I don't mean to BRAG or anything but...

I just made the best chili in the world. Yeah, and I made some pumpkin bread too. Dayum! Good stuff, people!!

HALLOWEEN FRIDAY AND SATURDAY

If you have kids, bring them to the Torri d'Europa on Friday or Saturday to decorate pumpkins with us! If you live closer to Udine, come to Centro Commerciale FRIULI on Saturday. 4pm-7pm.

Kids should come dressed up, of course!

In Case You are Missing Sour Cream

For those of you living in Trieste, or anywhere else you can't find the world's most perfect ingredient, I have found two great solutions for you. 

One: Make it yourself. 

Take one pint-sized container of FULL FAT yogurt (be careful to get PLAIN and not Vanilla) and blend it with a standard-sized package of Mascarpone cheese (Italians living in America for years lived with the problem of not finding their precious Mascarpone for making Tiramisu, but I think you can find it there now. If you can't, maybe someone can suggest a good substitution?). The ratio of yogurt to mascarpone is about 2:1. Blend it really well. It tastes just like the real thing. 

Two: Go to Slovenia. 

In Trieste we're just 10 minutes from the border with Slovenia where you can find the real thing. You just have to know what to look for. Go to the refrigerated part where you find yogurt. It is called KISLA SMETANA. 

Phyoo. Now you can make your tacos. Except you'll have to pay a mint to get the UNCLE BENS tortillas at the Super Coop at the Mall (until you live in Trieste, you think that he only makes rice. WRONG! In Italy he makes  salsas and flour tortillas and they're in the "foreign" section of one or two big grocery stores like PAM and SUPER COOP...) or you can make them yourself (easier than you think and cheap. But that's for another post...) and you're in luck: the Super Coop is open on Sundays! 

Happy cooking, unless you decide to go out and enjoy the day. 

Ciao!

Making Friends With the Pressure Cooker

It took me a long time to miss the good old American Crockpot. I think it's mostly because the first few years I lived here I was more into learning how to cook Italian than making chili. I was experimenting with homemade pasta (amazing salmon and ricotta ravioli one time, but what a pain!), gnocchi (sometimes great, sometimes gummy), and bread (too much salt, not enough salt, sometimes decent). I was stewing ragus and toasting bruschetta, layering lasagnas and tossing up and spinning pizza dough (actually, I flattened it with a floured rolling pin, but that's not poetic) and decorating it with gorgonzola, asiago, and gouda. 

But then the cravings hit: tuna sandwiches, my grandpa's chicken soup, Ranch dressing, brats, cranberry juice, potato salad, buttermilk biscuits, chocolate chip cookies, cheese and sausage on crackers, tacos, cole slaw, turkey, stuffing and mashed potatoes, and the American classic: chili.*

WELL EVERYBODY KNOWS THAT CHILI IS BEST WHEN IT SITS IN A CROCKPOT ALL DAY AND STEWS. But I couldn't find a crockpot anywhere, so I made it in a big pot and cooked it for three hours (Great Grandma Toodles' recipe says three hours MINIMUM) and that worked okay UNTIL I DISCOVERED THE PRESSURE COOKER!

COOKING REVOLUTION

Basically, like a crockpot, you can throw just about ANYTHING you want in there, and as long as  you keep the water below the line marked on the inside, you can close it and let it whistle however long you need and it will turn out perfect** really fast, which makes it like a crockpot, BUT BETTER! Plus, it's economical-- just ask anyone you know who is older than about 75. I'm sure they will have one collecting dust in their pantry and will be happy to unload it. That's how I got mine (Thank you, Long Gone Nonna Ofelia!)

THE PRESSURE COOKING COMMUNITY

Once you get into pressure cooking, you start running into other people who like them, and then you get all kinds of new recipes to try. My friend Graziano (who is an Engineer) appreciates the efficiency of the pressure cooker, the fact that it uses little water, and you don't dirty so many dishes (no dishwasher). He is the Master. Thanks to his tireless experimenting, I know that you can throw dry pasta, whatever sauce you want, and half the water you would normally use to cook the pasta and let it whistle for half the time that the pasta package says, and it will turn out delicious.

THE MIRACLE OF SOUPS

Like at least one family that I know (Elizabeth and Mauro), I have started making a pot of soup a week (sounds repetitive, but it becomes addictive, and, as Elizabeth points out, most schools that offer lunch serve either vegetable or meat broth as a starter to students daily and they never get tired of it) and the pressure cooker has made it even easier.

Here's what I made today: PUMPKIN SOUP!

Here's how:

I cut up  and sautéed a leek, three carrots, three stalks of celery (the numbers are arbitrary, I use what I've got) and a small piece of Hen (vecchia gallina fa buon brodo, but chicken will do) threw it all in the pressure cooker with some rock salt, a bouillon cube, two hunks of garlic and pieces of half a small cooking pumpkin and three peeled potatoes. I filled it with water up to the line. Then I shut it and turned on the gas and let it cook. When it started to whistle, I timed it for 30 minutes.

When I opened it I seasoned it with: All spice (thanks, mom), cloves, a little cumin, and some cinnamon. I took out that piece of Hen (the meat is too tough to really eat) and blended it with a hand blender, and VOILA!!  Excellent soup. Try it.

BUON APPETITO!

*I learned how to cope with variations in ingredients as best I could (brown sugar equals a cup of white sugar with a spoonful of honey, baking powder equals 1/4 teaspoon baking soda + 1/2 tsp cream of tartar. Don't have cilantro? Try some diced celery, it's not the same but does freshen things up in a similar way.  3 tsp lemon juice are the equivalent of 1tsp of cream of tartar, etc). Note that in 6 years I have never found a suitable replacement for American Vanilla extract, although I did find a recipe for making it yourself, which I will probably try this winter with the grappa that we make, or with last year's leftovers.

**(boiled potatoes: 10 minutes, stewed meat and onions: 30 minutes, add potatoes and cook another 11 minutes and WOW!)

I need a recipe for baked pumpkin seeds

So for Halloween in Trieste, we're organizing a kiddy party at the Mall (Torri d'Europa) in Trieste on October 30th (4-7pm) and in Udine (Centro Commerciale Friuli) on October 31. Kids can dress up and and decorate pumpkins with us. Doesn't that sound like FUN?

We are going to hand out directions for parents to help their wee ones carve JACK-O-LANTERNS when they get home. I'm thinking that while the parents are carving, the kids can separate the gooey pumpkin innards from the seeds and they can bake them.

I need a recipe... I can Google it, of course, but if anyone has any ideas, BRING THEM ON!!

I did a major No-No today!

Sweetie pointed out that I have become one of those people who complains in the summer when it's too hot and then in the winter because it's too cold.

It's true. I did that, and I feel awful about it. I did some soul searching, though, and realized that as much as I would like to do more, I can only take back one of them. This summer it was really hot and humid for WAAAAAY TOOOOO LOOOONG. That month or two of incessant complaining (for sweating for no good reason), I'm sorry to stay, stands.

I apologize, however, for this morning. I know that I may have snarled when I took out the dog at 6.30 (why was I up so early?) wearing a hat, fleece jacket and coat and was STILL COLD, but, to my defense, I think it was the new haircut. It just doesn't have the neck coverage I'm used to. So let's just say my harsh vocal reaction to the elements this morning can be chalked up to plain old unpreparedness (is that a word? Can it be now?). Tomorrow I will just have to wear a scarf, too.

That being said, I did run downtown (it's all part of my making-running-my- lifestyle kick) in running tights, long-sleeved shirt, and another thicker shirt over that, but I put a pair of shorts in my back-pack. You never know, it might warm up later...

Who won the Barcolana anyway?

Was it any of you, dear readers?

Congratulations, President Obama

for that Nobel Peace Price. I don't care what anybody says. You deserve it!

Did you see Cesare Cremonini last night?

How awesome was he?!! And how nice was it of him to end his three-month tour in Piazza Unità with little old us?! He was awesome. We were so close to the stage I could see every hair in his beard and I swear a couple of times he sang JUST TO ME (Sweetie was totally cool with it). If you didn't see the show (which was even more enjoyable because it was FREE), I'm sorry you missed it.

Toward the end it started to pour, and what was funny was the fact that the entire audience all seemed to have umbrellas except for Sweetie and me, and that they put them up without any regard whatsoever to who was behind them, next to them, at what distance, to anything. Once they were all up, though, it looked pretty neat. Cesare, thankfully, was covered, but sweaty enough to make it look like he had been down there with us.

***

Today, then, is the Barcolana. Are you going up to the Napoleonica to watch the regatta? Are you in the regatta? Are you downtown partying in the piazza and watching it on the jumbotron? I'm not. I did go down to walk around and see the stands twice (Friday and yesterday) but I'm staying home on this sunny Sunday morning. I should be getting some work done, but I think I will go for a run. Sweetie took the dog down to Sistiana for her Salvataggio in Acqua training (she's had her license for three years but she likes the other dogs, going into the water, saving people, etc.) so I'm alone until lunchtime. Maybe I'll watch the Barcolana on Tele4.

Have a great day, whatever you do!

Can you guess where this is?

Trieste Trivia question of the week. Come on, where is it? For those of you new to Trieste, that is the city's symbol, the ALABARDA, although we call it a Halberd in English. Sounds much more attractive in Italian, doesn't it?

Who knows, you may end up liking Trieste so much you get one of these tattooed somewhere on your body. My friend Stefano from Tribe & Crew Tattoo shop once told me that an American girl was in Trieste for the summer and went home with one. Think about it!

Who said Trieste isn't a Happenin' place?

So the other day BY CHANCE, I happened to be looking at the home page of the University of Trieste when this event caught my eye. It was a conference to be held at the Scuola per Interpreti in Via Filzi on cooperation between Europe and the United States of Africa. Well, looking at the list of presenters, I saw a name I recognized. Boubacar Boris Diop, who is a writer and journalist from Senegal whose writing I had studied in grad school in the States and whose intense, high-energy and genuine enthusiasm fascinated me in 1999 when I spent a summer studying Francophone African literature in Senegal on an NEH grant and he was our teacher for a day. During the same trip, all of the American French teachers (I was a high school French teacher in one of my past lives...) got to have dinner with an African family, mostly teachers and writers we had come into contact with over our stay. My family, as it turns out was Boubacar Boris Diop. Just me, and him. There was another guy there, too, apparently an assistant of his who worked at his newspaper. But he was only there to bring over the food. We had Senegal's national dish, which was quite tastey. We spent most of the meal talking about poetry (I later wrote a poem about the meal, which I'm tearing my house apart to find) and literature. I told him my two favorite African writers were Aminata Sow Fall (whom I had just met) and Ken Bogul. That dinner stuck with me, and, a few days later, when our delegation of teachers was ready to leave, we had a party to say goodbye to our new friends. Boubacar brought Ken Bogul. There is a picture of the three of us. They are on either side of me, and I have the smile of someone who has just met her two favorite rock stars. Where is that picture?

I got to the conference yesterday early. When the speakers arrived, I scanned them but couldn't figure out which one was Boubacar, so I asked until I found him. He looked completely different. He's bald now, different glasses, seemed a little taller. For a second I thought I had the wrong guy. He didn't recognize me, either. I was 25 back then and ten years is a long time... I hauled out that rusty French and it came back comme ci comme ça, enough for him to remember who I was. We decided to meet up afterwards.

When it was his turn to speak, EVERYBODY listened. For one, he actually spoke INTO the microphone. That, and he had this CHARISMA that made me remember exactly why I felt so lucky to have been the CHOSEN ONE who got to eat at his house on eat-with-an-African-family night. WOW!

It turns out Boubacar Boris Diop moved to Tunisia. Said he wanted to learn Arabic anyway, and that way he is close to Senegal and close to Europe. Whoever thought that both of us would leave our homelands and meet up again ten years after we met the first time, in, of all places, Trieste?

Life is funny like that sometimes.