Vinegar Buzz

On Satuday we made a quick trip to the Italian Store in Arlington, and purchased goodies including a Star brand jarred sauce with grape tomatoes and their wonderful homemade pizza dough. We used the recipe from Williams-Sonoma Florence and added the paper thin onion and the rocket. Wonderful!

Even better was the salad. Yes, another combination of field greens, lusty extra virgin olive oil, a good vinegar, sea salt, fresh ground pepper and one crushed garlic clove. I think I need to start keeping a list of the best oil-and-vinegar combinations.

This time we were evaluating Goccia Umbra's Aceto Balsamico de Modena, which came packaged together with an olive oil. I chose to combine it with Gourmet Sardinia Fruttato Extra Virgin Olive Oil. The combination was entrancing....award-winning....enough so that I may have to create a chart of the best oil-vinegar-and-greens combination for Olio2go. Perhaps I'll even create the all-salad-diet because I could live on these combinations.

The local middle school has been performing High School Musical this weekend and we saw it last night. It takes guts to do a big show like that while the original is still popular. The kids and their directors are to be commended!

Here's something crazy: I'm supposed to "coach" field hockey this afternoon. I'm the designated parent for our group, and the coach is in Arizona, so the responsibility falls to me. I sure hope those girls all know what they are doing. Most of the parents know that I can usually be found knitting on the sidelines.

The Valentine's Day Snow Day

Two Wednesdays in a row! It's almost like being a kid in Upstate/Central NY. That said, I wouldn't mind being up there for the historic snowfall, reminiscent of the Blizzard of '66 and the snow of 1993. It's getting there that's the problem. For the fun of it, I keep checking the Syracuse.com website, and occassionally, even the forum for Cortland County.

Guess who turned 15 since the last update? Carly! She's off to a good start on her 3rd quarter grades, which is a good thing. We're looking forward to lacrosse tryouts, eventhough she broke a piece of Hardiplank siding last weekend with her lacrosse skills. She's signed up for a field hockey camp at William and Mary this summer.

We had a few friends over for dinner last Saturday night, and once again, we included an Olive Oil Tasting--all extra virgin from Olio2go, of course. The tasting table featured: Gourmet Sardinia Fruttato, Titone DOP, Vittorio Cassini Classico, Olio Beato, and Santisi Novello 2006. Our guests could appreciate the freshness of Santisi, the smoothness of Cassini, and the intensity of Fruttato. Titone was the overall favorite, and I used that for the field greens salad--along with splashes of white balsamic vinegar and red wine vinegar--one clove of garlic.

Our appetizers included a selection of olives (thanks to Wegman's olive bar), marinated mozarella balls (my own creation), peppery cheeses, bread and crackers.

The salad was served as a separate course along with bread from Wegman's and one of their gourmet/European/restaurant butters.

The main course was Tom's specialty --an unnamed pasta dish with chicken, red and yellow bell peppers, and mushrooms in a reduced red pepper cream sauce. Yum.

For dessert, we had another tasting, although unintended it turned out to be fun. I had two chocolate desserts from Trader Joe's the Chocolate Ganache and the Chocolate Decadence. It turned out that everyone wanted a small slice of each, for comparison tasting! I'm not sure we had a clear winner, as both were devoured.

In the world of olive oil, we've had a challenging learning experience in the process of importing. It's been a long journey and the arrival of San Macario Novello continues to be ....imminent. We've had a very helpful customs agent, been held up by Homeland Security, and continue to wait. It left the port in La Spezia, Italy on January 9th. Our pallet arrived at the port of NY on January 25 (I think), and there's been a long wait for release due to the extra inspections. We'll never know what in the container caused the VACIS exam or the complete unpacking of the container.

I hope to spend part of this snow day working on the Constant Contact announcement for the arrival of San Macario, and also working on pages for Olio2go's new web site. Launching soon!

There hasn't been much time for knitting lately, although I finished a scarf on Tuesday morning and wore it the same day. I bought the yarn when Maureen and I journeyed to Uniquities in Vienna on December 30.

Send me an email if you want to know about H e a d L i c e , attitudes about lice, facts about lice, and how to use olive oil to treat lice. Good readings: the Harvard School of Public Health guidance, the American Academy of Pediatrics position, and Virginia School Health Guidelines. It's always helpful to know your own school district's policy. I hope I don't have to speak with any of you on this topic again!

The books: I keep scaning the travel books and am ready for a return to Italy. I'm also continuing to read the Donna Leon mysteries set in Venice. The current book on my nightstand is Death at La Fenice. Before that, I finished Dressed for Death.

It's a good day to bake bread.....and read!

Happy Snow! Happy Valentine's Day... L.