They know what you're thinking. They record what you're typing. They're snatching up excerpts.

Though you may sometimes believe you're addressing an empty auditorium (hear that echo?), research companies are listening. And reporting.

One of the latest "well, this shouldn't be shocking" findings to cross my desk is the revelation that companies have now established themselves as experts on the "blogosphere," mining the web for blogs, newsgroups and comment threads that indicate consumer preferences. They then distill all they find into whitepapers and research to distribute to companies.

(This is a great business model, by the way... they dig through what's free for the taking, digest it, and sell the findings. It's like foraging in the woods for mushrooms, but with less physical mud beneath the fingernails.)

Case in point: the lead story on Umbria, a market intelligence company specializing in blog chatter. Umbria has determined that "Low Carb is Out, Organic is In" and has published a whitepaper to this effect.

From April through June, 2006, Umbria's agents monitored the blogosphere to understand key trends in Organic food purchasing, specifically: where, what, why and for whom.

They targeted their research for conversations about Wild Oats Markets, Whole Foods Market, Safeway and Wal-Mart and provide an "interesting cross-section of attitudes and trends related to Organic purchasing across a broad range of income levels and geographic accessibility."

I know you're busy and protective of your email address, so I'll summarize the results for you:

Those online talking about Organic foods are overwhelmingly female, a fact that's particularly interesting when you look at the total number of women (segmented into Boomer, Gen X and Gen Y age ranges) who blog and comment.

Conversation was punctuated by the April release of Michael Pollan's hot-topic book, "The Omnivore's Dilemma" and Wal-Mart's May announcement of a big push into the Organic marketplace.

Wild Oats and Whole Foods tend to dominate discussions about Organic foods. Few bloggers seemed randy about trucking over to Wal-Mart for their Organics.

Women in the Gen Y group (15-30) appear to be the most salivation-worthy bunch from the perspective of retailers (apparently they love browsing and shopping at high-end Organic shops) and there's a "give 'em samples!" recommendation.

When it comes to Organic purchases, people are not as concerned about the environment, as they are about flavor, their health and the well-being of their kids and pets.

Also... some people think Organic foods are too expensive, snooty, hippie or just far too much ado about nothing.

It's only ten pages. You can go read it for yourself, but that's pretty much the gist of it.

Maybe I'm way off base here, but I really believe that the demise of the Organic philosophy came as soon as the US bill for the government certification of Organic foods was signed into law back in 2002. Wal-Mart just happens to be the most obvious of the nails in the Organic foods coffin.

Why? Well, it takes $400-$2,000/year and at least three years to be certified Organic by the government. That's meant to ensure quality and avoid fraud, but it's still a lot of cash for a little farm. Thereafter, there's a lot of paperwork and inspections. And if you grow organically managed lettuce but live beside to someone who chooses to spray, there's no way you can be certified.

That's why a lot of small-scale farmers choose to say they're "all natural" or "organically managed," or use "integrated pest management" (think: ladybugs).

Organic foods can be shipped from across the country or around the world, losing nutritive value as they age in transit, using up a bunch of fossil fuel in the process and robbing your local economy of an agricultural income source.

What Michael Pollan gets at is this: The absolute best way to ensure your vegetables are raised in the way in which you would grow them yourself (if only you had the time) is to know your farmers. We need to be able to look someone in the eye, have a conversation, and know that the eggs we're buying aren't from miserable, debeaked chickens stuffed into tiny laying boxes.

Unfortunately, we live in little enclaves separated from our local neighbors and craftsmen. We shop at big national stores, and we talk about those stores as if they ensure something virtuous for our food purchases. They don't. Walk around Whole Foods and do your own survey of what's local, what's Organic and what's conventionally sprayed produce flown in from Chile.

I wish I had the time and opportunity to source everything I buy. I can't. I have a day job. So I do the best I can. I get eggs, fruits and vegetables from my Community Supported Agriculture group, which is supplied by Eve, from Garden of Eve farm on Long Island. I've met her. She doesn't seem evil to me.

We get milk and yogurt from Hawthorn Valley Farm or Ronnybrook at the NYC Farmers' Markets.

J. picks up turkey sausage from DiPaolo farms and cheese and bread from Anne Saxelby at the Essex Street Market. She's passionate about cheese, she rides a cute bicycle and all her stuff is artisanally-made American foods.

That's not to say that I'm never going to savor a Hawaiian pineapple or a Florida orange. Sometimes you gotta get a nice box of Clementine oranges to stave off the scurvy. But the more you purchase locally from actual people, the more you do for your neighborhood, state and region.

Buying from local farmers means you stay in touch with the seasons (wow! the first pumpkins are showing up at the market! cool!), you feel proud about the successes of your neighbors, and you enjoy food quality and regional variety that just doesn't ship well.

Umbria can go on all they like about how hot Organic foods are. Maybe they are hot. But they're not the real answer.

The real answer is good food made by people who actually care about it and about you. And there's nobody who can slap a certification on that... except you.

Labels: blogging, local, organic, trends

Image courtesy of the NYPL Digital Library.

"Only reapers, reaping early
In among the bearded barley
Hear a song that echoes cheerly
From the river winding clearly
Down to tower'd Camelot"

- Alfred Lord Tennyson (1809-1892)

Labels: food quotes, Friday, writers

The Dinosaurs, courtesy of the NYPL Image Collection

Occasionally it occurs to me that my recipe card file is bogged down with dinosaurs. Raaar!

Among them, the petrified recipes I experimented with while I was a vegetarian. The newspaper clippings that piqued my interest on the page, but never materialized on the plate. Rich and complicated French sauces from cooking school that just don't fit my workaday lifestyle. A spate of the neatly filed, color-coded 3x5 cards that demarcate my lifetime of culinary dreams.

And then, there's the recipes that stay at the front of the box. They're not appropriately categorized. They're stained from use. They're full of illegible scribbled notes. Most are more or less committed to memory.

(Let's get really multimedia and add in an old-school audio cue to this blog post... I recommend The Replacments' "Here Comes a Regular.")

Yes, here come the regulars.

I'm working in food media and recipe editing right now, and I've come to understand that most people use a limited repertoire of the foods they make regularly. That changes with the seasons, of course, and most like to break out and experiment with something new if they feel reasonably confident they'llhave some success. No research to back this up, but I'd wager that risk-takers and those with professional chops have a far wider breadth of regular recipes than those who fear the stove.

The question, then. Do your own "house specialties" constitute a rut, or a groove? I prefer to view my reliable regulars as supremely groove-worthy. Especially since their simplicity begs boundless improvisation.

Our standard Sunday hummus enjoyed heaps of fresh garlic last week, zatar spice and roasted red peppers the week before, a curry blend and whole chickpeas the week before that.

My super-rich poundcake is normally cooked in a bundt pan, but around the holidays, it gets lemon zest and a juicy glaze and gets baked into small, individual pans for gift-giving.

In fresh berrry season, the granola is very plain (to make way for tangy-sweet berry goodness). During the barren winter, it's a festival of dried fruits and nuts. Most of the time, I sweeten it with maple syrup, but honey works just as well (and is quite a bit cheaper than the pure maple).

Moving into fall, I foresee these as the top-twenty regulars for Chez Ginsu (with a hopelessly long list of variations):

1. The green salad (and its best friend, the vinaigrette)
2. The poundcake (see below for recipe variation)
3. Green veggies 'n bacon
4. The bean soup
5. The lamb stew
6. The hummus
7. The granola
8. The carrot cake
9. The banana bread
10. That egg thing: The shakshuka
11. The chai masala
12. The curry masala
13. The garam masala
14. The chicken salad
15. The oatmeal cookies
16. The quiche (and its partner in crime, the pie shell)
17. The fresh fruit pie/tart (which will move from apple to pear to pumpkin)
18. The chicken soup
19. The squash soup
20. The fruit chutney/compote

Sadly, the fresh fruit salsa, the panzanella and the pickling brine will need a winter break, due to seasonal produce constraints.

Below, the recipe that inspired this post, a well-loved and requested variation on "the poundcake."

Feeds a throng. Awesome sliced and served with a hot cup of joe. Definitely not appropriate for those with dietary concerns. Feel free to cut back the sugar to 2.5 cups if you prefer yours a little less sweet.

The Massive Cardamom Cream Cake (Serves 12-15)

3 sticks unsalted butter, at room temperature
8 oz full-fat sour cream or 8 oz cream cheese
3 cups sugar
6 fresh eggs, at room temperature
1 tsp pure vanilla extract
1 tsp freshly ground green cardamom
3 cups pastry flour (for best results, sift before using)
1 tsp salt

1. Preheat the oven to 350°F. Lightly butter a bundt pan.
2. Cream the butter and sour cream (or cream cheese) with the sugar until light and airy, about 5-7 minutes.
3. Add the eggs, one at a time, scraping down the sides of the bowl as needed.
4. Add the vanilla, cardamom and salt, then add the flour all at once. Mix only until the flour is blended. Over-beating leads to tough cake. Nobody likes tough cake.
5. Pour the batter into the pan and even out the top with a rubber spatula. Bake until a toothpick inserted in the cake comes out clean (about 1 hour, 15 minutes).
6. Cool the pan on a rack for 30 minutes, then remove the cake from the pan and let cool completely. Enjoy with coffee or tea.

Labels: Chez Ginsu, recipes

Mark, ever-watchful for weird cultural phenomena, writes from his west-coast post this note, entitled, "But where's the Iron Chef head-to-head feature?"

I just ran across this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooking_Mama

For those who can't satisfy their cucumber-slicing jones
on a touch-screen, there's apparently a version coming
at Christmas for the new Nintendo Wii console, with its
fancy motion-sensing controller.

So then, Cooking Mama is either really sad (if you're like me and believe that everyone should have a real, live person who's willing to teach them basic life skills) or great news (if you see technology as a panacea for our cultural afflictions).

I envision a whole series... Personal Hygiene Mama. Basic Etiquette Mama. Don't Dress Like a Ho Mama.

It's clearly the necessary first step in acclimating us to happily accept our robot overlords.

Labels: technology

I know what you're looking for.

Thanks to the wonders of the web age (such as site statistics), I can now confirm all kinds of suspicions that would have been simple conjecture back the early days of blogging.

I know, for example, how many of you are reading this piece right now. (Not many, since I know that most of you don't really read blogs like this on the weekends.) I know that a lot of you sneak peeks during the workday. I know that a whole heaping bunch of you use Google to do your searching and you're checking out the web on a Windows machine with Internet Explorer.

I know how you got here, and according to my the data provided by hosting client, I get the tiniest inkling of what was through your head right before you got here.

Turns out, you folks are very interested in food. And sex. Very id, yes? (Also very predictable. This is the internet, after all, and it may have been created for military use and research, but it belongs to everyone now, and deep down, people are pretty attached to their vices.)

Here's a few recent searches:

how to make black walnut hull tincture (Good question. Anyone know this one?)

pierre herme chocolates in paris (Clearly a web user with good taste and deep pockets.)

patel brothers in nyc (Here's Patel's in Minneapolis and Patel Brothers in Queens.)

mahnomin porridge recipe (I wish I knew. I'll do some research and post the results.)

bad things that christopher columbus did (You should probably check the Wikipedia entry.)

organic hot chocolate reviews (Try Dagoba)

n.y. style spiedie marinade recipe (Links to recipes plus sandwich history here.)

cooking huitlacoche rice recipe (I don't have one. But you can find one here.)

wasted drunk (Sorry. I got nothin' for ya.)

apocalypse kit (No foodie should let an apocalypse start before they buy these things.)

aphrodisiac ingredient list (Check with this book.)

tomato haiku (Simple. Efficient. Elegant. Tomato Haiku is my medium of choice.)

tomato and watermelon salad (Far tastier than you'd guess.)

holy shit a talking muffin (Yay! My favorite muffin joke!)

And, quite surprisingly, these are the most popular searches of all...

miss ginsu (Aw, thanks!)

what is kritamo (A valid question. A valid answer here.)

marshmallowy treats (Maybe marshmallowy Peeps?)

how to make wild lard and recipes (This was a strangely popular search for Canadians. A terrific lard tutorial [how often do you get to say that?] can be found on An Obsession with Food)

bona calda recipe (Find both garlic love and bona calda info here.)

You guys like strange things. And it seems like you enjoy learning. Bully for you. I'm all for that.

With all this in mind, you can be sure I'll continue peeking into the dimly lit corners of the world, unearthing more recipes, tutorials and sources for strange and wonderful foods. You're on your own for the sex and drinkin'.

Labels: blogging, sex, technology

"If any man has drunk a little too deeply from the cup of physical pleasure; if he has spent too much time at his desk that should have been spent asleep; if his fine spirits have become temporarily dulled; if he finds the air too damp, the minutes too slow, and the atmosphere too heavy to withstand; if he is obsessed by a fixed idea which bars him from any freedom of thought: if he is any of these poor creatures, we say, let him be given a good pint of amber-flavored chocolate... and marvels will be performed."

- Jean-Anthelme Brillat-Savarin (1755-1826)

Drink in more rich, smooth food quotes here.

Labels: chocolate, food quotes, Friday, hedonism, writers

This was on the NPR Marketplace Morning Report:

Local Foods Plymouth... like FreshDirect for the farmers' market.

The website is supremely limited, but the report made it sound like it’s been really popular there. People said they liked picking up all their farmers' market produce in one place.

I like the way they handle expectations on the first page (you can only order on Tuesdays) and they inform you that if you don’t pick up by 6 p.m. on delivery day, your food gets donated to a local charity.

Like City Farms & Community Supported Agriculture, online farmers' markets could offer yet another option for busy urbanites to connect to the bounty of the fields... and it gives small farmers a way to manage inventory and prevent waste.

I’m sure we’ll see more of this to come as the various pockets of our culture become more web-savvy.

Labels: CSA, FreshDirect, local, technology, trends, veggies

A charming passage from Paolo Villoresi's little book, Whole Wheat My Love:

Concerning methods for determining when pasta is cooked, I have heard nearly everything, including the suggestion of throwing a piece of pasta against the wall. If it sticks, it is ready, if not, you must repeat the operation a bit later. Horror and error!

In reality, to determine whether or not pasta is cooked, it must be tasted with the teeth. I set a kitchen timer for one minute before the cooking time indicated on the box. Then I taste the pasta several times to be certain it is al dente. The pasta is ready when it is "without a soul!" In other words:

a. pull out one strand of pasta
b. bite it, and look at the center of the strand
c. if a white point, the "soul," is visible, the pasta is not yet cooked

Labels: advice, cookbooks, food quotes

Happy Pickle Day from missginsu's photos at flickr


Pickle history from missginsu's photos at flickr


Lineup for Pickles at Guss' from missginsu's photos at flickr

Why is it that we nationally celebrate Christopher Columbus (a man generally acknowledged as a less-than-stellar individual), and not the pickle?

I’m wondering, of course, because yesterday was International Pickle Day on the Lower East Side. People enjoyed informational displays, samples, cucumber-green balloons for the kids. It’s an annual celebration of all things pickled. Bread & Butters. Kim Chi. Chutneys. Sauerkraut. Oshinko. The good old kosher dill. How great is that?

Pickling is one of the oldest known methods of food preservation. Pickles have sustained and enriched people’s lives across the globe for a few thousand years. They kept folks alive on long voyages. They offered something vegetal during those long, cold winter months on the plains. They dress up salads. They brighten sushi. They’ve made the Chicago Dog a stunning ballpark snack. Do they have a big day of observance and celebration? Of course not. Pickles get a sunny afternoon on a single city block.

Columbus has parks, schools, streets, expensive statuary and a national bank holiday. As far as I know, Columbus was simply a sea-faring prospector. He reported back to the Spanish royal court about a continent that all kinds of people already knew pretty well, while simultaneously delivering disease and slavery to the people he “discovered.”

What about public displays of pickle pride? I'm all for endorsing Pickle High School, Kim Chi Circle and West Gherkin Boulevard.

Am I saying there’s direct correspondence between old Chris having a day of celebration and a sad underrepresentation in food preservation? Nope. Just want to point out the inherent lack of consistency at work in our government-sponsored observances. Why shouldn’t we link national celebrations to values that are thoroughly worthy of celebration? I also think Election Day should be a holiday, but that’s a topic for another post…

You’ll never know whether one of your great forbearers was fed and nourished with pickles, but it’s likely. You may, indeed, owe your existence in some small part, to pickles.

Pickles save lives.* Pickling evokes the technology of our ancestors. It represents thrift and good planning. And a jar of pickles humbly, eloquently symbolizes the concept of hope. Think about that the next time you twist the top on a fresh jar of pickles and hear the peppy pop. That’s the tiny, briny bang of pickled preservation... a noise I can't help but feel is worthy of pomp and fireworks.

* As an added bonus, having recently watched a very silly customer service video at work, I can assure you that pickles not only save lives, they also inspire people to treat each other with common decency (a value that, sadly, may not be not all that common.) Go on… Give ‘em the pickle.

Labels: events, nonsense, nyc, pickles

"caprese garnish" From thisismolly photostream at flickr.


"dami, eva e minty carrot sorbet" From thisismolly photostream at flickr.


"fichi ripieni con crema gorgonzola" From thisismolly photostream at flickr.

In this final letter from her ever-exciting post in beautiful Umbria, Italy, Miss Molly and her motley kitchen crew once again push out plate after plate of beautiful vegetarian cuisine despite a tearful screaming match, a wild boar on the loose, a motorcycle accident and much public drunkenness.

Ciao Regazzi!

Well, my summer in Italy is coming to an end. It was pretty eventful week last week. Just wait... it's a good one.

Sandra yelled at Judit, and if you can recall, Judit shakes like a leaf. The poor thing started crying, and Alberto came in and yelled at both of them. Unfortunately, I was the only other person in the kitchen and knee-deep in polishing glasses, so I couldn't really put them down and walk away. I didn't quite know what to do.

Sandra yelled back at him. She was always a bitch to Judit and had it in for her from the beginning, but no one knows exactly why. I mean, Judit is this cute girl from Hungary who is on a scholarship to go to school in Italy. She's at Montali to earn some money over the summer to continue improving herself and education. Sure, she hasn't done the best job in the world, but the girl puts in one helluva effort. What more could you possibly ask from someone?

Anyway, Sandra and Judit share a room, so we took Judit to the castle and had her stay with us. Sandra took off in the middle of the night. So I guess she's not part of my restaurant dream team anymore.

A few days later, Sandra came back, I guess to get her paycheck or something, and told Chef that Judit was having an affair with boss! Can you believe that? Remember I wrote about that a while back? First she had the balls to come back and ask for money, and then she said something like that. Any respect I had for her and her hard work went down the drain at that point.

A few nights later, Jaro took the Honda 600 home, but he couldn't get it started right away, so we said that when we dropped everyone off back at the castle, we would turn around and go back to Montali if he hadn't arrived yet. We saw the light coming up the road, so Josh and I waited for him. Jaro pulled up and started stumbling around and told us he had fallen off the bike when a wild boar jumped out in front of him.

I didn't believe him. We joke around like that... but then I saw the blood (See the photos here. Don't worry—they aren't gory). We helped him up the walk and when we got into the light, the blood was only from a couple of scrapes... not too bad. Then we realized how drunk he was. He didn't go to work the next day because of some internal bruises, but nothing serious. Chef and Alberto are babying him, and he's soaking up every last drop of it. It makes me want to barf.

Janko doesn't like Sara because he says he acts like she is in kindergarten. In the kitchen, she has the attention span of the kindergartner, but Eva (who has the day off with her) says she seems totally competent outside of work and doesn't know why she's like that inside the kitchen. Sara drove to the store yesterday and when I walked in the house, I noticed a 22oz bottle of beer she had finished on the counter before she left. Is the whole world drunk and I'm the only one who's sober?

We had a really good night last night. Really smooth, good-looking food and no stress. I am really going to miss this place. I enjoy working here very much, and it's too bad that it took me so long to adjust. Now that it's over, I feel like all my complaints have been are trivial. To use a cliché: hindsight is always 20/20.

It's so beautiful and peaceful out here, and not having internet access regularly is not as bad as seemed at first. The boss and chef are fun people who love life and I'm totally in love with their son, Damiano. He's one cool kid.

My hair cut went great. It was difficult to tell them what I wanted, but we got it accomplished. If I could, I would fly here every four months just to have Marco do my hair again. The town of Tavernelle is lucky to have him.

I'd like to close my last travelogue by saying a few nice things about the people I'm ending this adventure with:

Janko: A great great cook with a great sense of humor. He taught me how to just work and not to bitch about it because it's not that big of a deal. I learned this just by watching him.

Eva: so classy and intelligent. I never know what she is thinking, but in a good way. When someone starts acting stupid, she is the last one to roll her eyes. She's great fun to be with and I think she is going to go far in life.

Jaro: Also great fun and funny. I think his Mr. Bean voice makes everything funnier than it actually is, especially when he sings.

Judit: She's always scared as hell but does it anyway. I will miss her very much and I wish her well in her studies. Bravo to her for working at it.

Josh: Always willing to listen and think about it... An admirable quality.

Chef: Her passion for life is contagious. She's a happy person and works her ass off. She always listens and genuinely cares about other people, and this 50-year-old woman has more stamina than I do. I'm lucky to have worked for her for this short amount of time.

Boss: No matter how "stressful" his job is, it's been great fun to get into verbal sparring matches with him. When all is said and done, he has created a pretty special place here at country house Montali.

And last but not least, Sara: A free spirit who always wants to please. She's been nice to everyone, and harbors no hard feelings. Bravo to her, as well.

Thank you all for listening to my rants and raves, my highs and lows and reading my most personal thoughts. This has become an immense experience for me, and much more personal than I ever anticipated. And yes, everyone was right: I don't want to leave.

See you in America soon!

With deepest gratitude,
Miss Molly

Labels: Italy, kitchen stories, Miss Molly, travel

"From my table inside I watch the glamorous women outside who are lunching on Spa Cobb salads without blue cheese or dressing. The man with the bread basket wanders from table to table, lonesome as a cloud. When he comes to me his basket is full and perfectly arranged. He gives me a smile of sincere pleasure when I tell him I will take both the sourdough roll and the cheese stick."

-Ann Patchett (1963-)

More food quotes, high-carb and otherwise, here.

Labels: food quotes, Friday, writers

"bitter greens with caramelized cippolini vinaigrette and fresh figs" From thisismolly photostream at flickr.


"gelato in Tavernelle" From thisismolly photostream at flickr.


"i love this place" From thisismolly photostream at flickr.

Miss Molly, a cook I worked with at Tabla in New York, sends along one of the last few postcards she'll write from her summer-long post at the ever-so-upscale Umbrian restaurant and inn, Montali.

This note finds our dear Molly winning at Alberto's homegrown Quizbowl, reveling in kitchen-slave solidarity and falling in love with the world.

Ciao!

Okay, only one or two more left. Work has steadily slowed, which is nice. As of the past few days, the only special diets we've had is the kosher family (the koshies) which like I said before wasn't so bad to do, because we can make everyone's meal kosher, but they left today.

Anyway, so we come back from siesta on Tuesday and right away Alberto starts undermining the chef in front of everyone and immediately afterward starts asking me stupid questions like what the capitol of Iceland is. Our relationship is more or less built on sassing each other and his wanting to see how far I’ll go with the patriarch of the Montali kingdom, and usually it's fun, but it also usually does not come out of left field. So when I answered, he acted all shocked that a stupid American would actually know such a thing, and then he starts asking me exactly what they taught us in school history-wise, and I haven't been in school in 9 years, so in that moment all I could remember was Mr. Alderson’s American history class when I was a junior in high school. I told him I didn't really remember. He can be a real pompous jerk sometimes.

Too bad for him that I couldn't care less about what he and his nationalist ass think about me and my mouth and brain. Plus, I didn't have to pay someone money for three years to be my spiritual leader to learn the same things I’ve learned spiritually by working in a kitchen for three and half years.

So later that evening I’m plating this dish, putting sauce around the ring molded rice to be exact, and Alberto starts freaking out at me to not get sauce on the rice. He kept trying to tell me this way to do it and I didn't understand what he was exactly trying to say and for him to show me how he wants it done so I can follow is movements.

He said I didn't understand because I wasn't listening. I finished fine, and his anger only affected me because it was on top of other girl problems I started having about three hours before. Plus, I’m not one to totally freak out. It’s just annoying. And he is the boss, and I do work for him... I just sucked it up like a good cook should do.

When we arrived at the castle after work and Jaro handed over the keys, he gave my hand a squeeze and i just remembered how good it felt to have the human contact that I so often isolate myself from, and it was his way of saying it was okay. And I was okay, before that, but it was still just nice.

Uuummmmm what else? I was better with Sarah this week. She still gets annoying. She's one of those people who take one sip of alcohol and her whole personality changes. Mostly I feel bad for her. I’m learning to be tolerant, of her and other things that annoy me. I don't want to be one of those people. The boss seems to think she is really passionate about cooking and to quote him exactly, "since she's Italian, she already had a really good palette. Italians can tell with their mouth all the technical aspects of cooking."

This made me realize I need to travel around Italy a lot more and meet new Italians because I do not want to go back to America with this tainted version of Italy as my last impression.

Josh is his same gloomy self. Too proud and a bad attitude. Someday he'll have his ass handed to him and he'll learn. Maybe he's just been at Montali too long. On a positive note, he has some pretty decent music which he so graciously put on my computer. Also, when I’m not put off by his constant know-it-all cynicism, he can be insightful.

Ester started spreading rumors that boss was having an affair with Judit. A few people believed them for about a week, and when she said something after that about Eva, we knew she was lying. About once a week, Eva comes over to me and Sarah's apartment after work and we sip Limoncello and maybe a few Coronas. It’s pretty fun and we do the stereotypical girlie thing like talk about the drama that surrounds the 10-person team at Montali. It gives me a sense of sisterhood, something I only really feel when I go see my girls out in California. I need to be more open to that when I get back to New York.

At night, I sit by my window because I can watch the people walk by around the castle. I usually let the breeze cool me off after 15 hours in a hot kitchen and listen to music or watch the Golden Girls. And I always get that familiar overwhelming feeling of love. Like I love Eva and Jaro and even Josh and Sarah and Janko. They are fun to work with and we have a good time and I feel lucky to have that in my life.

I am lucky to feel sad that I probably won't ever see these people again after two weeks because that means they have touched my life in some sort of special way. And the chef tells me weekly that she is going to miss me a lot and how she is going to open a nice bottle of wine on my last night. And Josh and Jaro and Eva say we are going out to party on my last night. And I feel celebrated and loved and happy and sad and thankful... The last time I can distinctly remember feeling this way was when I was 14 and my mom threw me a surprise birthday party at "Hungry Burger." It just feels so good... and I didn't even have to pay a spiritual advisor who will eventually leave his body to learn all this!

On a lighter note, I just wanted to note that I’ve never felt such beautiful clean rain in my life before, and to document that all last week we had a thunder storm pass through almost everyday for about two hours followed by beautiful sunsets and clean, clear skies. The other thing I wanted to note, was the color of the eggs we have here. They are so bright orange; Like if they were a Crayola, they would be red-orange. I am posting a picture of one of the yolks, but I don't think it shows the true intensity of the color.

Okay, I think that's all for now folks. I’m getting my hair done next Thursday.... just cut and a few highlights, but it's by someone that doesn't speak English and I don't speak Italian, so we'll see how it ends up. Stay tuned!

Love, Molly

Labels: Italy, kitchen stories, Miss Molly, travel

"All happiness depends on a leisurely breakfast."

- John Gunther (1901-1970)

Find a steaming-hot batch of wholesome food quotes here.

Labels: brekkie, food quotes, Friday, writers