BERKELS!

I have made it (finally!) to Berkeley to pick up my fabulous dress! YAY! I have had a terrible cold, lost my voice, gave a paper at a conference, been to Toronto, and now I am back for the first time since August in Berkeley-berkeley... the air is so much cleaner here than in Rome!

We have Dragon*Con, and the Belgians...?

check out this article from the nytimes

Belgium was probably a pretty civilized place in the Middle Ages, actually.

neat article

Street Performance by "Greatest Violinist in America" goes ignored at L'Enfant Plaza

PRINCESS HAIR

I'M A PRINCESS PRETTY PRETTY PRINCESS!!!!!

I just got the best haircut EVER from the exceedingly talented Rick at Noi Salon and and and he curled it and I looked fabulous like a princess and today its STILL LOOKS GREAT.

I have therefore scrapped all of my convenient and inexpensive hair and makeup plans with "Francesco" through the hotel and rescheduled all wedding hair and makeup with him and his partners at twice the price.

PRINCESS PRINCESS PRINCESS!!!!!!

What should you study?

Your Learning Style: Personal and Passionate

You are very flexible and curious about the world. Human understanding is very important to you. You Should Study: Anthropology Architecture Art Art history Art therapy Classics Counseling Foreign Languages and Literature International Studies Linguistics Literature Psychology Sociology Teaching

What Should You Study?

Damnit. Where did I go wrong? (How is art therapy like classics??)

my special rome links

buy museum and exhibit tickets!
do yoga!
get your hair done!
go to church!
go to the salon!
get your nails done!
get your local info!
eat gelato! (or here!)
go to the library!
go running!
buy salami!
be romantic! (hint hint...)
try gran caffe!
learn Latin!
get married!

When the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie...

Matt and I have decided to incorporate some traditional Italian music into our special day. Please go here and listen to some samples!



This will go so well with our big spaghetti and meatballs reception! With the bottles of chianti wrapped in raffia and the red and white checkered tablecloths.

(Oh. dear. lord. Thanks Anna.)

Pompeii

To remind you occasionally that we ARE actually in Rome, here are some pictures from our latest excursion, to Pompeii!


This is one of the gates of the city. Outside is the necropolis, which has quite a number of large chamber tombs and such that look like mini-temples.


This is the creepy thing everyone has to see, from the "Garden of the Fleeing." That is, as excavations were taking place, the head archeologist noticed strange-shaped holes in the ash/dirt/deposits of time/pumice stone, and on a hunch had them filled with plaster and dug around them. Sure enough, they represented places where the bodies of unlucky Pompeians had been buried and then burned away by the heat of the ash, but not before the ash had cooled around them to leave an impression.


Many buildings are quite well preserved. Pompeii was covered with ash and rock, not lava, but most of the buildings are still recognizable, with many frescos. We saw a bakery, a brothel, several houses, food shops, theaters, and temples.


This is the forum. No, those mountains are not Vesuvius - it's in the other direction. Too cloudy to see.


And these were all in a huge makeshift warehouse - obviously they haven't figured out what to do with them. Pompeians were drinkers, obviously. (See the little guy kneeling? Creepy.)

Another reason to become a lawyer

Finally, some press time for medievalists!

I love Tolkien, I really do. But when Kalamazoo is in the same article as Dragon*Con...

(Thanks for the link Dad)

Two, count them TWO totally hot bridesmaids!

I must pass on the exquisitely worded sentence from The Manolo, whose witty banter never ceases to make me laugh...

As we all know, historically, the typical dress of the bridesmaid employed such undermining tactics as the over abundance of rump-enlargening ruffles, and the strategically misplaced, bust-minimizing wickety-wack, to make the attendants look faintly (if not explicity) ridiculous.

I thought it appropriate to share with the happy news that BOTH of my wonderful friends are actually able to come, and that we chose (yes, we all chose together) the very beautiful (and very on sale) Sophia from J Crew, which last season was offered in pink quartz:


Which I've asked them to pair with gold sandals.

In fact, I believe this dress is so lovely that I got it for myself in the long version (for that uhhhh.... other ceremony thing which is not the real wedding), which I plan to pair with gold shoes as well:

Cynthia Rowley Trilogy from Zappos

Weddings are fun when they come with shoes!

I love the alphabet

Look! when I'm alphabetized I come first! (In the links, that is.)

p.s. bitches

Oh PS - no, I'm fine, really - crazy ladies who come by your outdoor table at a restaurant asking for money and end up tipping over your bottle of wine, breaking your glass and brandishing it at you with raised fists? Totally normal. Happens all the time, judging by the total nonchalance of the waiter and all the passers by (who, incidentally, were busy comforting the crazy lady). Well loro sono stranieri indeed. All we got was a "mi dispiace." Not even a new glass, either. Bitches.

pretty!!

If I ever have any doubts about why I need to give up on academia, I just go to the Anthropologie website... seriously, imagine giving my conference paper in those! no one would even be listening to me - we'd all be looking at my beautiful shoes!

The New Democracy of Extravagance

I love it.

“a bastardized aesthetic derived from Victoriana and filtered through the lens of the romance novel and the Disney cartoon.”
- quoted in this article from New York Times, snipped from a new book called "One Perfect Day: The Selling of the American Wedding."

I think mine is more Childe Harold + Audrey Hepburn.



A ruin--yet what a ruin! from its mass
Walls, palaces, half-cities have been rear'd
Yet oft the enormous skeleton ye pass,
And marvel where the spoil could have appear'd.
Hath it indeed been plunder'd, or but clear'd?
Alas, developed, opens the decay,
When the colossal fabric's form is near'd:
It will not bear the brightness of the day,
Which streams too much on all--years--man--have reft away.

But when the rising moon, begins to climb
Its topmost arch, and gently pauses there;
When the stars twinkle through the loops of time,
And the low night-breeze waves along the air
The garland forest, which the grey walls wear,
Like laurels on the bald first Caesar's head;
When the light shines serene but doth not glare;
Then in this magic circle raise the dead:
Heroes have trod this spot--'tis on their dust ye tread.

"While stands the Coliseum, Rome shall stand;
When falls the Coliseum, Rome shall fall;
And when Rome falls--the World." From our own land
Thus spake the pilgrims oe'r this mighty wall
In Saxon times, which we are wont to call
Ancient; and these three mortal things are still
On their foundations, and unalter'd all;
Rome and her Ruin past Redemption's skill,
The World, the same wide den--of thieves or what ye will.
-Cantos CXLIII-CXLV, Childe Harold's Pilgrimage (1818)



And I'm totally wearing a tiara, too.

Favorite things when I was 8 (1988)

Favorite color: pink
Favorite books: 50 Famous Fairy Stories, Baby Sitters Club
Favorite movies: The Last Unicorn, The Magic of Herself the Elf, Willow
Favorite TV shows: Jem and the Holograms ("truly outrageous!"), Thudercats, She-Ra, Saturday morning cartoons
Favorite toys: My Little Pony
Favorite outfit: pink sweatshirt with sparkle-glitter leopard on it, hair up in ponytail on the side
Favorite foods: Kraft Macaroni and Cheese, french toast, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, doritos
Favorite activity: sleepovers!

hmmm... has that much really changed?

I feel like kidneys should come with a warning

ARG. Sometimes Italy can be so truly awful! (Or perhaps offal...!) OK, so we go to the restaurant now occupying the location which was formerly Il Primoli. Antipasto della casa - fine, lots of bowls of different veggies in marinades and such. Fun, whatever. I'm speaking Italian with the waiter, understanding things, everything is going well. Then I order for a secondi Lamb with Roast Potatoes. The menu says this in three languages - Agnello con Patate Arroste, Lamb with Roast Potatoes, and whatever it is in German. I ask them to split it for the two of us. We end up each with an unidentifiable bony chunk - I cut into what looks like the only piece of real meat and it is, no shit, a kidney. I mean like, it's a cross section from an anatomy book, but cooked (incidentally, overcooked) and on my plate. With a tuby ureter attached, oh yes. That, with the bones and some stringly lower back meat, comes to 15 euro, please. Thanks.

crying... so... funny...

http://shoeblogs.com/wordpress/2007/02/16/manolo-the-columnist-68/



Perhaps the Manolo would like to advise also the young fabulous scholar-medievalist what to wear to the tweedy conference in April before she sprints off to the school of the law?

the latest on the food front...

http://www.chowhound.com/topics/371089

And on the Marcella front - a few to avoid, actually - the risotto alba style, pg. 255, is a lot of work for not a lot of payout. takes forever and tastes a lot like... rice with ground beef. Also, the Farmer's wife's fresh pear tart I found too sweet - she should have a note (of course it seems obvious now) that you should taste your pears and calibrate the sugar accordingly - but she calls for 1 cup! I would've put in 1/4. and if it needs an "active act of sabatoge" to ruin it, well, then we have a terrorist counter-top Italian oven...


More of an over glorified toaster oven, really.

The Pear Tart looked nice...


but it was really not cooked through in the center. browned on top but not cooked through. Marcella had no indication of what "doneness" was...

But our little oven did manage to make a very nice roast chicken...! (Nigella's recipe, not Marcella's - my Marcella disappointments have led me into the arms of Nigella again...)



And just to show that we are also enjoying the city - a great picture of Castel San Angelo...

short update

a few nights ago - the Tomato Sauce with Chopped Vegetables (pg. 153) is stupidly tasty - I wouldn't have thought because the veg to tomato ratio is so skewed - there's barely enough tomato to bind it together. But the carrot makes it sweet and the celery becomes melty with a slight crunch. I thought I wouldn't like it because I don't like celery - you can't even taste it except that it lends a certain je ne sais quoi to the sauce. On fusilli so that the spirals can pick up the veg chunks.

Last night, just fusilli with jarred "red pesto" (pesto rosso) which has sundried tomatoes as its first ingredient instead of basil. It's a nice change from regular pesto but we both prefer the green stuff. This tasted a lot like olives - strange, since there were no olives IN it - but there you go.

My cold came back at the beginning of the week but it's almost gone again - soon we shall actually be well enough to start going to see things again! (maybe!)

Domestic Goddess or Italian Mama??

While awaiting my Nigella cookbooks I turned back to my old standby, Marcella Hazan. As I was going through picking recipes I began to realize, slowly but surely, that Italian food uses the exact same 12-15 ingredients for every recipe, but in different combinations. And, in fact, those are the only ingredients you can buy at the market. No wonder Italians only eat Italian food! Having bought these 12 ingredients, I now have everything on hand to make 12 different types of pasta, 4 risottos, three crespelle, three frittata, and to accompany any meat that I buy. How about that??? (ingredients: carrots, celery, dried mushrooms, cream, prociutto, pancetta, eggs, parmesean cheese, romano cheese, wine, onions, butter, garlic, olive oil, and obviously pasta of different types and also arborio rice ... ok so more like 15 or so, and this assumes you have a rosemary plant and a sage plant handy, like I do.)

So obviously I have challenged myself to go through and try all the Marcella recipes that I haven't yet, without repeating until I'm done. I started with an old favorite, Tomato Sauce with Onion and Butter (pg. 152) which is so simple anyone could do it and I usually just make that. But then I branched out...


And I made spaghetti carbonara (pg. 202)! Who knew that it was tossed with a raw egg? It was very delicious - and I made it not without some trepidation, as it is purportedly Matt's favorite pasta dish which he no longer orders at restaurants becuase it's never good enough. He liked it. :)


Here we have ravioli with lemon and cheese (bought at the local fresh pasta store) with burro oro e salvia (pg. 192) - golden butter and sage sauce, which we had with chicken with rosemary and white wine (pg. 329).


Honestly, I've never had it cook up this well - the chickens here must be extra fatty. Or maybe Marcella's recipes only work in Italy?


Last night I made fettucini with pesto, green beans and potatoes (pg. 177) - ok I bought the pesto (basil is not in season) but also quite simple and delicious.

So... when I come back and they have to let out the wedding dress more, this is why.