Last Year at This Time…

14 Sunday Jun 2015

Posted by bonniehull in Just visual, Modern Life, Trips, Uncategorized

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No trips for us this summer…too much work to do…but we are thinking fondly of LAST summer when we repaired to a villa in Umbria with George, Jennifer and Fanny for a pretty fun and luxurious week which looked like this…(I’m trusting even my most stalwart readers can’t remember back this far…). R and I started in the countryside and then headed to Florence…To see some art and to meet up with George, Jennifer and Fanny…

and then we took off for the villa…

Though my photos seem to be all food oriented, we DID do things other than eat and drink…

Italy 2014: Postscript

19 Thursday Jun 2014

Posted by bonniehull in Architecture, Art work, Just visual, Modern Life, Trips, Uncategorized

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Firenze, Garga, Italian food, Italy, Jackson Pollock at Palazzo Publico, travel, trips

So after the Umbrian idyll and saying good bye to loved ones we headed…

yep…back to Florence for two lovely days. We found the restaurant Garga right near our hotel…I’d taken a cooking class from Sharon back in 2001 when the restaurant Garga was on Via del Moro…and we had a fabulous dinner…

ending with this amazing dessert…sort of a decadence (flourless chocolate) in olive oil with rosemary…this I HAVE to try…(or Sally, can you do this wonderfully???)

We looked at a couple of modern/contemporary things that were fun. When we had gone to see the Pontormo/Rosso Fiorentino show earlier in the trip…

the ticket also was good for a photo show of contemporary photographers from around the globe on the subject of family. There were still photos, video, and R’s favorite, an “environment” with a mid-century modern feel…

which I liked because the table settings were embroidered onto the cloth…(and I spent the whole trip embroidering–more on that later)

we walked slowly toward the Piazza della Signoria…

and since it was 97 degrees we stopped at Rivoire and paid an absolute fortune for a salad…but the view was good….

and we noted there was a Jackson Pollock drawing show at the Palaazo Publico…what????

So we headed over and while R stood in the LONG line for tickets, I stood in the courtyard and watched people taking photos…too much fun…

so I got into the spirit of it…

and then the Pollock show. Well, you had to wind through all of the historic exhibits…including the Hall of 500 where it is thought there is a Leonardo fresco of the Battle of Anghiari under one of the Vasari paintings…

but FINALLY we reached our goal…a lovely and small selection of Pollock’s work from the late 30’s and early 1940’s (he died in 1956) which was terrific to see. Now keep in mind, photography is STRICTLY forbidden…first the show was “dropped” into a big historic building in an interesting way…

and I got these two…(with my phone)

and was ABOUT to go for a photo of the wonderful little set of four small paintings from the mid-late 30’s which delighted the art historian, when the photo police got me. Nice show.

Even a recuperative gelato couldn’t help us as the temperature was 98. We staggered back to the hotel and decided on Chinese takeout for our last meal in Italy…

followed by a shower in one of the new type of Italian bathrooms…all slippery tile, beautiful, but nothing at all to hold on to, no grab bars, and the tubs all a foot higher than the floor of the room…thank goodness for crocs…scary…

and the next morning we folded back into the airplane and headed home…(BTW six inches from my nose to the seat back in front of me of course, fully reclined …)

The next morning we headed to Court Street Dairy lunch for an early breakfast…

and a tour of our garden, which had gone completely crazy while we were gone…

Good to go, good to come home…

Italy 2014 Part 1: Colle di Val d’Elsa

14 Saturday Jun 2014

Posted by bonniehull in Art work, Coffee art, Modern Life, Roger Hull, Trips

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Coffee, Colle di Val d'Elsa, Colle Vilca Crystal, drawing in Italy, Italian Art, Italian food, Italy, Monsanto Vineyard, Penzani Pecorino cheese, Willamette Alumni Tour 2014

Our 2014 Italian adventure is complete, and what a trip it was. Though I started posting from “the road,” it became clear there was only enough time and energy to “live in the moment.” There WAS enough time and energy to take a ton of photos though…phew. The first half of the trip was with the lovely alumni group from Willamette University, as noted in the last post. They were intrepid, funny, nice, interesting, lively. Varied. The Alumni trip does more “cultural exploration” and less art-looking than the Hull/Birnbaum “Studies in Florence” 1979-2005, but they got to Sienna Cathedral and Museum to see Duccio’s Maesta, Simone Martini and Ambrogio Lorenzetti in the Palazzo Publico, and finally, a long and intense Hull tour through the Uffizi in Florence. Note on art photos: Italy absolutely doesn’t allow photography in museums and churches…what I took was on the sly. Interestingly our guide mentioned litigation in play now that might make it illegal to keep people from photographing.

There is no coherent way of organizing this really so just come along if you can…I’ll try for the usual text-light, image-heavy. Other people’s vacations can be pretty deadly…it’s just an archival habit I have. Once I’ve set this in motion I’ll move to just images and let you guess what we were doing. The plane left late…and flew over familiar territory…

Over the next week we visited a cheese factory where they made Pecorino Senesi…a sheep’s milk cheese milder than Pecorino Romano that we mostly get in the US. We visited the Monsanto winery where the most amazing thing was the encyclopedic cellar including a small niche for each grandchild…100 bottles put down on each child’s birthday and held until they are 21…we saw lead crystal being blown at Colle Vilca, we saw an interesting very old fresco just unearthed with people grouped around the fertility tree…don’t miss what the hanging fruit might be…here we go:

…and off go our new friends. We repack and head to Umbria.

Risotto

20 Sunday Apr 2014

Posted by bonniehull in Recipes, Salem, Think local, Uncategorized

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Fitts Seafood, Italy, Recipes, risotto, shrimp broth

Well, I’m beginning to think Italian thoughts, as we get organized for our trip this spring. The other day I felt the “Spring trajectory” cross the “Italian trajectory” in my head and…presto…RISOTTO! Our totally terrific local fish store FITTS SEAFOOD makes wonderful broth…halibut, chicken, fish stock and shrimp broth. They make the broth there at Fitts Seafood and it has no added sodium…very important to us. So I decided on a shrimp risotto as I had some fresh asparagus, fresh peas, carrots, and the desire to try the shrimp broth.

INGREDIENTS:

1 TBLSP OLIVE OIL

1 CLOVE OF GARLIC, MINCED

1 SMALL SHALLOT FINELY CHOPPED

1 CUP CARNAROLI (ARBORIO) RICE

1/2 CUP DRY WHITE WINE

3 CUPS STOCK (IN THIS CASE I USED SHRIMP BROTH)

1 PINCH OF SAFFRON (or use 1/4 tsp turmeric…cheaper but colorful)

1 TSP LEMON ZEST

JUICE OF ONE LEMON

1/3 CUP GRATED PARMIGIANO OR ROMANO CHEESE

3-4 SPEARS OF FRESH ASPARAGUS, BUT INTO 1/4 INCH PIECES

1/2 FROZEN PEAS (DON’T THAW)…I USED FRESH…

I ADDED A BIT OF CARROT…ORGANIC, CHOPPED FINELY…

FRESH SHRIMP…I served 4 whole shrimp per serving…

DIRECTIONS:

1. Remove tails from shrimp and in a small bowl combine with a little olive oil, a splash of white wine, a squeeze of lemon juice, one small clove of freshly minced garlic, pepper. Set aside to marinate.

2. Heat broth in a small pan.

3. In a good sized pan heat olive oil over medium heat and saute garlic and shallots, stirring until fragrant.

4. Add rice to pan stirring for a few moments to coat rice. Add wine and half a cup of the broth. Stir frequently until most of the broth is absorbed. The trick with risotto is to keep the heat slightly under medium and to pull the spoon or spatula across the bottom of the pan until the liquid is absorbed and the bottom of the pan is revealed as you bull the spoon across it. Add another 1/2 c. of the broth…etc. until all the liquid is absorbed (about 20-25 minutes).

5. Meanwhile (within 10 minutes of the risotto being ready): in a small skillet heat 1 TBSP olive oil and a tiny bit of unsalted butter and saute the asparagus (and the carrots and fresh peas)…5-6 minutes until asparagus is al dente…then add shrimp and cook until pink…about 2 minutes per side…

6. When risotto is finished, remove pan from heat and stir in lemon juice (I started with less lemon juice and added more until the taste was right for us), lemon zest, cheese, asparagus (and other veg) and/or frozen peas…I added a few roasted tomatoes this time as I had them on hand. Plate risotto, top with the shrimp and sprinkle with a bit of shaved cheese…

Serve with a glass of cold white wine and begin planning your trip to Italy…!

Italia…the flip side…

25 Saturday Jun 2011

Posted by bonniehull in Modern Life, Trips

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graffiti, Italy

I think maybe my discourse has been getting pretty scenic and adorable (and there’s more of that to come) so thought today I’d inject a note about modern Italy…so you can see that it is the combination of things that makes you love it so…the picturesque/the mundane.

If you’re looking for parking in urban Italy you look for the blue and white stripes…

There are interesting and often mysterious signs everywhere warning you about things:

When a building is being renovated they often post a gigantic life-sized photo of the building

Advertising is not sedate…(this one was in a city park)

Tourists need their favorite treats, in this case Pringles and “Coca” light

…and hey…what about those carabinieri???

Pigeons rule…

tee shirts are cool

Coaches are everywhere, sometimes with interesting names that leave you guessing as to their point of origin…

…this was a sentimental one for me…I went to NEW Trier high school…who knew there was really a Trier!? (…I did actually know that…)

Tourists love to take pictures of each other for their Christmas cards

…and other reasons…

There’s been a new invention to block off certain streets:

Graffiti is everywhere…

You can get a good coffee and a panini anywhere…

Italia 2011

22 Wednesday Jun 2011

Posted by bonniehull in Coffee art, Modern Life, Uncategorized

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Coffee, Cortona, Frankfurt, Italy

Amici! Home at last with a few tales to tell…guess maybe I’ll drag it out… in installments?

Leaving Portland at the end of May we checked the Louis Bunce mural of 1956 in the airport, once so controversial…now just plain beautiful…

had our last American coffee

and then jumped onto the plane where we were folded tightly, like living origami cranes, and inserted into our tiny economy seats. The new feature this year is that everybody has their own tv screen…AND they have cameras all over the plane (yes…a bit unsettling in case of loss of an engine or something…) so here was our take-off

after which there were snacks (thinking here of Mr. Hawkinson…)

movies, meals, pain, suffering…half way there

Eventually the first tortuous leg of the journey was completed and we arrived in Frankfurt airport getting to our gate only to discover the pilot had a nosebleed and our flight was cancelled…oh. We felt a little like theses guys…we’d been left hanging

but Florence found some hideous coffee from a machine

and we changed gates a few times

Chaos reigned

By the time we got on the plane to Bologna…wait! Weren’t we going to Firenze??? We began to hallucinate and see faces

but after planes and buses and 34 hours we finally arrived late at night for a mid-night supper and then a quick view of the beautiful Val di Chiana from Cortona…AHHH

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On The Way

Tag Archives: Italy

Last Year at This Time…

Italy 2014: Postscript

Italy 2014 Part 1: Colle di Val d’Elsa

Risotto

Italia…the flip side…

Italia 2011