Perfect Scrambled Eggs? · Feb 8, 08:57 AM 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 · Feb 5, 09:12 AM 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 · Feb 4, 08:20 AM 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
Popular These Days
Game Over for the Dollar? · Jan 22, 02:39 PM 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
Corkscrewed! · Jan 6, 10:09 AM by James Martin
Technology is an amazing thing, isn’t it? Well, it’s not a thing, but the thing to the right is a thing for sure. It came yesterday. What do you think it is used for?
I should have asked in a poll, but I’m too lazy. Perhaps you know of an application. I was thinking maybe it could be thrown in a suitcase you’re taking to Italy. The TSA guys would have a cow. Their probing meathooks might take a beating if the thing wasn’t wrapped up. But that’s just plain mean.
You could screw each corkscrew into a bottle of wine, then go on stage at the local talent show and spin the bottles around your pinky. On second thought though, something like this probably won’t get you any hot babes or studmuffins, so why bother?
Ok, I know the intended application so I’ll just come out and tell you. Obviously the thing is made from the business ends of 8 corkscrews. You screw 8 corks (without the corresponding bottles) into this deal until they’re snugly pronged. Then you have a hot plate. Homemade. Primative art. Recycling!
But Martha and I have refined this idea to suit our needs. We have decided to screw on only the corks from memorable wine we selected for no good reason (“Hon, isn’t that label just gorgeous?”) but we want to purchase again because they turned out to be quite tasty. That way, before we go to the store, we will have a central focus for our wine urges, meaning we’ll forget all about it but will know immediately that we forgot because upon returning from the store the corkscrew thing will be sitting on the table in full view—unless there’s a pot of unfinished spaghetti alla puttanesca covering it.
Sometimes we forget to wash pots, too.
Is Flying Safe? · Jan 4, 03:08 PM by James Martin
Those of you who’ve read Never Trust a Thin Cook will realize the playfulness of the above title. According to author Eric Dregni:
The word safe doesn’t really exist in Italian. Sicuro is just “secure.” My students suggest non pericoloso (not dangerous) but add that everything has a certain amount of danger, so “safe” is a paradox.
Now, I’m still contemplating the meaning of salvo in Italian, but I agree with Mr. Dregni’s students entirely. In the US, when we indicate that we want “safety” bad enough, a government agency inevitably emerges with its greedy hands already in our pockets. It’s viral opportunism at its best.
Said agency will be headed by a bunch of PR guys whose job it is to cover up the idiotic adventures of whoever has been assigned the impossible task of providing this ethereal concept we call “safety.”
Take President Barack Obama’s top counterterrorism adviser. Please! When interviewed about security lapses that allowed one Mr. Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab to set his leg afire on a jet bound for Detroit, John Brennan repeated a laundry list of government screw ups, then made sure we’d all understand that the nearly tragic event wasn’t their fault:
“There is no smoking gun,” Brennan said. “There was no single piece of intelligence that said, ‘this guy is going to get on a plane.’” ~ Obama adviser: No smoking gun in airline bomb plot-
Dang if Mr. Brennan doesn’t seem to be looking for a swarthy dude with a forehead anointed with blinking neon lights spelling out “I’m a terrorist about to try to blow up a plane flying over city with a doomed economy!” The president’s adviser insists upon a single piece of intelligence that explains the whole terrorism universe before taking action? Yes, let’s wait for that! It’s cheaper than actually doing something!
Without that sublime and compact little packet of knowledge that Mr. Brennan desires, his subliminal message trumpets: we (the hapless traveler) will just have to depend on Dutch tourists to squelch any attempts at blowing up planes. Not only that, but to make us feel “safe” we will be made to forever chase the (other) last known attempt at blowing up a plane, removing our shoes like pious lemmings before the stainless steel xray shrine. (Those of you who are hockey fans know that chasing (the puck) is the only sure way of losing a hockey game. A good hockey player is more intelligent than most government agency wonks. Doesn’t that fact just stun you?)
In the absence of Brennan’s sublime nugget of perfect intelligence, something needs be done that costs oodles of money. (You have to spend the government’s (our) money before they give you more. Everybody knows that, right?) I’ve got it! We shall be forced to stand in long lines fronted with government paid gorillas whose gigantic meathooks will gleefully fondle all comers, right down to the last colostomy bag.
This we shall do until those nifty scanners arrive. Then we’ll all diet before getting on a plane, eh? You don’t want to look fat for that “best of 2010” semi-nudie compilation tape they’ll be splicing together in the back room next to the stolen luggage, do you?
All in good fun. All in the name of safety, you know? Can’t beat that with a stick.
Filed in: Italy News General
Rome Fountains: It's All in the Mask · Dec 31, 11:23 AM by James Martin
Rome is known for its fountains—and its drinking water. The fountains I’ve always liked seem always to have theatrical masks in them somewhere.
The picture on the left is one I took in December in Rome. At night.
If you think about the last time you were in Rome hanging around the Pantheon in the Piazza della Rotonda, perhaps with a can of beer concealed in a paper sack as is all the rage, you might not have associated theatrical masks with this fountain, especially if the beer has begun to course through your veins and the guy with fat lips and the monkey grafted to the back of his empty skull starts to look like a friend from high school…
In any case, click the picture to see it larger.
This particular fountain was built around 1577. The masks in this fountain look like they were inspired by similar ones by Michelangelo, according to Garden-Fountains.com, who have some nice articles on The Fountains of Italy and Rome.
My other favorite mask fountain? The Fontana del Mascherone di Via Giulia financed by the Farnese. Odd. Entrancing. And the via Giulia is kinda nice, too.
Filed in: Italy Travel General
Diaphanous Gowns: The Answer to Airline Security · Dec 28, 01:22 AM by James Martin
I recently participated in a lively twitter discussion centered around solutions to the airline security issues currently facing international fliers.
After thinking about the problem for a while, I have distilled the essence of the solution into but two words: Diaphanous Gowns.
(We should work on the word “Diaphanous” because it is a word you seldom hear unless you’re prone to sucking the sap outta those bodice-ripper novels you (used to?) find in supermarket check-out lanes. Diaphanous “is of so fine a texture as to be transparent or characterized by extreme delicacy of form.”)
Wouldn’t it be nice to see travelers in clothing of fine texture? Wouldn’t it really, really, help the underpaid guys with the guns to actually see through clothing? Bag o’ explosives diaper-pinned to your jockeys? Visible! Ha ha! Nice try!
Make diaphanous gowns a requirement for international travel and the benefits pile up like dust in unswept corners.
But the benefits of such gownage goes deeper than airline security. The fact that a diaphanous gown weighs practically nothing would make airplanes lighter, thus more fuel efficient. (Prices for a ticket would plummet of course.) Plus, being infinitely thin, requiring fliers to don diaphanous gowns would cut the need for those ginourmous seats they put in steerage class. They could make airplane seats narrower, thus saving even more weight and allowing even more room for that all-important Duty-Free cart to come rambling through the cabin. Imagine how nice it would be to slide diaphanously into your snugly seat!
Do you see? It’s all good!
And don’t get me started on the benefits of wearing diaphanous gowns when it comes time to join the mile-high club. OK?
Filed in: Italy Travel Tips General