Moose cookie in the snow

The snow seems to be making most people happier: more smiles, hellos and head nods as we slip and slide along the sidewalks together. The snow has made our household absolutely giddy causing us to release our moose cookies to their natural habitat.

More moose photos on Flickr.

Vancouver joins the rest of Canada

Vancouver is under siege by a full-on Canadian winter. Most winters we live in blissful smugness with temperatures that stay well above freezing.

I grew up in the Interior so it’s made me a little nostalgic for my youth. It’s even given me the chance to re-use my 80s leg warmers as boot-top extenders. (I’ve never needed high boots here until now.)

My uncle says all this white stuff is a sure sign that our carbon tax has stopped global warming.

Pizzelle

Pizzelle are one of the few traditional Italian cookies that I can make on my own. But this year I was lucky to have my mom's help with them. We traditionally make them for Christmas. This year we added a "secret ingredient" we picked up in Calabria. Any guesses on what it is?

Making scalille

It's been far too long since my last post. I'll try to get back into the weekly swing and catch up with my Europe trip stories and photos.

About a week after we got back home, mom & dad arrived from their trip to Egypt. They stayed with us for a couple of weeks so they could come to our annual cousins' party. Lucky for me, mom was able to show us how to make scalille (or scaledde, literally, little ladders).

I have fond childhood memories of the epic making of scalille by a kitchen full of nonnas and zias. One of the few things I wanted from my last nonna's house was her board and her scalille stick.



It's a very simple recipe but requires great skill to wind the dough around a stick, creating the final design. These are traditional Calabrese cookies that my family makes at Christmas time. They were a hit at the cousins' party. Yum!

Find my recipe here.

I'm submitting this cookie to Food Blogga's Eat Christmas Cookies event. Check out the amazing cookies on the round-up page!

Free meat

During our afternoon stroll through Warsaw's Old Town, we stepped into a small, local shop to buy some meat & cheese for tomorrow's train trip to Inowroclaw. It's probably the only shop in Old Town that's specifically for locals and where no one spoke English. The woman helping us rattled on and on in Polish but we couldn't understand a thing, except for her cheese chopping hand signs. After we had picked out a few things for our snack bag, she went into a great passionate monologue of which we could only understand "telephone" and her pointing to a piece of paper. She put some free meat into our bag and wrote her phone number for us, while also insisting -- we think -- that we give her our phone number. We did but left wondering if we just exchanged for free meat.

Warsaw Chocolate

A few drops of rain were our excuse to duck into E. Wedel, Warsaw's marvelous chocolaterie. For 12 zlotys each, we ordered the classic chocolate drink that they've been serving for over 150 years. It was the best chocolate I've ever had: thick, rich, creamy and devilishly chocolatey without being overly sweet. AT was right about the Poles and their love for chocolate. The charming place was packed and we seemed to be the only tourists.

Sunday: food, family & churches

Had a late start to the day after an evening of Vin Santo and a morning finding bus tickets for our journey to the deep south of Italy. We raced out to Saint Peter's for a quick peek at the basilica before a fabulously rich lunch with cousins I hadn't seen in over 20 years. Then we walked to a nearby church, which had a long line waiting to get into the the start of a bible reading marathon featuring the pope. The old & new testaments are to be read continuously, lasting about a week. All the porta-potties were set up and ready for the crowds. My eldest zia was anxious to get there but no one was anxious to wait. Then we strolled along the ancient wall of the city, feature some Mussolini additions to build roads through them, ending at S. Giovanni in Laterano -- the pope's main church in Rome.





After the stroll and many stories between the eleven of us, we departed. I wonder if I'll ever see zia again.

A quick coffee and then off to dinner with cousins I've spent much time with but haven't seen in decades. I recognized them by there mannerisms before I recognized the features buried below memories of youth. We had a lovely dinner -- more food, drink and sweets, then parted, sadly.

We head to Cosenza by bus early tomorrow morning so this may be the last post while I seek out Internet access.