Tastes of honey and cheese. Together. And then chocolate.
Wait, I’ve been here. This tastes like the flavors of Perugia. In fact, I’m including a photograph of a cheese plate with a palette of regional honey we enjoyed a few years back at Ristorante Gus.
But Central Market is making it easy to get those flavors by focusing on Italy from April 30 to May 13. These snapshots represent a preview of some of the products that will flood the shelves of every department during Passaporto Italia.
This slideshow requires JavaScript.
Tre Numeri Parmigiano Reggiano? Never had heard of seeking this out, but Central Market did and has brought in huge wheels of the prized dairy cheese from Reggio-Emilia. While most cheeses from this region are branded on the outside with four-digit numbers, these are aged 20 to 24 months and are branded with three. Howard cracked open one to taste, and it melts in your mouth.
And why had I never noticed the barrels of amazing balsamic vinegars in the bulk section?
A convenient shortcut to assembling the ingredients for Ragu alla Bolognese can be found in a sleeve, a ready-to-cook mix of beef, pork, pancetta, onion, carrot, celery, tomato paste, seasoning and three bay leaves. The accompanying recipe card launches you onto the course of simmering the ingredients for three hours with milk, Italian red wine and beef stock.
My favorite things previewed were Sous Chef Santiago Flores’ arancini. The prep to make these fried, filled balls of risotto is more than I care to undertake at home so being able to buy them freshly ready-made is wonderful. The two featured are a spring vegetable one and a saffron one with beef marrow. Please keep these on permanently….
Some people see the arroyo of Obraje running through San Miguel de Allende as a squalid ditch, a place to dump household garbage when one fails to heed the bell of the municipal trucks collecting trash. It diverts floodwaters away from Colonia Guadalupe during the rainy season, but during the much longer dry season it serves as a shortcut for many, including children attending one of several schools bordering the arroyo. The area, well below street level, also is a magnet for those engaged in drug deals or other dangerous liaisons. And those armed with spray paint.
Former San Antonian Colleen Sorenson looks at the ditch and sees something different. She sees Paseo del Rio or pathways like those along the Mission Reach of the San Antonio River. The graffiti-covered walls of buildings backing up to the arroyo represent additional blank canvases for more constructive artistic expression. Muros en Blanco, ecologically concerned residents of San Miguel de Allende and city officials began meeting, and change is happening.
This slideshow requires JavaScript.
Bulldozers were clearing away debris in February, when these photos were taken.
According to an article by Antonio de Jesus Aguado in Attencion San Miguel, Edgar Bautista, head of the city’s Urban Development Department, said:
“The perspective is touristic…,” and it fulfills the development goals of the Millenium, the priorities of which are security, health and education. The idea is to turn the arroyo into a patio-garden within the city, a tourism corridor, “in other words, a park that would generate a new ecosystem as important as Parque Juarez.”
Colleen was working on another arts festival, but, in addition to the mural projects lining the arroyo, the event would involve the schools in Colonia Guadalupe and carry strong environmental messages to foster a spirit of community stewardship.
Looking forward to seeing the transformation next time we return….
No matter what, it’s the San Antonio Book Festival’s fault. Writing about some of the authors scheduled to appear there sent me back to a post from long ago about Jake Silverstein’s book, Nothing Happened and Then It Did, which had sent me delving back into The Devil’s Dictionary. Hence the omen reference. Add to that overstimulation from listening to five full sessions of authors talking followed by the Literary Death Match.
National Park Service photo of red-tailed hawk
This past Thursday morning, the Mister and I headed southward for our morning walk. A hawk swooped onto a tree not 15 feet in front of us. It was a newly planted tree on the Eagleland stretch of the San Antonio River, the name of which comes not from sightings of eagles but from the Brackenridge High School’s mascot.
The branches of this 12-foot tree were not big enough to successfully support a hold-onto-your-chihuahua-size hawk; so, before we could even zip out and focus the smartphone, he flew off. While we were fiddling like dummies with the smartphone, the hawk caught something white now dangling helplessly from the hawk’s claws.
I wasn’t thinking omen yet. But a mile or so later on the Mission Reach by Lone Star, we saw another hawk swooping through the sky. We were impressed by a two-hawk day because we rarely even spy one.
But that afternoon, there was a third flying across 281 right in front of me as I headed to a meeting.
Three hawks. Now that seemed ominous to me.
Some people view hawks as messengers. Messengers bearing warnings, not usually glad tidings. I was afraid to even begin to surf the internet to find out what it would mean if three were trying to deliver news to me. I elected to prefer the theory that the hawks just happened to live nearby; it was meal time; and I was passing through their grocery store.
The next afternoon was warm. We had the doors on the second floor wide open. I kept hearing noises, though home alone.
Bravely going back up the stairs to the third floor, I found the source. A sparrow clinging to the shade on the south bank of windows.
I’m thinking omens again. Some people believe a bird flying into your house is a sign of death. I prefer the belief it means a loved one is trying to communicate with you from the grave. That seems more comforting.
Unfortunately, the windows on the third floor do not open. I was pondering how I was going to convince the sparrow to go back down a floor to the open doors when the sparrow spied this:
The bank of windows on the north side. Well, the sparrow went for it as fast as his wings could flap through the length of the house.
Smack. Thud.
I’m thinking serious omen.
A bird breaks his neck flying into your window, particularly while inside the house? Not a good sign. A harbinger of death.
But a break came. A major stroke of good luck. When the sparrow hit the glass, he fell smack into the middle of the trashcan beside my desk onto a soft bed of kleenix, ever-present during this season of pollen.
I was able to cover him with a jacket and cart him out to the back porch. Upon my removal of the cover, he sat there stunned for quite a while. He had been tricked by those very same green leaves once, and, no fool, he wasn’t going to race toward them again. After about 30 minutes, he trusted his surroundings and fluttered home.
Surely that trumped all prior gloomy warnings.
I fretted a bit all weekend but finally decided no news was good news.
Our daughter solved it all inadvertently with an email with this photo attached. Aha, the sparrow must have been trying to tell me there had been a storm in Austin, and a branch blew into their house and smashed a window. Phew.
And then, on the phone later, she told me about the impending death. The Mister’s Infinity that had passed her way was in the process of passing away.
The Mister was sad. He loved that car.
But I was jubilant. Those hawks were only trying to tell me the Infinity was dying. I can handle that. I never even learned to find it in a parking lot; one silver sedan looks just like all the others to me.
I’m not paying attention to messages from birds again though; no matter what that pair of coots on the Mission Reach seems to be trying to say. The foreboding row of dark cormorants perched on the dam won’t scare me.
And those herons and egrets? They and all the other birds who didn’t use to flourish here are only here because our environment is improving everyday as the San Antonio River Improvements Project matures.
The Mister and I just happen to walk right across their dining room table, often interrupting a crawfish feast, as we head southward.
And, that sparrow spared by the bed of kleenix absolutely has to be a sign of good luck.
April 29, 2014, Update: The flock of wild parrots that are spied around Southtown periodically just spent about 10 minutes fluttering around a cypress tree outside my window. Spectacular. Wish they would stay, but I think even that temporal a siting is a good sign.
Postcards from Barton Springs 