Strolling Artists Today

I think, Christmas and New Year feasts are very stressing for the fathers and mothers of the families. Specially in this period of crisis. A cousin of my husband visited me this morning and told me about her "terrible" fate. She has to cook for about 15 persons this evening (and to wash plates after that). And to make gifts. Because those are her children and grandchildren. And 4 friends of her daughter. So, I can understand the man on the photo.



Those, who has not to think too much about the kitchen and the gifts, can take pleasure in walking through the streets and looking different shows presented by strolling artists. You can remember my post of a year ago about one of such shows Christmas Shows In The Streets Of Salerno. Sometimes you can see real troupes and very good performances there. I have not seen them this year (I rarely visit Salerno).



The weather is generally bad this year, it rains always, but some days are shiny, the temperature is high till today, about 16°C, and all beings try to live them as better as possible, in the streets.





Seems, these artists are more happy than persons walking near them...



Finally, if you live in the periferic streets of the old town and don't want to go far in the center, you can speak with S.Claus not far from your house. You had to see the face of these girls when they were near this dancing toy. It had something special. Even I was surprized to see him looking on me.

Feast In The Street

Every feast and maybe every weekend you can find this sort of markets in the streets of Salerno and in all other places of Campania. Normally, there are different little manufacturers that present their creativity. But the "most important" are not them. Everytime you will find these others:



These men (over) sell chestnuts. They fry them on this sort of oven directly in the street.
All others sell sweeties. I guess, they do homage to the tradition selling them. There are many different sorts of much more better bon bons in the shops, and when you see them for the first time, you do not understand who would buy something like this. But these vendors are the part of the culture, and they have to be, where the people celebrate something.

How To Prepare "Pan D'Oro"

We are only some days far from Christmas, so I want to tell you about a special Italian Christmas cake today. Every firm, fabric, group or family buys great quantity of these cakes some days before Christmas for every member of the group.

The Italian tradition is to eat "Pan D'Oro" o "Panettone" during the Christmas feasts. This is a family feast, so every group organizes meetings to create a family feeling for all members.

My story is about "Pan D'Oro"
that is a sponge cake in form of a star. Normally it's sold with a little bag with powdered sugar. Maybe you know about this cake. For me was interesting to see how Italians solve the problem of powder. I could never arrive to cover "Pan D'Oro" evenly with powder.



Shake the bag till the cake becomes white.

Open Italian Spumante that has better taste than Franch Сhampagne, they say

Attention! Don't clink plastic glasses! It's a bad sign!

You are ready. Best wishes to all you, my friends! Happy Christmas!

"The Bear"

Film by Jean-Jacques Annaud

GREAT. I have not other words. Splendid film.

My Italian Recipes. Polenta

The recipes of Italian foods is not the most frequent theme of this blog. In fact, you find only 5 of them in the category Recipes here (but TASTY!). Today I want to tell you about Polenta in my local interpretation.

Probably you know that it's a sort of porridge made with mais flour. But it has special components: Gorgonzola cheese and fresh meat sausages. Well, you can use what YOU like but for me these are the most important ingredients.

So, let's start from the beginning.

I use 250 gr of mais flour, that is ready in 10 minutes. For me is good. I don't like to stay hours and hours near the cooker. Boil it in salted water as is written on the package. Important is here to use this whisk when you strew flour in the water to have very fine porrige. If you forget about it (as I do often) you create too hard work for you after that.

Than we take Gorgonzola and cut it in little pieces. It is not very simple if you have fresh cheese, but it's necessary to do to have the uniform cover of our polenta.



Gorgonzola is not the same as other similar cheeses, but I think, if you like an other cheese too much (ehhh... I like Gorgonzola... you noticed it on the photo, it can't arrive alive from today till tomorrow), you can use what you like. Than you prepare sauce with sausages and tomatoe. It has to be enough liquid, if you want to use it so as in this my case. If you want to add the sause over Polenta, you have to make it more dry. I don't know how I forgot about sausages, so I used sooty pork meat this time. Excuse me.

Now we have everything ready for the last step.

When you cooked polenta and sauce, you set fire in the oven. In 10 minutes it is ready for our polenta.





15 minutes are enough. Just to melt the cheese.



And here we have the result. Unfortunatelly without sausages. With them is much more better. ;-)))
Left it to rest for other 15-25 minutes, so that polenta (mais) becomes harder.
This plate is splendid to use the next day. Warm it in microwawes. The cheese and the sauce becomes more liquid. You can even fry it. Great the same.

Killer Of The Palms

«Долгоносики-заговорщики» на Яндекс.Фотках

I looked among my photos and could not find it. A general view of the seafront palms of Salerno. Who could imagin this photo will be precious testimonial of it's previous beauty and splendor...

Most of that plalms in Salerno and in all the region do not exist more. The workers saw the poor rests of the palms all the autumn, their enormous trunks and leaves, and take them away. And all this because a little insect arrived in Campania.

I don't know if it is the same type of the weevils that you see on the photo, I know there are many species of them. But this one loves palms too much. Red weevil. What it makes with the palms you can see on my photo in the bottom. It distroys the leaf part (a palm in the background) and the palm dies. And so there are all dead palms everywhere you go today. Even here on our hill there are gardens with dead palms now. But the seafront of Salerno had too many of them and the disaster is more distinct.

It's Love!

More photos about first moments, hours and days of our lives made by photograph Lenard Nielsen you can find in this Russian site news.open.by

Flowers Made From Plastic Bottles

Evry year I write about the Christmas decorations in Salerno. And I have to say, the designers and artists are very brave there. Very interesting is that they use simple things for their art. This year they invented to adorn the town with flowers made with plastic bottles.

This little park in the center has an entire corner dedicated to this art. Even if in this period, when the weather is not very bad and the temperature is about 15-20°C, the park is full of natural flowers. The best impression these plastic flowers make in the night because they have lamps inside.

Not only this park, other streets are decorated so too. Here is the Dom street (with the bell tower on the background).



Flowers are very beautiful. And so incredibly easy to create!!!!!!