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therese

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Posts posted by therese

  1. You can also grill corn after removing the husks and silk, just as you would if you were boiling them. Set them directly on the grill and turn them every once in a while. Seems like they take about ten minutes total, but your mileage will vary. They're done when they look, well, done.

  2. Count me in. Though I don't collect them with quite your enthusiasm, hummingbirdkiss, I do make a point of picking up bouillon cubes of varying sorts when I travel, and also when I visit ethnic markets here in town (Atlanta). They're lightweight and compact (and so easy to pack for the trip home) and provide a nice souvenir of the place.

    Favorite at the moment in Knorr Chinese ham: nice smoky ham flavor that I use to cook greens.

  3. A rally race?

    Exactly. Very cool for us all, and entirely unsuspected. The (I think) 43rd Rally Val d'Ossola. It started raining cats and dogs part-way through the race, but fortunately the staff were well-fed and not the least bit pissy about all the spectators walking all over the road.

    Husband and kids took the funivia to Mottarone today, riding down with bikes. Dinner at home on the terrace: melon with prosciutto, farfalle with sauce from a jar (described as Sicilian pesto, with nuts and ricotta), sardines with carrot salad, fruit and yogurt for dessert.

    Dancing tonight in Arona, at a club that's a boat. Shades of "Roman Holiday."

  4. Still none of the uniformed types that filled the restaurant in this picture. Instead these are spectators in search of a good vantage point. We're already in one, perched directly over a hairpin curve in the road. We're joined by picnic-ing families and teenagers.

    gallery_11280_4766_23016.jpg

  5. I don't see any uniformed types...?

    Ah, yes, I should have been more specific. This photo was taken as we were leaving, after the uniformed types had all left for their afternoon's duties. Had I taken the photo half an hour earlier you'd have seen every last table full. Families, church ladies, old guys, and uniformed types. The uniforms varied, but some included alpine hats and some included day glo reflective trousers. An interesting fashion statement.

    I'll go find the teaser now.

  6. A stormy morning (though the rain held off long enough for me to breakfast on the terrace: tea, cherries, and those groovy breakfast cookies to dip in my tea; children will have bread and Nutella when they finally wake up, and husband will have coffee and bread with butter and apricot jam), so I'll try to at least finish the last post.

    Along with the cured meats we were served cheese:

    gallery_11280_4766_36888.jpg

    Our server decided that we proably didn't have enough food, so offered to go see if she could rustle us up some cold roast meat of some sort, but I said that I didn't think it would be necessary. She cast an eye over the table and suggested onions, some nice pickled onions. Would we like some nice pickled onions? Yes, indeed, we'd love some nice pickled onions (which included cloves in the spice mix---the mauve color depicted is not a fault of the lighting or photography):

    gallery_11280_4766_24541.jpg

    By this point the restaurant was starting to clear out a bit (but slowly, as every lasta person in the place knew every other person in the place), and an older man took over our service, and as he was also concerned that we might wither up and blow away for lack of nourishment suggested that we have dessert. So we did. Two sorts of cake: chocolate spice cake, and a jam-filled one, both very good, but the photo didn't turn out.

    So instead here's a nice picture of the terrace:

    gallery_11280_4766_35102.jpg

    The restaurant's called Cardini, in case you're in the area. Lovely views, very nice staff, food (to the extent that we sampled it) very good.

    Oh, and all those uniformed types? Any idea what they were there for? I'll post a teaser picture for you to figure it out.

  7. Meals coming to quickly to both post them and consume them, but I'll go ahead and describe lunch yesterday (Sunday).

    The weather was predicted to be variably cloudy with rain later in the day, and since we'd done some mostly sedentary touring the day before we decided to take a short hike, ending up here about at 2:30 in the afternoon:

    gallery_11280_4766_68876.jpg

    We were getting a bit hungry, and it was still quite sunny (and steep) so decided to see if we could get something to eat at a hillside restaurant. To our mild surprise the restaurant was absolutely packed, and my original query to the waitress/hostess as to the possibility of dining was along the lines of "no, we're full and besides the kitchen's pretty much closed." I asked if we might just have a drink instead and she answered of course, and showed us to a table in the bar. At this point the entire staff was busy pulling approximately 100 espressos in the space of five minutes, all the while handling payment from various uniformed types (who were all these people? and what was up will all the uniforms?), but as she seated us the waitress suggested that she could probably rustle up something along the lines of cured meats and cheeses.

    So eventually our table was set, and drink orders taken, and food showed up.

    gallery_11280_4766_107401.jpg

    gallery_11280_4766_76906.jpg

    More to come, gotta go do something holiday-ish.

  8. It is lardo of course! Yum yummy. Did you like it?

    It is fatback cured with salt and herbs. Really delicious stuff.

    Yep, we all loved it. Great herb flavor, as you mention. Is the herb mixture fairly standard? I couldn't pick out the different flavors, but it was overall very nice.

    We took the ferry to Locarno on Saturday as it was our first really nice weather day. Very busy but we were told not to bother booking, not even for lunch (which we wanted to do based on your recommendation, jmolinari). I ended up at the middle of a very small international incident as a result---I'll save the details for later. The food was fine----again, details (with pics) to follow. Train rides home through the Val Vigezza, with a brief stop in Santa Maria Maggiore, and then ice cream cones for husband and the kids at the station in Domodossola.

    Dinner at home on the terrace, where we are clearly the envy of passers by on the road below.

  9. Aaack. Darn this laptop---I just sent a nice descriptive post into the ether.

    I'll summarize by listing ice cream in Orta San Giulio yesterday afternoon, and dinner at a small place here in town near the train station, Il pesciolino rosso. Very nice.

  10. Gigi bar..a classic:) Make sure you get some of their Margheritine di Stresa. Best cookies in the world? Possibly!

    No worries there---there was a tray of them waiting in our room (most of them scarfed by my 16 year old son), and my husband got a little dish of them with his prosecco.

    I'm presently waiting to buy bread---the closest panificio apparently doesn't open until 8:30, and the kids are still asleep, so I'll head out (again, nice walk this AM) in a few minutes.

  11. Day 1:

    We're here! Arrived yesterday about noon, having rented a car at Malpensa. Nice weather during the afternoon, and husband and I had a light (and entirely undistinguished) lunch at a cafe just opposite the ferry landing, and then picked up sandwiches for the children (who were back at the hotel napping). Stocked up on breakfast stuff at the grocery on via Roma, and slept some more, eventually heading out for dinner at Pappagallo (recommended by the hotel, and chosen by me because it was likely going to start raining and it was close by). Food generally very nice:

    Snails (I got a dozen for us all to try, tempted in part by a literary reference that I'll look up when I get the chance---maybe "Il barone rampante"?)

    Prosciutto with melon (for me, very good)

    Insalata caprese (for husband, reportedly very nice)

    Mussels in tomato sauce (for son)

    Daughter didn't order a starter, instead just eating most of mine.

    Seconds were veal piccata (for husband), fish (for me, can't recall the name at this moment), and pizze margherite for the children.

    We skipped dessert in favor of ice cream sundaes at Gigi Bar (coppa Gigi for daughter, affogato in cocoa for son), drinks for husband and self. By this point the rain was coming down in buckets, so we sent my daughter on to the hotel to fetch additional umbrellas. Rained all night, lovely music to sleep by.

  12. Thanks for the FiberOne tip, therese. I'll be checking that out next trip to the store. Of course, I'll be interested to see if the FiberOne mascot is as good as that leapin' All-Bran being.

    No mascot that I recall, and now that I've gone to look carefully at the All-Bran guy I'm even happier that I've chosen Fiber One, as I'm already in a sufficient foul mood in the mornings without having to look at a mascot.

    Unless it's the Quisp guy. I really wouldn't mind some quality time with the Quisp guy.

  13. Thanks. Why FiberOne?

    A half cup serving of Fiber One is 60 kcals and 14 grams of fiber.

    A half cup serving of All Brain is 80 kcals and 10 grams of fiber.

    And I actually like Fiber One. Not as much as I like Cap'n Crunch with Crunchberries, but enough.

  14. Dim sum places that we keep in rotation are Oriental Pearl (you can see pictures of it from my eG foodblog here), Happy Valley, Canton House, and China Delight. We used to go to Hong Kong Harbor, but haven't been in a while.

    Dim sum restaurants in Atlanta tend to vary according to, well, I'm not sure, but typically one of them is better than the others on any particular week. I'm pretty sure that Canton House has been offering evening dim sum, not traditional but convenient if you feel like dim sum.

  15. Well, Trader Joe's in Midtown has been open for several weeks now, and I headed over today to check it out, in part because I'm a bit under the weather and didn't feel like doing real marketing, just picking up dinner and a few random things that looked interesting. Note that I do most of my routine marketing at Dekalb Farmers Market, a high standard to meet.

    My thirteen year old daughter went with me, and we agreed that we'd be unlikely to return given the other options availabe to us. She summed it up by describing it as "somewhere between Publix and a place that wants to sell natural foods." "Like Whole Foods?" "Yeah, like Whole Foods."

    Things I liked:

    Cheap wine: I got three bottles of vinho verde (mildly sparkling Portuguese white wine) for $4.49 a piece, great for summer.

    Interesting dried fruit, including freeze dried rambutans and orange slices.

    If I used frozen food I would probably have liked the selection, and pizza dough in bags seemed like it might work (I didn't buy any of either, so can't say).

    Things I didn't like:

    Pre-packaged (albeit pretty), expensive produce.

    Limited cheeses (seriously, our Publix is better, or at least as good, but I'll admit that we've got a pretty upmarket Publix).

    Things I was neutral about...

    Bread okay for grocery store, condiments looked okay.

    So, all in all fine for intown Atlanta groceries, nowhere near the standard of the large, often ethnically-oriented markets in town.

  16. Chinese is a real weak spot in the Atlanta Asian dining scene, and apart from dim sum we don't even bother. And I frankly wouldn't eat any of the Chinese food in Midtown if you paid me.

    Tasty China in Marietta (yes, Marietta, and yes it's a very, very long way from where you live) has gotten some very good reviews. I've been once, with Chinese friends who'd been and enjoyed it, but our meal was, frankly, not up to par, and our hosts were clearly embarrassed (and resigned to cooking at home when they want to treat us to Chinese food).

  17. Are the tents for the homeless still alongside the Canal now, though? (I haven't been in that neighborhood in a few months).

    Yes, quite a few as of three weeks ago, when I took this picture of a canal-side kitchen:

    gallery_11280_4636_75154.jpg

    I'd estimate about 100 hundred total tents in different areas, and some of the residents were a bit aggressive (with words and signs) towards people in the boat. The tour guide actually cautioned riders against responding.

    Still lots of pedestrians taking advantage of the lovely spring day, though.

  18. Yesterday I had the always renewed pleasure of waiting in line for nearly half an hour at my local Poste to ship a package to a friend in Atlanta, GA.

    Unless it's very, very unusual mustard there's a good chance that your friend can buy it here in Atlanta in any case.

    I'm finding it harder and harder to find items, food or otherwise, that are available in France and not in the U.S. unless they're essentially home-made.

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