la buona cucina americana: macaroni and cheese
Mom is here, and I’m happy to report that things are going swimmingly (although no, we haven’t been to the beach yet). Even though it’s been four years since we’ve been in the same room, it feels like no time has passed at all. Don’t you just love that?
We’re off today for some market action and then to see Cherrye in Catanzaro, but not before I share a recipe with you.
Particularly since my mom is certainly one of my biggest cucina influences, it’s rather fitting that for this round of La Buona Cucina Americana, I’m lucky to have her here helping.
I knew we’d have to make one of my very favorite dishes that remind me of home aka L’America, and that, amici miei, is Macaroni and Cheese. Mac ‘n Cheese. Whatever you like to call it, my mom’s has just six steps and six ingredients: pasta, cheese, milk, butter, salt and love.
I swear to you I could eat this every day of the week and twice on Sunday.
And if that doesn’t convince you how good this is, get this: even picky (read: non-American-food-eating) P loves it! Yeah!
There is an infinite number of variations on this–I’ve been known to spice this up with pancetta and onions, put sliced tomatoes on top and then bake it–but what I’m giving you here is the way my mom makes it, the easy stove top version, ready in just minutes.
And *of course* you can play with the cheese(s), but it may surprise you just how good this version is with plain old “white American” slices (either Kraft or fresh sliced for those of you in America).
Also, happy 3xth birthday to my brother from all of us on this side of the pond–no cake, but, um, you’re welcome to some macaroni and cheese!
Macaroni and Cheese
(serves 4 as main course; many more as side dish)
- 4 cups fusilli or penne pasta
- 2 tablespoons butter
- 1/2 c milk
- 4-5 slices of white American cheese, Kraft for example
- salt to taste
- lots o’ love
1. Prepare pasta in salted boiling water and remove when rather al dente.
2. In the meantime, in a pot big enough to hold all the pasta, melt butter and then stir in milk and cheese torn into pieces on low heat.
3. Drain pasta and add to milk mixture, stirring well to coat.
4. At this point, adjust for all the ingredients and salt (and love!).
5. It is ready when the cheese has melted completely.
6. Remove from heat, cover and let sit for three to five minutes before serving.
Maccherroni con sottilette
(per 4 persone come primo piatto; di più come contorno)
- 250 g fusilli o penne
- 28 g burro
- 125 ml latte
- 4-5 fette di sottilette
- sale q.b.
- tanto amore
1. Mettete al fuoco alto la pentola con l’acqua salata e portatela a ebollizione; quindi buttate la pasta e fatela cuocere piuttosto al dente.
2. Nel frattempo fate squagliare il burro in una pentola abbastanza grande per tutta la pasta al fuoco lento. Agguingete il latte e le sottilette a pezzi.
3. Scolate la pasta e rovesciatela nel recipiente del latte, mescolando bene.
4. A questo punto controllate per tutti gli ingredienti e sale (ed amore!).
5. Il piatto è pronto quando le sottilette sono completamente squagliate.
6. Togliete dal fuoco e portate in tavola ben caldo nello stesso recipiente di cottura. Copritela e fate riposarla per circa 5 minuti prima di servirla.
Buon appetito e buon weekend!
Love Thursday: Strawberry o’ Love
I wasn’t going to blog today (already going to break my 3-day-a-week rule!), but I just couldn’t hold in the love any longer.
Remember Tomato Love from a few weeks ago?
Well now we have some strawberry lovin’ goin’ on around here:
Happy Love Thursday everyone!
no cooking today–
mom’s here!
If you’re looking for What’s Cooking Wednesday, tune in Friday when I’ll be hosting La Buona Cucina Americana . . . and making something American with my mom! She’s here! Woohoo!
But for now, can I interest you in seeing our very first homegrown artichoke? It’s a cross between a normal artichoke and the wild kind, thus the interesting spiky look.
Can you see an unwanted guest? Look closely!
Enjoy your Wednesday my peeps!
La Vucciria Market in Palermo, Sicily
I intended to only write one post combining the markets and gardens of Palermo. When I started it, though, I quickly realized that I can’t. There’s simply too much good stuff to try to cram it all together.
So today won’t be the last Palermonday after all! Today we’ll hit the markets, and next Monday, the gardens, OK? And if you *really* want, perhaps we’ll even explore the Catacombs as well.
So tell me, would you like to see dead people?
Palermo’s markets are famous, and just from what we saw, I have to say–with good reason.
Unfortunately for Cherrye and me, our time in Palermo was limited, so we only had a quick pass through La Vucciria market the morning before we left. The other markets are Capo, Ballarò, and Borgo Vecchio, and then there are tons of little markets, or mercatini, on various days throughout the city.
La Vucciria is split up into food items and then everything else. Here’s a glimpse of part of “everything else”; sorry for the lighting. Didn’t catch the angles of the sunlight well I’m afraid, but you can still get a feel for the streets of the city, right?
There was a lot of nice knock-off stuff that was better quality than at our markets here, and yet I came home with souvenirs from an Indian shop of all places. What can I say? We don’t have any Indians in my village.
The food part was full of lovely sights and smells (except the fish, which doesn’t smell so good). The colors sure were pretty though.
We loaded up on spices but realized later that we should have grabbed some fruit for the train ride home. Lesson learned.
I would go back to Palermo just for the markets, I tell you.
Come back next week for the gardens!
P.S. I should warn my faithful readers that from now until at least early July, I will be cutting back on posting to three times a week. My mom is arriving shortly, and I want to have as much time with her as possible. Woohoo for mom visits!
5 ways to increase blog traffic & make money with your blog
One of the questions I get asked most frequently via email involves how to make money with a blog, so I decided to write a post about it.
If you’re not the least bit interested in making money from your blog, that’s your choice, and I respect that; it’s certainly a personal decision. But this is a post for those of you who wouldn’t mind having a couple more dollars, euros, pounds, whatever in your pocket each month. I’m far from an authority on the subject, but hey, you asked!
I imagine I get this question because you can see that I have BlogHer Ads, Google AdSense and an Amazon store. I’m not making a fortune by any means, but I am covering my online operating expenses including web-hosting and my Internet service, so I can’t complain.
There are two aspects to the question of how to make money with a blog; the first involves what kind of advertising opportunities are available for blogs.
As mentioned, I use three of them, but for even more options, see Problogger Darren Rowse‘s article How to Make Money From Your Blog – Direct Methods.
[On a side note, search around Darren’s site for *tons* of great advice. Seriously, if you’re interested in making money with your blog, you *need* to subscribe to Darren’s Problogger.]
Since revenue is intricately linked with blog traffic, the next issue becomes how to increase blog readership. There are many ways to increase blog traffic, some which require more time and dedication than others but all likely to get more people reading you and, hopefully, clicking on your ads.
To get you started, here are some helpful articles:
- How to get traffic to your blog (Seth Godin)
- How to build your blog’s readership (Problogger)
- How to Build a High Traffic Website (or Blog) (Steve Pavlina)
- 21 Tactics to Increase Blog Traffic (SEOmoz.com)
- Tips for Building Blog Traffic (Deb Ng’s Freelance Writing Jobs)
Now here are my 5 ways to increase blog traffic:
1. Decide on what your focus will be and stick with it, more or less.
Anyone who has ever taken a writing class has heard “write what you know.” I’ll see that advice and raise it a “write what you like” when choosing a focus (or foci!) for your blog.
How do you choose a focus? Other than picking a topic you enjoy, if there’s something special about you that you can highlight, use it to your advantage as your “hook.”
You don’t *have* to stay on your topic 100% all the time, but do take cues from your readers (like they’re not coming anymore) if you stray too much.
An example of a hook: I live in Italy, so that’s certainly something that draws a certain number of readers to me. Will they come back to the blog only because I live in Italy? Probably not, which is where the next tip comes in.
2. Write quality content.
My best advice? Write posts that you’d like to read. And then proofread. Please! Provide links to other sources for more information. Use photos, either your own or through sites like iStock, Stock.xchng, Creative Commons, etc.
Many of the posts I listed above have more in-depth content writing advice, so do check them out.
A small tip regarding formatting: use paragraphs, more so than you would in normal writing. Seeing white space every so often is pleasing to the eye. Am I saying that I’ll skip over large blocks of text even if it’s award-winning? Well, yeah. My Internet attention span isn’t the longest, and I’m not likely to keep returning to a site that won’t give my eyes a rest no matter how much I might like what the writer is saying.
3. Visit blogs in your niche and—capital letters here—COMMENT.
How do you find more blogs like yours *and* blogs that have readers that might be interested in reading yours too? Blogrolls and comment sections of other blogs like yours are great places to start. Another tip is to go the Technorati page of blogs like yours or blogs you enjoy and see who has linked to them.
Now, go visit blogs and get your blog name out there by leaving quality, insightful comments (more than just “Great post!” is advised), and people will get curious and come and visit you.
A small tip here: I sign my comments “Bleeding Espresso.” Why? Because if I use “Michelle,” would that make you click over and see my blog? Perhaps, but “Bleeding Espresso” is much more likely to entice someone. Yes, I could also do “Michelle of Bleeding Espresso,” but that’s more typing, and time is money peeps!
*EDITED: I find myself going with “Michelle of Bleeding Espresso” more often; I think it’s better for when commenting on new blogs since it gives people a name to go with the blog name and in most commenting forms, the information is stored anyway, so no typing and retyping (so no time-wasting either).
Now please don’t take this to mean that you should be visiting blogs willy nilly and leaving your mark like a dog. Too graphic? Ahem. Then how about this? Take time to read the posts of your fellow bloggers, carry forward an online conversation, and you will be rewarded with more visits.
4. Enable comments and put a contact form or email address on your blog.
This is a personal preference, and you may feel differently, but here’s my take: I rarely, rarely read blogs that won’t let me comment and/or that don’t give me a way to contact the author.
Ever been around someone who only talks about himself/herself? Blech.
In conjunction with this, respond to comments you receive, messages through your contact form, and emails. I don’t like being ignored, and I don’t think my readers would like it either. You don’t have to respond to every comment, but letting your readers know that their opinions matter will encourage them to return and make your site feel more like a community.
5. Participate in blog events, social bookmarking/networking, etc.
I’m sure you’ve heard this before, but it’s true: blogging is a community, and the more you’re involved, the more traffic will come your way. Of course if you’re lucky you’ll also make some great friends along the way like I have.
Participating in blog events like 5 Minutes for Mom’s Ultimate Blog Party and various food events and groups–especially The Foodie Blogroll–have brought me many readers that may not have found me otherwise.
For more info on social media (places like Digg, StumbleUpon, Twitter, MySpace, Facebook) see (you guessed it) Problogger’s Using Social Media to Grow Your Blog’s Readership.
Now it’s your turn:
Is your blog monetized?
What has worked for you in increasing your blog traffic?
Buon weekend, and be sure to check out My Bella Vita for Cherrye’s
La Buona Cucina Americana recipe–Chicken and Mushroom Quesadillas!
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.
Calabria Guidebook
Recipes
