Travels With Ringo

Those who are familiar with the sous vide method of cooking will know part of what I am about to reveal. Sous vide cooking involves placing the food, in this case a steak, in a vacuum bag and placing the bag in water that is heated by a special pump that maintains a constant temperature….

I have an E-Bike that I have written about before. I bought it to get exercise and to get around to take pictures. It is not the bike I wanted, it is one that I settled for when the one I wanted did not get to me after two months from the time I placed…

Yes, I am still here but I have not been blogging for many reasons, most of all, I had nothing I felt I wanted to say. Life has been both hectic and mundane at the same time. Part of that is the holiday season and all that that entails. Also, I have been having issues…

I’ve been playing with photos for a few years. At first, like everyone else, I took photos of family and vacations and friends. That evolved to “artistic” photography, mostly by happenstance. The occasional vacation photo that was a little better than the run-of-the mill, bore the shit out of everybody snapshots. That little bit of encouragement…

I have mixed feelings about truffles. I live in the land of truffles and this is truffle season. They are available almost everywhere. The local butcher has them on his counter, as does the green grocer and the local book store and wine shop. They are not cheap at 2000 euro a kilo but they…

When Alice and I first moved to Palermo, with Ringo, I noticed that most food shops had a large part of their display space devoted to pre-cooked or ready to cook foods. A typical butcher shop would have perhaps a quarter of its display with raw cuts of meat and the rest was filled with…

It’s been about 10,000 years since humans figured out that if you grind certain seeds and mix the resulting dust with water and expose that to heat, you get bread. Of sorts. With time somebody decided to make the dough but put it aside for a while, maybe the neighboring tribe came over for a…

The difference between touristing and actually living in a place is the access to the little things that tourists do not have the time to explore. The mundane stuff that brings life to a place. This post covers some of these mundane subjects and hopefully there will be more such posts in time.  Bresaola Toscana…

It has been two months since we pulled up to the front door of the 500 year old villa that is now our home. At least for a little while. After 10 months in Brittany and 4 years in Palermo, Chianti has been a big change. Not a bad change but a big one. Because…

Migraines are somewhat of a mystery to those who have had the pleasure of experiencing them. I’ve had them for as long as I can remember but I didn’t know that they were migraines. Just headaches. There are different kinds of headaches and they have their own characteristics. For example the classic hangover headache typically…