1-800

One blog = 800 posts

800 times I've clicked "New Post"

800 times I've clicked "Publish Post"

800% still committed...and better be...I can never get back those hours spent!!

It's sort of a blog-aversary since it's just over 3 years since I began my Lifetime Subscription.  I tend to keep things around for awhile.  Like, my current iphone...just turned 3 years old about the same time as my blog. That's a long time in cell phone years....like it's gotta be 36....right?

I still don't know what my niche is.  Everyone says you must have a niche.  I don't have a niche.  I'd like to have a niche but I still don't even know what I want to be when I grow up.  Although, I have sort of evolved into a world traveler....which I like very much.  And, it's official....I belong in Firenze, Italy.....the city symbol is a Fleur de lis and Petunias grow rampant all over the country.  Two of my true loves abounding in Italy....must be destiny.  Thank goodness for traveling or I might not have ever known my destiny!

I've printed 8 blog books, which I feel pretty good about.  It's nice to know I have 8 volumes of journals sitting on my shelf.

1-800
I wonder where the next 800 posts will take me.

Lofty Duomo of Florence

Of all my favorite things to do in any foreign country I've visited....touring churches is top on my list.  I love them all.  By ourselves, we tucked into tiny, seemingly lost-in-time chapels and toured grand and majestic cathedrals with the thousands.  I love churches.  What can I say...I'm churchy. 

Florence, Italy has it's own character and style of architecture, especially in places of worship.

The Basilica di Santa Maria del Fiore...begun in 1296....and took 170 +years  to finish.

It's huge....it's covered in colorful panels of marble in shades of green, white and some pink.  There are several churches in Florence with a similar design, color scheme and architecture, but none that rival the Santa Maria in size.  At one point the dome was the largest in the world and is still the largest dome made of brick.  It is impressive and staggering in beauty.

Tour guide, Ignazio took the time to explain the historical sculptures, frescoes and details in it's 3 buildings...which included a fabulous baptistry.  Seriously...an entire architectural wonder just for baptisms.

This is actually a great photo....of Boyd and Ignazio with the three distinct buildings that make up the entire cathedral in the background.  Baptistry on the left, cathedral in the center and the campanile (bell tower) on the right.  As you can see there is an animated conversation going on here.  We had stimulating conversations on religion, particularly Mormonism.  

If you are a Roman Catholic, then this is the place you want to be in Florence, since it is the local "headquarter"Archdiocese.

It's a World Heritage Site and very deservedly so.

A City in Ruins

Buried under Mt. Vesuvius' fury in 79 AD, Pompeii has been a city entombed in every day life.  It's inhabitants had been enduring earthquakes and mountain upheavals for centuries before it even came under Roman rule.  To see it is nothing less then fascinating.  A day in the life in ancient Roman times, frozen just as it was when the first cloud of poison gas overcame the city.

Everyone knows the history and the story of Pompeii.  It still takes you by surprise when you see it.  You are left with the knowledge of the reality of a people who completely vanished.

Pagan worship is evident.  There are temples and structures built to worship the Gods throughout the city ruins.  In fact, there was also a obsessive phallic worship there as well.  It was everywhere.  Thankfully, most of those particular frescoes have been removed to a museum in Naples.

A famous archaeologist once discovered that he could pour plaster into the moulds left behind from the decayed remains under the ash and pumice.  Once removed, these casts of bodies would show what a human or animal looked like at the time they died.  Some casts have been placed where they were found. Others have been moved to a museum and others are in a cache of casts and artifacts located on the property.  Some of the casts are very detailed, including some bones as well as facial expressions.  It's clear the Pompeians had no warning or idea of the fate that befell them.

Evidence of all the modern day Roman amenities still exists.  There were the bath houses, fast food restaurants, bakeries, fullers (they were pretty serious about cleanliness), brothels, decorated homes, businesses, courtyards, a forum, theaters, fountains, aqueducts, paved streets with cross walks, mosaic tiled floors, frescoes, graffiti, temples...necessities for a thriving community.

While millions of tourists visit this World Heritage Site, once you are within the city walls, you won't feel crowded.  Most tourists will be found pushing their way through the bath house and brothel with their nude frescoes and art.  Apparently, most people are obsessed with the same things Pompeians were obsessed with.  If those aren't a priority for you, you're in luck, and will have most of the city to yourself.

Our locally raised tour guide, Stefan, did a great job sharing the history of Pompeii as well as educating us about the local region.  He introduced us to the Naples style of pizza.  Thinner crust.  Good stuff.

I understand why Pompeii was built where it was.  With no knowledge of the mountain being a volcano...it is a very beautiful setting with the coastal breezes, Mediterranean weather, and surrounding mountains.  One could easily feel at home here.

I'd say, it's a must see on a trip to Italy.

Save me a piece of that corn!

In the meantime, while I've been posting Italian journeys, I've been living in St. George....hosting visitors, going to Swiss Days, turning a year older, hiking, eating....and so the story goes.

One of the true joys of summer markets and fairs is the food.  And when you find a booth that sells fresh grilled corn, dipped in butter, with your choice of toppings...you indulge.  Swiss Days in Santa Clara provides an assortment of fried fare that will tempt even the best of dieters.

And I can't help thinking of Nacho Libre either.  I know that's what you were thinking too.
Hey...Save me a piece of that corn!!

Yoda Cupcakes

We spent our weekend with the Ok Corral.  One of them is to be a birthday boy this Wednesday.  In honor of that occasion and because I happened to have a Lime Cupcake recipe I wanted to try, I made cupcakes and dubbed them "Yoda Cupcakes"....to appease the Star Wars lover in him.

I found the original recipe from bonappetite.com by Buttersweet Bakery, but I modified it a bit.  These cupcakes are fresh, not-too-tangy, and satisfying.  You gotta love a smooth, creamy frosting you can eat by the spoonful without feeling sick!

Yoda Cupcakes
1 cup all purpose flour
3/4 cup self-rising flour
1/2 cup (1 stick) butter, room temperature
1 1/4 cup sugar
2 large eggs, room temperature
2 1/2 Tbsp fresh lime juice
1 1/2 Tbsp finely grated lime peel
1/4 tsp green food coloring
3/4 cup buttermilk

Frosting
12 oz. cream cheese (1 1/2 pkgs.), room temperature
3 cups powdered sugar
3/4 cup butter (1 1/2 sticks), room temperature
1 tsp vanilla extract

1 Tbsp lime zest

Preheat oven to 350.  Line standard muffin pan with 12 paper liners.  Whisk both flours in medium bowl. Beat butter in large bowl until smooth.  Add sugar; beat to blend.  Beat in eggs 1 at a time, then next 3 ingredients (batter may look curdled).  Beat in flour mixture in 3 additions alternately with buttermilk in 2 additions. Spoon scant 1/3 cup batter into each liner.

Bake cupcakes until tester inserted into center comes out clean, 20-25 minutes.  Cool 10 minutes.  Remove from pan; cool.

For frosting, beat all ingredients in medium bowl until smooth.  Pipe frosting onto cupcakes.  You will have extra.  I added some green food coloring to the remainder to add a green dollop. Sprinkle cupcakes with lime zest.  You will still have some frosting left...makes a great treat with graham crackers.

I refrigerate the cupcakes immediately after frosting and remove them 1/2 hour before eating.

Thank goodness for 3 leftover cupcakes this morning.....birthday cake for me!!

Ponte Vecchio, have pity!

The oldest and most known bridge in Florence, Italy is the Ponte Vecchio.  It's even sung about in the song..O mio babbino caro...which everyone knows when they hear it.

The Italian woman sings:
Oh my dear papa
I love him, he is handsome, handsome
I want to go to Porta Rossa
to buy the ring!
Yes, yes, I want to go there!
And if my love were in vain,
I would go to the Ponte Vecchio
and throw myself in the Arno!
I am anguished and tormented!
Oh God, I'd like to die!
Papa, have pity, have pity!
Papa, have pity, have pity!

I can't imagine one would die from throwing themselves off the bridge, but the stinky river below just might do the trick.

Ah, love the tourists who don't care how gunky a river is....by golly, they will enjoy it's banks no matter what!

What I learned from our colorful, live and let live, native tour guide...Ignazio:

Yes...you have to love a local Italian name like Ignazio.

The bridge was built on wooden remains of an ancient Roman bridge in the 1300's.  

It's seen a few devastating floods and has been rebuilt a time or two.

It has always been the location of merchants.  In medieval times, there were butchers and fish merchant stores, known for being quite a smelly place.  Today it is known as the place for goldsmiths and jewelers.  There are plenty of touristy shops.

Apparently, so Ignazio says, the royal citizens did not enjoy the smells that came from the fish shops and river on their walks from their political headquarters to their residential headquarters (which are now museums), so a suspended "tunnel" was built from one end to the other (which felt to me like approx. a mile long).  It runs high along the sides of buildings and across the tops of the merchant's shops. That way the rulers and royal families would not be offended by the commoners and their smells below.  

I asked why the bridge wasn't bombed during WWII, as so many other bridges were destroyed and I was told that Hitler himself ordered that this bridge should be protected.  

It is very crowded and over photographed.  It's one of those, hang on to your wallets and push your way through experiences. But, it is an experience worth beholding in the lovely city of Florence.  

Ponte Vecchio...may you always be loved.

Moon Sighting

This pretty much sums up how great today was...

Apparently, it's so fun splashing Lola, that you can't even tell when your pants have fallen down!  

To say I saw it

While on our excursion to Florence, we rented a Smart Car and made a bee line for Pisa.  We had to say we saw it, right?

You can climb the Pisa Tower for 15 Euros in a scheduled time slot. Worth it to me...not so worth it to him. Oh well.  I saw it.  It leans.  It's very old....construction started in the 1100's. It's actually very lovely and in a quaint town.  It's very touristy. An iphone is the best tool to help you find it. It's best to enter and park north of town. The crowds to the south were unbelievable. The potty will cost you...literally. It's smaller then you think.  

But, I saw it.

Piazza di Spagna

It's pretty obvious that Piazza di Spagna doesn't mean "large number of tourists" but maybe it should.

This is the Spanish Plaza, home of the Spanish Embassy in Rome, and a small cluster of long time Spanish residents. In the plaza are the Scalinata della Trinita dei Monti.  They are steps that climb a hill from the plaza to the Trinita dei Monti....a lovely church...which is actually of French origin.  By the way, so are the stairs.  They were funded by the French in the 1700's.  So why they aren't called the "French Steps" instead of the Spanish Steps is an interesting question.  I've heard the staircase is the longest and widest in Europe.

But anyway....there are a lot of people there....all the time.  It's close to the expensive shopping district so there are a lot of beautiful people there as well.  We went several times and each time, we were amongst thousands. But, not many of them want to make the climb to the top of the stairs, so my tip is:  If you want to get away from all those people, climb the stairs!

(View from the top, you can see a small fountain at the bottom...shaped like a boat...that's another story)

Egyptian obelisk on the way up the stairs.  Interestingly there are many ancient Egyptian obelisks and artifacts throughout the city.  As the Romans would conquer civilizations and increase their dynasty, they would bring back these pieces of art as trophies to show their dominance.  In the Renaissance period, these statues were placed throughout the city on monuments and topped with crosses. Basically as if to say, the Catholic church now dominates and has conquered and claimed this city and her treasures.

If you like observing people...beautiful people and you don't mind being around a lot of people, the Spanish Steps are a must see in Rome.  

Glee-full cupcakes

I made a decision yesterday....to master cupcakes.

Every day I see blogs and websites with recipes for the most amazing cupcakes.  All of them look so wonderful and there are so many that it's hard to choose which recipe to make.

So, I'll just make them all.

What better reason to make the Milky Way Cupcakes then to celebrate the new season of GLEE?  And these little ditties are full of Glee...

They were a little fancy for my beginner baking skills and my kitchen looked like a chocolate bomb when off in it.  Not that I mind splattered chocolate everywhere...more to lick!

Milky Way Cupcakes

Cake
1 box of chocolate cake mix
3 eggs
1 1/3 cup water
1/2 cup oil
1/4 cup dark cocoa powder
2-3 packets of instant coffee (I bought a tiny jar of Folger's decaf and used 3 tsp)
1/4 cup sour cream

Mix all together and bake in muffin tin according to the directions on your cake mix box.

Filling
1/2 cup heavy whipping cream
1 cup chocolate chips

Bring cream to a boil.  Remove from heat and stir in chips.  Stir until smooth.  Let cool.

Milky Way Frosting (the part to die for!)
1 cup room temp butter
1 tsp vanilla
1/8 tsp salt
2 tbsp milk
4 cups powdered sugar
8 snack size Milky Way bars
2-3 extra tbsp butter

Beat the butter, vanilla, salt, and milk until creamy.  Slowly add sugar until thick.  Set aside.  Cut Milky Way's up and put in sauce pan on stove with the extra butter.  Stir on medium heat until it is melted and sticky. Begin whipping the frosting again and gradually add the melted candy bars as you whip.
Take a small taste but don't eat too much because I found that I couldn't quite cover all the cupcakes I made with this batch.

After the cupcakes and filling have cooled, scoop out the center of your cupcake with a melon ball scooper.  (Just a small amount, or you won't have enough filling mixture. And you have my permission to eat the cupcake balls, I did!) Fill the cavity with the chocolate filling.  Then frost your cupcakes with the Milky Way Frosting.  Decorate with a piece of chopped Milky Way if you desire.

A couple of recommendations:
Refrigerate your cupcakes before you eat them.  But remove them from the fridge and allow them to warm to room temp before eating.  The filling is very runny and you will have gooey mess that you will have to eat with a spoon.  Not that there is anything wrong with that, but it doesn't resemble anything like a cupcake.  If the cupcake gets chilled a little before you eat it, you will have a yummy ganache filling inside. Talk about "full of Glee!!"

Let the frosting rest a little after adding the Milky Way mixture to it.  You've just added hot chocolate to a butter cream base and it will be slightly runny and hard to frost with.

(This picture was taken of a cupcake that hadn't been chilled because I couldn't wait! It was yummy but even better after it chilled a bit.)

I was totally impressed with these cupcakes.  These rivaled my Cocoa Bean favorites even!  I will definitely make them again.  

One fancy cupcake recipe down....thousands more to go!

Glee and GLEE in one night? Can you ever have too much glee?

Gastronomy

Gastronomy is the study of the relationship between culture and food.

The ultimate foodie experience.

In Italy, I studied...and studied and studied.

Here's what I observed.

Italians use fresh ingredients.  They shop at outdoor markets frequently.  Even restaurants have fresh produce brought in every morning.  We watched from our hotel room, as delivery men would bring in flats of fruit, herbs and vegetables every day.  And they use locally grown and raised produce and meat.  Everything from the olive oil, to the vinegar, the wine, and the ingredients for the pasta, can be found and made within their own country.  Fresh idea.

I think it's obvious that Italians like pasta.  And they do make good pasta.  But I also learned that they love meat.  They are all about meats.  Cured and roasted mostly.  In older days, meat was considered a little more sacred and would generally be used for special occasions or in homes.  But now you can buy it everywhere...the local supermarkets and even outside!  We ate a lot of salami, bacon and prosciutto. In Florence, (Boyd's favorite place) we ate at a place called Il Latino (as the ham cured from the ceiling), where they brought us platters of all kinds of roasted meats, cooked to tender perfection.  I actually liked the rabbit.  

It's all about olive oil and wine.  

In Florence, our tour guide informed us that his family of 5 children consume an entire gallon of olive oil a month.  But, they don't use much butter.  Olive oil is in EVERYTHING.  And the olive oil is so much better tasting then what we use here.  He demonstrated it's use by doing me the honor of pouring my olive oil over my food for me, as the Italians would do. He probably used close to a 1/4 cup on my Tuscan peasant soup alone.  And surprisingly, I loved it.

Wine flows like water.  At Il Latino, the owner offered us the traditional dessert of biscotti dipped in a shot glass of wine.  We certainly ate the almond, mouth watering biscotti, but politely declined on the wine.  This man was shocked.  How do you not drink wine?  Although, he was impressed enough to send me home with a free bag of his homemade biscotti...which really was the tastiest biscotti I've ever eaten.

They don't sell a lot of potato chips.  England was fun for me because there, they satisfied my wildest potato chip fantasies with their huge variety of flavors and brands.  But I found only one kind of chips in Italy...Pringles, which I love and which they do have a fun variety of.  Rice and Paprika were unique.

Pizza isn't fattening.  The crust isn't saturated in butter.  The sauce is simply pureed tomatoes with a little olive oil.  They are very modest with their toppings. Each region has it's own flavor and style of crust and sauce.  We enjoyed the hearty crust of the pizza in Florence, and the simplicity of it in Pompeii/Naples. 

Gelato is not overrated.  Although just like every trend in food, there is good, better and best. We tried it in every town, everyday.  It seems to be a national pastime now and available, literally, on every corner.  We asked some locals where the best places were.  In Rome, we were told:  Giolitti's.  And it was.  But Boyd and I both preferred the more homemade versions in Florence.  

Besides wine, I think Coca Light (Diet Coke) is the national beverage.  No Pepsi to be had.  I'm good with that and did indulge a few times.  You can buy Diet Coke everywhere.  Not Coke, not Pepsi... just Diet Coke.  And unless you ask nicely for a glass with ice, you will get it in a can every time. And it's an itty bitty can.

How Italians stay thin:

~wholesome ingredients

~smaller portions (really...even in their restaurants)

~they walk everywhere

~they smoke....sorry, but it's true.  Every thin Italian woman I saw, lit up a cigarette every time.  They smoke quite a bit there.

~not much fast food available.  There were a few McDonald's here and there but fast food to them consists of a quick slice of pizza and an espresso to go.

~No candy.  Even at the supermarkets they have very limited amounts of candy or junk food.  There are a plethora of olives and cheeses and meats to choose from, but not a lot of over processed sweets.  You get your sweet fill from real desserts and gelato.

Even on the occasions where I was stuffed and overate, I never once felt sick or made uncomfortable by the food I ate in Italy.  It's good stuff.  A pleasure to study.  And study I did.  I think I got an "A" in Italian Gastronomy.