A Postal Quiz

This time of year most government departments are involved in charity campaigns.  What was once a simple canvasing of colleagues for donations has given way to some very elaborate ways of raising money for various local and national charities.  I was working briefly at Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC) the past few weeks and their bake sale included one of the most delicious Niagara Grape pies I've ever tasted.  And the bon-bon skewers that the Candy Ladies sold later in the week were a visual and taste delight.  

The good folk over at CIC International Region (the section Laurent is part of) came up with the idea of a cookbook with recipes contributed by Officers and their spouses who had served in Embassies around the world: Chefs without Borders/Chefs sans frontières.

You may recall that this past April I tried my hand at making Pasteria using my friend Marco's mother's recipe.  Marco had helped his mother make this Napoletane Easter dolce since he was a child so he gave me it to me not from a book but from memory.  Deciding exactly how much "a little but some is required" actually was became an adventure which I shared at that time - and thank god I did because Marco saw the photo of the ingredients and immediately sent me an SMS just before I added enough orange flower essence to make 20 pasterie!  Well after all he had said 3 bottles - he just didn't say what size!  Fortunately the end product met with everyone's - including Marco's - approval so I must have done something right.

So I decided it would be a great recipe - even in its slightly unscripted state - to submit from our household.   Once it was published I felt it was only right that Marco get a copy of the book that included a recipe that I'm sure will be followed this coming Easter in many Foreign Service quarters.

So last Friday - October 21st - Laurent put it in a large envelope and consigned it to the tender combined mercies of Canada Post and PosteItalia.  The big question was "how long would it take to get there?"  Well today marks the 5th day since it was stamped and sent on its way.  Marco has been forewarned and is on the lookout for it.  In the meantime I thought I'd take a little poll of my faithful reader.  How many days do you think will fly by before it reaches his doorstep?

How many days will it take for the cookbook to reach Marco?

We were asked to share any culinary secrets we had learned in our posting abroad and I shared the lessons I had learned during our four years in Italy:

Four years in Italy taught me that simple is better and fresh is best; and the eye, the nose, the finger and the mouth are the best tools any cook can have in the kitchen.

25 ottobre/October - Santi Crispino e Crispiniano

"Quote ... Unquote"

I was down in Centro earlier this week meeting blog buddy Danny for a coffee - we're trying to get together again before he leaves but he's here for his brother's wedding and the weekend has been filling up for both of us. Since I was downtown I figured I'd drop into Feltrinelli International Bookstore and see what was new. I should know better - I came out with four books (all paperback)and a Mastercard receipt for $80.00. Paperback books in English here run about $2 - 5 dollars more expensive than listed on Amazon Canada.

So why not get them shipped over? Two words: Italian Bureaucracy. This is the likely scenario:

1. The parcel is sent from Canada to Rome
2. Thence PosteItalia sends it up to their Customs Centre in Milan
3. I will receive an invoice telling me how much I owed the State for daring to bring something into the country
4. I take the statement to a Post Office - in the morning only as there are only two that I know of that are open all day, except of course from 1 pm until 4 pm when they are closed for lunch.
5. I line up and when I reach the window will no doubt be told I am in the wrong line and directed to another line-up.
6. When I reach that window - if it really is the right one and the employee is not going on coffee - I buy the equivalent in stamps to the customs duty
7. I send the invoice back to Milan in the envelope provided - not stamped so I better remember to buy one - at another window.
8. I receive a notice in the mail that the parcel can be picked up at the local post office - in the morning only.
9. I pick up a parcel of books with pages yellowed by age and print faded by time and find that they have since been republished with corrections and additions.

Think I'll just pay the extra - it will give me one less thing to whine about!

One of the books I had gone in looking for was Bill Bryson's Shakespeare and as you can probably tell it was there. I tend to be leery of books where the author's name is four times the font size of the title (you know Danielle Steele, Jackie Collins, Dan Brown) but Bryson is normally a good read and the reviews had been generally positive. Well so far nothing new has come up but as I suspected it is a good sitting-in-the-shade-sipping-a-cool-drink Summer read.

Faced with a wealth of text but a poverty of context, scholars have focused obsessively on what they can know. They have counted every word he wrote, logged every dib and jot. They can tell us (and have done so) that Shakespeare's works contain 138,198 commas, 26,794 colons, and 15,785 question marks; that ears are
spoken of 401 times in his plays; that dunghill is used ten times and dullard twice; that his characters refer to love 2,259 times but to hate just 183 times; that he used damned 105 times and bloody 226 times, but bloody-minded only twice; that he wrote hath 2,069 times but has just 409 times; that altogether he left us 884,647 words, made up of 31,959 speeches, spread over 118,406 lines.

I'll take useless Shakespearean Knowledge for 400, Alex.

10 agosto - San Lorezno