Esino Essentials

Some of my favorites:

Dark Chocolate

Until the 1800's chocolate was a luxury unaffordable to the lower classes because cocoa came from far away places like Africa.  Then Hershey in the US (and probably others in the UK, France, and Russia) discovered that they could reduce the cost of the end product by diluting the chocolate with a lot of milk and sugar.  Milk was produced in the US and UK so naturally milk chocolate was much cheaper than the darker, more intense chocolate.

To this day chocolate in the US contains no reference to the relative cocoa content.  But in Europe it is a different story.  Here they proudly proclaim (or hide when ashamed) the cocoa content.  The richest I've found is a Lindt extra bitter chocolate that is 85% cocoa.  To my taste this is almost like baker's chocolate that has little sweetness.  In between the lowly milk chocolate and the 85% extra bitter is the fabulous 72%.  They are rightly proud of this.  It is generally sold in  100 g bars for about € 1.

The Grill

June is a good month to sit outside and grill.  On Tuesdays the local market of vans sells meats, cheeses, and produce not readily available at the local shops.  In early June they sold cherries from Verona.  By late June we had lots of cherries on our 4 cherry trees, one of which is shown below.  After buying meat at the market I start a wood file on the grill in the yard.  No charcoal need apply.  There are lots of fallen twigs and branches to start the fire, then I load on pine cones and some locally cut wood to get a good fire going.  Below are some pork chops and local sausage.  I left the pork chops on a little too long so while they were juicy, they were not at all pink inside.  The sausage was near perfect.

In early August Alex came up for the weekend so I bought 2 rib steaks weighing 1.5 kg and managed to overcook them so they were tough.  Each steak had 2 bones.  Lea ate the 2 bones from my steak but buried Alex's for later.

La Principessa Lea and her sidekick Orso

July 18, '04, Jo flew to Sicily so I stayed a hot night at Alex's new apartment on v. Ampere.  Monday I took the train home and stopped in Lecco to shop.  Passing a pet shop near the train station I saw a poster for a dog named Lea. It described her as 5 years old, sterilized, medium size, affectionate around the house.  I called and Paola, the animal rescuer, said they would bring her up the following weekend for a 2 week trial.  Lea  had been a guard dog that had been given for adoption and had just spent 4 months in a kennel awaiting a taker.  When she came on a rainy Saturday she liked the yard but liked even better that there were numerous ways she could escape and roam the town.  Esino is notorious for roaming dogs who leave home for a stroll and return to eat and sleep so she fit right in.  She is a Husky mix so the cooler climate is ideal for her.  She had one brown and one blue eye which always attracted attention.  She had been trained not to bark except as a warning before she attacked.  When she was provoked, she would bark and grab the arm of the attacker.  I never tested what she would do if you attempted to break her hold since I had seen her chew bones to small pieces in minutes.  She was generally not aggressive towards people or dogs but liked to meet new dogs and exchange sniffs.  Beyond that she usually demonstrated that she was the alpha female and would not tolerate any unwanted interest.  A couple fenced dogs along our walking path wanted to fight and she was ready to take them on.  One of the unfortunate characteristics of Huskies is they are not used to streets and vehicles so they tend to be at danger around traffic.  Fortunately most the cars in Esino are forced by  narrow, inhabited streets to drive slowly and the drivers expect to see people and animals.

Princess Lea was a very good companion and followed me all over the house so I put rugs at the usual spots--desk, TV, kitchen--for her to sleep on.  She had a rug with a layer of foam under it at the foot of the bed and would wake me around sunrise, sometimes sooner.

What Lea did for me besides act as companion and alarm clock was force me to walk.  Every afternoon we would take a couple hour walk in the country.  This did not cover a great distance because she had to stop and smell everything.  When we would get to an area with nothing to disturb like burros (she chased 3 burros one day) or cars, I would remove her leash and let her run.  She would run up and down the hills and splash in any water she found.  After a good run I would hold up the leash and call her over.  She would come over and let me leash her.

We started encountering a friendly red dog about Lea's size who roamed all over town and was known by everyone.  His name was Orso.  He lived on a small farm at the edge of town but spent little time there.  Lea liked to prowl the woods with him and over time he came to spend more time at our house than his.  He would go home, forcing his way through the bars of the gate, late at night and return early in the morning.  In the middle of the night Lea would come to me and want out so she could be with Orso.  By March 2005 he was staying here all the time so when I took Lea for shots, I took Orso, too.  His owner came to accept it.  Orso still liked him, but he like Lea more.

Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire

December 23, 2004, was clear and cold.  At noon it was about 36 degF (2 degC) but very sunny and only a slight breeze.  Lea was lying in the sun and before grilling sausage for lunch I decided to roast some chestnuts I had collected in the woods in October.  Unfortunately, I had left the chestnuts in a plastic bag in the house and some of them had started sprouting.  I had put a glass of scotch on the marble table top to chill as I spread the nuts out and threw out the sprouts.  I selected about 15 large ones, slashed them with a knife to allow steam to vent, and put them in a roasting pan we had found in the house.  I had made a roaring fire of small wood so I put the pan on the grill and waited.  A few exploded and some were incinerated but most were roasted to perfection.  They taste like sweet bread.  Lea didn't care for them. Jo ate a couple.

Links

My son-in-law Brad Kratochvil has a Canon G3 with which he takes some very good pictures.  They are on his website: http://brad.thekratochvils.net/gallery/