Fiberglass is icky

Last night, I was coated in fiberglass. At least, that is how it felt.
That stuff does not wash off easily.
Ugh.
I am itchy.

Tutto Bene Ribollita

Comfort in a bowl comes to me in only one form.....the sublime Ribolitta. The first time I had this soup was on a cold day in Florence. I literally thought that I had died and gone to heaven. It must be the simplicity of the peasant dish....loaded with one of my favorite foods......BREAD!

If you can open a can and use a knife, you can make this wonderful soup.

Start by chopping onion, celery and carrots. I did one onion, 2 celery stalks and 2 carrots. Chop up a clove or two of garlic and saute in some olive oil. Add a bay leaf and some salt and pepper. Don't be stingy, use a good quality sea salt or kosher salt and only fresh cracked black pepper!











Soften the vegetables for about 7 minutes or so. Add in 2 cups of tomato sauce, 6 cups of your favorite chicken stock and 2 cans of white beans. I did use cannelini beans, but do prefer the smaller white beans for this soup. (The first Ribollita I had also had greens in it. This is truyly a soup you can make your very own. Add whatever additional veggies you like!) Bring to a simmer. Now comes the fun part. The Bread! You will need a stale loaf, or at least day old bread. Cut it in half and scoop out the insides. You will tear up the bread with your hands and drop into the soup. The bread will begin to break down and absorb the stock. You can add as much or as little bread as you prefer. The ribolitta can be super thick, or more soupy...your preference prevails. Use some of the crust to dip into the soup for a taste test. Adjust your salt and pepper seasonings if needed.

When you are ready to serve, dish it up into a bowl, grate some parmigiano cheese and a drizzle of olive oil! Tutto Bene!

Things I Learned In Jury Duty

and in no particular order....

1. Jury duty is not that bad. Don't be drama about it if you have to go.
2. Bailiffs work a lot more than I thought....I thought they only said, "all rise"
3. Cool new words can be learned in jury duty.....Voir Dire
4. Not all attorneys make a lot of money.....the prosecutor for the state had on a really cheap suit and bad shoes. It was almost a distraction. Someone call "What Not to Wear"
5. 6 grams of cocaine can put you in prison for a looooong time.
6. A bad public defender is terrible to see up close.
7. Moral Turpitude - one set of words I never heard in my whole life, and now want to use in a sentence when I get the chance to.
8. People brought together to serve on a jury form a really interesting bond.
9. Trial lawyers have to pay close attention all day long. It is intense beyond my imagination.
10. Retired judges on the bench don't tolerate stupidity.
11. If you are a defense attorney - look into Toastmasters....being a low talker is not working for you.
12. Determining guilt or innocence is hard.
13. Reasonable Doubt is a tough one.
14. Determining credibility on people you know is tough enough....determining credibility on total strangers is nearly impossible.
15. Jury deliberation rooms are really small and the chairs are uncomfortable. At least it was not swealtering like in "Twelve Angry Men"
16. There were no Angry Men on the jury.
17. Police officers in bullet proof vests have a really weird body shape and walk kind of funny.
18. Character witnesses on the stand can make you cry.
19. Just because a lawyer has a legal pad, and they flip the pages during questioning doesn't mean they have anything written down. I could see it was blank.
20. It is really hard to not raise your hand and get to ask the witnesses your own questions.
21. It is really hard to not talk about the trial before deliberation.
22. It is really hard to impose a sentence.
23. 12 people carry a large burden.....I'm glad I got to carry it with such a responsible, thoughtful and intelligent group of people.
24. I'm glad we considered the man's family and future in our decision.
25. You get an escort to your car.

This one is originally from The Big Read. Apparently they reckon that most people will have only read 6 of the 100 books here.
Instructions:
1. Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2. Underline those you intend to read. (In blogger you can use Ctrl. U to do this)
3. Italicize the books you LOVE.
4. Reprint this list so we can try and track down these people who've only read 6 and force books upon them.

Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkein
Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
Harry Potter Series - JK Rowling
To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
The Bible
Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
1984 - George Orwell
His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
Little Women - Lousia M Alcott
Tess of the D'Urbevilles - Thomas Hardy
Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
Complete Works of Shakespeare
Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
Birdsong - Sebastian Faulkes
Catcher in the Rye - J D Salinger
The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
Middlemarch - George Eliot
Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
Bleak House - Charles Dickens
War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
Brideshead Revisted - Evelyn Waugh
Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
Emma - Jane Austen
Persuasion - Jane Austen
The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
The Kite Runner- Khaled Hosseini
Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
Animal Farm - George Orwell
The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
Lord of the Flies - William Golding
Atonement - Ian McEwan
Life of Pi - Yann Martel
Dune - Frank Herbert
Cold comfort Farm - Stellla Gibbons
Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
A Tale of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
The Curios Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
The Secret History - Donna Tartt
The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
On The Road - Jack Kerouac
Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
Bridget Jones' Diary - Helen Fielding
Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
Moby Dick - Herman Melville
Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
Dracula - Bram Stroker
The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
Ulysses - James Joyce
The Bell Jar - Slyvia Plath
Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
Germinal - Emile Zola
Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
Possession - AS Byatt
A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
The Color Purple - Alice Walker
The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
Charlotte's Web - EB White
The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
Watership Down - Richard Adams
A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
Hamlet - William Shakespeare
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

This list will help with my "reading" resolution for the year.
At least I read more than 6 already....

Optimisim for 09

Happy New Year Everyone!
I just read my own New Years post from 08 ~ I sounded so hopeful. Goodness knows, in comparison to 07 - 2008 was a much better year for me.

Last night, 2009 came in quietly....Tony and I were the only ones awake in the house.
Today, I am not dashing off to a New Years brunch. Instead I am braising pork ribs and making my black eyed peas and donning my new Ovechikin T for the game tonight.
08 had a feminine lovely start....in 09 I will have bbq sauce all over me and am hoping to see a good ole fist fight on the ice!
We will see how this year plays out.
This will be my year to toughen up, not be such a girl, not worry so much about what other people think.
ggggrrrr!
I feel the manly empowerment already.

My life since December 17th

Whoa - what a whirlwind since the Crackberry Nosepicker incident. I will sum up in quick bullets.
12/18 - store visits (this term equals me running from store to store with carloads of product to replenish each store I visit. Robbing Peter to pay Paul)
12/19 - store visits
12/20 - store visit. I did wear antlers on this day to keep the Scrooges cheery.
12/21 - church, grocery store, gift wrapping, dropped gifts off, picked up butter for my aunt, got invited to the Redskins game by two random strangers in the grocery store because I was wearing my Cooley jersey, came home and made my Ciopinno for the mass crowd on Christmas Eve.
12/22 - store visits
12/23 - store visits, came home to family just in from California and New Jersey - went out to eat, came home and made egg thing for the next morning - prepared for my work day until about 1am.
12/24 - office day at home, lots of conference calls, in between I served breakfast and entertained my guests...sent mom, sis and grandfather to the grocery store for the ingredients for my salads and to pick up the fish to pop in my ciopinno. Frantically realized at 2pm that the day was half gone and I still had on pajamas. Made 2 salads - one orange and fennel and one pomegranate and arugula - frantic shower, threw on outfit - drove with food to aunt's house, requested cocktail the moment I walked in the door. The rest of the night was a blur. I cooked, I ate, drank and made merry. Went to midnight mass....in bed 3am.
12/25 - woke and made Panetonne French Toast - it came out yummy....openend presents...squealed over my new Wii. Dressed, went to Christmas Dinner - another blur of a day...
12/26 - worked and was bitter about it. Ate pizza for dinner and then played Wii until 2am. Did manage to shatter a christmas ornament off my tree when going for my best "serena williams backhand" yikes.
12/27 - sad, family left. I did pass out on the couch about 23 minutes after they left. Woke to eat chinease food at 7pm. Passed out again watching "Love in the time of Cholera" What the hell was that movie about?!?!?!?
12/28 - slept really late, missed church, felt guilt for like 2 seconds. Made a yummy breakfast passed out on the couch again....do we see a pattern here? Managed to drag myself off the couch and went to grocery store. Ate dinner, decided to try one more time to watch "Love in the time of Cholera" I managed to not pass out this time - but I still don't get it. Why did he tell her he was a virgin? Why did she marry Benjamin Bratt? Who decided John Leguizamo was right for that part? I think I can't look at Javier Bardem without seeing his Dutch boy haircut, even when he doesn't have a dutch boy haircut. Did they stay on that boat forever? WTF?!
12/29 - worked and was bitter about it.
12/30 - worked, not so bitter today....mainly happy because I was invited to a hockey game on New Years Day and I only have to work a 1/2 day tomorrow!!! Can't wait to pass out on the couch again.

Gross Crackberry Nose Picker

This is really to rich.
I was flying home this evening.
At the appointed time, the flight attendants told everyone to please turn off all electronic devices and cell phones.
Apparently the Crackberry addict next to me did not think this applied to her.
2 different attendants came by and told her to turn it off.
"oh, ok" she said. Then she would pretend to turn it off and place it face down in the middle seat between us. Then she would pick it up and start all over again.
I finally lost it.
Do the rules not apply to everyone?
I said, "excuse me, are you negotiating middle east peace talks? No? then how about turning it off. You don't look that important"
She smiled smuggly at me and said nothing.
Then continued to leave it on and text message.
I said, "you may not value your life, but I do value mine. And my life is hardly worth your unimportant emailing. Turn it off."
She placed it down again - and I said, "am I going to have to turn that off for you? Or shall I call the flight attendant?"
She finally turned it off, and I made her show me it was turned off.
Finally, I closed my eyes for a nice little nap on the ride home....I opened them to find the woman picking her nose!!!!!!!! Ugh!
I asked her if I could provide her a tissue or was she going to wipe it on the seat? My goodness. How gross.
Needless to say. We were not best friends on the flight.
Is it a wonder I don't touch anything on an airplane?