Wandering Italy Blog: General

Rain and Rain Again - Pontremoli · May 5, 10:47 PM by James Martin

Ok, I am officially sick of rain.

But, nonetheless, I persevere in bringing you the best of cultural constants. For every two people working with their witches brooms to clean up after the Saturday open air market there will be one more on hand to hold up a column. It doesn’t matter which culture you’re inside of, it’s always like this, è Sempre Così.

pontremoli in the rain picture

Rain and Rain Again - Pontremoli originally appeared on WanderingItaly.com May 05, 2012, © James Martin,

Filed in: Living in Italy | General

Italy Travel Toolbox

Food and Knuckleheads · Apr 21, 01:00 PM by James Martin

I came across an interesting graph the other day. It showed the gross amount people from around the world paid for food. It seems China has passed the US up because their country outspends our country for food. They have more people of course, and spend way less per person, but there you have it.

The big spenders, per person, turn out to be the French. This doesn’t surprise me a bit, having once picked up a whole Bresse chicken, the celebrated kind, all wrapped in plastic in a French supermarket, and almost dropping the thing when I saw the price. 23 euro for a very small chicken!

Another interesting thing is that Americans pay about the same as Italians for food. Italians pay just slightly more. But from my experience, you’re getting a much better deal here in Italy. I mean even the industrial chickens you get here are way, way, way better tasting and have better and crispier skin when you roast them, for example. But real chickens, like the ones the butcher claims are “nostrano” are cheaper than the marginally better than industrial chickens in the states.

Which brings us to this little tidbit, as part of the reasons that “The Myth of Sustainable Meat” exists in someone’s mind:

Advocates of small-scale, nonindustrial alternatives say their choice is at least more natural. Again, this is a dubious claim. Many farmers who raise chickens on pasture use industrial breeds that have been bred to do one thing well: fatten quickly in confinement. As a result, they can suffer painful leg injuries after several weeks of living a “natural” life pecking around a large pasture.

What kinda idiotic argument is that? I mean even Jethro who got kicked outta the second grade and then happened to get hit on the head with a rock the size of Kansas on the way home could still look up at pappy with his puppy-dog eyes and say, “Pappy, how cum dey use deez kinds chickens when theys real chickens what could walk real good?”

I mean the ~~hatchet job~~ argument that we’ve bred chickens that can’t walk so we are forever doomed to having chickens stuffed two million to a barn and injected with all manner of crap before being sold and therefore we have to accept that there are no alternatives to these sorry experiments in nature is absolute crap as anyone with a tenth of a brain can understand. I’ve actually seen Italian chickens walking around like they owned the place. Armando’s chickens. We haven’t made walking chickens extinct. There’s still time!

James E. McWilliams is the idiot who wrote this diatribe against common sense that was published in the NYT. You can read it but don’t pay for it, you don’t want to be encouraging such chickenshit: The Myth of Sustainable Meat.

You can see the chart of various nations and their food expenses here: China overtakes America to become the world’s largest grocery market

Food and Knuckleheads originally appeared on WanderingItaly.com Apr 21, 2012, © James Martin,

Filed in: Food | General

Moto Madness: Italian Motorcycles of the 50s and 60s · Mar 8, 08:30 AM by James Martin

Can Italians do anything without an overwhelming sense of style? Beauty is everywhere here in Italy—and it’s spread itself like butter on warm toast the world over—or perhaps that should be “Italian racing red over hot gas tanks” because that’s pretty much what I’ve come to talk about.

On my way to the boot I discovered the exhibit Moto Bellissima: Italian Motorcycles From the 1950s and 1960s at the San Francisco International Airport terminal while I waited on the first leg of my Air France flight headed for Paris. I can tell you: airports have improved at least as much as seats in airplanes have shrunk in the last 30 years. But back to these motos.

The Italian wartime recovery required cheap transportation options, cheap meaning the same as today only cheaper, vehicles that got 100 miles to the gallon. But do you think that Italians could just throw something together cheaply and let it out the door? Nah, they created enduring art. Just look at the details on the right. It is a pair of carburetors feeding pistons just larger than a thimble. The perfect duet, duetto.

Imagine this (from the exhibit):

The Italian government assisted a beleaguered industry in 1959 with a revision to its Highway Code that allowed anyone over the age of fourteen to operate, unlicensed, any internal combustion vehicle “not exceeding 50cc and able to travel on a horizontal road at a top speed of 27 miles per hour.” Manufacturers competed for a whole new generation of riders with a variety of innovative small-displacement motorcycles, including Moto Morini’s Corsarino, FB Mondial’s Record, and Italjet’s Mustang Veloce. They all used a piston the size of a shot glass, and were all easily modified to achieve speeds of up to sixty miles per hour.

Could your government do that for you? It’s not that way these days, of course, but the actions of the backroom boys with the cigars sure made Italy the place to go to zip around on a snazzy moto between trips to the bar for a quick Caffè and a gawk at the girls.

It was the time of great and optimistic Italian pop music—and a time when space exploration was becoming a reality. Italians went nuts over the concept of a flying saucer, making the MV Agusta CSS Disco Volante (flying saucer) the hit of the show. It gets the name from the smooth, wing-like bulges from its tank, as you can see in the picture above right. Alfa created a car with the same moniker.

Italian racing red. You’ll see a lot of that when you start looking at Italian motos, and this exhibit was no exception.

iFrogz EarPollution CS40s Chromatone Headset Review · Feb 23, 04:11 PM by James Martin

james, CS40s Chromatones I do not usually bliss out. Not with headphones on, anyway. But there I am, with a pair of Ifrogz CS40s Chromatones wrapped around my sorry noggin, blissing out to the Joshua Redman Quartet.

The orange ones are purty, aren’t they? Everyone who’s walked into my office and has seen them has pointed this out. They come in 6 other color combinations.

I’m thinking that these would be ideal for the airplane. The AeroFoam cushions mold to your ears and attenuate noises without squeezing you uncomfortably. I’m looking forward to that application. I can’t stand ear buds. It’s like something moth-like is stuck in my ear and every nerve ending in my body is encouraging me to stick a finger in there to wedge it out. And they don’t really keep out the drone of an airplane.

Let’s talk about sound quality before you get queasy. I compared the CS40s to the earbuds that came with my iPod. No contest. You might expect that, considering the iPod earbuds, which retail for a suggested $29, often sell in the single digits. But the C40S Chromatones are listed at a mere $49, and you can get them for much less. I’d call it a bargain.

The bass response was fantastic, especially compared to the earbuds, where it was almost lacking entirely. Only at extremely high volumes did the bass get boomy. The 40 mm speaker drivers also did very well on the high end, while the midrange, as exemplified by Redman’s creamy sax on the album “mood swing” was very pleasant indeed. Amazing, actually, for $50 headphones.

But that’s not all! The The single button microphone, while nothing to write home about as far as fidelity in concerned, is compatible with Apple, BlackBerry, and Android devices. So while you’re blissing out in that plane, you can stop and make a voice note on your iPod.

As in the picture, the headset folds up so that big head space isn’t empty when you try to cram the thing into your carry-on bag. Nice.

So I’m waiting until March, when I’ll board that big bird to Paris and on to Nice, to try these babies out under that horrible conditions they put you under in a modern plane. I’ll let you know if it all works out as well as I hope it will.

Psssst…Amazon sells these babies for under thirty bucks: iFrogz EarPollution CS40 – Orange Chromatone with Mic

Disclaimer: I was provided with this product for the purpose of review.

iFrogz EarPollution CS40s Chromatone Headset Review originally appeared on WanderingItaly.com Feb 23, 2012, © James Martin,

Filed in: Travel Technology | General

Traditional Foods, Traditional Solutions · Feb 21, 11:33 AM by James Martin

How many time has modern science proven the computerless and iPhoneless ancients right about complex issues of food safety and nutrition?

We tend to forget that computers are just massive instruments of storage. They easily and quickly store all of our failures and a few successes. But the slow life of the ancients had lots of the same trail and error—and the careful and systematic observation that is the foundation of all real science. It got things done.

According to The Passionate Foodie:

Those who live in hot and humid regions, which are more conducive to the growth of dangerous bacteria, have developed another method of combating bacteria: the use of spices. Spices can possess antibacterial abilities, thus making food safer, and that is a significant reason why people from those hotter regions use for more spices than those from colder climates. The most potent antibacterial spices are garlic, onion, allspice and oregano. Thyme, cinnamon, tarragon and cumin are also powerful, with capsicums (such as chilies and other hot peppers) being fairly effective as well.

Another example: Italians’ ancient insistence that pasta be cooked al dente, which aids digestion (see: Pasta, Why Al Dente is Really Good for You)

The Passionate Foodie was talking about something new to me though. That is, new to a person who loves candied orange peel. Yes, orange peels, lots of them, might be the key to preventing over 500,000 human deaths worldwide each year from the popular E. Coli and Salmonella bugs.

Yes, citrus peels can clean the gut of cattle of these two bacteria in a non-antibiotic way so they have less chance of ending up on your plate. Perhaps it will keep governments from making a rare steak a criminal offense.

The power of orange. The power of natural ingredients normally thrown away. Eat your heart out Monsanto.

Read: Food Safety: The Importance of Orange Peels.

Traditional Foods, Traditional Solutions originally appeared on WanderingItaly.com Feb 21, 2012, © James Martin,

Filed in: Food | General

Arrosticini | Abruzzo Fast Food · Feb 9, 06:06 PM by James Martin

Hang around an Abruzzo deli long enough and some platters of these will show up. Yup, arrosticini, the fast food of the Abruzzo.

How do you make these arrosticini? Layers of meat and fat, usually goat or lamb along with some seasonings, are pushed into a metal form called a taglia arrosticini. It’s like one of those boxes magicians use with slots where the swords go in to make you think the scantily clad helper babe will be skewered—only it’s smaller.

(The arrosticini in the picture are made of liver. In the Abruzzo life has been a bit hardscrabble. You don’t waste a thing. They even use some liver in their sausages.)

After the meat has been pressed into the form, the bamboo or metal skewers are threaded through a plastic piece on top to puncture the meat and come to rest in a little recess in the plastic bottom piece so you know they’re straight. Now you have a stainless steel box full of precisely skewered meat pieces. You should not put this on the seat of your car and drive erratically away from your dinner party. Imagine explaining that to the friendly but concerned constabulary.

In any case, if you have followed along there are now hundreds of potential spiedini or, as they say in the Abruzzo, arrosticini awaiting the knife.

The knife goes in the taglia arrosticini slots one by one until everything is cut through.

arrosticini picture

Now you can remove the meat and you’ll have a sheet of skewered meat (with fat!!!!! Important!!!!!) that will fall apart into little kaboby things the Greeks would call Souvlaki. They use pretty much the same instrument.

Spiedini, arrosticini, and souvlaki are little cubes of skewered meat. This is not your American kabob. You do not put a hind quarter of steer on a skewer and set it atop a football stadium sized fire-pit. Arrosticini cook quickly and uniformly on a furnacell, a long and slender grill that just heats the meat and lets the sticks hang over the sides so they don’t burn. Clever, no?

But that’s not all. The size of the slots in the taglia arrosticini is very carefully conceived. That’s why you notice a uniformity among these measurements. Yes, somewhere in antiquity some smart dude or dudette figured out the exact cross-section of meat that would cook fully without burning the stick it was skewered with. Even cleverer, no?

And the big boys have an industrial powered taglia arrosticini that would make you proud, zapping out the arrosticini by the tens of thousands. They need that many during the world cup and other important ball-kicking events.

Now I’m hungry again. I’ve got to stop writing about food.

Filed in: Food | General

Salsicce and the Butcher Brothers · Feb 8, 06:41 PM by James Martin

One of the things I can’t wait to get back to when I get to Italy is the sausage, salsicce. Ground up pig parts can’t possibly taste better than they do seasoned and stuffed inside an intestine and cooked over a hardwood fire.

In Tuscany, the food is simple. The sausage guys you see at the market fight over the recipe, which is pig, salt and pepper. The part they fight over is pepper. No si usa pepe! a big sign says, “we don’t use pepper!” It’s a proclamation awarded the same exclamation-point-weight as the admission, “we don’t put pink slime in our burgers any more” currently in use by a very famous industrial crap hamburger operation. It’s as if one set of sausage guys is accusing the other of a crime akin to murder (of a tradition at least). “No, Luigi, there’s only two ingredients in a real, manly sausage, salt and pig. Everybody knows that. Get with the program!”

Anyway, this weekend I popped into the Ristobar in San Francisco to see the pig preparations by the famous Butcher Brothers of the Abruzzo, Ercole and Stefano Fasciocco. Below is a picture of one of them with the sausage he made in front of us. I think it’s Stefano, but you know, I was eating, photographing, handing out business cards, and admiring some of the world’s finest sausage. I was distracted. Here, be distracted yourselves:

salsicce

The Abruzzese are inclined to put a little dried orange peel into their sausage. That’s fine with me. If you take that sausage with some orange peel, put some peperoncini in it and cure it, it becomes my favorite salame, ventricina.

I can tell you, if the Butcher Brothers ever come to your city as part of a Slow Food event like the one I observed, go. Don’t even hesitate. They don’t have anything to do with the food except to cook it and serve it to you, so you get quite a value. I mean the guy took a suckling pig out of the fridge, made sausage, and had it grilled just outside the door and on our plates in an hour. It’s not like that stuff in the styrofoam tray that’s been in the Safeway display case since the 1906 earthquake, I’m talking fresh sausage made from top notch ingredients.

Dammit I’ve gotten myself hungry. I gotta go.

Oh, here’s the Event Notice

The Butcher Brothers toil at their macelleria, Antica Macelleria Fasciocco, making delightful things out of pig and sheep with masterfully short strokes of the boning knife and a lot of salt. They are expert at making salumi, salsicce, and spiedini. I’ll bet your butcher can’t touch them with a styrofoam tray.

Filed in: Food | General

Do You Need a Car to Visit Italy? · Jan 4, 12:44 PM by James Martin

It always amazes me when I see Internet writing types who’ve used bold text to spout loudly the unequivocal law of the Italian countryside, “you definitely need a car to see Italy right!” If you research, you’ll likely find that these are people who have bought a house in an agricultural wilderness and turned it into a Bed and Breakfast that train-riders can’t visit because the tracks don’t go anywhere close to there. It’s a vested interest thing.

There’s also a romantic side. Every Italian tourist’s noggin has been graced with a portion of memory devoted to an endless loop revealing a red car gloriously shredding the asphalt between idyllic Tuscan villages over and over again. The top is down, the exhaust note is throaty, and friendly folks wave encouragingly as you zip along with Italian verve. It’s a virus caused by overindulging in Italian Romantic Comedies and taking to heart the hyperbole found in tourist brochures. Really.

These days (sung sadly to a tune by the Duke), you “don’t zip along much anymore.” Not legally that is. Millions of Euros worth of autovelox cameras make sure that zipping is kept to something you do when your trusty steed, parked discreetly, is approached by the constabulary just as you’ve finished getting amorous with your sweet honey. “Nothing to see here, officer…”

Presumably the fees extracted from the jauntier drivers pay for the machines. It doesn’t often work out like that, but these days folks are increasingly willing to go into debt to keep everyone else in line. “God,” they will explain, “wants them to.” And so you will likely find yourself and your rental vehicle in frequent lines, except in Italy the line of cars you wait in is called a coda or a “tail”—except you don’t want a piece of this one…

There is another problem with driving these days. The price of fuel has skyrocketed. Taxes, you see, have been added to rebuild the towns that bad weather has crunched. And, remember, the prices have skyrocketed from stratospherically high prices we now think of as reasonable. We are a flexible people.

I’m not trying to scare you from renting a car and driving your butt off. It’s just that it might be time to consider the train. It’s (relatively) cheap. It lets you off near the center of cities—bypassing the industrial crap that rings them—and you don’t have to pay attention to anything you don’t want to pay attention to.

I mean, look at what’s on a single rail line: Torino to Trieste. It’s like a box of assorted chocolates, these sweet and compelling cities and towns: Torino, Vercelli (known for risotto with frogs!) Milano, Brescia, Verona, Padova, Venice. And you pay just a few Euros to travel between any two of them. You can spend weeks along this one rail line without thinking you’re missing the “real Italy.”

And in Italy you’ll find passes that integrate the public transportation experience, from boats to metro to buses and trains. In little-visited Lazio, for example, you’ll find the BIRG Pass that will save you money and make getting places darned easy. Check with the local tourist office wherever you land.

And don’t think the train stations themselves are seedy little stink-holes like some in the US. Both Venice and Florence stations have been named in one of those ubiquitous Top Ten lists of train stations in Europe.

So, no, you don’t need a car to visit Italy. You can get to some mighty sweet places on the train.

Filed in: Italy Travel Tips | General