Clarification for the curious

Perhaps you're wondering why all the pictures suddenly changed from winter in Rio to summer in Rome. It's easy to explain.

I resigned from my job.

I took vacation to sort everything out.

I fell in love.

Simple, yes?

Creative Dining

Positano. Day 1. It's lunchtime and we're sitting at a little restaurant, watching pastel Vespas dart by and women in Dior sunglasses wander arm in arm with their friends. The water seems nearly still as it laps the edges of the cliffs down below, and I'm speechless by the expansive amount of blue everywhere. At the Vatican, the tour guides told us that blue was the most expensive paint color...I can see why God decided to overdo it in creation!

We order our pasta (rings of pasta and baby squid for me, gnocchi for him) and as the waiter brings it out, he passes the parmesan to Vance and instructs him in a joking, but stern tone,

"Please, don't let her have the cheese!"

Apparently, in Italy, it's a BIG no-no to put cheese on seafood pasta dishes. And they're quite religious about their food. Which, judging from the pound or two that I've already gained, is a REALLY GOOD THING.

At the Vatican

I've got gladiator sandal shaped tan lines on my feet from all the stomping I'm doing around the city. Today was the Vatican museums and St. Peter's. Vance hooked me up with some guides he knew, and it was quite an informative tour, not to mention high tech. There is no more shouting; guides have radios and all the tourists are wearing earpieces and matching radios on lanyards around their necks. It's not only more pleasant to listen to, more discreet, but it's also an effective way of keeping tabs on wayward tour members!

Here are some highlights from my photographic forays:





The Romans had some pretty sweet footwear.







These are details from wall hangings depicting Herod's murder of the innocents. For those of you who need a brush-up on early Jesus history, King Herod of Judea was a bit shaken by the idea of another king coming to usurp his throne, so when he heard about Jesus' birth, he ordered all the baby boys two years and under to be killed in the Bethlehem area. You can find the Biblical account in Matthew 2:16. I was taken aback by how graphically the violence was portrayed in these tapestries, but you have to love the mother in the first picture fighting back. Right in the eyes.

Roman Visions

One of my most impressive memories of Italy when I came with a high-school Latin club psycho-tour (trying to “do” four countries in two weeks?) was of walking down a street in the evening, just looking in the shop windows. Glorying in the ridiculousness and perfection of those displays, in particular, at a pair of green thigh-high boots whose three-inch platforms were carved into a twisted snarl of draconian teeth. Quite literally crocodile boots. This trip has not disappointed in the window shopping department. Actual shopping however, leaves me feeling slightly depressed, as I am being reminded once again of my feet fall into fairy-tale evil stepsister dimensions. There was this one shop, decked out like a candy store to humiliate all others, with shoes in a frenzy of colors, crafted from silky soft suede. There were peep-toes in shocking violet and lemon yellow, sky blue pumps trimmed in peacock green and…not a pair fit. Serves me right. I’m currently unemployed and ought to be wearing orthopedic clunkers. What POSSIBLE use could I have for a fantastical pair of Willy-Wonka inspired heels?
A girl can dream though...

Nursing my wounded self image over a lunch of bread, olive oil, cheese and ham, I enjoy the sight of vendors at the Campo de Fiori starting a little food fight, playfully hurling fruit or hunks of bread at each other. The old man at the water fountain tosses a handful of water in through a passing car’s open window and the women at the table just a few feet from me smoke like fiends behind dark aviator sunglasses. Mother and son pass by, his face turned up to hers and their fingers interlaced, while she smiles at him and carries three regal stalks of sunflowers, held head down in a manicured hand. A man walks a small fluffy dog on a yellow leash, and the Italian women walk by, with runway perfect bedhead and impeccable fashion sense. I realize I will never, never pass for Italian. (That's okay. But oh, how these women intimidate me!)

It makes my heart happy to see that all of these gloriously beautiful people are eating ice cream. The wrinkled nonnas and the street sweepers, the business men and the tourists. Everyone is enjoying the technicolor flavors. I decide to be a bit more adventurous than usual and try a Mangueira-themed cone: pistachio and something rasberry-ish, which I ate in the shade of the Column of Marcos Aurelius. It's been around, giving shade and testifying to bloody battles, since 193. Please ponder that with me...

I make it my job to get lost today, to walk under archways and nose around streets of forbidding demeanor that I'd never enter, even in daylight, if I was in Rio de Janeiro. No one even so much as blinks an eye at me. Nuns wander the back alleys, carrying bags of groceries, and in a near cinemagraphic scene, pigeons wing over their heads, scared into flight by the skinny youngster on a bicycle who wags an unlit cigarette between his tight lips. And the sun scatters along the cobblestones like spilled orange juice...

p.s. Such sights made me forgive myself for not taking pictures like I should. I’m admittably not a photographer. I’ve always preferred to paint my pictures with letters and metaphors.

p.p.s. Portuguese is messing with my English spelling. I had to Google "cinemagrafic" to figure out why it kept coming up in the spell check!

Back to food blogging...Batata Baroa

Also known as mandioquinha, arracacha or apio criollo, it's one of those foods on my "I'm-scared-to-buy-you-because-I-don't-know-how-to-cook-you" list. I've been seeing "batata baroa puree" on fancy restaurants' menus for a while, but as I don't actually eat at such places, I never had the opportunity for a taste test. In the stores, it sits in bins by the potatoes, and rather looks like a scrawny, long-legged and pasty-white teenager variety of potato. Until last week, I'd never bothered to experiment with them, but finally, curiosity got the better of me.

And then strep throat did, which meant the three little potato wannabes spent a couple days sitting neglected in the produce drawer of the refrigerator.

Tonight, realizing I'm going to have to empty said refrigerator in 2 days time, I decided to go ahead and make mashed potatoes. Mashed batata baroa, anyhow. I assumed it would be all potato-like...until I began peeling them. They gave off this faint nutty floral aroma, almost as if I'd stuck a bunch of dandelions and chestnuts in the oven to roast. Pleasant. A sort of warm, peachy brown smell with overtones of spring and dirt and just a patch of blue sky. And this just in the raw stage! They were pretty tough for such tiny things and took more time than I expected to cook to a mashable stage. But they just fell apart when I went at them with the fork. A touch of butter, milk and salt didn't overpower the flavor, which had only deepened during cooking, and made the puree extremely smooth and rich.

I keep tasting it as I type, trying to identify the unique aftertaste that's bringing back such interesting sensorial memories. I think if I were to narrow it down to one word, I'd say this "potato" tastes like...Peru. Or maybe, more specifically, my host mother's dirt floor kitchen in Lima, where I spent the good part of 3 months, gained 15 pounds and fell in love with Peruvian cusine. Which features, not surprisingly, some 2,800 varieties of potato. (Don't believe it? Fact check the BBC.)

This might sound crazy. And perhaps I'm having sensory overload from the strep-killing antibiotics. I can't explain it. All that from a forkful of a previously unknown vegetable? But I don't care. This bowl of mashed deliciousness is quite fantastic.

Good, green design. Would you buy one?

A facebook friend had this link from the BBC up the other day: bamboo bicycles. It's an innovative entrepreneurial project. Sure, the creators seem a bit too enthusiastically ambitious, but can you blame them? There's so much to love about this idea, what with the low impact on the environment and, my personal favorite, the intentional low-tech-ness of it all. I love low-tech. I love taking things back to simpler methods that work just as well, if not better, than the ones that need 600 page instruction manuals. I still don't own, nor want, a Blackberry. My Moleskine does just fine, thank you. I prefer kneading my own bread dough to buying the presliced cardboard in the stores. And I'm hopeless at Wii, though I've been known to actually take a walk on the beach from time to time...it's a pretty nice alternative entertainment option! So, low-tech praises aside, what's your opinion on the bamboo bikes? Clever, stupid, brilliant, or an accident waiting to happen?

The Eternal City

Anyone have friends in Rome???

God's blessed me with a surprise vacation next week and I would love to have people to eat lunch with...so please send contact info my way!