Crotasc – A Winery Restaurant Specializing in Wild Game

March 15, 2004 Deirdre Straughan Leave a comment

We’ve discovered a new treasure, Crotasc, a restaurant attached to the Mamete Prevostini winery in Mese, just outside Chiavenna (a town north of the northern tip of Lake Como). Their specialties are salumi and insaccati (dried meats) and wild game (including salumi made from wild game), and of course their own wines.

The house welcoming nibble was thin slices of slinzega, a dried beef similar to the Chiavennasca specialty, violino di capra (“violin of goat’ – salted preserved haunch of goat, traditionally carved by holding it under your chin and sawing towards you with a long knife), along with several kinds of excellent bread, ranging from pure white to the traditional pane di segale (rye) – I wish I could buy the bread the restaurants get!

My husband had the 30-euro wild game menu, which started with a small selection of wild game salumi, followed by ravioli with fagiano (guinea fowl). I had home-made papardelle (wide pasta ribbons) with duck breast. Both were wonderful.

Enrico’s secondo was a medallion of venison with a sauce of Sfursat (the local “fortified” wine); I had a venison cutlet. Both were served with a dollop of polenta and a vegetable “foam.” My cutlet was excellent, but Enrico’s with the sauce was even better.

For dessert I had a chocolate pudding in vanilla sauce, Enrico had an orange semifreddo (semi-frozen), which again I liked better than my own – maybe I’m just envious.

We accompanied everything with a Grumello 2000 by Mamete Prevostini, also excellent. We could probably have bought some of their wine while we were there, but they were disappointingly out of the lovely white called Opera that we had tasted last summer at Lanterna Verde – they’re waiting for the new vintage to be ready. I guess we’ll just have to go back for it.

The restaurant is divided into two rooms, one traditional with a huge fireplace, and big dark wooden ceiling beams. We ate in the non-smoking room, which looked as though it had been recently done or re-done, in light wood with lovely modern fountain chandeliers and stone paving. There is also lots of outside seating, so the place is probably even more delightful during daylight, in good weather.

I warmly recommend this restaurant to anyone who’s visiting Lake Como – it’s well worth the trip.

via D.P. Lucchinetti 67,
23020 Mese (SO)

bio

Fitting Clothes

March 11, 2004 Deirdre Straughan Leave a comment

AnÂ articleÂ in the Christian Science Monitor confirms what I have long suspected: clothing size has nothing to do with body size, and indeed is not uniform even from manufacturer to manufacturer.

I began to wonder about this years ago, when shopping for shorts in a mall. Much to my surprise, I ended up buying a pair in size 8, at a “Petites” store. I don’t think much about clothing, but I do remember clearly that, when I was in college in 1983, I had a pair of Gloria Vanderbilt designer jeans. They were, as the mode of the day demanded, skin-tight, the kind you have to lie down on the bed to slide into. And they were size 12. Ten years and a child later, how could I possibly wear a size 8?

I had also been experimenting with sewing my own clothing. I never got good at it, but it kept me amused while I was home with the infantÂ Rossella, so, during this same trip, we went shopping for sewing patterns.

“What size do you take?” asked the clerk.

I shrugged helplessly, my usual answer to that question. “I have no idea.”

So she measured me, and announced: “Size 14.”

This sounded reasonable, but I was still puzzled about the shorts, and told her the story.

She replied: “The clothing industry keeps deflating the sizes, to make people think they’re skinnier. Pattern sizes have never changed.”

According to the article, the clothing industry now has a lot of new data about the shape of American bodies, which they will use to redesign their styles to fit people better, although it is already clear that most brands will not be altering their sizing to achieve uniformity with the others. So you’ll still need to know what size you are in a specific label in order to get a good fit, a marketing trick to ensure brand loyalty. It works, too – part of the reason I buy a lot at Lands’ End is that I already know what size will fit me.

For me, buying clothing in stores is endlessly frustrating. My basic problem – incomprehension and dislike of most clothing – is compounded by living, travelling, and shopping in so many other countries. European sizes might be uniform across brands for all I know, but I don’t shop enough for the numbers to stick in my mind, so I never know what size I’m buying. Except shoes – I know that I wear a size 39 in Italy and 8 1/2 in the US.

Shopping in Italy is difficult for me because Italian women apparently have a very different body shape than I do. Judging by what’s in the stores, Italian women when young are thin and straight – no hips, not much chest. In middle age they become barrel-shaped. Either way, the clothes don’t fit me. (Luckily for them, they also don’t have the stomach curving out in front that I have.)

The best solution to the clothing problem for me has been custom-made, in India, where wonderful fabrics and talented tailors come very cheap. I still wear a beautiful skirt and jacket of black raw silk that I had made back in 1986 – it’s almost too dressy for business occasions. Unfortunately, I haven’t had enough time on recent trips to India to pursue this solution. And people wonder why I dress like a slob.

living in Italy

Italian Winter Weather

March 11, 2004 Deirdre Straughan Leave a comment

The first time we visited Milan, in January of 1991, there were about four inches of snow on the ground. It melted the next day, and in the 12 years we lived in Milan after that I only saw snow falling once or twice a year, some years not at all, and rarely enough to stick. For the last few years, February has been mild, April cold and rainy, and everyone complained about how the seasons weren’t what they used to be (a lament that has probably been heard since the australopithecines).

Today it’s snowing in Lecco. A lot. Just like it did the week before last, and the week before that, and I lose count before that. A few weeks ago we took in “refugees,” six of Ross’ classmates who had commuted up to an hour to get to school, only to find it cancelled because snow was falling and the heating system wasn’t working.

The kids weren’t a problem, but I’ve had enough of winter. I never liked cold weather in the first place. I was born in New Orleans, subsequently lived in Texas, Hawaii, and Thailand. I never saw snow actually falling out of the sky until we got to Pittsburgh, when I was 11. I hate having to dress up in layers and layers of clothing to go outside, then when you go into a shop or come home again you’re too hot and have to undress. I have no circulation in my hands and feet, so they’re always icy cold (cold hands, warm heart – I’d settle for the reverse). I even have chilblains on my toes this year, probably from wearing wimpy shoes in a misguided attempt to be fashionable, before I found a pair of decent-looking fur-lined boots in England.

One problem specific to Italian winters is that most of us have no control over home heating – condominium buildings are usually centrally-heated, and the thermostat is set according to government regulations. Heating goes on October 15th and off April 15th, regardless of actual outside temperatures. And it’s turned way down during hours that most people are out of the house, e.g. 10 am to noon, which happen to be my peak working hours in my home office. So I’m sitting at my desk wearing ski socks and fleece slippers (still going strong – thanks, Laura and Larry!), a turtleneck, corduroy trousers, and a Kashimiri shawl.

Heating also gets turned off at night when we’re all supposed to be in bed. There are few things more miserable than being wide awake at 4 am with jetlag, and you can’t even read in bed because it’s too cold to put your arms outside the covers (yes, there is another activity which could warm you up in bed, but that only works at 4 am whenÂ both of you have jetlag).

opinion

The End of Fear

March 11, 2004 Deirdre Straughan Leave a comment

There’s a frightening opinion piece in the New York Times, A Nuclear 9/11, about the need to stop nuclear proliferation. Some people in the know think that there’s a high risk of some form of nuclear weapon being used by terrorists on American soil, sometime in the next 15-20 years. The war in Iraq has done little or nothing to alleviate that risk, and not much else is being done about it.

I grew up with the constant threat of nuclear war between the US and USSR. That threat didn’t loom nearly as large over my generation as it had over my parents’; we never had bomb shelters or “hide under your desk” drills in school. But we did have Ronald Reagan’s massive military spending, sabre-rattling, and “Evil Empire” speeches. Perhaps I’m a hypersensitive soul, but it made me wonder sometimes whether all our hurrying and scurrying to build happy lives for ourselves and our children might be blown to naught by someone’s itchy trigger finger.

My daughter was only a few months old when the Berlin wall fell in 1989. It seemed like a good omen for her life: the world was finally emerging from the shadow of the Cold War, and her skies would be bluer than ours had been.

In 2001, as we all know, the skies got much darker. At least with the USSR we had had détente, mutually-assured destruction actually being a good deterrent. Now we’re up against people who gladly accept their own destruction, if only they can take a few of us with them.

In my research for the Woodstock School history book, I read a first-person account of World War I, by a woman who was a student at the time:

“And then the war. It was always there in those days 1914-1918, over the horizon to be sure, but it somehow took the bottom out of the world for us. We had all been brought up to know that the world was getting better and better, and [war] was more and more impossible. I suppose it will be at least a hundred years before there is such a confident, carefree generation again. The impossible had happened…”

That hundred years has nearly passed now, and we still can’t be confident and carefree. If anything, the prospect seems to recede ever further into an uncertain future. When will mankind grow up?

Italian culture

Randy Newman in Milan

March 4, 2004 Deirdre Straughan Leave a comment

Monday night we went to hear Randy Newman in Milan, on the last date of his European tour. I didn’t realize it was the last til I looked at his site just now – he certainly didn’t look any worse for the wear of 22 shows in 30 days. This was theÂ SongbookÂ tour, just Randy and his piano; I’d heard about the tour (and bought the CD) thanks to a review in the NYT or somewhere. It was sheer dumb luck that I stepped out of a hotel in Milan a few weeks ago and found myself face to face with Randy Newman on a poster, glued to a fence around the Pirelli tower (re)construction site (this is how I usually learn about concerts I want to go to, usually too late).

The promoters missed a marketing opportunity – I thinkÂ RossellaÂ and I were the only Americans in the theater. Ross was also very much the youngest person there, but that’s less surprising. I watched as the crowd entered, and amused myself speculating on who these people were. My guess is that this concert brought out every old-school lefty to be found in the Milan area: I have not seen so many beards in one room since about 1975. There was even one guy with long sideburns and a gold corduroy jacket – thirty years of fashion had passed him right by, even in Milan! Or maybe that stuff’s back in now, and I, as usual, am the laggard follower of fashion.

We hoped not to be subjected to a constant audience singalong such as we had suffered through at theÂ Alex Britti concert. This was a very different audience, but Ross was plagued by the two guys behind her singing along through most of the show, albeit so quietly that Enrico and I didn’t hear them. Unfortunately, she didn’t mention this til afterwards; she hadn’t wanted to disturb anyone else by shushing them, though she might have said something during intermission.

There was one song that RandyÂ askedÂ us to sing along on: “I’m Dead and I Don’t Know It,” about all the geriatric rockers still on tour (referring to himself as well). I had recently been thinking about this phenomenon: my daughter is the third-generation Who fan in our family. That’s a bit scary, but at least it’s something we can share, though my tolerance for her generation’s music is limited.To sum up, the concert was wonderful. If you don’t know Randy Newman, or only know him via such pop hits as “Short People” or “I Love LA,” or his movie scores, I recommend a closer aquaintance. He writes songs unlike anyone else’s: three-minute stories narrated by characters very distant from himself, sad, funny, touching, and often with an ironic punch that gets you thinking.

Songbook Vol. 1Â Amazon UK

About Randy Newman

Countries Beginning with I

Crotasc – A Winery Restaurant Specializing in Wild Game

Fitting Clothes

Italian Winter Weather

The End of Fear

Randy Newman in Milan

Deirdré Straughan on Italy, India, the Internet, the world, and now Australia

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Deirdré Straughan on Italy, India, the Internet, the world, and now Australia