Ode to cooking

People believe that cooking is easy.
It is.
Well, at least most of the times.

The first and only rule: keep it simple and do things your mum and grandma cooked. Don't overd-do it; people will not appreciate much more what you have done and you will get tired and frustated.

Cooking is a great school:
It can be linked to precise ingredient lists and amounts; but most of the times it's not, so it forsters your creativity. Open your fridge and invent. Learn new techniques, new mixtures (if they fit with the first and only rule) and copy shamelessly.
It can be seen as a task to perform to feed people who are going to eat; but you can train them on the virtue of waiting and sharing their thoughts. Waiting for food enables exchange of thoughts; do not have everything ready for the time people are supposed to come. By the way, food being one of the greatest pleasures of life, remember that you will always find people who are fascinated by the different cooking techniques that you use. This is spontaneous sharing, and you will learn a lot of the culture your guests are coming from, sometimes more than going to the place they actually come from.
Cooking can be seen as an idiotic, mind-less task: but try to cook for 15 persons with different eating habits and allergies, and it becomes an incredibly enjoyable school for organization management.

And, most importantly, food is pleasure. EAT, DRINK, CHAT, ENJOY. As long as you are not starving, food is simply a pleasure.

good weekend

Cari miei,
this weekend was pretty good.
Friday I didn't do anything, went to bed at 10:30 like a good girl.
On Saturday we went to Wagner's to give an idea of reaaaaaaaaaal greeeeeeeeeasy German food to Samirro (Preeti's fiance, with Italian spelling) and then we went to Club Keller. This place is really nice. Eventually we found a place in Frankfurt where people are nice, i.e. not wearing suits with ties, music is cool, and they also have a tisch fußball (calcio balilla). It has been voted "The place where I want to get sick in" 2007 - by us, I mean.
Today (Sunday) I had Samirro, Preeti, Jack, Jasmina and Simone over for luch. Gaborno and Paritosh were supposed to come as well, but we don't know where they are... After following Preeti's advice "go to south or to the north, but not both", I decided to book my flight to India and then go to the South; where exactly, don't know yet. Anyway, I will be leaving Germany on the 22nd March won't come back until April 11th. All flights to India booked. What I am going to do in this time is still kind of uncertain, but hopefully I will figure it out.
By the way, we started drinking 1 bottle of wine and now I am finishing the second, so I assume I will collapse preety soon. I wanted to clean up the place and read some intersting stories about India (heloooooo! I am not a shitty touristic person going to Agra and Goa and coming back saying that I visitied India! Meeeee???? Never!) ; but I assume I will find some time later on....
ronf ronf
ciaoooooo

the beloved morning truck

Cari miei, some time ago I went to a training where this guy told us that it is more efficient to use the hours where someone is more productive to do the important things. I figured out that I am active in the afternoon/evening/night, definitely NOT in the morning. Ever since this training, I started going at work at 9:30-10, and when my boss, who comes at 7-7:30, complained a bit, I could tell him "hey, man, you sent me to the training!". Now the problem comes when you organize a trial in the plant and you need to be there at 5:30 in the morning. Which means that you have to set the alarm clock at 4:15 - twice you snooze the mobile phone, then you crawl out of bed, then you wear something and you go get as much coffee as your body can take before having a heart attack, then a shower and then to the plant. And since it's your trial, you want to see what happens and you stay until they kick you out of the plant because you look like a blonde zombie with the wrong make up. Well, this is what happened in the last 2 days. I feel like a truck had run over me, and over, and over, and over, and over...

Golden Gate... no, not in Frisco

Yesterday night we went to the Golden Gate, which is a strip club here in Frankfurt. I was a bit reluctant to go at first, when you are on a diet and you go see this super fit girls, either you stop eating at once or you feel so bad that you go home and cook yourself a pasta all'amatriciana. Actually it was pretty nice, and I didn't even feel so bad - even because yesterday I didn't go food shopping so I actually cannot cook myself a pasta all'amatriciana. The place is nice, it's not even too expensive (if you go out in Milano you definitely spend more) and they not only have strippers but you can also dance. There were a couple of groups there for birthdays, and it was funny to see how they somewhat went crazy. Also, a couple of the strippers had a little, vague start of cellulitis, well, if you looked at it really hard trying to find it, at the end of the day any man that I know wouldn't care less if they had those birds at hand, but it definitely helped. The most amazing thing is seeing these girls doing all sort of tricks with the poles, like lifting themselves up (I couldn't do it at all in high school), without being the female version of Schwarzenegger with bouncing muscles. All of it wearing 20cm high shoes. Impressive. Applause. At the end, Gaborno and I wanted to leave and in front of us there was this English couple who nearly started a row because their bill was 119 euros. They were sitting next to us inside, and I saw them drinking only beer, which means that they drank more than 20. Now, if you go to a nice strip club, or also to a nice place in general, and you drink more than 20 beers, then you shouldn't be too surprised if your bill exceeds the 100 euros. Idiots. This morning I wanted to sleep long, but there is this shitty super wind blowing. Perhaps it's our friend Kyrillucci coming to visit us again.
hmm, the Jamaican guy didn't look bad at all:-)

El Santo against Pippo Biardi

El Santo one day figured out that he could not win alone against the evils of modern society. He decided that he had to build some sort of lethal machine, possibly with some nasty chemicals inside, and with that he would have a better chance to succeed. However, he soon figured out that his education in Scientias Politicas did not give him sufficient expertise to accomplish his new objective, even with his master thesis in "Estudio de las herpes a las mammellas ne la epoqua pre-colombiana". He then went on internet to search for a course that would give him the knowledge he was missing. He soon found himself on the site of the Politecnico di Milano and found a professor that was teaching unit operations of chemical plants names Giuseppe, Pippo for friends, Biardi. What better way to reach his goal while being anonymous than learning the subject and then building his own plant to produce the chemical machine he needed? So he called the guy to have an appointment, collected all the money he had, took a plane and ended up in Milano. The next day he went to the appointment; he briefly explained that he was extremely interested in the course, however unfortunately could not move to Milano for the lectures; would it be possible to take the course from Mexico? Pippo looked at him, thought for a while and eventually said "if you reach the flash point, and x power 250, with x in Rn, can be approximated with a Fourier series to y, of course... well, cum grano salis, natürlich". El Santo was stunned for a second; then he thought that perhaps his request had not been clear enough because of his poor English, and Pippo interrupted him "Yes, I noticed that your English is not exactly proficient, and this is a great disadvantage for an Engineer. Personally, I believe an Engineer should talk at least English, French, German, Latin, Greek and perhaps a bit of Aramaic aut Esperanto, you never know". El Santo was starting to feel sick and started sweating; Pippo saw this, took out his hanky, blew his nose, wiped his mouth and then offered it to El Santo to wipe off his sweat. El Santo kindly refused the hanky and Pippo, puzzled by the refusal, said "As my friend Nusselt said, Enthalpy? You must be NUT! This, needless to say, before he was invited to Marghera at the Petrolchimico, ate some funny muscels coming from a pipe with a foul fouling coefficient - ahah, nice one, the foul fouling coefficient! well, and then he really went NUT and started bothering Deborah, Give me your number, Deborah, come on!". El Santo was at this point completely frightened, so he stood up, looked around and decided to jump out of the window. Pippo was still sitting in his chair while El Santo jumped; well, that was already the fourth this month...

Thanks to Alina for the great idea; and greetings to Pippo Biardi, whose lectures I actually enjoyed.

Kyrillucci

Yesterday I was driving back from Euskirchen while our friend Kyrill the cyclone decided to hit Germany. It was somewhat funny to feel the car moving on the highway despite me not moving the steering wheel, but even funnier to check the 4 sms and 2 phone calls that my mum made to make sure that I wasn't flying all over the place like a female&blond version of David Copperfield, only me without strings. I tried to explain to her some basics rules of physics, such as how much force you would need to lift my nice little ass, but apparently she was not convinced by my theoretical approach.
Tonight we should meet at O'Reilly's, but honestly I feel like I could sleep for 13 hours even without the 10 pints of beer that I would end up drinking if I went there. And then, tomorrow is another day.

Angelo Izzo

only if you talk italian.
questo è allucinante:
il delitto Maiorano
la strage del Circeo

oil doesn't stink

Welcome to globalization v10:
Iran president visits Venezuela

Hello, Hello Bombay (Mumbai)

Cari miei, tonight I went to a party, there was a good looking guy but obviously I was too shy to do anything, otherwise I wouldn't be here writing. One day I will learn how to cope with german guys, those who look at you and do nothing so that you have to go and chat them up (what??!!??). And that day I will move to another country and be screwed. Viva il parroco.
Since I am still kind of jet lagged from holidays, and I had not enough gin tonics to collapse in bed, I decided to start planning my India trip. I checked if I can book the flight with miles and, eureka!, Alitalia now has an online booking service, so I could actually go to India on the March 23rd and come back on April 11th. I will stay in Pune on the 24-25-26 to get my dress and get used to it (the dress and India); perhaps I can try and see if I manage to ride the camel with the sari/saree (what is the right spelling? boh). I will then be there on April 6th to see if Preeti needs help (or to get some massages, just in case). On April 7-8-9 there is Preeti's wedding, 3 days long: this is great! Anyway, this leaves open what to do in the remaining days. I would like to see the caves+paintings in Ellora and Ajanta, and I also would like to spend some time in Kerala or there about. I mean, Kerala is supposed to be really nice, plus it's a renoknown center for ayurveda, which I have no clue what it is but it sounds like good massages (ohh, I looove massages) and it's supposed to be less touristic than Goa; so perhaps I can relax a bit, since this is supposed to be holidays, what the hell. Well, I still have some days to plan, and I was thinking about going to Delhi, then Varanasi (because there is the song about that), then go back to Delhi and then from there go from 3-4 days to Kerala.
I have no clue whether I chose completely bullshit places, but the more I read the guide, the more I think I should have a couple of years to see everything that I would like to. And also I would like to know how to cook Indian food, which so far is the only food that I believe I could eat every day (apart from Italian, which I was brought up with). All these spices are simply amazing, you take a shitty carrot and you make it a meal full of flavour. This is true proof of genius.
Good news is that I will be in the US in Feb, so I can go buy a decent suitcase for a kick in the ass, to be filled with spices (assuming that I learn what to do with them). ahhhh, I want to go tomorrow....

GRRRRRRRR

Internal message:
Freaking bastard bloggers on my links, will you write something????

OK, today I am a bit nervous. First of all, I am on a diet because I'm getting fat like a cow. Second, today I stayed at home to write some reports, I didn't finish the second one, the data looks like crap and I HATE WRITING REPORTS cazzo. Third, I stayed at home so that I could write the shitty reports in peace and I ended up with 7 phone calls (average duration 10 minutes > 1 hour gone) and 18 sametimes, most of them at the same time (of which only 2 of friends, rest all work). I finished the cigarettes 3-4 hours ago. I have no food, apart from frozen spinach, which I like but have been eating way too often. I am finishing the orange juice. The indian take away that I liked apparently does not exist anymore. The indian take away in front of my house is crap. The döner close to my place is OK, but, shit!, I'm on a diet. The sushi that I used to call is off limits since that time that I got pissed because they didn't come, I called, ordered more and then didn't open the door. I could order a pizza but then I feel bad for the diet, I leave half of it and then it's crap tomorrow. It's 5 to 9 and I'm still here writing about what I could not order, another 30 minutes and the places are closed anyway, and then cous cous, for the 3rd night of the week (4th if you consider today at lunch).
I would need a teddy bear as big as a grizzly, some green beans with the montasio, a couple of gin tonics and a naked man (well, then perhaps I don't need the teddy bear after all). Since at the moment I am lacking all of this, I will go on writing my report. merdaaaaaaaaa

cannot sleep...

miei cari, tomorrow I am back to work and now it's nearly 1 am and I cannot sleep, I have been going to bed at 3 earliest for more than 2 weeks. Tomorrow I assume I will have to put some wooden sticks to keep my eyelids open, Kubrick docet. Worst case scenario I will start baking some cookies with my brand new piggy shapes. Well, since I started bothering you, why not going on. In the last couple of days I have been reading some interesting books about what happened in Italy in the 70s, meaning from the revolts in the universities in 68 to the terrorist acts of the Brigate Rosse, Prima Linea and a ton of other groups who went around shooting people. What is most amazing for me is that these guys decided to go kill someone (or injure him permanently) based on some political ideas. They didn't personally know the guys. A lot of times, they didn't even know exactly what the guys were doing as a job. They chose one, went there and shot him. Opla'. This is delirious. They way I see it, and I know that I might be completely wrong, is that this is equivalent to shooting someone because the Magical Creamy told me to. Buona notte.

I'd better become a nun

There is an Italian saying: "Lucky in the game, unlucky in love". Today I won 25 euros playing tombola, after investing 6. Net, I won 19 euros. This means that I can stop shaving right now, since anyway I will get a man not before being 35 years old. Sigh sob

Alba 34 : Swiss police 0

Hail to me, Thane of the Borders! This is to share with you all my joy for having successfully bulshitted my "friends" of the Swiss police. I managed to take all through Switzerland, in and out 2 borders, not 1, not 2, but 34 (thirty four) bottles of wine!!!!!!!!!!! Along with a bottle of grappa, 1 salame, more than a kilo of parmigiano, 1 panettone, some shrimps (grassie cammello) and some more food which now I cannot remember. They also stopped me to ask me what were the plants I was carrying and I told them, with my perfect hoch deutsch, that those were my plants because I was in Italy for the holidays and they need water. And the idiots didn't even check the back of the car... scemi scemi scemi

still alive

Cari miei, it's the 3rd of January 2007 and I am still alive. Capodanno (i.e. new year's eve) was somewhat intriguing, I figured out before that I have some nice pictures of myself wearing a hat that I stole from someone, don't know who, don't know why, and obviously the pictures need to be censored. Needless to say, I ended up on the 1st nearly puking on the lunch table with uncles and aunts looking at the nice shade of green my face had and my dad laughing his head off, asking me if I was reallyreally sure I didn't want a little bit of cabernet. Yesterday we went to the MART, the modern art museum in Rovereto. I wanted to see the exhibition of the futuristi, but apparently they took all of it away because they are now hosting Mitomacchina, a show of all the history of autos, which sounds bad if you read about it but was actually very nice. They also had an exhibition of Someone Gordon, who is this English artist who likes playing with videos. The video of the elephant was pretty good, the others were a piece of crap, but at the end of the day I am a bloody engineer so most probably cannot capture great art. Well, they are still pieces of crap. Today I will go to Padova in the afternoon, tomorrow to Milano and then on Friday I will take my Jean Jacques, packed with boxes and boxes of wine and drive back to Frankfurt.
Advices:
- go to Rovereto to visit the MART
- listen to Radio Sherwood
- go to Guia to buy the pork roast, that was taaasty

And I have the guide of the best Italian wines of 2007, which needs to be further explored this summer when you are invited for the housewarming party.

And Philip Marlow is somewhat nice, even if playing it a bit too hard.