Stuff unrelated to food, wine & spirits that I just feel like posting.
A recent article in Business Insider was rapidly passed around, more for its headline than its content. The title asserted “The key to happiness might be living within walking distance of a coffee shop”. I realize it’s stated as a possibility, but if it’s true, I ought to be positively giddy with delight. We’ve always had… Read More Caffeinated Happiness
[Complete edit: a month in, I’ve decided that trying to keep up with two separate platforms, here and on Substack, is more time than I’m willing to commit. So I’m going to post all articles in both places, which just increases the reach of them. Donations, on either site, are appreciated, in support of my… Read More Buenos Aires Social Club
I’m sure you’ve heard of it. It was in all the papers. Gastronomic detectives worldwide were set out on the task to track down the best cannoli their cities, towns, villages, and hamlets had to offer. I assumed I had my work cut out for me – a city of 3 million or more people,… Read More The Great Cannolo Reconnaissance, Round 1
Okay, so I’m behind, because I just decided not to spend time while on vacation posting on the blog. For those who follow me on Instagram, you’ve probably seen a good portion of this. After three days in Lima, I headed up to Trujillo, where Henry’s from, to spend a little over a week with… Read More North to the Coast and the Mountains!
Welcome back to Lima! I haven’t been here since mid-2019, pre-pandemic. This is a somewhat spur-of-the-moment visit (I knew I’d come some time between now and early November, as Henry is hanging with his family for two months). Mostly because I really needed to get away and relax for a bit, and particularly from BA… Read More Lima, Round One
How and when did Neapolitan cuisine, probably most epitomized by pasta and tomato sauce, become the symbol of Italian cooking? It certainly wasn’t early on, as tomatoes didn’t become a widespread part of local cooking until, really, the mid-1800s. And in Naples, it’s still not really the standard. In popular culture this was perhaps best… Read More Mangiamaccheroni – The Macaroni Eaters
There once was a poet in Italy named Filippo Tomasso Marinetti. In the leading gastronomy magazine, La Cucina Italiana, in the early 1930s, he wrote the Manifesto of Futurist Cooking, a screed on Italian food traditions that became infamous for its dissing of pasta, among other things. In it, he declared that pasta was “an absurd… Read More The Anti-Futurist’s Pasta
The second half, and second dish, of the Calabria episode of Stanley Tucci’s Searching for Italy. In the previous post, I covered the sweet red onion spaghetti he waxed poetic about. In this one, we get fishy, with Spaghetti con pesce spada, or, spaghetti with swordfish. Not an easy fish to find here in Buenos Aires. As I… Read More Tucci #7b