What Fills My Plate

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. ...

  Liver and   onions!   My mother made this dish at least once a month, always remarking that it is “good” for us.   Basically I rated it   as bad as eating dog food, so I buried it in a pile of ketchup.   Things change, my taste for food changed and I was challenged   to see liver and onions on menus in Venice.   Not like mom’s!   I had to find out more, and discovered that this is a dish featured in Venice, a favorite among Venetians.   It is now frequently what I order when we do a day visit to Venice.   You should give it a try. Bigoli is a larger type of spaghetti, usually home made by restaurants in the Veneto.   You can find it in Venice, usually with wild boar (chingiale), or in the hills south of Venice with donkey (Musso) .   If you order biggoli, expect it to be filling.   You may not need a second course.   Give a hard look in the markets and you might find bigoli to take home as a souvenir. ...

It is more difficult to celebrate July 4 here in Italy.  We still make an attempt by having American food, this year is burger night.  I am thinking of making a cake from my mother's old American cookbook.  However, there will be no picnic with a blanket on the grass, games, lots of chat and fireworks at the end.  That is missed! The town of Moraga puts on a big fireworks display, fireworks purchased through donations by the town's people.  The town of Fountain Valley had a nice shoot out one year, and the biggest one I have witnessed in person was at Vancouver, Oregon in 1976.   It took them a whole day to set up.  In 2000 we watched on television each region's biggest, Boston with its orchestra, Chicago, Denver and then San Francisco.  We could catch one of those this year, but it would be something like 4:00 am here (the next day). America is struggling to find progress, to find a new way.  I have faith that people will speak up an...