Don A, the other Don A who is now down in Florida for the winter, sent me a bunch of information about stuffed olives after seeing my little taunt about the very good appetizer Rebecca made for Christmas Eve.
Rebecca said her appetizer was "stuffed olives"; but actually it was little meatballs stuffed with pitted olives. Then she proceeded to argue that her little meatball recipe was the authentic one and that my memory of the olive being on the outside of the meat filling was faulty. This article sent me by Don is one more proof that she was wrong:
http://blogs.denverpost.com/preserved/2009/04/08/ascoli-piceno/
I suppose it's not surprising that Rebecca stubbornly maintained and defended her mistaken view despite the evidence, for Grandpop L used to periodically tell a joke that went like this:
Question - What's worse than having a dead body in the living room?
Answer - Having a stubborn Marche' knocking at the door.
The implication, of course, is that Marche's in general are a stubborn lot, impossible to get rid of. And Rebecca, of course, is three-eighths Marche' by the following calculation.
Grandmom and Grandpop L were both Marche's from Ascoli Piceno, as was Grandpop A. That makes Rebecca's dad three-fourths Marche. Grandmom A was not from Ascoli Piceno - she was born "a Muro Lucano" according to her birth certificate, which is in the L side electronic picture file I sent you a couple of years ago if you had a need for the family pictures.
"A Muro Lucano" means - well perhaps that will be your homework assignment. I figured out what it means many years ago before Al Gore invented this internet thingy, with the help of a librarian, much to Mom's irritation. Find and rattle your family own skeletons if you want to.
Speaking of family skeletons, there is evidence in the family picture album of at least two instances that prove Shakespeare was very right for all the ages when he wrote the best known line in Troilus and Cressida.
Now to other matters:
It's as cold as a brass bra on a witch's tit out there, as Pop and a friend of mine from Missouri named Randy often used to say at this time of year. A very useful quote which will stay useful for a lifetime.
Pop also used to say "another year shot to hell" each year on or after New Year's Day just as he would always say "another summer shot to hell" on or just after Labor Day each year. Not that he brooded on those things. Pop was a very optimistic person, perhaps the most naturally optimistic person I've ever met. Also just after New Year's Day, regarding the cold winter, which he most definitely did not like he always used to say "we're over the hump, it's all downhill from here." Pop managed to see the light at the end of every tunnel of life earlier than anybody else could see it. And he was optimistic about that light even after it became clear that the light might be an approaching train.
Don't go through life brooding about the approaching train that's gonna get you in the end no matter what you do. Most of the time the light is actually the other end of the tunnel, and even when the light is a train you may as well meet that train in a good mood, enjoying life until the moment it gets you.
I generally make my dentist appointments for 8:20 in the morning in part because the dentist usually has on the Philly radio station that has played the Monty Python song Always Look on the Bright Side of Life at about 8:30. Life is too short to go through as a brooding mope.
In other news: Samuel came by last evening Samuel to give me and Linda a presentation on the knives he's selling. A very interesting presentation, and we bought some of his knives to complement the very fine ones Alex and Christina gave us for Christmas. After his presentaion we spent some time over coffee and discussion of David Serdaris's books and of the Oxford English Dictionary, of all things because Samuel said he was interested in books that contain interesting historical information, so I pulled out The Profession and the Madman to give to him.
The madman in the book made the best of his unfortunate situation, being in an insane asylum for life due to an unfortunate crime or two, by making himself the most prolific contributor to the OED. The professor in the book, on the other hand, spent twenty years of his life being grateful for the many contributions being made by mail by a certain fellow and didn't learn that the fellow was in an insane asylum until he decided to visit the recluse and thank him in person.
Here's a piece of advice for you younger married folks. There are a lot of things one must tolerate in life because they're impossible to avoid. And then there are other things one tolerates because of sheer foolishness. We, for instance, have been using a drawer full of annoyingly dull knives all our life because we were too foolish to buy decent knives way back when. This doesn't mean you have to spend a ton of money all at once on good knives. But it does mean you should judiciously accumulate good quality stuff in those areas of life where you can purchase something that will truly last a lifetime.
If anybody is interested in books send me an email detailing the kinds of books you like along with your mailing address. If I have a book or two or a dozen that I think you will like I'll either put it aside for you or mail it to you - media mail is very cheap. My email address is sully(mylastname) at AOL dot com.
Showing posts with label stuffed olives. Show all posts
Showing posts with label stuffed olives. Show all posts
Wednesday, January 6, 2010
Sunday, January 3, 2010
Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow
I got five gallons of diesel for the tractor yesterday, so I'm of a mind to wish for snow. This winter has started off well but we need more. We haven't had a really good winter for snow for a few years. Bring it on! I have plenty of wood stored up for the stove.
Now for the subject of Christmas Eve, which Rebecca reminded me of at Sam and Deb's house yesterday before she convinced me that I have to bit the bullet and yank my jammed toe back into proper alignment. . . which I may do once I get up the nerve when Linda isn't around to hear the scream. And then again, I may not. Who declared Rebecca a toe doctor to know whether I should torture myself intensively by yanking at that thing or whether I should simply leave it alone to torture me subtly and naggingly until it gives up?
Enough with the toe. It's mildly throbbing down there; but I have more important things to concern myself with, namely a rant on the general disrespect for tradition among the younger generation.
We deep fry battered vegetables and breaded fish on Christmas Eve because in the proper scheme of things, before the beginning of the decline of Western Civilization, no meat was allowed until midnight. This tradition has, of course, been corrupted for many a year by the introduction of red tomato gravy made with meat, which some barbarians insist on putting on my Spaghetti Aglio e' Olio, thus turning it into a fusion cuisine nightmare.
This practice is by no means new. It started in the 1990's, thankfully after Pop was no longer around to see it. Mom, however, was still around, and we had many a discussion about whether it should be permitted, the uneasy compromise being that we would not make the red gravy but would turn a more or less blind eye to its introduction into the house.
This year, however, Rebecca went further. She suggested that she would bring stuffed olives and I agreed to the suggestion in a moment of weakness. Thus did meat, actual meat, impossible to deny, enter the house on Christmas Eve. I agreed, of course, because stuffed olives are perhaps the finest achievement of Italian cuisine, at least in the appetizer category.
But then, when Rebecca brought what she said were stuffed olives they turned out to be olives in the middle surrounded by little meat balls. She made some claim that her dog had eaten the olives meant for stuffing, so she had to revert to pimento stuffed olives. Then she went further and claimed that putting the meat outside of the olives was actually the original Marche' recipe. Sam's Marche' cook book quickly proved that wrong; but it wasn't necessary.
My memory may have degenerated a bit over the years; but this is something impossible to get wrong. I distinctly remember Mom and Aunt Mary discussing the people who used pitted olives and the people who put the meat on the outside of the olive as they spiral cut the olives away from their pits, a fairly delicate task.
I just finished, by the way, a porchetta sandwich on a Corropolese medium kaiser roll. And I'm fairly confident you didn't. There was quite a bit of porchetta left over on New Year's Eve from that 9 pound roast I cooked; but I somehow neglected to give any of it away to the departing guests. I have five containers of it in the freezer, plus the bowl I've been finishing sandwich by sandwich since New Year's day.
Meanwhile, a large flock of starlings is flying and walking around the lawn out there even as a fifteen or so mile an our wind is whipping the 25 degree air around. It's hard to imagine just how those birds survive in this cold. Why don't they go south? They're clearly finding stuff to eat out there on the frozen ground; but wouldn't they find tastier and warmer stuff in Georgia or South Carolina where they would have warmer feet?
Sam and I talked to Al and Jas down in Florida yesterday and they were whining about the temperatures dipping into the fifties during the day. These starlings should be down in Florida annoying them.
There are, however, some small consolations for living up here in the cold. I have the woodstove roaring away in there. Sitting by it as those damned starlings freeze there little feet off because they're too stupid to fly south is one of those consolations.
In other news: Five scientists, no doubt working very hard down in Australia, where it is summer for those of you who are geographically challenged, have figured out how bees land. I was intrigued by this paragraph:
"First the scientists built a bee landing platform that could be inclined at any angle from horizontal to inverted (like a ceiling), then they trained bees to land on it and began filming."
One has to wonder whether it really took five scientists to do that; or whether a couple of those scientists were looking for an excuse to go to Austrialia and catch some rays.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/12/091223074657.htm
Now for the subject of Christmas Eve, which Rebecca reminded me of at Sam and Deb's house yesterday before she convinced me that I have to bit the bullet and yank my jammed toe back into proper alignment. . . which I may do once I get up the nerve when Linda isn't around to hear the scream. And then again, I may not. Who declared Rebecca a toe doctor to know whether I should torture myself intensively by yanking at that thing or whether I should simply leave it alone to torture me subtly and naggingly until it gives up?
Enough with the toe. It's mildly throbbing down there; but I have more important things to concern myself with, namely a rant on the general disrespect for tradition among the younger generation.
We deep fry battered vegetables and breaded fish on Christmas Eve because in the proper scheme of things, before the beginning of the decline of Western Civilization, no meat was allowed until midnight. This tradition has, of course, been corrupted for many a year by the introduction of red tomato gravy made with meat, which some barbarians insist on putting on my Spaghetti Aglio e' Olio, thus turning it into a fusion cuisine nightmare.
This practice is by no means new. It started in the 1990's, thankfully after Pop was no longer around to see it. Mom, however, was still around, and we had many a discussion about whether it should be permitted, the uneasy compromise being that we would not make the red gravy but would turn a more or less blind eye to its introduction into the house.
This year, however, Rebecca went further. She suggested that she would bring stuffed olives and I agreed to the suggestion in a moment of weakness. Thus did meat, actual meat, impossible to deny, enter the house on Christmas Eve. I agreed, of course, because stuffed olives are perhaps the finest achievement of Italian cuisine, at least in the appetizer category.
But then, when Rebecca brought what she said were stuffed olives they turned out to be olives in the middle surrounded by little meat balls. She made some claim that her dog had eaten the olives meant for stuffing, so she had to revert to pimento stuffed olives. Then she went further and claimed that putting the meat outside of the olives was actually the original Marche' recipe. Sam's Marche' cook book quickly proved that wrong; but it wasn't necessary.
My memory may have degenerated a bit over the years; but this is something impossible to get wrong. I distinctly remember Mom and Aunt Mary discussing the people who used pitted olives and the people who put the meat on the outside of the olive as they spiral cut the olives away from their pits, a fairly delicate task.
I just finished, by the way, a porchetta sandwich on a Corropolese medium kaiser roll. And I'm fairly confident you didn't. There was quite a bit of porchetta left over on New Year's Eve from that 9 pound roast I cooked; but I somehow neglected to give any of it away to the departing guests. I have five containers of it in the freezer, plus the bowl I've been finishing sandwich by sandwich since New Year's day.
Meanwhile, a large flock of starlings is flying and walking around the lawn out there even as a fifteen or so mile an our wind is whipping the 25 degree air around. It's hard to imagine just how those birds survive in this cold. Why don't they go south? They're clearly finding stuff to eat out there on the frozen ground; but wouldn't they find tastier and warmer stuff in Georgia or South Carolina where they would have warmer feet?
Sam and I talked to Al and Jas down in Florida yesterday and they were whining about the temperatures dipping into the fifties during the day. These starlings should be down in Florida annoying them.
There are, however, some small consolations for living up here in the cold. I have the woodstove roaring away in there. Sitting by it as those damned starlings freeze there little feet off because they're too stupid to fly south is one of those consolations.
In other news: Five scientists, no doubt working very hard down in Australia, where it is summer for those of you who are geographically challenged, have figured out how bees land. I was intrigued by this paragraph:
"First the scientists built a bee landing platform that could be inclined at any angle from horizontal to inverted (like a ceiling), then they trained bees to land on it and began filming."
One has to wonder whether it really took five scientists to do that; or whether a couple of those scientists were looking for an excuse to go to Austrialia and catch some rays.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/12/091223074657.htm
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