What Fills My Plate

A Short Question Remains to Be Answered Christmas Market Time Nuremburg                                          But first a few short words..... Once in awhile there is a huge amount of readers of this blog from Russia.  Today I had 44 readers and the day isn’t over.  This makes me curious, of course.  Are there people wanting to know about Italian life?  Maybe it was the title, Dave the Mad Bomber.  I once received a huge amount of Russian readers when I wrote a title which had the word Putin in it.   Nuremburg Christmas Market More Crowded at Night Maybe I will never know the answer, but I am hoping  that some of them will take the time to make a comment at the bottom of the blog post.  I also would like to know a little about my two faithful French readers.  So, I am coaxing you to take a few minutes and write something. Santa Claus, Bavaria Style Smells Like A Carnival Nothing like Onions and Brats Meanwhile I will mention that we are just r

I will admit it, I was addicted to cooking shows.  I say was addicted as  here in Italy I find their cooking shows boring and limited mostly to  Italian dishes.    American palates are more adventurous  enjoying food from all over the world using ethnic ingredients.  Back in the U.S. I watched a lot of Food Network shows  and I also enjoyed others, like the shows where the host eats bugs, and other roadkill items, or the one where the host is challenged by the clock to eat a pile of food that would feed a  famished army.  I was a fan of Emeril until Food Network left older viewers and went and changed directions and pulled his show off the air.  He had a lot of followers and brought a lot of interest into cooking your own food from scratch.   He showed people how easy it is to cook something not out of a box.   Yellow Tag says chicken broth for 1 euro But there is none to be found here. One thing I saw that was pushed on viewers was chicken broth, and I believed that chicke

Happy Thanksgiving Day to Everyone.  Protect Native American Rights! Dear Lady Gaga, Miley Cyrus, Whoopi Goldberg, Amy Schumer and others, I heard you are leaving the United States.    Don’t move to the city of Marco Polo!   What you see is not what is real!  The true Venice that you and millions of visitors should see is evidenced by the shuttered windows of homes all along the canals.  Shutters that are closed most of the year, opened only for short-term renters or the rich owners who come for a short holiday visit.   Closed shutters/nobody home!  There’s one reason with a growing problem. Dark and Lonely I call Venice The Italian Disneyland.  They are quite similar, both aiming  to  suck the pockets of tourists dry.   Both provide a thrill or two.  Both are visually beautiful.  Disneyland is empty at night, frequented by guards and the cleaning staff.  Venice is also devoid of people.  If you wander the walkways of Venice in the belly of winter with your fre

on a bridge in Venice It's time to get back to writing about life in Italy.  We have a pathway in our village that goes behind it, circles around  clockwise, and then cuts through the middle.  I decided on my last late afternoon walk to take some photos and post them with a bit of discussion. My village is small, you can drive through it in 3 minutes or less.  City Hall has a board that says we have 8,000 inhabitants but I think they are counting the people who live outside on their farms, and maybe a few deceased. This gives you an idea of the size.  If you plan on moving to Italy I would suggest finding a village outside a large town, one with public transportation.  That was our choice, and it was a good one. Those hills in the back are ancient volcanos.  The wine from these hills is above average and worth investigating if you are here looking for wine. We walk north down a street and come out on a small park where the mayor has provided a small field for socce

Through the internet, people have been able to see more clearly the corruption in American politics.  Whistle blowers have given us access to behind the stage workings of people in power.  I feel as if I have been cheated out of what should be .  Democracy is losing. I am lucky to have readers from many countries, France, Italy, Russia, Canada, Great Britain, United States, Colombia, Japan, and Turkey.  To you I want to say I am ashamed of my country .   In these past months It feels as if we have been enrolled in Politics 101.   I voted through my home state Taking notes in Politics 101….. Debate moderators asked softball questions.  For example, the NSA was never mentioned.   CNN received debate questions to ask Trump from the DNC as revealed in recent  found emails. Democratic National Committee, from the very beginning,  worked against Bernie Sanders as revealed in the missing emails now found. The Department of Justice is favorable to Hillary. The head of t

I am involved with a few blogs where people who are seeking information on life in Italy.  Many are considering moving to Italy, and are researching the hows and wheres, etc.  These blogs are helpful and I try to make a few comments in them about life here besides writing my own blog.   For my subscribers….. I am back to writing about Italy.  Here we go, my attempt to season your romantic world view. The sky today is  gray, the clouds are low, the humidity is heavy like a wet blanket.   Italian pop music rhythmically reminds me in what country I reside in, while  three old guys sit near my small table in my coffee bar, Cafe Jolie.  A balding guy with a neatly trimmed mustache is speaking in Veneto, the dialect of this area.  He bears a striking resemblance to  Higgins, the character on Magnum PI.  Looking over the top of his glass he says, “ Heyay gowa sua eeah ay cava subata laya comeeah waka veeyaw, si, roba comabah….”  Veneto sounds exactly like this to me.  The acoustics of

Old Center of Tallinn I wonder how many people in the United States could correctly point to Estonia on a blank map of Europe.  Shamefully, I have to admit that I might have guessed right with a 33 per cent chance between Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania.   You almost never hear about them, and the last big news was years ago when they broke from the Soviet Union.  Think about what you know about these countries.   Not much, right? I had my eyes opened this summer.  Landing in Riga, Latvia and riding a fancy but cheap bus to Tallinn, Estonia.   Walking through the center of both Riga and Tallinn, we visited the wonderful markets and later found some great local cuisine.   It was easy to have our eyes opened to see the gathering weight of two economies.  Clearly, the citizens have decided to use a strategic approach and compete with the rest of Europe.  That took  hard work and a truck load of time.   For several months we made plans to meet two men in Tallinn who started