The Mint Shop

The Mint Shop

Monday 23 January 2012

My ABC of Travel



Mette of Italian Notes has kindly asked me to participate in the "My ABC Travel" Series. Being so non-technical it took me three rounds of emails to understand what I was supposed to do. But here it is!

Monday 16 January 2012

The interiors of Rome

Rome is famous for many things and I don't need to list them. But one thing some people might not be familiar with is its offals, also called "quinto quarto", the fifth part left from the four parts of the animal thus everything else other than the front and the back. These include tripe, lungs, hearts, liver, tail, brain and tongue.

 

(I would like to reassure vegetarians who by now have been taken by convulsions that other type of dishes are also available in Rome like artichokes and courgette flowers - see one of my previous posts. So don't feel disgusted and give up with the idea of eating in Rome!) .

Friday 6 January 2012

Christmas in the land of the fairies


"And another Christmas is over" as my grand-mother would have said. I always feel quite sad about it. Our tree looks so nice that I might be considering the idea of keeping it till Easter (in my sister's style). But I guess it would simply be wrong - and very weird.

On the contrary of most English people who take their decorations down today, we celebrate the 6th January being Epiphany, the day the Three Kings, who got slightly lost or were very slow, arrived to the manger and gave their gifts to Jesus. In some parts of Italy in fact this is the real day when presents are exchanged - whilst Christmas is only dedicated to food and drinking.