What Fills My Plate

Buon Giorno! It has been awhile since the last posting.   I have been very busy painting watercolors almost every day, as I am planning an exhibition   in a few months. This will be a short read for you.   There are two things on my mind.   I want to mention a dish served in Venezia, which is common to the people who live in the Veneto.   When I was a kid, my mother served this dish about once a month, and I hated it so much that I put a mountain of ketchup on it to survive the meal.   She didn’t really know how to cook it like the people here do.   That dish is liver and onions, commonly know here as fegato alla Veneziana. featured with soft polenta When we have guests from abroad, I always encourage them to try it.   I tell them if they don’t like it they can have what I have ordered, that way they won’t miss a chance to taste a regional dish.   This weekend I ordered it in a restaurant in the hills called Colli Euganei, sout...

You Ever Wonder Who Made These And Where Did They Come From? Those Romantic Chianti Bottles Italy is filled with amazing mini adventures.  This weekend we left the Veneto, entered the Province of Ferrara and drove south towards Ravenna.   We would stay overnight at an agritourismo and do some minor bird watching.   The area around the Po River is known for such.   We were also going to take in a Goya exhibition in a nearby village.   While there t he owner of the agritourismo told us about an herb museum in the nearby village of Villanova di Bagnacavallo and we decided to check it out.  This was the tip of the day! Hats, etc! It was not an herb museum but a straw ….. a bit of everything made out of straw museum.   Walking room to room through the past, viewing baskets, shoes, hats, implements, rugs, made me stop to consider how plastic has replaced this old method.   We should have rejected plastic.   Soon to come, I ...

Perhaps you know Karl Pilkington, a worldly maladjusted man on tv, who was forced to visit famous places all over the world.   I have had my own frustrating Pilkinton experiences, discouraging me to be disheartened and frustrated.   There have been many incidences where I wanted to throw up my hands and raise a white flag in desperation.   One of the first of these episodes occured when I was first in Padova, completely lost, and in need of directions to an internet shop.   This became a fishing expedition to find someone who could give me exact directions.   My immediate plan was to seek someone on the street who looked like he or she would know where to find   internet shop.   All the people I asked   seemed to know a place, and after speaking to each one, I followed their directions.   Back and forth I walked through Padova, but each time finding that the previous person’s directions led me on a wild goose chase.   After never ...

No Movies Here, We Must Drive to Padova We went into Padova to see the new movie Dunkirk.  They have a few times when they have a bargain showing and we take advantage of that.  We also use the free parking under the theatre, but it takes some expert driving as whomever planned the parking never considered the turns one has to make to get in and out.  They are really tight.   American sized cars would get stuck, probably resulting in a for sale sign and keys left in the ignition The outside of the theatre looks a bit messy as the cement job never received a finishing touch.  Inside it is also total cement.   Darkened by time and all the rain in the winter, it looks like a slum building.   This kind of fits in here as Padova has a lot of  structures built in the 1400's.  People like Galileo and da Vinci were here, for instance. They have a counter that sells popcorn and the usual drinks and snacks.  I have seen only a few people b...

Lots of Langos Choices This past August, while travelling from the bottom of Poland to the bottom of Turkey I came across interesting things that added a little fun into the trip.   I would like to show you a few of them. Walking along the Danube River in Budapest we had intentions of eating breakfast in the big market.  We were informed that there we could find the   Hungarian breakfast specialty called Langos, which is a large piece of fried bread (like Navajo fried bread)  with various toppings.  We were told that Hungarians like Langos, served with sour cream, garlic and cheese.    Other various toppings included mushrooms, hot spiced tomato sauce, and cheese.  This is very different from our Italian breakfast or even American.   You cannot eat it all. On the main floor of the market people shop for vegetables and meats.  This market has some of the best looking vegetables in Europe.  Tomatoes, perfectly ripe,...

Look closely  Out with the old doesn’t quite work sometimes.   As in Olympics, for instance.   The citizens pay for great stadiums, dormitories, and all the structures that it takes to present the olympics.   Lately is has been found that the events did not make enough income to pay for building them.   When the olympics finish,   the area is deserted.   You probably were not born yet, so you have to rely on an old person like me to tell you the story.   Italy hosted the Winter Olympics back in 1956 in Cortina. Participating were Thirty-two nations which competed in the four sports and twenty-four events.   The  Soviet Union made its first appearance in the Winter Olympics and   won more medals than any nation.   Since television in places like Germany and Scandinavia did not have the technology to show the events live, people there had to rely on Communist television sources, a big plus for the Soviets. I ...

The first time I saw Venice I arrived by canal and I could not believe all those people   walking back and forth, up and down the bridges along the waterfront   The appearance was of an ant colony.   I had never thought to see Disneyland size crowds, a silly naive idea of what I expected.   When the cruise boats unload, it is greatly overwhelming.    (In fact, the townspeople of Venice have protested against the cruise boats, even going to the lengths of swimming and boating in their path to stop them in protest.)   St. Mark's  From the boat dock you walk   towards St. Mark’s Square bulging with   lines of people waiting to get into the many famous structures.   You will see people who have brought bread and seeds to feed the pigeons.   The result of this is   that those flocks of pigeons get excited and in retaliation show their respect by relieving their little digestive systems on tourists as they fly over. ...