What Fills My Plate

                                                       I dedicate todays’s  blog to all Americans who complain about the so-called poor service provided by their postal service. Today I have to mail a  letter to America. I dread this experience!  Postal workers in Italy do not pick up mail at homes, they only deliver.   Lines at the Post are long, and service snail-like, and I learn all over again to appreciate my postal service in the states. Italian post offices are nothing like what is found in the states but a more complex affair, more than the  mailing and picking up packages.   It is a government mailing and banking system combined.   The colossal problem is that most everyone pays their sewer, lights, gas, water, and television tax bills at the post. Not only do we pay bills here  but while  standing in line, one can view a catalog of goods where they can be purchased through the mail clerk. Purchases, such as a cell phones complete with monthly service, a televisio

In the past few years we have been able to watch Anthony Bourdain shows through our Italian tv provider.  Bourdain always reminds me of the nitwit who sits in the back of the class and mugs the teacher with zingers.  He is a smart ass and gets away with it.  He is honestly funny. Yet Bourdain, through his books and food/travel shows has become the Mickey Mantle of food and travel television, belting program homers that has built a pile of cash, some of which will open a huge New York food court, featuring foods of the world. Travelling vicariously with him to Istanbul, Prague, Paris, and just about everywhere else on my own personal bucket list his programs make for great entertainment.   Last December while we were in Istanbul we actually made a pursuit of a few of his eateries that had a favorable impression after watching his program.  The few we found turned out to be a foodie windfall. He attempts to convince his audience that when venturing abroad it is most important

                                                Today is Wednesday and I need to remember that, especially this afternoon.  The reason is that in my village and throughout the Veneto almost all the food shops will be closed in the afternoon.  I can’t tell you how many times I have forgotten this hard and fast rule, walked to my supermarket and found it closed up and dark inside.      This fundamental decision by shop owners is a tradition followed so that the workers could have a half day off, mostly as they also work all day on Saturday.  Therefore, after 12:30, one can expect to find a closed shop and if you are out of butter as I am today, you better head to the store in the morning.        Another tradition is that on Monday mornings the stores that sell clothes, appliances or mostly anything except food will be closed in the morning.  The same reasoning holds here, that the workers and shop owners need a half day off since they work on Saturday.      The workers in s

                    Take a moment and picture a  bottle of wine on an Italian table.          In this vision do you see a red and white checkered table cloth?  What could be more Italian than that?   The bottle, is the bottom partially covered with woven straw? That bottle of chianti is sold in the states, and you have seen that red and white checkered table cloth a hundred times in movies and restaurants in America.  These are the symbols in our minds of Italy.  We can almost smell the food!      Funny thing is that in 6 years of living in Italy I have only seen one red and white table cloth for sale.  For 6 years I kept my eye open hoping to find it, and finally in my "Thursdays only" village market it appeared.        Let's talk about that romantic bottle of wine, wrapped in straw.  It is the symbol of past days where life was slower,y et identified as one of the worst Italian wines sold in America.  In the Veneto where I live, that bottle can be found, but no

                            Busting stereotypes!   Those romantic views, created by Hollywood and the media, the red and white checkered table cloths,  the romantic accordion player in the piazza, the huge pile of sauce on spaghetti, the heavy use of wine at gatherings, all are illusions that now litter the   floor of my reality. They are busted like a frozen 45rpm dropped from a 20 story building,   If you are old enough to know what a 45 was. My new reality is where this blog will be, through my life in a small village near Venice.  This blog will be about the Italians I know, how they think, how they live, eat, travel, see and celebrate their life in our world.