I might break a raw egg into the nests a few minutes before the end of cooking, then finish it off under the broiler. More yolk makes me happy.

Well, this was a great intro into a fantastic book and now that I’ve up and broke the ice I suspect I’ll be working my way through this culinary behemoth for quite some pleasurable time. Look for more num-nums to come.

-M. Pants

Christmas, en el stilo de famiglia Husbear

Ah, Christmas.  I know everyone has their different traditions (it's really the same way for Thanksgiving), and each family does things their own way.  Since I'm Jewish, and my family didn't do Christmas (apparently that suprises a lot of people, that Jews don't do Christmas?), I don't really have a lot of expectation built up.

That being said, I really, really love spending Christmas with the Husbear's family!

There's lots of food:

(Ribollita, traditional Tuscan stew, with all the toppins);

Various tasty casseroles, including the best broccoli-rice EVER, and rolls;

Cornbread dressing, giblet gravy, sweet potatoes with gingersnap topping, fried turkey, roast turkey (gotta have two kinds!) and panade (bread, onions, cheese, salt water);

Turdilli, Italian fried cookies, and blueberry biscuits;

And of course, lots of other wonderful food that we don't have pictures of.

There's also lots of family!

Hi, everyone!

And a cute little nephlet (already 17 and a half months!) named Rayne!

(If you click on any of these pictures, it will take you to the Flickr photo page - then click on "all sizes" right above the picture to see it larger.)

Rayne really wanted in on all of the action!  This is my favorite picture:

They say he's got the Husbear's ears!  Woo!

And then, of course - the traditional Christmas nap.

He stole back the bear we gave Rayne for Christmas!

And now, back to the napping...

-girlie

Ever-helpful felines

We're back from Christmas in Louisiana, and working on editing and uploading all of the pictures we took while there.  Unfortunately, we accidentally left one of our two cameras (the big'un) in Natchitoches, so we're missing a good chunk of Christmas Day photos.

In the days before we left to visit family, there was a frenzy of giftwrapping and cooking.  We couldn't have gotten it done without the cats.

Do cats know how fat they look when they do this?

I really appreciated their help.  They really gave the paper a certain crumpled "lived-in" look, which is really what you want in wrapping paper, n'est ce pas?

Back later with more actual pictures...

-girlie

Merry Christmas, Jews and Everyone!

So, I'm Jewish.  But my husband isn't.  We're in Louisiana with his family celebrating Christmas.

But what do we Jews normally do on Christmas?

For that answer, let us turn to Atom and his Package.  Read these lyrics to get a better idea...

What we do on Christmas lyrics - Atom and his Package

Ever hear the right wing crazies talk about the jewish conspiracy?
and how the jews run the media, and they have all the money,
and they pretty much dominate the world?
no, well i've heard of it and that would pretty much leave one day of the year
when no one else is around to have a whole year of planning of world domination,
and that's christmas.
merry christmas buddies!

It's christmas eve and you know i am hardly sleeping.
But there are no presents waiting for me on the floor.
It's the one day of the year when i use what my super jewish powers are for. (HEY!)

Got introduced to the network at my bar mitzvah.
Got my code name and number it's #16761.
While you were sitting around the tree and that knockoff menorah,
You're idle, we work. justice is done.

Princess Di, we killed her; El Nino, we made it;
Reggie White, is stupid; Billy Joel, let's trade him!

If the neo-nazis know we're part of the conspiracy,
And if it's as strong as they think, you think they'd be nicer to me.
Still mad about what happened to your pal jesus?
Well, if he didn't die for your sins, you'd be going to hell with the rest of us.

Princess Di, we killed her; El Nino, we made it;
Reggie White, is stupid; Billy Joel, let's trade him!

Wouldn't you like to know what we do on christmas?
You think we're sitting around polishing our horns?
Making soup with the blood of the christian born?
You think i'm being rude?
We go to the movies and eat chinese food.

So, there you go!

Merry Christmas!

-girlie

On the road again...

I need to go into work this morning, unfortunately, along with most of my office.  Nobody is really able to focus, though - everybody's thoughts are on the break.

Husbear got left with the short end of the stick today; he'll be at home frantically cooking and cleaning and packing, with a little last-minute shopping thrown in.  We're all set on gifts, we're just a little low on those other essentials, like wrapping paper and gift bags.  He only has a few hours to take care of all this, since I should be home by 1:30 and we're leaving directly after that.  (don't rob my house, please!)

For once, I feel good about this year, since I sent out all my mailing Christmas and Hanukkah gifts earlier this week.  Now I owe the office like $50 in UPS postage, which will be fun to pay when we get back in January.  (At least by then I'll have made some progress towards paying off this giant gift/Italy/car credit card bill!)

We're bringing the cats this year - they're going to have their own Hanukkah, visiting their cousin-cats, Fritz and Feo.  I've got high hopes for the car ride.  Luckily, these cats have only gotten carsick once, and that was on a really curvy country road.  Stupidly, that bout of carsickness ended with them both vomiting on my coat.  Now, we put down sheets over everything before we leave.

This disjointed entry is done - time to wrap up all I need to before heading out for the year.

Happy Holidays!
-girlie

BARGLEFNARGLE!

My car broke down over the weekend.

It's getting up there in years, my little red jelly bean, the car that got me through most of college and those first awkward years really on my own.

This car's been through a lot with me, fun and not so fun.  Road trips from Columbia to DC, Florida, Philadelphia, Chicago, then finally to Austin.  Driving me back and forth to a succession of temp jobs, and then to my first real job.  Getting hit by that drunk girl in West Campus while innocently parked; that lovely highspeed spinning accident last May, backing into that Volvo in the Walgreens parking lot...

Whenever something goes seriously (or not-so-seriously) wrong with the car, I start to wonder - is this the beginning of that war of attrition that marks the end of a solid vehicle?  I remember when the first family car bit it, the brown '79 Chevy Malibu (I believe)... bought right about the time I was born.  My mother was driving, we were at 53rd and Woodlawn, right by Mr. G's before they became part of the co-op...  I just remember sitting in the back of the car as we approached the four-way stop, then all of a sudden drifting slowly through the intersection while my mom hit the brakes harder and harder.  There was an awful lot of honking, as I recall.

After that, we traded the Malibu for the Dodge Aries (looked a lot like this, except maroon.  Otherwise known as the shitbox - thanks, Dad!)

Luckily, this doesn't seem to be the death knell for the SL2 - apparently, the water pump is leaking coolant like crazy, throwing it onto the belts, which were squeaking (that's not a fun sound, by the way).  Oh, and also, the spark plugs and wires are really old, it has the original radiator (which could seriously use a flush) and the gasket on top of the engine appears to have a slow leak.  No biggie right now, but if you leave it... (dun dun DUNNNN).  Yeah, that added up real fast.

But really, $700 twice a year is a lot better than making a monthly car payment, yes?

Today, I'm in a cutey-pie rental car, a Chevy Aveo - I like it a lot!  It might be a different story, if I had to put anyone or anything besides myself into the car, but it would be a great little vehicle just for scooting around town.  Nice little trunk.  Plus, starts at under $10,000 (well, JUST under.) 

But I will be really glad to get my car back.  It's been good to me over the years.

-girlie

HI!

So, the plan today was to get up and get out early, so we could hit the shops right when they open.  We still have some shopping to do (and no, I'm not going to tell you what we're buying today)!

But, husbear's been getting in to  work this week at 6, so it seemed like it could be a good idea to let him get a little more sleep.

I'm just concerned because of this article on Snopes... the Saturday before Christmas has been the busiest shopping day for the last 8 years. 

This is going to be awesome... I'm putting on my brass knuckes before we leave the house.

-girlie

Revolution (or honeymoon) #6: Ravello

We-eel, it's another Saturday afternoon and I'm hanging out at home...

I uploaded a bunch of honeymoon pictures to Flickr earlier this week, thinking that I might have some time to go ahead and put a post up, but I spaced a bit and never got around to it. 

After our relaxing beach day, we decided it was time for another day trip, this time to Ravello, a beautiful town set high up above Amalfi.  It's where Gore Vidal used to live.

Getting there meant a bus to Amalfi, then transferring to a bus to Ravello.  Getting on the Ravello-bound bus out of Amalfi was a little more difficult than we had anticipated; it seemed a lot of people wanted to accompany us up the mountain.  Interestingly, even though buses left Amalfi for Ravello pretty often, the line never seemed to get shorter.  Somehow, though, the actual town didn't seem that crowded, once we got there.

After giving our elbows a good workout, we were treated to a lovely view of the Amalfi Coast from a series of narrower and narrower mountain roads.  Husbear got a little carsick.

Our first stop after getting off the bus was Ravello's Duomo.  We read that it was restored in the 1980s to more closely match the pre-gothic historical appearance, though the church apparently dates originally to 1086.(!)

The bare outside of the church really appealed to me, as did the lack of overbearing decoration on the inside.  So many of the churches we've been to are just dripping with ornamentation - this one wasn't.

There were a couple of old pulpits inside the church, one of which I really liked.

This pulpit is from 1272, which makes the shape it's in completely shocking.  The lions were even anatomically correct (here's a link to our picture... not *too* offensive?), which I found odd.  It had a great mosaic of the story of Jonah and the whale on the side.  My apologies for the blurriness of the picture...

Our guidebook described what he's doing as "waving to his homies", which we found pretty apt.  Also, note the whale-what-looks-like-a-dragon.  Somehow, I don't think this artisan had ever seen a whale...

After looking through the Duomo's museum, which had some really interesting statues and sarcophagi, we headed over to Villa Cimbrone (their website actually has an interactive tour that you can take of the grounds - very nice!).  There are a couple of old estates in Ravello, Cimbrone and Rufolo, that both have large public gardens and beautiful on-site hotels. 

The walk to the villa was short, but through some lovely parts of town.  We walked past a lot of vegetable gardens and small family vineyards.

Though we couldn't really do any exploring in the villa itself (closed to non-guests), we did spend several hours rambling around the gardens.  The building did have some nice nooks and crannies that we were allowed to poke around.

This is the cloister in the center of the villa.

We took off for a quick ramble around the gardens.  The most stunning area was right at the edge of the cliff, which was lined with busts.

We played around a little - for some reason, being at the Villa Cimbrone made us all giddy.  Maybe it has something to do with it being the secret hideaway for the "elopement of Greta Garbo and Leopold Stowkowsky"?  love is in the air... da da da da da da da....

Continuing through the gardens, we came across a temple to Bacchus.  (you have to appreciate a good temple to Bacchus!)  It looked like people had been rubbing a certain area of the statue, perhaps for good luck?  This pose is my fault.

The gardens were just jam-packed with so many beautiful little gazebos and buildings!

Unfortunately, it soon was time to begin heading back to Positano.  We reluctantly left the Villa and began the walk back into town.  There, I saw a terrific poster advertisement:

Esplosiva, ladies!  We all need one of these!

We sadly boarded the bus back down the cliff to Amalfi.  We traveled through several small towns on our way back down, and in one of the towns, we saw this in the square:

I'm not sure if there was something in particular that they were commemorating or celebrating, but I could never have the patience to spend a lot of time making something like that, that will blow away in a stiff breeze... so, I applaud them.

Ravello was absolutely amazingly awesomely divinely beautiful.  I would love to go back and spend some more time there.  It is, however, a very small town; I don't think it would have been a good home base for our honeymoon trip.  As far as we could tell, getting anywhere would first mean a longish bus ride down to Amalfi, unlike in Positano, where you could directly reach many places.  Ravello would be a great trip for people who want to go one place and then stay there, relaxing.

Plus, they have what seems to be a great orchestral music festival there every year - I can't think of a better place to hear classical music!

OK - time to go use up some Lush stuff, maybe put up a review or two...

-girlie

BULLETIN: Austin paralyzed by 1/4" of ice!

Well, I'm sitting at my house this morning.  We had "freezing drizzle" last night, here, and my office closed for the morning.  I still have to be there at noon, though (darn).

There were 100 accidents last night between 4 and midnight, which sounds like a lot, but I don't know how many there are normally.

So, time to finish up my online Hanukkah shopping!

-girlie