Eating with the Seasons in Italy

I met Ashley and Jason Bartner on line. We connected through our love of cooking, good food, and travel. I read about their new life in Italy and I am very jealous. Not that I want to trade places--I love our life in Pacific Palisades--but I would definitely enjoy a long weekend or even a month staying at their farm house in Piobbico in the Marche region, just below Emilia-Romagna and east of Umbria on the Adriatic Sea.

They were generous enough to send me a description of their life and a few recipes which I can't wait to try. fyi: A "glug" is roughly 1 tablespoon.

After years of travel and eating our way through every city, state and country we visited, we decided to share our love for food with others in an unique way in the Marches, Italy and opened La Tavola Marche Agriturismo & Cooking School. We took a leap of faith and traded in the hustle bustle of life in NYC to slow down in every aspect of our lives & started growing our own food in the Italian countryside!

Jason is a professional Executive Chef & I am a customer service/hostess extraordinaire and currently write a monthly column for Italia! Magazine. During our travels to Italy, we felt at home & really enjoyed the diversity of recipes in each region combined with the atmosphere of staying on a working farm or agriturismo - plus the Italians & their passion for life & good food!!

We love connecting our guests to the people, land & culture of this little known-region through the food! That is exactly why we decided to work for ourselves & open an inn, farm & cooking school in Italy! We were ready for a change...Why not?! We thought we were just crazy enough to pull it off! It took us a year & a half from our first trip to Italy to living here! And we've never looked back ~

Slow Food & slow living is huge for us! Here we live it everyday- we have slowed down in all aspects of our food & life here in Italy! For us, Slow Food philosophy translates to celebrating traditional Italian country living by eating locally & seasonally and becoming s self-sufficient as possible. This is a complete shift in our 'previous life' in the States.

We are so lucky that our neighbors & friends have taught us the ropes: from age-old family recipes to plucking chickens! It's all new to us and if we can do it - so can you! In the winter Jason makes sausages & salami by hand & hangs them to dry in the rafters of the house and in the summer months, since I can't cook, I contribute by creating home made liquors! It is such a kick to create these homemade treats!We jar, jam & preserve fruits & veggies in the summer extending their season -we even make our own homemade liquors! The most full-filling aspect is that we grow our own fruits & vegetables - from apple, cherry & plum trees surrounding the house to our enormous farm garden with over 600 onions, 400 tomato plants, loads of lettuces, spinach, garlic, cucumber, pepper, eggplant, melons, zucchini, pumpkins, radishes & more!!

Wild game, mushrooms & truffles as well as strawberries, blackberries, asparagus, wild dandelion greens & much more are collected from the woods behind our house! We are really excited because this spring we are adding CHICKENS! And this coming from two city kids! Our neighbors are in awe by "young Americans" with the most beautiful garden! Locals stop by to eye the goods & leave with an armful of gifts from the garden!!

The most incredible part for us is being accepted into the small farming community of Piobbicowhere we live, making a world of difference in our their experiences. As always in Italy, the conversations turn to food as neighbors pop in to say hello & see what's cooking! At first the thought of an American Chef cooking traditional local dishes did not blow over well - they figured all he could do was hamburgers & hot dogs! But that has all changed!

Now Jason is thought of as kin in the kitchen - grandma's are always sharing their secret recipes and he is trusted with cooking for big holidays & family events - for Italians! As testament - opening day of hunting season was celebrated at our farmhouse with a feast of wild game with a huge group of hungry local hunters!

We just love sharing this experience/connection to food with our guests - we specialize in Cucina povera (peasant cooking) with farm to the table cooking classes. Each cooking class starts with a walk through the garden to collect the night’s dinner.

Jason is so very proud of what he has created & loves sharing that with our guests - and it seems to be contagious! Many guests return home with a longing to eat locally, start a garden, join a CSA & all around become more connected with the food they are eating & understanding where it comes from!

Here you will eat what your fed, there is no menu options & the guests love it! This gives us the freedom to work with what is at the height of the season & best looking at the market each day. Guests are surprised by every dish, with whispers of 'what's to come next...' Jason enjoys the time he spends at each table explaining the dish, it's history & ingredients or where the meat is from. It helps connect them to the food they are about to eat.

"We hope our guests take home a taste of la dolce vita, the simplicity of good cooking, great stories to share, and an appetite to return."

RECIPES FROM OUR FARMHOUSE

I wanted to share 2 recipes that are easy to recreate, tasty and represent our area in the winter.

CHICKEN LIVER CROSTINI

Yield 6 servings

Time 10 minutes

Ingredients

2 tablespoons olive oil
1 carrot, chopped
1/2 onion, chopped
1 celery stalk, chopped
6 chicken livers, trimmed
3 tablespoons red wine vinegar
Scant 1/2 cup dry white wine
2 egg yolks
Juice of 1 lemon, strained
4-6 whole-wheat bread slices, lightly toasted
Sea salt & pepper

Method

Heat the olive oil in a skillet. Add the carrot, onion and celery and cook over low heat, stirring occasionally, for 5 minutes. Dip the chicken livers into the vinegar, pat dry with paper towels and add to skilled. Pour in the wine and season with salt & pepper.

Cook, stirring frequently, until browned. Remove the chicken livers from the skillet and chop finely, then return them to the skillet and cook for 2 minutes more. Beat together the egg yolks and lemon juice in a bowl. Remove the skillet from the heat and stir in the egg yolk mixture.

Spread on slices of lightly toasted bread. Serve immediately.

OSSO BUCO

Yield 4 servings

Time 2 hours

Ingredients

4 pieces of osso buco--veal shank
A nice size carrot, chopped finely
A nice onion, chopped finely
A couple cloves of garlic, smashed & remove the skin
1 bay leaf

Any aromatics you like - rosemary, we used juniper berries because we have them in the woods
A little flour for dusting
Sea salt & pepper
A good handful, about 5 oz, of canned tomatoes, skins removed or fresh tomatoes with skins & seeds removed
Olive oil
Butter
White wine, a couple of glugs
Half a cup of water or stock

Method

Salt & pepper the osso buco & then dredge in the flour. In a good size casserole or roasting pan, on med-high heat, add a glug or 2 of olive oil & a pad of butter.

Sauté the osso buco for 2 minutes on each side.

Then add the vegetables & continue cooking the osso buco, turning frequently until it is nice & colored.

Add the white wine cook until the wine is reduced by 2/3. Add the tomatoes, aromatics, crack of pepper & salt, water or stock & bring up to a simmer.

Remove from stove & place in a 350 degree oven, uncovered for about an hour & half or until the centers of the bone have melted away & the meat is falling away from the bone.

If you need to add a little more water or stock towards the end, do so.

Serve over polenta, potatoes or rice to soak up the juices.

Follow Jason & Ashley on Twitter
La Tavola Marche Recipes & More on the Blog
Book your holiday at La Tavola Marche Farmhouse, Inn & Cooking School

Post Pussy

This is destined to become a backwater of the internet, but just between you and me, will you ladies answer this question?

After a man has spent himself licking and sucking and lapping your gooey regions, do you want him to kiss you?

Yes, I want every woman who reads this to answer. Please.

Let's be clear: his chin is dripping with your juice, and his tongue red-raw from pleasuring your kitty/taint/arse.

Should he rise up from between your loins and look approvingly for a smooch?

Bottoms up!



Photo from here, although I doubt they're smart enough to realize the audience we provide them. [link]

Edited for overuse of 'lapping' and other sundry failings.

Spring Flavors

I hope everyone had a nice Easter weekend!   I got to spend a relaxing weekend at home by this beauty...

The fishies were eager to say hi!  Or was that I'm hungry after hibernating all winter?  I'm not sure ;)

I wanted to share with you the dessert I made for Easter--  a Meyer Lemon Lavender Bundt Cake.   I followed Hannah's recipe for the cake, adding in 1T crushed lavender pedals (you could probably use up to 2T, but I ran out).   I made a quick glaze of sifted powdered sugar and more meyer lemon juice/zest (3.5T for 2c sugar).   While the glaze came out a little runnier than I had wanted, it was absolutely delicious.   Everyone seemed to enjoy it, and I couldn't help but go back for a second piece!

Meyer Lemon Lavender Bundt Cake

This was the first time several of the people at our table had tried meyer lemons, but they enjoyed the slightly more complex and less tart flavor.   Have you tried them?   What is your favorite thing to do with them?

ps-  Check out Heather's giveaway for So Delicious!!

Salt, Sweet, Sour, Bitter and Umami.

There used to be only four basic taste descriptors, (salt, sweet, sour and bitter) but they (the smarties who study these things) discovered an extra one in 2002. I have called it umami, its Japanese name, but it's also known as savouriness.

It's quite something to think that everything we eat and drink can be completely described via a combination of these five categories. Smell plays a big part in the way food feels and tastes, as well as the texture. There's a lot going on there.

What's true of food is true of eating pussy too. Lots of weak jokes surround the taste of ladies' vaginas, but I don't swim with that school. Yes, there can be a fishy undertone to some lady juice, but by no means all holes taste the same. (By "all holes" I don't mean all holes in the one lady; I'm talking about the poon-hole in different ladies. Just wanted to make that clear, although other lady holes are fun too, and some even have teeth.)

The perfect pussy "...tastes like hot-sweet-sticky-kinda-salty candy." Who wouldn't like a second helping of that? I'd like it for all seven courses, thank-you waiter. The quote comes from this Salon.com article, an excellent read. I don't need to rehash it here. One truth I hadn't connected before is that hairy love trench is a fundamentally different experience than deforested trim. That's mostly because of the residual smells hiding in the pubes.

See, tasting and smelling are closely related in sex too.

All the evidence points to everything you ingest, inject or stick up your vagina changing its taste. Pretty obvious, that, and the same phenomenon as the sperm/semen combination tasting different depending upon what the owner eats. The big difference is in the contraception arts, which can make your va-jay-jay taste like hand sanitizer if you're not careful.

Frankly, I have yet to meet a muff I haven't liked. Some research in this area would be a fine thing, because of pet theory of mine: I believe that snatch tastes different depending on the position of the female, and wonder if there's any science to the postulation.

Bottoms up.





Tongue pic from here [link]

Edited out of respect for English.

For the female perspective on dining at the Y (girl on girl) try this [link]

Change Gears

Repulsion and attraction rest upon the smallest particles. Loving a woman can be about the way she tilts their head. Loathing a woman can be about the way she closes a door. It's ridiculous when placed on a plinth like that, but all my observations and experience tell me it's true.

A lot of the stuff that we might label 'small' is right on the edge of consciousness, too, in my opinion. I don't know exactly what it is I like about her...I just know. Detachment and self-examination are needed to figure out what our brain is filtering out, and what it's including. The answer is there, but we need to point the flashlight at the edges of how we think, towards the less obvious nooks and crannies of our personality.

This is the reason I dislike the standard online dating architecture. The profiles are all about big-picture things, painted with a large brush. Unfortunately, the paint is water-based, and washes away with the first exposure to rain. Yes, I like sailing and martinis, just like you, but where's the hook in that? I have just described about a billion people. Small is special and big is...well, it's just big.

The real point I want to make about this is that because my attraction for you is about the small stuff, you are entirely unlikely to know ahead of time what those small stuffs are. That's why it is such a waste of time to spend time thinking about your shortcomings - as, remember, you see them, not anyone else - to the detriment of being the best you can.

I have discovered this, thousands of years late, but it's worth repeating: change what you want to and accept the rest. Oh, and don't worry about what other people find attractive or repulsive. You have no control over that.

Martini, anyone?

Bottoms Up.




Woman contemplating from this man [link]

Feminist Literature

Floating around the internet searching for dungeon equipment proved immensely time wasting. Not only are there VERY few vendors, the quality of the goods looks decidedly dodgy. And surprisingly there's not much of a market for second-hand (pre-spanked?) BDSM kit...although maybe not so surprisingly.

Hey, I'll give you fifty for the rack, the standing cage and the two wooden stingers.

What I did find was an enormous amount of porn, which, as we all know, was the reason hand lotion was invented.

One kink I don't understand is this thing of writing shit on a woman. I'm looking at an example now. She's wearing spike heels and a sweet spiked collar. Her master (presumably) used a felt pen to write what amount to instructions all over her. Big arrows point at her cooter saying "For Fucking". On her buttocks, similar arrows lead to her chocolate starfish with the words "Cocks Go Here." On her boobs is the instruction "Cum All Over These" and at various places she's branded a "Slut".

Ooookay.




Exploring Uma photo from here [link]

Newton Running Week 1

This is the second in a series of posts about my experience with Newton running shoes.  In case you're wondering what they're all about, check out my first post to learn a little bit about the shoes!

To adjust to Newton running shoes (or barefoot running),  you need to start slow.   There's no putting them on for the first time and running 10miles.  Your feet have been dormant for many years in our cushioned shoes, it takes time to strengthen and adapt the bones and connective tissue in your feet.   To adjust to their shoes, Newton recommends starting with a run of 1-2miles.  Then run every other day, increasing distance by no more than 10min a day (umm, that sound wrong to anyone else?) and continuing to rotate with your old running shoes for the first couple of weeks.  Two more things, don't try to increase intensity (speed or distance) until you're adjusted, and focus on good form.   As with all things, if you do feel unusual discomfort, back off!

I picked up the shoes on a Saturday, and for one last hurrah, went out for a 6.5mi run in my old shoes on Sunday.  I needed to get used to the idea that I may be setting myself back and it might not be easy.    Then I got started.    I'm not sure if I'll need my orthotics, but because the shoes seemed to correct alot of my alignment on their own, I'm giving it a try without them, and then I'll reassess the situation.

Tuesday (Run 1):  1.6mi

     Wow, these feel light.   Take it easy...  think about your form...  Hmm, done already?  13ish minutes?  You should stop before you hurt yourself.

Wednesday (Run 2):  1.6mi

     Still can't get over how light these feel!  A little tightness in my right ankle/lower calf, stretch that when you get home.  Otherwise... ok?  Am I doing this right?  Does my knee hurt?

Thursday (no run)

     I went to a spinning class, and realized how tight my calves were when we started to climb.  I started to roll out and use my Trigger Point kit on both of my calves, but probably should've done this from Day 1.

Friday (Run 3):  2ish miles

     Still a feeling a little tightness on the right side, but otherwise good.

Saturday (no run)

     Another try at a spin class and more rolling.

Sunday (Run 4):  2.5mi in Newtons followed immediately by 5 in my old shoes

     This was the big test in my mind, a back-to-back comparison to see how they felt.  The first 2.5:  feeling good, take it easy...  look at my watch (8:15 pace)... really??...  check back...  this feels easy...  try to slow down, you've got more miles coming!
     Shoe change:  Umm, these feel wierd, why am I so high?  This is going to be interesting...  can I turn around and get my Newtons?...  I can tell I'm trying to land on my midfoot for the first 1/4mi or so, but don't feel the same "spring in my step" as when I had the Newtons on.  My legs felt heavy the entire run, and I felt sluggish.   By the end of my run, my joints felt like they had taken the brunt of the work.

While I'm still feeling a bit tight in my calves, I'm cautiously optimistic after Sunday's run.  I immediately noticed how much harder it was to keep a quick cadence in my old shoes and lift my knees.   While skeptical at first, I think I felt the energy transfer they talked about on my Sunday run, and really like what these shoes do for my form (at least from what I can tell).  It's going to be hard to try and run in my old shoes again, especially back-to-back like that.  Maybe I can throw a short run with them, or just try my orthotics in the Newtons?  We'll see!  I realize I didn't follow all of the rules I mentioned to a T, but I think I took it slow...

I'll be back soon with a recap of Week 2, and some Easter cooking this weekend!  Have a great day/weekend :)