A public showcase where to display a private passion for elegant food, something between innovation and inspiration, tradition and what is inside the fridge. Sharing is the only mean through which solitude, insane competition and egoism may be tamed.
Showing posts with label Valvona and Crolla. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Valvona and Crolla. Show all posts
Never present an alarm clock inside a crocodile to James Hook!
When we move from speech as a non-spoken gift - able to map our world - to gift
as present, we may notice a striking
similarity. When we actually are careful about other human beings, suddenly we
became mindful about their likings. Gift
and present, donation, offer and thought, are somewhat all synonyms, yet
each of them declines the idea of giving
according to different linguistic roots and core-ideas: http://www.etymonline.com/
This episode in the Walt Disney cartoon Peter Pan is particularly touching,
because Peter never came across gifts in his entire life, he is a castaway, he does really ignore
the implications of gifts.
Where to watch Disney Peter Pan in English with caption
The gift is a way-of-being we impress on an
object/a gesture/a segment of time; we
have to uphold an accolade so to nominate (and treat) the object as a gift.
A gift should be a spontaneous message, an opening we produce to witness our
care, as concern or joy. Hence, the gift is opposite to violence: violence is
the act of taking what does not belong to us, giving is abandoning something we
posses to someone else without wishing to have it back, which would be borrowing.
The gift becomes the solid manifestation of the being infused in it: it is the
thought we made while choosing the gift itself, it is the Time we devoted to
the gift, it is the relinquishment of part of us we make over to the receiving
person. Moreover gifts are empowered by the surprise effect that doubles the
marvel. Christmas is a tricky momentof the year: everyone, somehow,
expects something, yet one does never know what to expect.
Two products from Piemonte (North West Italy): some apricots in Grappa,
a phenomenal hard liquor obtained by the grape stalks from the Alps & a boar salami from Cuneo, delivered
by Luke a food evangelist!
Pistachio nut creme, to Michelle from Simone: definitely the best choice.
Eataly is a new chain that focuses its attention on "alti cibi", high foods, trying to safeguard prices and quality: http://www.eataly.it/
Artichoke pâté, delicious on bread or pasta: to Michael,
who looks like Matt Dillon at his best!
First Moleskine of my life, from Isabel & John
Heidegger calls the Ereignis the event in which two beings meet together, a sort of
symbolic dialogue between two essences, otherwise not communicating. Ereignis is making something our own, a
process of acquiring for instance the presence of a single tree despite the
dense appearance of woodland. The psychological
evolution of Ereignis is not anymore
just the event or experience of
spotting something and isolating it from the context, but is the advent of a deeper comprehension,
through which we create a bridge between separate unconscious beings – the ring
and the finger thorough love, for instance. This is why gifts create bonds!
So to sum up, the Being is the living
spirit of things, through meditation and listening men are able to awaken this
being and receive it as a gift, which gives us conception. Then, as we gain
this idea of gift - as a natural form of giving -, we can export the mechanism
when we deal with human being’s relationships, where gifts rise to the stage of
symbolic conversations occurring amid responsive senses. Giving is a sign and
motion of constant remembrance, and it is a pity that in the consumerist era – a degeneration of Capitalism – gifts
are degraded to mere objects, commercial entities to feed the void of solitude,
worthy for their prices rather than
their value, idiotic display of power through money. Giving is also
custody: women are averagely better than men in processing and dealing with
feelings and emotions. This might depend on structural factors, such the
ancestral chance of giving birth, and the social aptitude to remain in the
cave, while men were hunting: so whereas men developed a skill based on
renewable sources of pleasure, women cultivated the skill of caring better of
what was already achieved.
Carve a mandarin with a sharp paring knife and let it dry on the heater for one hour
Add the desired chocolates: here Green & Black organic four tastes (butterscotch, white chocolate, dark chocolate and milk chocolate)
Wrap in an alimentary fancy sachet
and secure it with an elegant ribbon:
Franceska, the beneficiary, appreciated it profusely.
Nosiola, a refreshing & fruity white wine from Dolomite Trentino (North-East Italy), perfect as a starter, and Marzipan, a thought to our lovely flatmate Andrea from Frederick and I. Valvona & Crolla never leaves us alone! http://www.valvonacrolla.co.uk/
The incapability of giving is not only a
symptom of avarice and greed, but is fundamentally a misperception of the idea
of relating to others, is the failure of
mutual socialization: these people are accounting as a natural instance to
get from others and not reciprocate, since they underestimate what they receive
and they overestimate what they give back; they take for granted a sort of
warship from the others, because they believe they are naturally sympathetic
and nice, yet they never consider the
importance hidden beneath the gift, they are incapable to see the other out
of their pleasure principle; therefore, they perceive gifts as tokens of a
shared-codified civilization and not as true channels of proximity. When guests
think that it is expected and consequential that I am cooking for them since I
love cooking, they utterly misunderstand the meaning of my welcoming and they
offend me intensely. Fortunately, I daresay, the majority of guests are as entertaining as those language-speak-processing students Frederick invited over for an exquisite dinner, a couple of days ago.
Self-gift: Hazelnut butter, 100% organic hazelnuts and a French organic Orange blossom honey, both from Real Food: http://www.realfoods.co.uk/
Chopsticks-cutlery from my sistaaa!
Another detail of this fab chopsticks.
Caramelized homemade onion relish for Zinga,
who emptied the jar in half a fraction of second!
Four years ago, when I undertook my
Erasmus, I used to live in Warrender Park Road – a semi-affluent area of
Edinburgh, tangential to the Meadows, close to Brunsfield road with its cinemas
and cafes, and Morningside with its elegance. I felt – just a little bit - like
the main character of L’Auberge Espanole [The
Spanish apartment] (2002), a delicious film with a very young Audrey Tautou:
English trailer
And several years after, I discovered that
also Kelly Rilley was acting in this European film. She is the same Kelly
Rilley that - once grown up - played Watson’s loves interest in the second Sherlock Holmes with Robert Downey Jr and Jude Law, as co-protagonists:
Kelly Rilley in a thrilling V-cut blue gown
at the European Premiere of the new
Sherlock Holmes' movie, A game of shadows, in London's Leicester Square.
12/12/2011.
Robert Downey Jr, Jude Law and Kelly Reilly in an hilarious clip
from the film directed by Guy Ritchie.
Mary & Watson
An enchanting close-up of Kelly Reilly's countenances
I wasn’t that lucky, my dorm hosted only
boys, alas! I was younger, Edinburg was my first experience out of my parents’ home,
and I never actually had the chance to reason (philosophically) about shopping.
Shopping was for me a promenade with my family into a food hall. Although I
have never been a compulsive buyer, the relation between an item and its cost
merely suffered an aesthetical and hedonistic co-dependence. The price was in
the 90% of cases non-influential: whether exotic chocolates for instance or
Tuscan red wines or some super-selected biscuits, they were all understandable
titbits. It was more important the value than the price, the excuse worthier
than the need, the quality superior to the quantity. My father was actually
pleased, because my a-logical pattern of choice, allowed him to experiment
products he had never thought about. And I was also the scapegoat if the bill
raised too high peaks:
How my trolly would have appeared in Italy!
In Italy, in particular in Emilia-Romagna,
I showed a "compulsive interest" for this company,
Coop. It offers under this brand "Fior fiore" (the best choice)
a selection of the best Italian food culture.
Their motto is "La coop sei tu" (You are the coop),
as if they could chose exactly what you desire!
Albeit my enthusiasm,
it is not entirely free from blame, sine you may find palm oil among
the ingredients, which is not acceptable: http://www.e-coop.it/portalWeb/portale/index.jsp
Hazelnuts covered in dark chocolate...
...one after another they will fall into the pit
of stylish voraciousness.
So, when I came to fair Edinburgh the scene
changed! I had a budget of 100£ per month and I had to re-create workable
parameters to deal with the new environment. How do you map your new reality?
Should you take decisions beforehand, using Italian prejudice on British food
as a compass? Some of my friends - surprisingly the majority of these friends
were women – opted for Lidl in
Nicholson Street, because it was a known brand in Italy and ABOVE ALL, the
internal structure of Lidl resembles a snake (and it is impossible to get lost
among the shelves). I was shocked by this approach because it showed a sort of
derogatory syllogism: “I need to eat, Lidl is easier and somehow cheaper, Lidl
is the best option”. Setting the convenience above everything else often can be read as a misperception of reality:
The Lidl message is: more at less
My approach was vaguely more enthusiastic.
Lidl actually sells some interesting goods, but one cannot rely on it as the
only option: I merely deny the idea of eating because of the natural insurgence
of hunger, so I allow myself some experiments. Finally, I normally wish to
understand how the British people themselves addressed the problem. This former
loom has to be considered in a different post: here I can solely anticipate
that the social class to which each individual belongs might severely affect
one’s shopping choice. Food-education then matters and I have been often accused to be slightly choosy:
I cannot cope with myself: when I do my shopping,
the monocle comes automatically out!
Near to my dwelling place, there was Margiotta, which exhibits more than a
few Italian delicatessens, yet it appeared too expensive for an everyday
shopping, even with the student discount. Only my American flatmate’s laziness allowed him to shop there
continuously, especially because his diet consisted in beer and pizza. Down the
road there was Scotmid - which now
merged into the Co-operarive -that
is fine, but too small at the same time: the Co-operative target is that of
having a preference for Scottish products. Such a marketing option is deserving, but often it is not competitive, so the buyer is lead to
shop there on ideological bases. Peckhams
and Victor Hugo (like Valvona & Crolla in Leith walk) are
food boutiques and I prefer to consider them as places where to buy gifts or
random specific items. The fifth option
was going here and there in the grocery shops nearby, some of them excellent
for fish and bread, yet is was dispersive and - when you have to study - TIME
is your worst ally. Why then I appointed Tesco
then?(My) Ignorance, (a
logistic) convenience, and (the company) philosophy are the answers, I will try to exploit this triadic sentence in the following post:
