briciole

biglietti di auguri per le Feste fatti a mano / handmade Holiday cards

stones, shells and paper on linen (from La FABBRICA del LINO) The New Year lies just ahead, inviting and insidious. It will bring us an assortment of joys or sorrows punctuating a sequence of blessedly uneventful days, which we will fill with the wonder of being alive. L'anno nuovo si avvicina rapidamente, invitante ed insidioso. Ci porterà un assortimento di gioie e dolori che punteggeranno una serie di giorni benedettamente ordinari, che riempiremo del nostro stupore per la vita. An afternoon walk on a favorite beach On a recent afternoon, I went for a walk on a favorite beach and collected... Read more →

Feste fatte a mano / handmade Holidays

[cliccare il link per andare alla versione in italiano] I made it last year at a wreath-making party Here are three proposals to counteract the consumeristic Holiday drumroll that has started weeks ago: make [some of] your gifts or cards by hand purchase [some of] gifts or cards handmade by an artist, possibly local to you contribute to a handmade project on a crowdfunding site as a gift to someone (who will then receive the gift attached to your contribution) I hope you will join the party by doing any or all of the things I listed above and also sharing... Read more →

alert and update

Update This is to let my readers know that the problem described below has been resolved, thanks mostly to the help of TypePad Support staff, who suggested I contact the offending site's host The company handling the advertisement that was popping up on the fraudulent site, who immediately followed up on my requesto to investigate. Needless to say, this episode caused me a good amount of stress. Why would anybody plan to attack my blog in such a way is really beyond my comprehension. Shame is the only suitable reward of such behavior. The root URL of the page you are... Read more →

Women's Power Strategy Conference

Life is full of surprises and of sources of inspiration. This story starts with a book and a bowl of beans. The book is Harlot's Sauce, A Memory of Food, Family, Love, Loss and Greece. It was the Cook the Books' Club choice in the fall of 2011. I read it and loved it and was inspired by it to prepare a dish with glorious beans I had just brought back from Italy. Patricia Volonakis Davis, the book's author, enjoyed the recipes the Cook the Books Club members prepared so much that she added them to her web site. meeting Patricia... Read more →

anno nuovo nei parchi / new year in the parks

[cliccare il link per andare alla versione in italiano] Joshua Tree National Park If the word "desert" (deserto) brings to your mind a desolate, waterless land covered with sand and devoid of vegetation, the deserts in Southern California will correct that notion. I chose to visit the deserts closest to us during this Holiday season, because I felt the need to be in a simple landscape for a while, to quiet down some internal turmoil and thoughts that seemed to always come in an avalanche, drowning my ability to analyze them and put them in some kind of order. We spent... Read more →

briciole su Sale&Pepe / briciole on Sale&Pepe magazine

from the November issue of the Italian magazine Sale&Pepe Good news: briciole is one of the blogs featured on the Foodblogger page of the November issue of the esteemed Italian food magazine Sale&Pepe (which earlier this year celebrated 25 years of publication). The issue includes an article (with recipes) dedicated to handmade pasta from Apulia, hence the choice of bloggers passionate about fresh pasta. And speaking of pasta, a reminder that this week I am hosting Presto Pasta Nigths. I am preparing a post on another adventure in fresh pasta making. Stay tuned! Read more →

risveglio / waking up

THE VIEW FROM THE BED I have been away from home for a week, away from my kitchen. I am in a beautiful place, surrounded by beautiful people. More on the trip in a future post. Read more →

eventi e notizia / events and news

events... There is a lot going on here at briciole this week and the next one, and you are all invited to participate: Presto Pasta Nigths #269 — deadline: Thursday, June 21 Weekend Herb Blogging #339 (English and Italian edition) — deadline: Sunday, June 24 Novel Food #16 — deadline: Sunday, July 1 Abbecedario Culinario d'Italia: M come Matera (in Italian) — deadline: Sunday, July 1 Follow the link to learn the details of each event then join us for the ones that appeal to you. and news I recently started to contribute to Ganzo, a neat online magazine on Italian... Read more →

sette link / seven links

Paola of An Italian Cooking in the Midwest and Brii of briggishome have invited me to the seven link challenge (here and here): albeit with some delay (for which I apologize), I am hereby taking it up. It is a difficult challenge to answer, because it asks me to choose a post with specific characteristics and since I have about 500 posts, it is not easy to keep all of them in mind. So, my choices come with the disclaimer that they represent my current thought and are subject to my memory. In a month, I may have a different set... Read more →

botte / barrel, cask

The first botti I came to know as a child had lived their file as wine containers and were located in the cave my father and her sister had in their native village. I know this sounds strange, but that is how it was: not far from the house in Poggio Catino, inside the village, a massive door opened to reveal a high-ceilinged, dark and cool corridor carved into the rock. For many years that was our refrigerator and also our long-term storage area for staples like fruit, wine and olive oil, and also for the wood my aunt used during... Read more →