Fab! Fabbri

They're back (at the Mediterranean Wholesalers - see here) so we snagged some. We weren't able to go home in a Fabbri truck, seen on the Boston food website here:

But we found some fascinating Fabbri history here and here, the latter being the official website, which has a range of remarkable period advertising here.



Better than roses, pearls?  But of course!

James

The Tomato Processing Day

Recently we combined with our friends Brad and Kirsten to convert several boxes of tomatoes into passata and various other squashed tomato products.  Here's a photo account of the day.

Brad starts by giving the toms an invigorating shower...

And then they were chopped, the dud bits ditched, and made ready to be cooked on down.  This shot was actually from later in the day, with some finished product on the left, but don't peek there now.

They were cooked down on every hotplate we could involve, including the barbique...

Using the bright red passata machina from the Mediterranean Wholesalers (where else?) latched to the table by its vacuum foot and a piece of screwed down Perspex.  Brad's invention.

Meanwhile Kirsten had made a magnificent loaf for lunch.

Other products included chutney, underway as here, and tomato sauce.

There was loyal, hardworking support from Jarvis, the cat.

And after going through the Fowler's Vacola machine, they were turned upside down by Mickey Mouse...

And Brad prepares for his farmer's market look.

We're good for Tomato product, now!

James


[Pix by Bev & James.]

Senso Unico a Orvieto

Only in Italy.

On Days Like These - Two

This BBC advertorial ~ with a few problems* ~ has a classic mix - Alfa Romeos and Tuscan roads. The programme here. You get the feeling you could do better, which is probably the point... Enjoy.

Days like these - One.

* A reporter on a vintage car segment who drives automatic only?

Only in Italy

While we were last strolling in Florence, we passed this little vignette, and I grabbed a (rather average) snapshot. My initial interest was from being an ex-professional in the field (I can justly state I've written manuals on how to do window dressing) but there's so much more to it. For a start, I'd never seen a pintled revolving display window like that before.

But really, it's fascinating because it could only be dressing the window in Italy. The accessories; from shoes, to cigarette, shirt-fronted glasses, to 'phone, the carefully rumpled or unrumpled clothes - and hair, and the extended team to dress one window.

Inspiring lust with a boathook?

James

360 Degree Markets

Thanks to this post on 360 Cities Panoramic Photography Blog, we have a set of 360 degree panoramas that drop you right in the middle of a selection of the world's markets. Click on the title to go to the panorama.

Cho vuon Chuoi market, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

The Spice Suq Sana'a in Yemen.

And there's twenty more; although sadly none of our favourites (anyone prepared to do Oxford's Covered Market? Our 'local' is probably still Melbourne's Vic Market and then there's the fish market in Treviso, which has to be a top location, set in the middle of a canal). It's close to a 'real' experience, but you can't fondle the merchandise, smell the smells or hear the crashes, noises and banter. But some things are captured -

My favorite has to be this Sicilian fish market in Marsala - there's a nice man offering you your fish (I can't seem to find the 'complete transaction' button) while the usual market lurkers are all staring at 'you' wondering what you are up to - very Italian.

James

Team Pasta

After an episode with some eight-year-old pasta chefs, Bev decided she needed a pasta machine for Christmas. Funded by her sister (thanks Tam!) and purchased from the Med Wholesalers (who have to sell Nonna-proven Italian cooking kit, or risk Malocchio) we have a pasta machine.

So (on Christmas day) there was a team effort to make tagliatelle. Paul went first...

...and proved a smooth operator. Top tip (from Maria) was to dust the pasta with flour to smooth the rollers by making the pasta silky...

Jo dressed for as the elegant Italian Donna for the task, and rolled a successful batch as well...

I turned a mean handle next,


...and lastly Bev, who'd helped her glam assistants take a turn...

and then...
...we ate it.

Biennale Personalle

Two years ago today, we were in Venice*. As a celebration of that day out, here is a selection of photographs taken by Bev and I.

A water gate and window box achieving an Italian flag effect.

Candleholder for your plaque. Otherwise who is going to be scared by your wolf by night?

The vital Venetian chimney tops to collect sparks and avoid fire. Despite all the water, fire was a major risk.

Don't feed the cherub too much spinach.

"When you said two outboard motors, I thought..."

A delivery barge, a tree, a nap and thou...

The original Arsenal. Interestingly this Naval shipyard is still closed to the public, but I suspect the defences of Italy aren't dependant on their products as Venice's were.
Garden and church.

You can't get the plasterers to finish a job properly, here.

Church with tollbooth. Or is is an aquatic confessional?

* I'm writing this in the evening in Victoria, so it is the afternoon of the same day in Venice. With the international date line, you've got to be careful about such statements!

The Advanced 1300 Lego Set...

...offers unrivalled construction opportunities.

Batteries and plan for the dome not included. (Dome available in the 1400 Brunelleschi expansion pack.)

How do you like your cherries?

The recent extremely cold weather in the UK in particular has had a number of odd or unusual effects. My friend Rob Leigh was recently surprised in the morning:

"I opened my car door this morning to find what looked like a shower of broken glass all over the back seat and around the centre console. There was also a strong smell of cherries.

It had got so cold overnight that a couple of cans of coke had exploded. Luckily the contents weren't liquid and it was easily brushed up. That's the last time I leave cans in the car when it's that cold. I'm up in Congleton at the moment. I don't know what the overnight temperature was but at nearby Woodford it was -16 C." [3 F]

I was reminded of Rob's experience when Bev went to fish in our car's centre console for some sweets on a journey home. As you may recall, we had a 44C (111F) day here recently, and that's the shade temperature. Inside a dark grey car parked all day in direct sunlight, it would have got a lot hotter. However there was a graphic demonstration of quite how hot it got coming up. Instead of a bag of hard cherry sweets, there was one, big, bag-shaped example. We are all familiar with the chocolate that ends up melted like a juice in a bag, this must've got to a similar liquid form, but if you had picked it up, it would've burnt.

These sweets are basically sugar and a little cherry flavoured syrup. A quick check by Bev in Stephanie Alexander's Cook's Companion reveals that sugar melts in this form at 112 - 130 C (233 - 266 F).

That's HOT.

More seriously it's been interesting that we've had several responses from UK friends, family and correspondents regarding the 40+ temps as being in some way enviable. Temperature, like other things has often to be experienced to be taken seriously. I don't have stats, but it's fair to say that the heatwaves here in Australia are as lethal as the current below zero conditions in the UK. Unprepared people outside have just died, and numbers of the elderly and infirm haven't made it through even in their own homes - in Victoria from heat, in the UK, from cold. Costs and demands for heating or air conditioning have caused spikes and shortages in both places.

Most of the debate on the issues to do with climate change miss one essential point - we are going to have to get better at coping with weather extremes than we are now. I like my cherries fresh or in Amarena, not burnt or frozen.

James

Cinquecento!

Time for an Italian Job - this one's for Greg & Eileen.


Inspired by Eileen's neat painting of the iconic original FIAT Cinquecento (above) on her blog Easelarts (go have a look, it's neat, and an impressive run of artwork) I've dug out some shots we took of the original FIAT 500 in Italy and the modern pastiche supermini.

Original in Rome.

An Italian Job set, with a trio being used as pace cars in the Giro d'Italia bicycle race we ran into the Italian hill-towns.

And parked up with another retro-pastiche, seen in a typical street, this time in Arezzo.

Tragically, according to the Wiki page, this modern car "is available with four different trim levels: Naked, Pop, Lounge, and Sport". Meh.

James

An electric turn of phrase

A view past a lightning conductor from inside the tower of the Duomo, Florence.

"upright Rods of Iron, made sharp as a Needle and gilt to prevent Rusting, and from the Foot of those Rods a Wire down the outside of the Building into the Ground;...Would not these pointed Rods probably draw the Electrical Fire silently out of a Cloud before it came nigh enough to strike, and thereby secure us from that most sudden and terrible Mischief!"

Benjamin Franklin

In Response to Sahlah's comment below:
As is often the case as an editor I was distracted while checking a fact on the web. After establishing, as my author had claimed, that Benjamin Franklin had indeed invented the lightning conductor, I was impressed by his writing about it; including the scattering of capital letters and what is to us an antique vocabulary of concerns - yet he achieves a clarity that few designers today manage - what will they expect for their bright ideas a century or two hence?

Benjamin was on any measure a remarkable man, one of the many that I didn't get to learn about at school in England, because he was on the 'other side' of that war.

We never learned about the incredible courage required to challenge a government and king and seeking independence as Franklin's fellows and he did (just though we were taught their cause was). The American War of Independence, was important, however it is but one event of Benjamin Franklin's life and works. His achievements, intellect and virtue are exceptional, on the level of a true Renaissance man - so much so that it's a relief he had a face like a second-hand pear, with spectacles, for if he had good looks as well, he'd have been all-too-much.

Where are our Benjamin Franklin's today?

James

Bella Italia - Chiesa con gelati

A church in Treviso.

Whenever I'm in Italy, I can't help but be reminded of ice-cream. Sometimes, as here, mint.

James