Archive for January, 2008
i know all there is to know about the writing game
My dear blogging buddy Jen of A2eatwrite has organized an amazing project called “The Writing Game.” You may have noticed the button over there on my sidebar? Well here’s what it’s all about:
Each person who wants to play sends Jen story ideas, character descriptions, and a conflict. Jen then randomly swaps these lists among the participants so that each person has a blogging buddy and writes something based on his or her buddy’s ideas.
I was matched up with one of my favorite bloggers who I can’t wait to meet in person when she moves to Rome and who gave me a fantastic set-up, characters, and conflict. Grazie mille NYC/Caribbean Ragazza!
Below is just a taste of my story entitled For Love or Garlic.
Go here to read the rest of my story on The Writing Game blog and see NYC/Caribbean Ragazza’s original ideas. And don’t forget to let me know what you think either here or there (or everywhere)!
Also, while you’re over at The Writing Game, take a look at the rest of the stories (each with different plots, themes, ideas) from this edition of The Game, and start thinking about your ideas to join up next time!
For Love or Garlic
I can’t believe it’s 2 a.m. and we’re stuck within nose-shot of the garlic capital of the world, thought John as leaned back against the front bumper of his Mercedes. He zippered up his new lightweight jacket, one that was never meant to weather any actual weather, and crossed his arms in front of him.
“It’s not my fault, you know,” Melinda yelled through the passenger side’s open window. They had been together for 10 years and she knew what John was thinking by the way he sighed as he looked toward the sign pointing the way to
She pulled her head back inside the car and wrapped her scarf a little tighter.
The studio head didn’t agree, though, and John had to endure finding cloves of garlic on his desk for many months after he suggested the idea. Of course those silly pranks were better than his eventual reward of a brand new although garlic-free desk at a different studio with a boss 15 years his junior.
With the young buck to compare himself to, John increasingly felt as if his own 45 years were speeding toward the half-century mark like a getaway car.
Getting away from what was the question he struggled to answer.
The mere sight of the
Besides, there was definitely something pungent in the air.
* * * * *
Be sure to click through to read the rest of my story For Love or Garlic.
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[tags] the writing game, fiction writing, writing, gilroy, garlic[/tags]
Banana & Nutella Cake for World Nutella Day 2008
***Be sure to check out NutellaDay.com for the most up-to-date info!***
Well you had to know that a What’s Cooking Wednesday recipe with Nutella was coming up . . . World Nutella Day 2008 is less than a week away!
Don’t forget to post your entry on your blog and send the link and photo to nutelladay [at] nutelladay [dot] com by February 4th to be included in the big round-up!
Yesterday my co-host of World Nutella Day 2008 Sara of Ms. Adventures in Italy posted her experiment with Nutella and a variety of fruits. Go see Sara’s recommendations on which fruits “go” with Nutella and which are, ahem, better off as just friends.
Sara’s post got me thinking about my own World Nutella Day contribution from last year, which was a very understated slice of banana on a Nutella-coated cracker sprinkled with nutmeg.
I wanted to bake something this year but I still love that banana and Nutella combination, so I turned to my trusty Louise’s Banana Cake recipe that I posted a while back and kicked it up a notch. With Nutella, of course.
Banana & Nutella Cake
1 c mashed bananas (2 medium, overripe)
1 1/2 c sugar
1 c vegetable shortening
3 eggs
3 c flour
1 tsp salt
1 tsp baking powder
1 1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 c sour milk (add 2 tbsp of lemon juice or vinegar to sour it)
1 1/2 tsp vanilla
1 c chopped nuts (optional)
1 small jar of Nutella (drinking glass size!)
Mash bananas and set aside.
Mix together sugar and shortening, and then add eggs and beat until pale yellow.
Mix together the dry ingredients, and then add them to the sugar/shortening mixture, alternating with sour milk and vanilla. Batter will be thick.
Add bananas and the nuts if you’re using them, and beat until blended.
With this batter, I made a loaf cake and about 20 mini-cupcakes. First I filled half the loaf pan with batter and then spooned Nutella length-wise down the middle, swirling it with a toothpick as such:
Then I poured more batter on top until the pan was 3/4 full and repeated the Nutella swirling process again. FYI, this used up about half the jar of Nutella. If you like more Nutella in there, by all means, go right ahead and swirl away!
For the mini-cupcakes, I filled the cups 3/4 full and then put a dollop of Nutella on top and swirled it around così:
Bake at 325°F (162°C).
If baking a 13 x9 cake, it should take about 45 minutes; my loaf pan took about 45 minutes as well. The mini-cupcakes took about 20 minutes at this temperature, but always be sure to test–remove when the tops springs back from the touch and/or when a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.
Buon appetito and remember to send your World Nutella Day entries to nutelladay [at] nutelladay [dot] com by February 4th to be included in the round-up!
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[tags]nutella, nutella day, banana cake, recipes, baking, what’s cooking wednesday, bananas[/tags]
Voting from Abroad in Italy (for Democrats)
We’ve discussed what’s going on in the Italian political sphere, so it’s only fair that I also talk about my homeland, the United States, in this extremely important election year.
Some of you have asked whether I, as a dual Italian-American citizen, can vote in American elections as well as Italian–and the answer is yes. And up until this year, all I had to do was ask for my absentee ballots in time.
FYI, in order to get absentee ballots and vote the old-fashioned way, Americans living abroad can visit the Federal Voting Assistance Program or the Overseas Vote Foundation for specific state requirements.
But this year, there’s another option, at least for Democrats.
If you’re a Democrat, you can, for the first time ever, vote *online* in the Democrats Abroad Global Primary. If you’re in Italy, you can also vote in person in Rome, Florence, Milan, or Bologna. See DemocratsAbroad.org for more details.
If you’re a registered Republican, though, this option isn’t available to you just yet so you’ll have to go the absentee route.
Now, who should you vote for? Well if you’re still undecided, there are plenty of online quizzes that will match you up with the candidate whose views are closest to yours; my favorite is from Glassbooth.org.
You’re given 20 points to allot among a list of issues depending on how important they are to you, and then you answer a series of more specific questions.
Click! And you have the candidate whose views are most similar to yours.
How’d I do? Of the remaining candidates, Mike Gravel and I are apparently peas in a pod at 85%–who knew? I hadn’t even heard of him until I took this quiz. Quite depressing actually.
Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and I meet at the 74% mark, while John Edwards and I agree 73% of the time.
I have to be honest. I’m not uber-excited about any of the candidates (I would’ve loved to have voted for Dennis Kucinich or Joe Biden . . . or Al Gore!), but I do know I’ll be voting Democrat in November. After all, I am pretty much what you’d call a Yellow Dog Democrat and proud:
That’s for you Cherrye!
No matter who you’re supporting, BE SURE TO VOTE!
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[tags]elections, presidential election, presidential primaries, voting overseas, voting abroad, glassbooth, democrats abroad, yellow dog democrat[/tags]
heath ledger: 1979-2008
I wasn’t planning on writing a post about this, but I just have to. I was literally lying awake the other night thinking about the sudden death of Oscar nominated actor Heath Ledger, so I knew I’d have to write.
Because that’s what I do when I need to work through something.
And seeing as though nearly a week has passed since Ledger’s death but it hasn’t strayed far from my mind for more than a few minutes at a time, clearly I need to work through this.
I wasn’t a particularly huge Heath Ledger fan, and I’m not one to be emotionally involved in the lives of celebrities in general, so what’s the deal here? Why does the mere thought of his smiling face send me into an emotional downward spiral?
I don’t know how many 28-year-olds die every day in the world. However many it is, it’s too many, and each one of those deaths is tragic. But it’s Ledger who has made me stop and look squarely at death.
Death that comes at all ages, sometimes when we expect it, but more often when we don’t.
And I think of Ledger’s 2-year-old daughter Matilda, who, by all accounts, he simply adored. Indeed, being a father was a “cosmic” experience for Ledger–and it showed to anyone who caught of a glimpse of him and his little girl around New York City.
And then I think of his former fiancée and mother of his child, Michelle Williams, just four years younger than I am, raising her daughter in a world without Ledger.
Obviously I don’t know what happened between them, but as their split is only a few months old after three years and a child together, well, I have to believe that there are still a lot of deep feelings involved. My heart truly goes out to her–and to all young parents who have lost their partner in raising a child.
It’d be nice if the media would leave Williams and her daughter alone right now, but we know that won’t happen.
Here on the homefront, P didn’t know precisely who Ledger was until I pointed him out (P’s not great with names of foreign actors), but once he realized who Ledger was, P, too, was drawn into a pool of sadness–very unlike him, might I add. He’s not what I’d call into the whole celebrity gossip scene.
“Sono sempre i migliori quelli che se ne vanno,” he said while shaking his head–the rough Italian equivalent of “only the good die young,” a sentiment that Robin expressed the other day as well and to which I replied that I couldn’t help thinking of Natalie Merchant’s song “River” about the tragic death of 23-year-old River Phoenix in 1993. Not all the lyrics apply, but they’re pretty close to how I feel about Ledger’s situation as well.
A piece from the The Huffington Post written by Star Jones entitled Reporting on the Dead also does a good job.
Toxicology reports and the final word on what caused Ledger’s death will be coming in soon, but honestly, it doesn’t matter to me what killed him–unless, of course, it was, as suspected, a fatal prescription drug combination that others may learn from.
What I mean is that no matter how Ledger died, his life, his work, his passion, his down-to-earth way of living touched millions of people, and perhaps in death, he’s reaching out to even more of us.
I still can’t put my finger on why this has affected me so deeply, but I know that others feel the same way. Even though they didn’t know one another, actor Daniel Day-Lewis couldn’t get Ledger off his mind during an interview with Oprah Winfrey during which he was supposed to be discussing his Oscar nomination for There Will Be Blood:
“I didn’t know him. I have an impression, a strong impression, I would have liked him very much as a man if I had. I’d already marveled at some of his work, and had looked forward so much to seeing the work that he would do in the future.”
I think this sums up how a lot of us feel about Ledger–he just seemed like a guy you’d love to hang out with at the pub and yet also someone who took his work, his craft, and his family so seriously that you couldn’t have anything but respect for him as a man.
And I do hope this remains his legacy. He deserves nothing less.
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[tags]heath ledger, michelle williams, river phoenix, daniel day-lewis[/tags]
italy’s government falls…again
Last night Prime Minister, er Former Prime Minister, Romano Prodi lost a confidence vote in Italy’s Senate after he had easily won in the Chamber of Deputies, the lower house. You can read details about what happened here and read my friend Paola’s take (with which I happen to agree) on the whole thing here (in English).
FYI, the lead-up to the vote included spitting, fainting, and one senator being taken out on a stretcher. And yes, those are Prodi’s oh-so-mature opponents popping the bubbly just after the results were announced in the above photo. They were actually scolded on live television by Senate President Franco Marini who told them to put away the bottle as “We’re not in an osteria.”
So what does this mean? Well we could be looking at either an interim caretaker government (which just might be led by . . . Prodi) *or* a so-called snap election.
Because goodness knows what Italy needs is more elections. It’ll be up to President Giorgio Napolitano to decide.
As Eric Reguly notes in this article, this turn of events opens the door for the return of Silvio Berlusconi, Former Prime Minister, billionaire, controller of a large chunk of Italian media, and, in some political circles, the Anti-Christ, as the leader of the Bel Paese.
On a personal note, this could also mean that I’d get to vote for two countries’ leaders in one year.
Still, I’d prefer the interim government to give President Napolitano a bit of time to fix the electoral system so that fewer parties would be able to spit (literally as it turns out) and fight for control in Parliament. The last election put 40 different parties in there, which turned into a lot of power struggles, strange bed fellows, repeated confidence votes, and general chaos.
Ah, and a fallen government.
Kinda feels like déjà vu all over again, doesn’t it?
The last time Italy’s government fell eleven months ago, I posted this and suggested we all turn to alcoholic children’s snacks to ease our pain.
But I say we up the ante.
I hear that Hershey’s is making some mints whose packages resemble street packets of cocaine–although not for too much longer, so hurry and grab yours today! Talk about an Ice Breaker!
Click here for a photo on the off-chance that you, too, had no idea what a mint that resembles a street packet of cocaine might look like.
And that’s all I have to say about that.
Buon weekend a tutti!
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[tags]italy, italian government, romano prodi, silvio berulsconi, confidence vote, giorgio napolitano, politics, hershey’s, icebreakers[/tags]
Michelle Kaminsky is an American attorney-turned-freelance writer who lived in her family's ancestral village in Calabria, Italy for 15 years. This blog is now archived.
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