Lardo Tales: Part 2, Italian Law is Not Always Your Friend · Mar 22, 05:47 AM by James Martin
After we had squeezed ourselves between the vats of Colonnata lardo producer Al Lardo, Al Lardo so we could get as comfy as one can when wedged between cool marble slabs, the owner points his foot at a floor tile and begins to outline it with his toe.
“We cut the lardo into squares about the size of one of these tiles,” he says (calmly, but with an edge; you can tell there’s something on his mind and it’s not comforting). “Now, here’s the thing. The government allows us a single tag identifying the lardo as Lardo di Colonnata IGP on the whole square of lardo. Nothing wrong with that.”
(The problem is that almost nobody wants to eat that much lardo, even on a bet. I mean, just tell your cardiologist that you had a picnic and ate a kilo or so of cured piggy backfat because you had to buy it that way and felt you didn’t want to waste it. He’d likely tell you never to come back again if you were gonna treat your ticker so horribly. [Of course, he would be wrong, but we’ll discuss some surprising health issues in our next edition of Lardo Tales.])
“So we cut it into smaller pieces. But then there’s only one piece which carries the tag. So if we cut the slab into ten manageable pieces to sell, there’s only one that qualifies as Lardo di Colannata IGP, the one with the tag, and we can’t sell the other nine pieces with that designation, even when it’s cut off the same slab.
But get this: A supermarket can sell all the pieces they cut as Lardo di Colannata IGP, it’s just the supplier who can’t sell them that way.
So click the picture up there to see it larger. What you’re lookin’ at is two packaged pieces of lardo, one with the tag and the label “Lardo di Colannata IGP” and the other labeled “Lardo Artigianale.” Behind the two are two slabs of lardo still covered with salt in the process of being packaged. Each is showing the official tags.
Life is a bit odd in LardoLand.
Lardo Tales: Part 2, Italian Law is Not Always Your Friend originally appeared on WanderingItaly.com Mar 22, 2012, © James Martin, 
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Sex and the Florentine Plumber · Feb 28, 09:15 AM by James Martin
Ah, you’ve always wondered how plumbers get around in Florence, Italy, didn’t you? Well, there’s more to it than the bicicletta of the Trombaio.
According to The Florentine:
Outside of Florence no one has the slightest idea what it (Trombaio) means and it is natural to associate it with a word to describe a sexual act . . . so be careful with this one!
(Tuscans and those of us pretending to be Tuscan use the word idraulico to describe the guy who comes to your house and diddles with your pipes for a huge sum of money.)
It’s amazing how many words and mispronunciations in Italian also associate with sexual terms—from sweeping to Menabrea beer. With many words, slightly mispronounce them and you’ll be met with guffaws of a rather nervous laughter, as if the boys at the bar knew it was coming and feel guilty that they encouraged you to say it. So just point to the beer, especially in Liguria, where the local dialect has a very juicy word quite similar to Menabrea I’ve heard.
Sex and the Florentine Plumber originally appeared on WanderingItaly.com Feb 28, 2012, © James Martin,
Everyone Goes to Florence, Italy · Jan 19, 11:43 AM by James Martin
Who cares that Italy is going broke? Who cares that the economy everywhere that isn’t China or Germany is in the toilet? Folks like you and I have been hiding out in Florence hotels at a rate greater than ever before.
12 million hotel rooms in Florence province were filled with tourists and their spawn last year, according to The Florentine. Up over 8% from the year before. The city’s hotels did quite well, too. Over 8 million people slept in them. Or at least paid for them (dearly).
Perhaps tourism can save Italy. Of course, for that, there’d have to be a weak Euro, or better yet, a feeble Lira. Not only that, but every destination would have to be as popular as Florence.
It’s true that you can’t find as much art crammed into as small an area as the city that calls itself “Firenze.” But if you have a car and don’t mind narrow, curving roads there sure is a lot to discover in the rest of Tuscany. For real contrast, you could go up to little Sant Anna di Stazemma and find out about the massacre and what Spike Lee was trying to convey. If that’s too rural and remote, you could visit one of Italy’s most beautiful hill towns, Pitigliano, also spectacular in its setting. Heck, I’d stay a while and walk the Vie Cave, the Etruscan rock sculpted paths.
But enough. Yes, there’s art in Florence. But if you want to know a bit about the world, from the plight of Jews in Pitigliano to the plight of the resistance in Sant Anna, to the world of artisan cheese making, you’ll find it all within the friendly confines of Tuscany.
So spread out. Together we can stimulate the economy of Italy to make sure it lasts for a while without folks being forced to sell off ancient artifacts or pickpocket every last tourist.
But then, if you must go to Florence, we have Florence Weather and Climate Information just a mouse click away.
But you know, this is Italy, and even in Tuscany there are exotic islands awaiting your bags. Heck, you might think of renting a vacation house on Giglio and watching the cruise ships waddle by. Or maybe not. Still:
Giglio Island Vacation Rentals
Everyone Goes to Florence, Italy originally appeared on WanderingItaly.com Jan 19, 2012, © James Martin,
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Ligurian Floods: How to Help · Nov 5, 07:26 AM by James Martin
Just as the Cinque Terre had started to dig out of the mess the last heavy rains had left, now a new set of storms has begun to batter Genoa and other nearby areas, including the Val di Vara.
In the Lunigiana region of Tuscany, Equi Terme, a spa town, is getting pounded with rain as I type.
To get an idea of the amount of water we’re talking about here, and the tenacity of Italian bus drivers as they float down the streets, you need to see Simone Lupi’s video
Again, people have died in this latest disaster: Six killed, others missing in latest Liguria storm
How can you help? The Italian Red Cross has set up an English language page to accept your donations for the flooding in Tuscany and Liguria via credit card or Pay Pal. It’s in English: Croce Rossa Italia donations
For history of flooding in Liguria and video of the flooding in the Cinque Terre and the Italian Riviera, see: Devastating, Lethal Floods in Cinque Terre
To see where Liguria is located, see the Map of Liguria
Ligurian Floods: How to Help originally appeared on WanderingItaly.com Nov 05, 2011, © James Martin,
Fancy Pants Pictures from Tuscany · Oct 19, 04:52 PM by James Martin
You see thousands of travel pictures taken by all kinds of folks posted on the net. Usually the ones you look at are from your own country due to language issues. Thus, just a little, they probably share a tiny bit of your worldview. They’re purty, but you’ve been there and done that.
I have to say I was surprised when one of my close Italian neighbors, the master Italian gardener Enrico’s wife Isa, sent me notice of her slide show. Now, folks are often bowled over when I tell them I know more about my Italian neighbors than about my neighbors in California, but I do. Still, I was blown away by the quality of Isa’s photography. So, I thought you’d like to know where a Lunigiana couple goes on a “close” vacation, and what they think is important enough to photograph. So, here:
Now, was that artistic or not?
Fancy Pants Pictures from Tuscany originally appeared on WanderingItaly.com Oct 19, 2011, © James Martin,
Tuscan Barnyard Fry · Oct 16, 09:43 AM by James Martin
I don’t know what made me think of this. Perhaps it was a conversation with my mother who lives in rural Illinois, where you can’t get butter in a restaurant and have to settle for some chemical glop called “Shedd’s Spread” because, you know, butter has fat and that nasty thing in it that patches cracked arterial walls called cholesterol—and then (surprise!) everything else on the menu is deep fat fried. Tradition. You can’t beat it.
But if you are yearning for fried and happen to find yourself in Tuscany, you need to try the Barnyard fry called “fritto dell’aia” on menus.
You get all the stuff my Italian neighbors have in their backyards: chicken, rabbit, and vegetables, fried up in a crisp shell that keeps all the juices in so they can escape and run down your arms after you pick up a piece and apply your incisors to it.
Below is a picture of a good one. Its from the Osteria del Vecchio Pazzo, an old olive mill converted into an interesting restaurant outside the walls of Lucca and very close to some interesting Lucca villas worth visiting, especially Villa Reale, Villa Oliva e Villa Grabau. (The room we ate in is shown in the picture on the left.) Precede this dish with some tordelli and you can’t go wrong—and you might not want to eat for a while after, I can tell you!
Tuscan Barnyard Fry originally appeared on WanderingItaly.com Oct 16, 2011, © James Martin,
Luminaria di Santa Croce: Lucca in a Different Light · Sep 14, 08:07 AM by James Martin
Photographers seek out and relish a different light. Luminaria di Santa Croce on September 13th, a night in which the “Volto Santo” is paraded around Lucca along medieval streets illuminated entirely with candles, offers tourists and photographers a great chance to see a compelling city in this different light. Not only are there thousands of candles lining doors and windows, attached by workers with an amazing number of “cherry pickers” or boom lifts for such a small town, thousands of people holding candles participate in the procession, singing religious songs while winding through the streets of Lucca, watched by thousands.
I’ll let Martha write about the festival, but the pictures are pretty interesting. Here’s just one of San Michele in Foro in early evening before the procession started:
To see a slideshow that explains the goings-on during the Luminaria in Lucca, see: Luminaria di Santa Croce in Lucca, Italy
Luminaria di Santa Croce: Lucca in a Different Light originally appeared on WanderingItaly.com Sep 14, 2011, © James Martin,
Italy in Decay · Aug 31, 09:56 AM by James Martin
Italy in Decay originally appeared on WanderingItaly.com Aug 31, 2011, © James Martin,