Gee...I'm on a roll today with two posts. Anyway, my stomach's growling, I'm hungry, and for some reason I'm thinking about the finocchio I bought at the grocery store yesterday. I figure that maybe if I write about food it will make the hunger subside a little.
Finocchio ( pronounced fin-'oh-kee-oh), or fennel, is an anise-flavored vegetable that is very popular in Italian cooking. A finocchio, or fanuch for the N'italian afficianado, is also slang for a gay person, and if anyone is interested in Italian slang they can check out my earlier posts in the above links, but I'm not going there tonight. Tonight it's about the food.
One of my favorite ways to fix finnocchio is to make a salad with it...very simple...very Italian. Don't even think about saying 'eye-talian or my grandmother will rise from the dead and put the evil eye on you.
Badabing's Finocchio Salad
1 bulb finocchio
1/2 fresh lemon
handful of baby arugula, stems removed
Parmagiano Reggiano cheese
Extra virgin olive oil
Cut the finocchio crosswise in extremely thin slices, best done using a mandoline (no, not the kind you play like a guitar...that's a mandolin). The thinner the better.
Put the finocchio slices in a salad bowl, add arugula & lemon juice, and toss. Add enough olive oil to coat lightly and toss again.
Top with parmagiano shavings...that's shavings and not grated...and don't even think about substituting canned or jarred grated cheese...and serve. Finito!!
Oh yeah...my stomach's growling even more than when I first started this post. Maybe a little wine will help...for medicinal purposes of course.
Badaboom Badabing...
Monday, November 20, 2006
At Least Get The Friggin' Facts Straight...
Okay, this is my first post in a while, and I hate to start the week off by ranting, but it's my bloggie and I'll rant when I want to...rant when I want to...rant when I want to...you would rant too if it happened to you :-(
One of my pet peeves when reading a novel is when the author gets some obvious facts about a person, place or whatever just plain wrong. Yes, I know it's a novel and it's not true, and so on and so forth...but, it really ticks me off when an author gets something so wrong which could have been prevented with just a few minutes of research. Sloppy, sloppy, sloppy!!!
Okay, here's an example: "The cab turned west on Madison Avenue and raced towards Little Italy." Now, you don't have to be a New Yawka to know that 'avenues' in Manhattan run north and south and 'streets' run east and west, and if you're writing about a place at least look it up on a friggin' map. If you're a best selling author, such a faux pas is friggin' inexcusable in my opinion.
So, last week I'm reading the latest, Cross, from one of my very favorite authors, James Patterson. Now, the book was just fine overall...one of his typically great stories that makes you want to read the whole thing in one sitting. He describes a scene in which a mob character sneaks away from his home in Brooklyn and holes up in his waterfront compound in Mineola, New York...which is on Long Island. Actually, Brooklyn is on Long Island as well, though there are still (many) people there who will argue to the death that it's not...but that's another story. Anyway, here's the thing...I grew up a few miles from Mineola and haven't been to Mineola in 20 years, but I can tell you that there's no body of water anywhere within miles of Mineola, which is the county seat of Nassau County...except for maybe a drainage ditch or two and and a handful of backyard pools. I love Patterson's books, but you'd think a guy who pulls down tens of millions of green a year can get a fact like that straight. There are also a few minor f-ups about locations and stuff in the DC area where I now live, but that one really drives me f---ing nuts. To make it worse, the book credits thank a team of researchers.
Ahh...I feel so much better now. Ranting can be good for one's health.
Badaboom badabing...
One of my pet peeves when reading a novel is when the author gets some obvious facts about a person, place or whatever just plain wrong. Yes, I know it's a novel and it's not true, and so on and so forth...but, it really ticks me off when an author gets something so wrong which could have been prevented with just a few minutes of research. Sloppy, sloppy, sloppy!!!
Okay, here's an example: "The cab turned west on Madison Avenue and raced towards Little Italy." Now, you don't have to be a New Yawka to know that 'avenues' in Manhattan run north and south and 'streets' run east and west, and if you're writing about a place at least look it up on a friggin' map. If you're a best selling author, such a faux pas is friggin' inexcusable in my opinion.
So, last week I'm reading the latest, Cross, from one of my very favorite authors, James Patterson. Now, the book was just fine overall...one of his typically great stories that makes you want to read the whole thing in one sitting. He describes a scene in which a mob character sneaks away from his home in Brooklyn and holes up in his waterfront compound in Mineola, New York...which is on Long Island. Actually, Brooklyn is on Long Island as well, though there are still (many) people there who will argue to the death that it's not...but that's another story. Anyway, here's the thing...I grew up a few miles from Mineola and haven't been to Mineola in 20 years, but I can tell you that there's no body of water anywhere within miles of Mineola, which is the county seat of Nassau County...except for maybe a drainage ditch or two and and a handful of backyard pools. I love Patterson's books, but you'd think a guy who pulls down tens of millions of green a year can get a fact like that straight. There are also a few minor f-ups about locations and stuff in the DC area where I now live, but that one really drives me f---ing nuts. To make it worse, the book credits thank a team of researchers.
Ahh...I feel so much better now. Ranting can be good for one's health.
Badaboom badabing...
Wednesday, November 15, 2006
Badabing is Back
The rumors that I have been dispatched to perform a secret mission for an unmentionable agency of the US government during the last two months are simply not true ;-) Hehehe.
Anyway, I can't believe it's been two whole months since I made a post...been very busy with work and stuff. So, I apologize to the two readers of this blog (one being myself) :-) , and I'll be posting again in the next day or so. But now, I've got to run and catch a plane for Denver...
Badaboom Badabing....
Anyway, I can't believe it's been two whole months since I made a post...been very busy with work and stuff. So, I apologize to the two readers of this blog (one being myself) :-) , and I'll be posting again in the next day or so. But now, I've got to run and catch a plane for Denver...
Badaboom Badabing....
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