CSA 2011- Week 2

Another week already! The first week of the new CSA went well, and the only real challenge was the pea shoots. We tried just eating them raw on salads which I could have sworn I had read somewhere, but only the very tips were tender enough to eat that way. Next time we'll have to try a stir-fry or something. This week is very green, with an explosion of leaf vegetables. It's a mix of cooking and salad greens, so I think we'll make it through.

We got more Spring garlic this week, and if you look closely you can see that the scapes are still attached. Fun! We have a recipe for the grill that involves slathering chicken with a large amount of garlic mashed into a paste. I see that in our future, with both the scapes and bulbs. Red stutgart onions French breakfast radishes are usually funny looking, but these have an inch of pencil-thin neck at the top. I assume this is due to odd weather changing how they grew, but it sure is funny lookin'. The first of two spinach variants this week is Space spinach which is the astronaut of the greens world. More Baby lettuce mix means more salads. We've gotten mizuna before. It's a mildly spicy salad green, and our only real complaint is that, like cabbage, it grows two new heads for each one you cut off. Both seem to multiply in the fridge when we are not looking.

These mustard greens and this tah tsai (which the email from the farm describes as "asian spinach") will end up mixed in a spinach calzone that we like. We will likely toss in the cosmonaut spinach as well and make it a threefer. I hope to make more ice creams this summer, and if Mary will let me I will probably start that trend with a frozen yogurt made from these Earliglow and Wendy Strawberries. Fresh from the CSA, Sugar ann sugar snap peas are amazingly sweet and summery. These will get eaten on salads (and just plain snacked on.) Mary is not actually a huge fan of English spring peas when we've had them in the past, but we may have undercooked them. She actually likes 'em mushy, so we may have to do them in the English style this time. More arugula this week, this time in the form of Roquette Arugala. With this being the third salad green on top of two spinaches this week, I think we'll want to do something beyond salad with it. I am guessing pizza again, since we can have a salad on the side even when there is a salad on top, but we'll see. This rhubarb is not actually part of the CSA, but we have succumbed to madness and started buying more farmer's market produce on top of the CSA. All during the week we had ongoing discussions of what exciting thing we'd do with the next batch of rhubarb, then we found there was to be none in the box. Luckily I averted tragedy by buying these bundles, which will go into Gingered Rhubarb Apple Crisp. Yum.

CSA 2011 - Week 1

Summer is here! That means it's time to build a fortress of solitude out of outdoor cushions and eat lots of fresh veggies. This year we are trying yet another new farm. While there were upsides to a Saturday pickup, we also felt like we couldn't travel anywhere over a weekend last summer, and that was an issue for us. After searching around for a good sounding CSA with a local-ish drop-off point, we discovered that one of our favorite stands at the Farmer's Market was doing a CSA this year with a pick up site at the market. Since we have been saying for ages that someone should do that, how could we not sign up? It's the first time we have gotten in in year one of a CSA, so it will be interesting to see how they do. This one is starting noticeably earlier than previous ones, so I expect that in the next few weeks we will see a mix of spring stuff and storage vegetables, carried over from last year. We are also getting their fruit share, which for a blessed change is actually local fruit. That's getting folded into the main share, and in weeks with little fruit we may just see more veggies instead.

The first lettuce of the season takes the form of Baby lettuce mix. We've been avoiding having salads for the past month or so to prepare for the onslaught of lettuces, and now that it's here I am not fully convinced we are ready. A whole buncha Cilantro. We actually have a shrimp recipe that calls for a full cup of it, so we should be able to use this up. We have grown to absolutely adore rhubarb. We've already made a few dishes with the stuff we got at early spring farmer's markets, but we're still not out of recipes. This batch is going to be used for a roasted pork dish (with rhubarb and onion sauce.) Yellow stutgart onions look like slightly fat green onions, and will likely be used as those would be. Green garlic is something that I always think I should have specific uses for, but we usually end up subbing it in for normal garlic. This batch will likely end up in garlic naan.

These are the first strawberries of the season! So sweet, so juicy, so getting consumed as-is. We love Asparagus and will likely roast this batch. Champion radishes will get snacked on and eaten in salads. I've actually remembered to prepare some for a snack for tomorrow, so I am already ahead of last year when I managed to forget to do so every single time I planned to. When we were thinking about what we would get this early in the season, it did occur to me that we might see some potatoes carried over from last year. I'm psychic! These are russian blue and desiree potatoes and we'll...do something with them. We usually make a Rosti with potatoes, which is pretty much hash browns for dinner. It's OK though, because it's Swiss. All spring, our food magazines have all been full of recipes for sweet pea shoots. All spring, Mary and I have said to each other "We will never be in possession of this item" and tossed out those recipes. Now we find ourselves with a rather large bunch of them. We had some raw in salad last night, but past the smallest branches they got pretty tough, so I think I will look up a recipe online to use. Many of the recipes we tossed pointed to light stir-frying, so that's probably where we will end up. Oddly, most of our Arugala recipes are pizzas. We are planning on pizza-ing up this batch as well. This one is an odd bunch for us, because it actually has some flowers on it. Arugala flowers! Who knew?

Tuscany Part 2

Thankfully, escaping Siena by car proved much easier than getting there. We had a more general target ("not siena") which helped. Our next destination was the hill town of San Gimignano. In the old days, when all of the towns in Tuscany were battling each other, rich families would build towers to protect their stuff (and selves) from rival towns and families. San Gimignano still has a dozen or so of these towers, though it originally had sixty four.

We found it quite engaging, despite being pretty solidly built around tourism. The town is centered on one main street, with several piazzas strung along it like closely packed pearls. At the top of the town is an old fort which has been converted to a park that affords lovely views of the skyline.

As in Rome, it was not uncommon to come across cats wandering the streets in Tuscany. This fella had laid claim to the bench we ate lunch on in Sam Gimignano. We also had a pair that seemed to live on the roofs of the buildings next door to our hotel in Florence, and it was fun to check on their comings and goings.

If a town has towers, that can only mean one thing: Stairs! This is the view over San Gimignano from the tower of the civic museum. The museum itself had extensive displays all about local saint Santa Fina. When we asked about her story, the person commented that she could tell us all about her in Italian, but less so in English. From the discussion, she appears to have rescued someone that fell from a roof and also some sailors. Or something.

This is another view from the civic tower, looking down on one of the piazzas. It was a neat little town, and we both very much enjoyed the visit.

Next up was Volterra. Our guidebook commented on what a great town it was, so we had somewhat inflated expectations. Sadly, the bulk of our time there was on a Tuesday, when most of the interesting stuff seemed to be closed.

One of the big draws of Volterra is their Etruscan museum and arch. The museum was closed Tuesday, of course, but at least the arch was open. The amorphous blobs in the arch were originally heads, but thousands (yes, thousands) of years of wear hasn't been kind to them. Locals claim that this arch (and those like it) taught the Romans how to build arches with keystones. During World War Two (when Italy was on the wrong side, recall) the retreating Nazis wanted to destroy the arch to slow the advance of the Allies. To save it, locals tore up all the stones from the street and piled then in the opening, preventing folks from getting through and saving the arch. And helping the Nazis. So....it's...a win? History is weird.

Another neat historical site in Volterra is the ruins of a Roman amphitheater. For years, this was used as the city's garbage dump to the point where they forgot it existed. This lead to quite a discussion between Mary and me about how one loses an entire amphitheater. Again I say, history is weird. The theater itself was closed during the off season (which we were just at the tail end of) but you could see it very well from the road that runs along the city wall. It was surprisingly well preserved. I guess garbage is a good insulator.

This is the main drag of Volterra where many cute little shops and artisans are. The local specialty is alabaster, and there are a ton of places to buy it. I kept eying lamps with alabaster shades, but in the end was afraid that they wouldn't survive the trip home. Volterra was by far the sleepiest of the cities we visited. The streets were pretty empty during the day, but they were absolutely desolate in the evening. We ate dinner at a place our guidebook suggested, and for the entire meal were the only patrons there. Very odd. Perhaps not surprisingly, it was the weakest meal of the trip (though certainly not horrible.)

After spending the night in Volterra, we set off to find our way to Pisa. We were doing so well -- We found the signs to Pisa; We followed the signs to Pisa; We were on the brink of escaping the city...and our road was closed. On the bright side, this really made us realize how much more comfortable with Italian we were this time around. We managed to ask three different people for directions and mostly understand the responses. We weren't able to apply those directions to actually escape, mind you, but we understood them more than we expected.

While Pisa is primarily known for the leaning tower, the entire piazza surrounding it is pretty neat. It's referred to as the field of miracles and it has the Duomo, the campanile (that'd be the leaning tower), the baptistery, and a few other sights. While the campanile gets all the press, everything in the field is leaning one way or another. The picture above is the outside of the duomo, and this shot is from inside. It was one of the rare buildings that actually allowed pictures to be taken inside.

And here it is, in all it's leaning glory. We saw several folks taking the "holding up the tower" shot, though only later did I think I should have gotten one of me pushing it over. Maybe I'll Photoshop myself in later. We had originally planned on climbing it, but we were running a bit late so in the end we did not.

This a back door to the duomo. We are suckers for a good door. This one was interesting to us because rather than a heavy Renaissance influence, it was very Byzantine. Since the trip had been so very about the Renaissance, this was a neat change.

And here is the baptistery. The acoustics inside were amazing, causing sounds to hang in the air long enough that one person (a security guard, in our case) could sing a three note chord with themselves. So neat. The building also has what looks like a dilapidated roof, which is in fact a lead roof. This is fancier than the terracotta tiles that are more common in the region, but prone to melting when on fire. This happened during world war two to the neighboring covered graveyard, causing a huge amount of damage to it.

This picture is surely revenge for all the times I have gotten Mary mid-action. Here I am looking at the book, planning a quick snack to grab on the way out of town.

Pisa straddles the Arno river. The river itself has a very Venice feeling, though it's pretty limited to just the buildings lining the Arno looking like those that line the Grand Canal. The trip out of Pisa was full of adventure, as always. There is a lot of very urban modern city built up around the old town, and we didn't see very many signs pointing us towards our next destination (or really, any destination that we could find on the map.) We eventually wandered our way to the train station and from there to the proper road, but I'd be lying if I claimed we never saw the same stretch of road twice.

Next up after Pisa was Lucca, which lies just to the North. One of the fun things about being closer to the coast is that the climate allows for citrus trees. We were very taken with Lucca, and when we came across this little square (literally named the little plaza of oranges) I couldn't help but be charmed. And goofy, apparently.

Lucca is primarily known for its wall. Most of the Tuscan towns had walls during medieval times. These walls were generally thick enough to keep out invaders, but not thick enough to remain useful when cannons entered the picture. In Lucca, rather than ditch the walls, they dedicated several years of taxes to cannon-proofing. This resulted in a wall that is thick enough that these days it's an elevated park that circles the city.

The wall is an amazing place to stroll, and we found ourselves drawn back to it repeatedly during our several day stay there. There is a main path along the center of it, but then many wider grassy areas at the corners where fortifications used to be. It's immensely charming and really made it feel like a place we could live. Lucca was by far our second favorite destination after Siena.

The duomo in Lucca has several neat features. First, all of the columns on the facade are in different styles (which is neat or silly, depending on if you ask me or my wife.) Second, the statue of the saint on top not only has bronze wings, but he is also rigged to flap them on special occasions.

Can you spot the chair in this room? While we loved Lucca, our hotel room did have a very...unique charm. We overlooked a nice large (yet still quiet) piazza though which increased the charm quite a bit.

Here is a shot of the walls from outside. As part of keeping the town defensible, they cleared out land at the base of the walls as well. This adds even more green space to the town.

While most of the towns that we visited had some form of tower (or many of them, in San Gimignano's case) Lucca has one with a unique feature: It is topped with planters filled with trees. It was quite enchanting, even after having done so many stair climbs already.

This is the piazza that our hotel room overlooked. It was huge and open and had surprisingly few restaurants on it. There was a carousel tucked into one corner, though it was unclear if that was there for a special event, or if it was a permanent fixture. Lucca was definitely a less visited place, but we loved it. It was very easy to envision that people actually lived there, and to imagine ourselves doing the same some day. I may have picked up a half dozen real estate fliers while there, to the bemusement of my wife. It was friendly, not overly touristy, and so very charming to walk.

Our first stop was also our final: Florence. The drive back was fairly uneventful, but finding the airport proved to so much more difficult that it should have been. You'd think that there would have been a hundred obvious signs, but we must have managed to miss them all. When the google directions include a U Turn, you know you are in deep, deep trouble. By the time we got to the area where we saw signs to the airport, we were so stressed (per usual when driving in Italy) that we were very happy to pay them to fill the tank. The sooner out of the car, the better. In fact, we we so very done with driving that we totally neglected to take a picture of it. Oh well.

After visiting so many smaller towns, Florence seemed absolutely enormous to us upon our return. We stayed in the same hotel as we had the first time through town, so we managed to keep our bearings fairly well. We used our remaining time to visit some of the larger sights and some of the areas of town we hadn't hit on the first pass. This is a shot from the courtyard of Santa Croce. It was a nice church with an associated leather working school, oddly.

Santa Croce had two kind of funny tombs, if such a thing exists. The first was this one of Galileo who, as you may know, was excommunicated by the church for heresy. Apparently both parties resolved their differences.

The other amusing tomb is this one of the author of the Divine Comedy, Dante, who was banished from Florence for his political views. In this case, the parties did not resolve their differences -- the tomb is empty because he is buried elsewhere.

Our last days in Florence were quite lovely, and I felt like now that no additional destinations were ahead of us we really slowed down. We walked to a few different areas, and sampled as many gelatos as we could fit in. We got blueberry and pear (from two different places) and both were amazingly good, bursting with real fruit flavor. This shot is of the Palazzo Vecchio (the old palace) which sits on one of the major piazzas of Florence. It has a museum inside, though we didn't manage to see it due to it being closed for a special event when we were there.

It was odd to us how many places would not allow photography inside, though no place was more surprising than the sculpture museum. We could get pictures in the courtyard, but not inside. I guess those giant hunks of stone are very light sensitive. Still, we got to see a ton of neat sculpture inside, which we're fans of.

Of all the doors we saw in Tuscany, this one (on the baptistery in Florence) was the best. It's no surprise, since when the door was commissioned, they had a contest amongst all of the artisans of the time to design the door. The winning design really is a marvel of Renaissance style. The amount of detail and perspective that they put into reliefs that are only inches deep really is astounding.

In the end, both Mary and I were sad to be leaving Tuscany. We ate a lot of great food, walked a lot of wonderful streets, and had a marvelous time all around. There are definitely a bunch of places we are already excited to return to (Siena, Lucca, Florence) and a few that we feel we have done. I think that next time we would probably change our transportation plan (the driving was just way more stressful than we need when on vacation) but I am glad that we got to see some of the more far flung towns. I am absolutely certain that we will return to the area again, and so immensely glad that we made the trip.

Tuscany Part 1

We are back from our wonderful adventures in Tuscany! This was the first time we went into a trip with a large number of specific expectations (about the food, the wine, the scenery) and as the trip approached we got worried that it might not live up to those. We didn't need to worry. Everything was magical, particularly the food, wine, and scenery. So gorgeous.

We visited eight towns in all, following roughly this route. The driving was mostly not terrifying, since I had prepped myself for Italy's more aggressive driving style. I also grew to really like traffic circles, and not just because our car had some issues stalling when in idle.

Given that we went all over, keeping this post in roughly chronological order seemed the sensible thing to do.

Florence is where the trip began and ended, and was the largest city we visited. This is the heart of the early Renaissance, and reminders of that are everywhere. We arrived in early afternoon and as always we had a long walk planned for the day, including the first (and I believe longest of the trip) stair climb.

The centerpiece of the walk was the Duomo and it's surrounds. The baptistery, which is directly across the piazza from the entrance, had great mosaics including this glass tile ceiling. We were not at all surprised that it was done by an artist from Venice, since it was very reminiscent of St. Marks. After the baptistery, we checked out the Duomo museum, which had a lot of the original sculpture and whatnot from the facade. It's not often that someone makes a relief of people's backs, so we had to snap a picture. The facade has changed a lot over time, with various works being traded in and out as tastes have changed and the weather has taken its toll.

It's true, we never met a set of stairs we didn't like. This is the view down the apse of the floor of the Dumomo itself. There is a lot of neat mosaic tile work in the floor, which we are total suckers for.

Further up the stairs we emerged atop the dome to a gorgeous view over Florence lit golden by the setting sun. Magnificent.

Back down the stairs, we walked the rest of the way to the Arno and grabbed an artsy nighttime shot from the Ponte Vecchio (old bridge.) We grabbed dinner back near the hotel (a great braised beef dish for me and chicken in balsamic reduced to syrup for Mary) and then went to bed exhausted. The plan worked, because we woke the next day refreshed and ready for our trip to Siena.

Driving in Italy proved to be a bit more of an adventure than we expected. I had been warned about the very aggressive drivers and mentally prepped for them, but nobody told me about their philosophy of how to get around. In the states, you take Street A for a mile, turn on Street B, etc. In Italy, you follow signs to town A, twisting and turning as they prescribe. If you are in a city, then you follow signs towards the soccer stadium or the old town, and woe unto anyone who doesn't know these landmarks.

With some twisting and turning and wandering, we did manage to find a place and verify (in broken Italian, over a delicious gelatto) that we could legally leave the car there overnight. We hoofed it with our stuff to the hotel (having bought a detailed map from the newsstand) and to our delight found it to be in a gorgeous old building with a lovely garden overlooking the Tuscan countryside. Beautiful. The hotel also had all sorts of fun little touches, like these lions holding up the 'ropes' that serve as hand railings for the stairs. Fun!

Man, that guy is about to get messed up!

One of the problems of having an eye for the absurd is that we tend to get fun pictures like this, but to completely miss some of the classic ones. This is the only one we took of the fountain atop the Piazza del Campo (literally, the plaza of square) in Siena. D'oh! We did get to see a lot of details from this fountain in the archeological and civic history museum, which was under the museum of the Santa Maria della Scala. This was pretty much three museums in one, and all were neat (though none allowed pictures, a theme that was to prove to persist.) The fountain was made out of a very porous and easily eroded local stone. While convenient, that ended up not doing much for the longevity of it, so the current one is a replica. The pre-restored bits are still in the museum, and it was very cool see see the befores and afters.

This shot of the Duomo in Siena gives a sense of style that most of the big churches went for at the time. Understated! The horizontal stripes on the campanile (bell tower) actually get thinner as they get higher, to give the impression of greater height. Oh those tricky Renaissance architects.

The view out of our hotel window in the morning in Siena, with the mist clinging to the valleys. So amazing. This was the same view the garden afforded us, and we took advantage of that as much as possible in the evenings.

The morning of our first day trip took us to Pienza, which is a little nothing of a town but very cute. When one of its native sons was made pope, he came back and re-cute-i-fied his home town, giving the whole thing a Renaissance makeover. Given that it's all of three blocks by two blocks, it was easier to do than it sounds. We had our first victory on the language front here, buying some Pecorino cheese (the local specialty) from a shop keeper who spoke almost no English at all. The cheese was great with a nice tang and savoriness.

From Pienza we headed to Montepulciano. This is a true hill town, with pretty much the entire thing raked at a pretty severe incline. One does various tricks to deal with that, like having stairs that appear to disappear into the hillside.

Like Venice, Montepulciano had a lot of roads that defied that description. At least here the absurd streets were labeled "Vicolo" rather than the laughable "Via" (little street, versus street.) I am a sucker for a good vicolo and could totally imagine my front door opening on one of these little charmers.

Throughout the trip I kept pointing out to Mary all the great places we could buy and restore. This place, right outside of town though, officially ran away with my heart. Look at it! So adorable! Montepulciano is known for it's wine (Vin Nobil de Montepulciano) so we could totally start our own vineyard! Instead of buying the ruin and making our own wine, we settled for tasting and purchasing a few of the local wines. Full bodied and robust, they were right up our alley.

The Duomo in Montepulciano was fascinating to me. At the time of construction, it was taken to the point where it was structurally sound and could be used for worship, and then left that way. Under all the beautiful facades we saw or would see laid rough brickwork like this. As it turns out, facade-less churches are pretty common in smaller towns. Tarting the church up is always the last and longest step in the construction process, and fortunes often turned by the time this step was reached.

Our return from Montepulciano to Siena resulted in one of our most frustrating adventures ever: Being lost in Siena. Most of the cities we visited had a road that circled the old town, making it fairly easy to fumble your way to where you wanted to be. Not so Siena. We spent 60 - 90 minutes trying to get to our hotel when we returned from our day trip, and it was maddening. We knew right where we were on our map, and right where we wanted to be, but we just could not get from one to the other. Insane. We eventually made it back by following signs to Florence and then redoing our steps from our first arrival in Siena, though that makes it sound much more directed and direct than it was.

The Duomo and Duomo museum in Siena had some pretty cool stuff, including a tower climb that we couldn't resist (that's the Piazza del Campo and the civic tower we failed to climb due to weather above.) It also had very neat inlaid floors including this one, symbolically showing Siena and all its neighbors. Almost the entire floor was covered in symbolic and biblical scenes in this inlaid style, and it was neat and totally unique compared to the mosaic work we've seen elsewhere. Very cool.

The Duomo also has a very intricately carved altar (which would prove to be a theme) including pillars standing on lions standing over their prey. These represent Christianity kicking paganism's butt, and were found all around Tuscany. Those Renaissance sculptors sure disliked paganism.

Off the Duomo in Siena was one of the neatest rooms we saw - The Picolomini Library. This room was covered in frescos, none of which had been restored. These bright colors and detail work? Original and hundreds of years old.

When we returned the car after the trip, we realized that we had complete failed to take a picture of the device that had been such a source of adventure. As a backup, here's a shot of the parking lot we found the first day in Siena. The lot is just outside the Fortezza (fortress) which has since been converted into a park. We strolled the ramparts, had some great wine at a wine bar built into the walls, and got some lovely shots of the city.

We were quite taken with Siena. Of all the places we visited, it was probably our favorite. It had a nice old world feeling, but still felt like a place people lived. That view from the hotel couldn't hurt it either.

As we headed out from town, I grabbed some pictures of the ways the Seinese deal with living on three hillsides: They attach blocks of wood to the downhill legs of their chairs and tables.