Perfect Scrambled Eggs? · 9 hours ago by James Martin
This recipe for Perfect Scrambled Eggs is getting lots of play among internet foodies these days. It involves a cobbled together double boiler.
This is a pretty fussy way to do it I think. The double boiler is really just a crutch to ensure that the temperature of the pan in which you cook the eggs doesn’t get hotter than the boiling point of water.
Here’s my recipe for perfect scrambled eggs.
Gently whisk eggs with a little water and set aside. Jab a toe of garlic with a fork, so that it sticks in the tines. Jab it lots before it sticks if you want more than a tiny hint of garlic in your eggs. Meanwhile, heat a saute pan under a very gentle heat. If you have an electric stove this should be easy. When the pan is warm add a tablespoon of butter, which should melt luxuriously but not bubble furiously or darken in color—throw it out if it does and start over.
Then tip your bowl of eggs and let them gently slide into the warm pan. After a few seconds start gently forking your eggs. See? The tines of the fork can’t do any damage because they’re covered with the garlic. Clever, no?
Just before the eggs are “done”—they should still glisten wetly, tip them into the plate and let them set a bit so that they finish cooking.
Then season and eat. (You don’t add milk or salt to the eggs before cooking because it toughens them.)
That’s how I do it. Except for the times I chop some pancetta in the eggs before cooking that is.
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TSA and Excess Baggage: Hiring Convicts Is Good · 3 days ago by James Martin
I’ve always wondered how long an outfit like UPS or FedEx would last if they “lost” packages with the regularity of the airlines. Nobody seems to care that airline luggage seems to go missing, least off all the US government agencies in charge of looking into such things. I wonder why that is. Could be the TSAs fixation on shoes, but who knows for sure? The thing is, if nobody cares about missing baggage, can that fact be exploited in an effort to kick-start the economy?
If recent news of the TSA’s insistence that an new hire with a conviction for stealing get full access to your baggage is any indication, I’m suspecting that the Feds have determined that not enough baggage has gone missing in recent times and they have a clever fix in mind. (see: TSA Tells Richmond Airport to Give Convict Full Airport Access)
Before you call me an my idiotic ramblings ridiculous, let’s do something different. Sure, the media is picking up the TSA story and clucking their tongues over it with the fervor of jolly religious dingbats convinced of their own moral superiority while running off with a random selection of foreign children. But, I’m always trying to think along the lines of my anthropology mentor Marvin Harris. Marv wrote a bunch of books analyzing apparent cultural oddities. He could explain, for example why Indians don’t eat cows and why it was good for Indian society as a whole that they didn’t—even when protein was scarce (Cows, Pigs, Wars and Witches; you should read it). Let’s put on our Marvin Harris Thinking Caps ($29.95 at geeks-r-us).
The economy is in a slump. New products aren’t moving. American jails are bulging at the seams, threatening to explode. The unemployment rate is high.
So, it is entirely logical and good that we hire convicts, especially if we can get them at bargain-basement salaries. It relieves the pressure on the US crack prison system (few countries can come even remotely close to the participation level of US prisons) and employs the unemployable.
Now, if you can travel today, especially to a foreign country like Italy, you are, by definition, flush with cash—mainly because so few people outside of Goldman Sachs execs have any. What if we hired convicts, pay them little, but allow them authorized access to all the cool stuff we’re smuggling into the country from Europe, like our Salame Toscana?
So, despite the fact that the pay is so low that the newly hired folks can’t afford food, we can rely on the fact that the resourcefull among them can get boundless energy from the prime preserved pork that nobody could reasonably expect to get into the country anyway.
As we know and many have experienced, every once in a while a whole bag is stolen for its cash value. You can’t get around that.
But that’s good for the economy, too. You lose your bags. You need new luggage. You buy it. The economy jerks spasmodically into action. People in China start stitching for a nickel an hour, making $400 bags by the boatload. Travelers buy bags they lack. Corporate baggage barons buy yachts. Middlemen head back to their “offices” and start stuffing countless dollars into pole dancers’ bras again! Money flows, especially to crack pushers. Good times are here la-di-da!
So, to summarize: low TSA pay to convicts with cost-free benefits is a cheap way to move the bowels of a stuttering economy while at the same time giving travelers the warm and cozy feeling of increased security. Relieving the economy of excess baggage creates demand for same and renewed economic strength.
You’ll think my analysis is pretty amazing when the good times start rolling. Soon.
Filed in: Italy News General
Those Dirty Hotels · 4 days ago by James Martin
TripAdvisor, the travel site that’s gained fame and fortune from using unpaid content from users to create an online travel empire, is in trouble for a list of the UKs dirtiest hotels it published recently. Turns out hotel owners want an EU commission to start looking into limiting anonymous reviews. Hotel owners would like make sure that “reviews are posted by genuine guests and not by rivals or people simply out to cause mischief.”
I’d have to agree. Anonymous reviews are pretty worthless unless there’s a critical mass of them. Sure, eventually you can learn enough to spot a clunker with pretty good accuracy, or at least you think you can.
The difference between (good) professional writing and anonymous drivel is in the details—no matter if the subject is pornography or hotel reviews. A pro can’t say “the room was too small” without defining exactly how many square feet too small is. A porn pro can’t say “it was gargantuan” without a ruler and…well, you get the picture.
It’s odd reading reviews that trumpet the idea that “service was not up to snuff” when we don’t know what snuff is, or what level of “service” the reviewer expects. Is “service” what’s provided by information gleaned from the staff? Or is bad service defined by the fact that nobody carried your 2700 pounds of luggage up to the room with a smile the minute you arrived? The degree of goodness or badness is always related to expectations, and a good reviewer has to be a slave to that fact. An anonymous unpaid reviewer isn’t necessarily a slave to any facts, and there’s the rub.
Besides, cleanliness isn’t the half of it. One of the memorably bad hotels I’ve ever stayed at was one of the cleanest. It cost more per night than I usually spend for a week in a self catering apartment. It had two bathrooms and a little office with a sofa. Every day the maid came in an rearranged my stuff on the desk so I had little chance of finding or making use of it, then turned on each of the 37 lights so that when I came home at midnight, stanco, or “tired as all get out” as we say in America, and pushed my card key into the wall I was greeted with an explosion of light. If I my tired eyes didn’t snap wide open from all that, I was certainly wide awake hours later when I had finally managed to extinguish all but the one light I’d need to turn on at night—what little was left by then of the darkness of it.
I don’t need a gargantuan room. Just a quiet place and a comfy bed without critters, a bathroom that works right and a staff that leaves me and my stuff alone. Now you know.
Here’s how I find hotels. (Hint: good companies limit reviews to folks who’ve stayed in those hotels, it’s not rocket science to program this stuff.)
Here’s the article which inspired this post.
Filed in: Italy Travel Tips General
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I'm Missing the Lunigiana: A Statue Picture · 8 days ago by James Martin
I’m on my way soon to Palm Springs. It’s a way to escape winter and visit with my mother and brother. It’s not the same as being in Italy.
The statue over to the right is one I recently discovered in the town of Bocca di Magra, the mouth of the Magra river. I’ve heard that Italy’s famous writers met here. It’s a great place to go to eat seafood—or fish for it.
The statue is interesting because its form mimics the stele statues you find in the museum in Pontremoli (which is inside a castle you should visit). The statue is of a woman who seems to have come out of the sea with friends at her feet. The “friends” are like the local critters they cook up and serve to you in the nearby restaurant which overlooks the yacht harbor.
Darn, I miss that.
Filed in: The Lunigiana Italy Travel Tips
Having a Cultural Experience in Italy: Experiential Travel Tips · 11 days ago by James Martin
When people ask me for travel information, they often append their request with something like, “Don’t send me to any tourist traps. I want to go to a place without tourists where I can have a true cultural experience.” The unwritten part is, “…which you are going to spell out for me and which is going to be easy.”
Here’s the thing: nobody can give you steps to follow to have a cultural experience—or, for that matter, an epiphany.
I like epiphanies. You just can’t force them. They come when you’re ready.
What you can do is open yourself up to experience. For the most part, this means becoming a “cultural relativist”, even if only temporarily and then only if your chosen political party or leaning allows it. Yes, that’s right, the first step is to stop thinking that the culture you come from is the very bestest in the whole wide world and nobody does it better, despite the fact you haven’t experienced any other cultures. Other folks a long way away from your country have solved (or tried to solve) the same social problems. They got different answers. That difference is what makes the world go ‘round. Well, that and a whole lot of good Barolo…
Become childlike. Marvel at things. Have no shame in asking about things you don’t understand. People everywhere like explaining their traditions. Open your mind. Control nothing.
You’re in the garden of Eden. What’s around you is beauty and goodness and light. Marvel at it. Remember you get kicked out if you try to gain control of things. Remember God.
Now you’re ready. I’ve got tips.
Learn a bit of the language. You’ll have a hard time making inroads unless you can at least show folks you’re a decent person. Learn the polite words. Greet people in shops. Thank folks who help you.
Go on a quest. Got a question about why folks do what they do? Find out for yourself. Want local regional foods, the best a restaurant has to offer? Discuss the food with the waiter and take his recommendations; it’s how you get good food in Italy because what’s special isn’t always offered to us hamburger eaters and isn’t always on the menu because they think we won’t like it. Or—go to an open air market and search for something you’ve never eaten before—perhaps agretti, or perhaps a rare cheese from a guy in a truck who likes talking and using his hands to make a point.
Stay where you’re not isolated as a tourist. That usually means you won’t be staying in a hotel. You might try a self-catering vacation home or apartment, but you’ll get more advice in a rural agriturismo, a country house on a working farm, where there’s someone to lead you over the cultural hurdles and send you to the right places to learn what you want to learn. You’ll also eat well and learn how the Italian insistence on good ingredients has created a cuisine that’s the envy of the world, especially in places where the industrial hamburgers are awash in Ammonia or other noxious liquids.
How to find an agriturismo and an owner that suits you? Easy. Go to twitter and search with the term “agriturismo”. You’ll come up with a list of owners that use the social network to tell you what’s happening in their neck of the woods. You can use twitter not only to find a likely agriturismo, but to see if the owner might share your interests or be willing to teach you something about the culture. If your quest is to find out how the taste of extra virgin olive oil you buy in the supermarket is different from that of artisanal production, you’ll be amazed the first time you taste an oil made by people who care. It’s an astonishing difference you’ll tell your friends about until they hate you for it.
I’m out of gas. Maybe my open mind has dried up. I need to remember to cover it in saran wrap when I’m not using it. There’s a hockey game on tv tonight.
Filed in: Experiential Travel Italy Travel Tips
Hot Oil Lamp Sex in the Boot · 12 days ago by James Martin
In honor of the parents of kids in Southern California who discovered the salacious entry oral sex in the new editions of Merriam-Webster and had a cow over it, I’ve prepared this post. For a while these folks managed to make the dictionary a tome non grata in school libraries. Can you imagine?
I just don’t get it. How turned on can a modern kid get over the “explicit content” of this entry. Cover your ears cuz I’m gonna repeat it: “Oral stimulation of the genitals.”
Yup. That’s it. Totally, as far as I can tell.
Those parents probably don’t travel, but if they did they’d be horrified to discover the wonderful world of sex lurking in such unlikely places as Italian archaeological museums. There’s hardly a Greek vase (or Roman copy of one) that doesn’t have something genital-like peeking out from the folds of those gowns they wore.
But it’s the Italians we promised to talk about here. We might as well start with the Romans. For them, the erect, you know, “male genital apparatus” was a good luck symbol. You tacked a representation of one over the door of your business to ensure good exchange of money. Kids saw ‘em, too. They didn’t melt. They probably didn’t even giggle. Much.
And it makes a certain amount of sense. Good health was lucky. An erection was a sign of good health, so you put it over your shop. I don’t mean the real thing, I mean a representation of an erection.
Anyway, just as soon as the Romans figured out how to make molded oil lamps like the one you see on the right, what did they do? Well, how many sexual positions could you imagine being put on top of the lamp you kept near your bed? Never mind that the wall of your bedroom was likely fresco-ed with folks “doing it” as they say. You needed something tactile. Bas relief. You grabbed your oil lamp. Yes, they mass produced oil lamps with different sexual positions on them. These sexual oil lamps sold like hotcakes evidently, because you find them darn near everywhere you dig in Italy.
These lamps were mass produced in ports, most notably the old port of Rome at Ostia. Yep, you might as well make ‘em were there are sailors, your sexually deprived best customers—until the rape and plunder part of the job starts anyway. (If you go to Rome, you should definitely plan to visit Ostia Antica as a day trip.)
If you want to get an education on these and other sexual appurtenances of the Romans, you’d best get yourself over to the Naples Archaeological Museum and head right for the secret cabinet: the Gabinetto Segreto, where they’ve stocked all the stuff they couldn’t show women, children and excitable parents in the dark ages of a “little while ago.” Now anyone who can afford entrance to the museum can go in and poke around. I mean “poke” in a general way, of course.
Oh, and click the picture to see it bigger. Warning: you’ll see in pretty good detail just what the parents in Southern California were talking about: Roman archaeology and social customs of times past in living, digital color. You might decline to look if you’re too excitable.
Filed in: Italy Travel
Game Over for the Dollar? · 17 days ago by James Martin
Lately there has been a general decline in the number of times folks collar me to ask what Italians think of Americans. These days, the Italians in my village are too troubled with their own um—for lack of a better word—“leadership”, not to mention the slumping, dead-in-the-water economy.
I was thinking of this when I remembered the picture over there to the right (click to see it bigger). It was part of an art display that caught my eye as I searched for the entrance to the Naples Underground excavations below the Church of San Lorenzo Maggiore, located at the exact center of the Greco-Roman city.
The artist wanted to know if an American like me “got” the art. Well, certainly I got this one. And they’re right, the dollar will probably never be the same again; all bow to Goldman Sachs. We know they won’t quit until the even the butterfly loses interest in the greenback.
Another thing I noticed is that Italian art is like Italian food. It’s simple, direct, and to the point. There’s not a lot of ingredients. You don’t stew in it for hours. After, you go out for coffee…
In any case, you should forget the wallowing dollar and make an effort to get below Naples at any cost. It’s quite interesting. As in many Italian cities, people have been digging out soft limestone underbellies for years. They’ve made bomb shelters, dovecotes, wine cellars. Along the way they’ve discovered that other folks have been carving out the same territory; ancient Greeks and Romans had the same ideas. You can go underground in Rome, Orvietto, and Naples and probably a bunch of other cities built on soft rock.
The other interesting thing is that the folks who keep the Naples underground going are volunteers. It makes sense—if the Italian government financed every archaeological excavation and visitor center they wouldn’t have money left to repair their leader’s faces after irate and ignored citizens smash them with Duomo statues.
Of course, through these volunteer organizations you can explore the whole underground thing in Italy virtually. Try Napoli Underground for example. One of its members is Larry Ray. I bet you can’t guess what Larry does. He’s a Gourd Artist. As someone who’s lost his gourd years ago, I can dig what Larry does. Besides making some incredible art out of inedible squash, Larry has written the history of some of the stuff that gets discovered under Naples. Check out Larry Ray’s Site then read the stuff Larry has penned about the underground history in Naples, Italy
There are some mighty fascinating people in the world. You should go visit them. They tend to live in some interesting places. To hell with the dollar. Just go.
Filed in: Italy Travel General
Rome Calling · 22 days ago by James Martin
After a fine meal with friends and a new acquaintance at Olea Restaurant in San Francisco I was itching to go back to Rome. Yes, we discussed the Eternal City, its secret gardens and some interesting places to view Rome from above.
Rome is one of those cities that divides folks. Orderly folks will hate it as they might hate Naples for some of the same reasons. For those of us who like surprises, cacaphony, and life lived in the midst of surreal oddness, Rome is the motherland of vacations.
Anyway, this occasion, a fine meal presided over by a waiter who understood our desire to communicate unabated while he worked in the background tirelessly, gave me an opportunity to drag out one of my favorite pictures taken last year at the Christmas Market in Piazza Navona. Call it performance art if you wish. It was colorful. Dazzling in its serenity. There was also a little eye candy in it. So shoot me.
Which also reminds me of a page I wove together yesterday on Rome Taxis. It includes a widget that allows you to find what the real fare is to wherever you’re going, just so you don’t get ripped off I mean. There are many sides to Rome.
Filed in: Italy Travel Italy Festivals