Michelle LaBrosse Blogs

My friend Bob Kane, who runs Kane’s Market in Simsbury, CT asked me to assemble instructions on how I prepare his famous Turducken’s and the incredible gravy that goes along with it.   (Bob will create a custom turducken for anyone – you get to specify the size and the type of stuffing you’d prefer – and he ships them anywhere).

Here are two posts I’ve done in year’s past on my turducken cooking experiences:

http://www.michellelabrosseblogs.com/2009/11/knocked-it-out-of-the-park-with-the-turkey-gravy-no-humble-pie-here/

http://www.michellelabrosseblogs.com/2008/12/a-thanksgiving-mulligan-turduckin-take-2/

Here is a printable version of the Turducken cooking instructions:

turducken-directions1

And if you just want the directions without having to download anything – here they are as well:

Turducken – www.kanesmarket.com – 860-930-3723. Directions by Michelle LaBrosse – www.everydaypm.com

Prepping Turducken

1. Preheat oven to 300 degrees.

2. Get a large oven roasting cooking bag. Line the bag with flour, pepper, salt, rosemary. You will use this for the gravy.

3. Rub butter over the turducken and salt. Use a good salt – such as a himalayen pink salt.

4. Place in the large oven roasting bag and secure the back. Poke a couple holes on the TOP of the bag (you want to be able to keep the juices in the bag for the gravy).

5. Place in a large roasting pan, put a meat thermometer into the center of the turducken and place in the oven.

Prepping Gravy

1. Making the base – While the turduckin is roasting, simmer turkey giblets (neck and accessories but not the liver) with all the leaves from one celery stalk, a tbs of whole peppercorns, and 1 tsp of salt in a 2 quart sauce pan filled with water. Cover and have on very long temperature. It will be on the stove a long time – check periodically to insure you don’t run it dry.

Cooking Turducken

6. Cook until the internal temperature reads 165 degrees (depends on the size how long this will take – estimate 5 hours).

7. Take out of oven and let sit for at least 30 minutes – covered.

Making the Gravy

8. Take the drippings out of the bag and use to make gravy. Use the bag to hold the drippings to transfer into the gravy liquid. Mix the drippings in with the base that has been simmering on the oven while the turducken was cooking.

9. Making the roux – this is the gravy thickening agent . use ¼ cup butter and ¼ cup flour (white pastry flour is best – but I’ve done it with fresh milled flour as well and it came out just fine) with ¼ tsp pepper and ½ tsp salt for the rouge. It will be very thick and clumpy. Use a two to three quart sauce pan (avoid using a Teflon and aluminum pans). Keep the temperature on low to medium low.

10. Starting with ½ cup of the base and pan drippings liquid, gradually mix the pan drippings into the roux – stirring with a wire wisk.

11. Add the drippings into the gravy in ½ cup increments, whisking to break up any lumps and to form a nice smooth gravy.

12. If the gravy is too thin, keep whisking, and let some of the liquid evaporate – keep the temp at low or medium low.

Michelle LaBrosse, PMP

Initiation – For one reason or another, I find myself doing several thousand mile road trips a couple times a year.   Jumping into a car, van, truck and camper combo and driving for four days is just not something that new to me.   In September, I adopted two four week old kitties who had been abandoned.   So when I had to get to San Francisco to do the keynote presentation for International Project Management day November 4, 2010, it just made sense to pack the kitties and the puppy into the cheetah mini-van and head to San Fran from Connecticut.   It took about a week to customize the mini-van for the road trip.   Besides making it safe and comfortable for the baby animals, I also decided that unlike other road trips, I was going to survive on food that if I didn’t grow, at least I prepared from ingredients I knew the origins.

Planning – Provisioning this type of trip takes a bit more planning.  I didn’t want to spend a lot of time cooking on the road so I had to have food that would keep for at least four days.   And when I am driving, I want to drive.   I’m not much into stopping to eat a meal.   So whatever I prepared had to be easy and not messy to eat while driving.   Plus I wanted to eat food that would keep me awake and alert, without having to rely on drinking copious quantities of caffeine.   Also, it would have to be food that I was somewhat into as I did not want to be tempted to eat fast food.   I can only be so disciplined.

Execution –   To fit the above criteria, I made my homemade bread that is made from wheat I mill myself.   I learned at cooking school in France that this bread does really well if you slice it very thin using a meat slicer.   A small amount of peanut butter on one of these thin slices of bread with a little non-fat milk makes a great snack that kept me satiated for several hours.   This became one of my staples.   I also made a berry smoothie with non-fat greek yogurt and non-fat milk.   Without a lot of sugar, this shake gave me a power boost without the concurrent sugar spike then energy sag.   For snacking, I made beef jerky from rump roasts from my cattle.   It takes forever to chew and the protein kept my  energy level high.   I also learned how to make this vegetable soup called Pistou Soup at cooking school in France.   The soup is all vegetables with beans and left-over home made pasta (in CT most came out of my garden).  The soup can easily be heated up in microwaves at the quick mart gas stations or in hotel room microwaves.   This soup balances out all the beef jerky snacking while driving.  I did have to eat the soup while stopped – usually at night in the hotel after 15 hours of driving.  (I opted NOT to sleep in the van too).  The quick marts also let you have free hot water and I could make my own tea back at the mini-van.

Monitoring and Control – I used a cooler that could be plugged into the outlet of the mini-van.   This meant that I did not have to get ice. However, the cooler would not run unless the mini-van was running.  I could get away with this as it was late October during the road trip and it got below 40 at night on the route I was taking.   I had a kitchen set up in the back of the mini-van where the hatch acted as a rain tarp. In back of the mini-van kitchen, it was set up for easy access to the most used items – such as paper towels, peanut butter, tea.  I also brought 5 gallons of water – which I used a number of times for a variety of reasons throughout the trip.   It helped that I set up easy access to the water as well.

Closeout – I have more easy to eat foods for the road trip back.   In Portland I discovered this little pie maker and now have small little chicken pies to eat.   On the trip out, I had the soup in this vacuum packed sealer bag that I could microwave.  But it was kind of messy eating it this way.  So for the return trip, I am using glass bowls with the clip on lids – it will be easier to microwave and eat the soup all in one in those bowls.   The baby animal management system went fine – I have to make sure that I keep the access to the front seat area blocked as the kitties are very exploratory and have found their way recently to my feet – not cool.

Michelle LaBrosse, PMP

While Kristen and Miquette have been busy traversing the country running to save Cheetahs, Monica, Jean, Barb and I have been sponsoring PMI meetings, doing keynotes, running conference sessions, and generally having a great time with our project management compatriots around the world. In between meetings, I have been perfecting my pasta making skills. On this latest trip to the East Coast, we undertook a recipe that became an epic journey to create.

Project Initiation

This project started with Thomas Keller’s French Laundry Cookbook. For a week, this recipe for lobster with leeks and a beet juice reduction sat staring at me on my kitchen table from Mr. Keller’s book. It was a daunting recipe – it required steeping the lobsters, pulling all the meat out of a partially cooked lobster (no easy feat), and finishing it off by poaching it in this emulsified butter mixture. It required reducing a beet concoction to a thick syrup, blanching leeks, and a bunch of other steps we decided to skip. We also decided to skip the step to make an oven fried variety of potato chip as the starch and replace it with homemade pasta. I knew making this recipe would be a substantial effort.

Project Planning

The Pasta – I have become quite the homemade pasta snob. Only the best and most fresh ingredients. This started quite by accident when I learned in Italy that pasta just required eggs and flour. As I noted in a previous post, inspired by the 100 mile challenge TV show, I have begun milling my own flour. I found a source for durham wheat berries – the type of wheat used in pasta. I now have enough durham wheat berries to make pasta for the next decade. Also, about three months ago, my right hand man, Kent, found free chickens on Craig’s list. These chickens produce a dozen or so eggs every day. I have an abundance of very fresh eggs. However, my chickens are in Nevada, right now, I am in Connecticut. My initial supply of durham wheat berries are also in Nevada. Since I frequent the east coast for the biz – I now have a ten years supply of durham wheat berries here and a source for fresh local eggs. To make the homemade pasta for tonight’s dinner, I had to start procuring the ingredients a week ago. Homemade pasta is now a several time a week staple at my dinners (with my travel schedule, I have become the traveling pasta maker – sometimes I have to use standard eggs and semolina flour – the bane of living out of a suitcase). So the pasta was really nothing special about this dinner, but it totally made this dish.

The Sauce

This was the biggest pain in the neck pasta accompaniment I have ever made. Monica and I decided early on to take license with the Keller recipe – it was still quite a complex endeavor.

Ingredients

Blanched Leeks
2 – leeks
1 tbs butter

Beet Juice Reduction
1 cup beet juice
1 tbs lemon juice
1/2 tbs red wine vinegar
3 tbs butter

Poached Lobster Meat
3 – 2 lb hard shell female lobsters
1/2 cup butter
1/4 cup half and half

Project Execution

Lobsters – this recipe called for steeping the lobsters just so they were partially cooked and then removing the meat. We are NEVER doing this again. Pre-cooked lobster meat, crab meat, halibut, sword fish, or shrimp can easily be substituted. This also called for making this butter emulsification. After hour two in the kitchen, we bagged that idea and just melted the butter, tossed in the partially cooked lobster meat and tossed in a bit of half and half – it was FANTASTIC.

Leeks – clean very good, slice thin, toss in boiling water for a minute, strain and then put in ice. When ready to use on the pasta, take a bit of the lobster butter and cream in a small fry pan. Toss in the leeks and heat.

Beet Juice Reduction – we were very worried about this as it was a stretch for us to consider this a good combo with the lobster. It was very easy to make (quite a different story with procuring the actual beet juice – we went to three health food stores before finding it). Mix all the ingredients in a sauce pan and reduce until a thick syrup. Then add the butter and let it melt into the sauce.

Plating the food – put a tablespoon or two of the beet juice reduction on the plate. Then put the pasta. Next put a tablespoon or two of the leeks, and cover with the lobster butter cream mixture.

Project Control

Most of this is timing. The meat removal of the lobster was the longest time requirement. We waited until the lobster was poaching in the butter and cream mixture before tossing the pasta in the boiling water. While one of us was removing the meat from the lobster, the other was making the homemade pasta.

Project Closeout

No need to start with fresh lobster. You can get the lobster meat pre-cooked and this would be fantastic with any white fish, crab, or shrimp.

The ingredients were fantastic together. The beet juice reduction gave the dish a nice touch without being overpowering. The lobster taste was the prominent feature with the other ingredients nice fresh accents. Maybe starting with the lobster live was worth it from a taste perspective. I am going to try this next with halibut.

Slept.   I would put in a picture of me sleeping, but I was sleeping so it was hard to take a picture.   Well to be totally honest, I did not sleep the entire day.   Being up in Alaska during the shortest day of the year, I have a rule – if the sun is up, so am I.   I am also enforcing this rule on my two college children home on their winter break.   Having once been in college myself, I understand the desire to sleep most of the time when you first show up back at home.   Partly so no one considers you available to do chores, but mostly to recover, from well, college.   Since I know the game, we have competitive napping going on here.   But I figure, we can all sleep for the 19 hours of the day the sun is not up.   I’m not sure if the sun is truly even “up” more than two hours because it only peaks over the mountains to the south for an hour or two – the rest of the time the area is washed in an eerie lightness.

To counter the winter blues, I have taken to making tropical drinks.   My latest “adult” non-alcoholic beverage is a no-hito mo-hito.   Upon my arrival in the land of perpetual o-dark-thirty, I stopped at the Juneau Costco and purchased a twenty pound bag of limes.   And then at the only florist shop in Haines, I found a lovely little lime mint plant.    With these two main ingredients, it was party time at the manor.    After the pucker punch of the first round, I scoured the cabinets and found a stash of agave nectar that makes the no-hito mo-hito a delightful, eye opening beverage.   We are now down to ten pounds of limes.   And no one will suffer from scurvy at the house.

I also purchased a case of pomegranites – besides staining all my clothes in little red splotches that has me even more in the Christmas spirit,  I’m still racking the creative synapses to figure out their mission this holiday season.   Maybe I’ll have to go back and take a nap to let the subconscious work on this task.

While I was making my third batch of homemade pasta, I was thinking that while I was getting better at the pasta skills, my skills to put on a Thanksgiving bash might be a bit rusty and this year might be even harder than most.    Every project starts with “boundary conditions.”  Those are the pre-requisites you need to even start the project.   This year, we are going to attempt to do thanksgiving dinner in a house that isn’t completed – where the new kitchen is done,  cabinets in, and all the appliances are working.   But it has never been used.   The reason, the small little house that I call home, is too little for the 12 people who are coming to dinner AND we like having this tight of a deadline to push us closer to finishing up the house.

For most people, Project Turkey, starts with a well seasoned kitchen.   For my “Project Turkey” this year it starts with having to move into the kitchen and get part of the house ready for a party.   This means finishing the entry way tile, putting the bathroom fixtures in on the hallway powder room (right now the only functioning bathroom is in the daylight basement and the stairs are not in the house yet so the only way to get to the bathroom is to go outside and around the house to the ground floor entrance),  installing a door to the powder room, AND getting the kitchen set up (with dishes, utensils, cooking tools, verifying all the appliances do in fact work).   The pilgrims put on their first feast with far fewer amenities than I have to work with – I am not expecting anything to arise that we can’t efficiently handle.  Yes I have a high risk tolerance for this project.

Since I love complexity and challenges, have been doing Thanksgiving dinner now for almost 25 years,  this has added a lot more excitement to this holiday for me.   I am practicing on the food elements as well – made a pumpkin pie the other day just to flex my Thanksgiving cooking muscles.    It was very easy:

Ingredients:

• 1 small sugar pumpkin (2 – 3 pounds)
• 1 1/2 cups whipping cream
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 2 eggs
• 2 tsp pumpkin pie spice
• Pie crust (I cheat and get mine at Trader Joe’s).

Directions

Cut the top off the pumpkin, and remove all the seeds.  (you can cook these as well for a nice snack).   Put the pumpkin in an oven proof dish you can cover.  Put in a 350 degree oven and cook for 1 – 2 hours until it gets soft.  Let the pumpkin cool.  Scoop out the insides and cream with sugar, eggs, cream, and pumpkin pie spice.  Pour into dough lined pie pan.  Cook in the 350 degree oven for an hour or until a butter knife comes out clean.  Let cool for several hours or overnight.

Project Initiation

Jean Steinmetz, PMP – my right hand, left hand, colleague extraordinaire who has been working with me since 1997, took the initiative to create a Cheetah Mobile out of the company mini-van.  Now this is the main vehicle I drive when I find myself on the east coast, but when I’m gone, Jean gets to drive this moving billboard.  Since I had a flight out in the early AM, Jean and her daughter (who was born the same year I started Cheetah Learning), came over for a sleep over to get the mini-van,  bring me to the airport in the early am, and to make Tortelli de Zucca.  I was able to use  my new found pasta making skills from Italy and my fresh milled flour.

Project Plan

I had to pick up the pasta maker and the farm fresh eggs (a VERY IMPORTANT PART OF FRESH PASTA).

I had the fresh milled flour, the Parmagiano Reggiano cheese and the pastry bag.

Jean and her daughter brought the canned pumpkin (okay so we cheated on this).

We had to run out and get the Ricotta cheese and the almond biscotti cookies.

With all the ingredients- this is what we did to make 40 Tortelli de Zucca (ravioli with pumpkin filling).

Project Execution

Pasta – 2 cups of flour (fine grind), 3 to 4 eggs.

Put the flour in a pile on a clean counter.   Make a well in the middle of the pile of pasta and put in 3 eggs.  Combine with your hands.  If the dough needs more moisture, add in a fourth egg yoke.   Wrap the dough in saran wrap and let rest for 30 minutes.

Filling – Mix 8 oz of pumpkin with 8 oz of ricotta, 3 tbs freshly grated parmagianno reggiano cheese, a tsp pumpkin pie spice, and three crushed almond biscotti cookies.   Let sit for 30 minutes.

Making the Tortelli’s

Divide the dough into thirds.   With the first third, put it through the pasta maker, starting at the first setting and going to the thinnest setting (it will get very long).

Make the Tortelli’s – Using the Pastry bag, put a 1 – 2 tsp dollop of pumpkin filling on half of the dough – about 1 to 2 inches apart.   Use the other half of the dough to cover the section of the dough with filling.   Press the top dough into the bottom dough.   Use a small wheeled cutter to break the tortelli’s into 2 – 3 inch squares.

Cooking the Tortelli’s – you want to boil the tortelli’s that you wish to eat.  Freeze the rest.   Drop the fresh tortelli’s into boiling water.   Boil three to five minutes.   Take out with a slotted spoon and drain.

Serving the Toretelli de Zucca – melt some butter in a fry pan.  Place one layer of toretelli’s in the pan, coat with the butter, letting the outside get just a little bit crisp if desired.   Put on plate, and sprinkle with freshly grated parmagiano reggiano chees.

Project Control

They came out GREAT – this is why I’m sharing the recipe with you.

Project Close Out

What a mess – thank god I have a cleaning lady and that we wore aprons.

Here is the story of how I got into milling my own flour from wheat.

Project Initiation

I was watching the Green Channel on the reality show where the families are living on food they can get within 100 miles of their homes.   The biggest challenge they were facing was how to make their own bread as the wheat was hard to come by.   A natural foods grocery store was able to get them the whole wheat berries, but they had to grind the wheat themselves.    The bread they made was dense and coarse.    I thought back to this book I had recently read called the “Blue Zones”  – its about areas of the world where people live the longest.  I remembered the mountain people of Sardinia.  The men lived the longest – they primarily ate the local cheese and locally made bread that was made with locally grown wheat.   Then I recalled all the research I have done on how food impacts learning – we have our students eat a diet of complex carbohydrates and protein to improve their ability to retain a lot of information in a short period of time.    As simple carbohydrates found in highly processed foods spike blood sugar which increases the brains beta state and makes it harder to stay calm, relaxed and focused in tense situations.    I was thinking, maybe, just maybe the reason why people are getting fat in the very developed parts of the world is that they are eating too much of the simple carbohydrates – and NOT because they have a self-discipline deficiency.  But because it takes much more of that type of food to get the proper nutrition that the body needs.   I recalled reading something that people rarely overeat meats, cheese, fruits, and vegetables – they get satiated on reasonable portion sizes of those foods.  HOWEVER, people routinely overeat commercially processed breads, cakes, cookies, candies, pastas, white rice.    COULD WE BE EATING TOO MUCH OF THIS STUFF BECAUSE OR BODIES ARE TRYING TO GET THE PROPER NUTRITION?

So I thought, let me experiment on myself.  I have tried diets such as the Atkins diet, the south beach diet – these severely restrict your carbohydrate intake.   Over time I just felt like I was missing out on too much of life to stay on them.    When I took a four month sabbatical last year, I lost 30 pounds just by eating more of the food I made myself and relaxing.    Since I neither want to take off four months again, OR severely restrict my consumption of the staff of life – bread – I figured, let me see what happens to my food craving patterns if I make my own flour from wheat like the folks did on the 100 mile experiment.    I’m pretty healthy to start with – so I’m doing something right already – but I don’t eat that much bread and after reading the Anti-Cancer book last year, I do my best to stay away from refined sugar.

Project Plan

To start with – I needed to get a machine to grind the wheat berries into flour.   I talked with a friend of mine who’s mom has been grinding her own wheat for years.  His biggest complaint was the bread was too dense and coarse.   So I was committed to making bread that was lighter.   Dense and coarse bread is nice as a novelty and to use for making toast  – but I prefer lighter breads for sandwiches.   I found the Pleasant Hill Grain company via google, and ordered the the Nutrimill Grain Mill that could do fine or coarse grinding on the wheat.

On the Pleasant Hill Company site they also have a variety of types of wheat for sale (they are located in Nebraska – but I am not doing the 100 mile challenge).   On the grains section of their site they give a whole explanation of milling your flour right before you use it as that preserves the most nutritional value of the wheat.    Per their recommendation,  I ordered the hard white and the hard red wheat berries.

I ordered this all a week before I went to Italy.   It didn’t make it to my house before I left.   Which I guess now is a good thing – there is no way I would’ve had time to eat the bread before I left AND you’re only supposed to mill the flour that you need – right before you need it.

Project Execution

When I got back from Italy – my mill and wheat were waiting for me at my house.   The wheat shows up in these five gallon buckets that protect it from bugs and rodents.  They also protect it from YOU.   It took me about an hour to get the wheat container opened.   I definitely burned a lot of calories trying to get the lid off the wheat.

I had also learned in Italy – that when eating very simple foods that were made fresh, I did actually lose weight while spending a lot more time eating.  So the experiment was well underway, accidentally.

I went to work milling my first round of flour.   I had managed to open the hard white wheat berries so that was what I was going to use.   I made my standard bread recipe:

1 Package yeast

1 cup warm water

1 TBS honey

Proof the yeast – this means you mix the yeast, water, and honey and wait to see if the mixture starts to bubble – when it does, the yeast is viable and ready to use.

Add

1 tbs good cooking oil

1 egg

1/2 cup of walnuts (I like nuts in my bread)

enough flour to make an elastic dough (the amount is really dependent on the flour).

I use a kitchen aid mixer with a dough hook.   When the mixer engine starts to smoke, I take the dough out of the bowl and knead it by hand for another 5 – 10 minutes.   Kneading the dough is very important as it gets the wheat to release gluten that feeds the yeast and makes the dough rise.

Next, I lightly oil the bowl, put the dough back in the bowl, cover it with a clean kitchen towel, and put it in an unheated oven with a pan of water that has been boiled on the stove.  This creates a nice warm moist environment for the yeast to work it’s magic on the dough.

I let it rise until the dough is double in volume.  Since this was an experiment, I had no idea how long that would be.  It took about three hours.

Punch down the dough, roll it out and make it into whatever type of loaf you would like.   I divided the dough into two sections and made a baguette and a typical loaf of bread.  For the typical loaf of bread, I rolled it out with a rolling pin, put cranberry sauce on it and rolled it back up.

Boil the pan of water again, and put the loaves back in the oven to rise.

I had to go to several meetings so they were left to do their thing on their own for six hours.  When I got home, they had again doubled in size and were ready to cook.

I cook bread in an oven about 350 – 375 degrees for about 30 – 45 minutes.   To test for doneness – you tap on the top of the bread – if it sounds hollow, it is done.   The baguette was done in 30 minutes, the regular loaf, 45 minutes.

Project Control

Well here was the moment of truth on this experiment.   The baguette was great – I had one slice and was stuffed.   Too full to eat a piece of the cranberry swirl loaf.   So I waited until the morning and had a piece of the cranberry swirl loaf for breakfast.  The bread has somewhat of a “nutty” taste – duh – I had put in walnuts.  The texture is denser than store bought bread, but still light.   And since I did the fine grind, the bread is not coarse – it’s more like the texture of a sponge cake.   There is no sandy gritty feel to this bread.

Lets see how long it takes me to get hungry after I had that piece of bread.   Typically after a bowl of cereal, I’m hungry about 2 to 3 hours later.   I did only eat one slice of the bread.  Usually when I have toast, I have two slices of bread.    Right now, I am too full for another piece of that bread, or anything else for that matter.

Project Closeout

This flour is very slippery when it gets on the floor.   I’ve cleaned up the kitchen – it was getting kind of dangerous with that fine powder on the floor.   Next I might try to use the flour to make my own pasta.   I have to remember that you need to mill the flour right before you are going to use it to have the most nutritional value.   I’ll be giving the flour I’ve already milled to friends and family as I did go a little overboard with the milling machine – I wanted to see what type of loading the machine could take (better to find out before the warranty ran out).   It worked just fine through several hours of use.

Since I accidentally left my Italy tour books at a counter in JFK, on Saturday we were flying blind. We decided to go to that most displayed Italian landmark from our childhood, the Leaning Tower of Pisa. The tower was first built around 1100 BC and started learning around 1200 BC. Now, I might be wrong here, but this tower put Pisa on the map. Also, it most likely would not even still be standing today if it weren’t for it’s less than 90% vertical status. The Leaning Tower of Pisa is what gets people to visit Pisa. And what do people do when they visit an area – they spend money. I’d say this mistake has had a great 800 year run on creating revenue for the people of Pisa. GOOD WORK.

I’m back in the States – back at the grind.  Literally.  My Nutrimill grinder showed up when I was gone.  I’m milling my own flour.  It’s supposed to be a lot better for you than the over processed stuff at the store.  I have a loaf of bread rising in the oven.   I am also going to try to make “Mustardo.” This is candied apples in a mustard and hot chili pepper syrup. I can’t find a recipe for it on the web, so I’m going to do what I do best, experiment.

And for the record – I lost four pounds on my eating tour of Parma. Rather amazing – to lose weight, I need to spend more time eating. I’ve been doing it all wrong all these years. We didn’t even eat that many fruits and vegetables – just Prosciutto de Parma, Parmagiano Reggiano cheese, lots and lots of fresh pasta, meats with sauces, bread, butter – I even had chocolate croissants and pastries at breakfast with whole milk. Amazing. Viva Italiano!

Cooking school boot camp ended yesterday.   And I’m still in Italy.   I head home on Sunday.   I figured it might be nice to have some unscheduled time after the culinary immersion to just hang out in Italy.   I didn’t leave the room until 1.   Went to a little Tratorria a block from the hotel.   And had a lovely 84 year old gent sing us an Italian love song.   Boy do I like a country where I am treated like one of the treasures from God instead of in the US where I’m treated as if I have some type of self-discipline disorder for not being a perfect size 8. In Ominvore’s Dilemma, Michael Polen says the US has a nationwide eating disorder.  After being here – where these folks eat and eat and eat – all natural, locally raised foods, prepared with no additives,  I completely agree with Mr. Polen.   We aren’t getting fatter and fatter in the US because we don’t have any self-discipline.   We are getting fatter and fatter because we are purchasing crap products with too many preservatives and additives that help the food manufacturers increase the shelf life and shelf stability of their products, but that are literally killing us.   Spending five hours a day in the company of great people, enjoying great food and great conversation is the way to live – not running from one meeting to another gulping down whatever food you can quickly get.   The US doesn’t just have a national eating disorder, they have a national living disorder.

What is odd is in the US I am pretty much invisible – a standard middle age, rotund short woman of average looks.  It’s very strange – I am very well known in my field.   Pictures of me appear in all our publications.  Many people claim they know me.  Yet when they see me in person at meetings, they ignore me – like I don’t exist – until I go up and introduce myself.   Then it’s as if – oh my god, this PM “big wig” is standing here in front of me.   When five minutes earlier, they just blew me off.   Yes we have a problem in the US of what we think “successful” people should look like.

But because of way I look, people actually treat me nicer here.   I am reading the book Heat by Bill Buford.   In his book, he mentions a restaurant in a town just south of here called Zibello and a restaurant there called La Buca.  We had our tour guide Melanie make us a reservation there for tonight.  We were warned the woman who runs the place Mariane was a force of nature sometimes prone to storms, but the food was GREAT.  

Carey practiced her Italian all afternoon making sure she had the basics down so we would do nothing to cause bad weather with Mariane.   However, when we got there, we
were welcomed with open arms.   Mariane, just loved us.   She showed us her “cantina” – with all her salami’s, cheeses, proscuitto’s, and wine barrels.   She had her son-in-law wait on us since he spoke very good English.   We were treated like royalty.   Maybe she doesn’t like the skinny US reporters who visit her?   She was very nice to us.

The big adventure with going to La Buca was just getting there.   We had not ventured out in the car since we got here.  And getting here was a very disorienting experience.   We left for La Buca right as it was getting dark, and it was raining.   We made it there without getting lost – and had an hour to drive around.   So for another adventure we decided to gas up the car.   At the station, we couldn’t figure out if the car took diesel or regular.   After much discussion with the gas station attendant Fabio and his friend Stefano, I decided to google the make and model of the car on my Iphone – both guys looked at each other and said Google – SI, Google and were nodding their heads up and down.   Very funny – yes the answer was on google – it took diesel.

One last day in Italy before we head back to the States.   I think I might find some type of cooking school in residence back here where I can come live for a couple of months.   Who would not want to be where you are just totally loved for who you are – instead of being dismissed by the general population since you don’t live up to some ideal of what others think you should be?    I love the Italians.

This day of cooking school was spent on the bus and not in the kitchen.   However, it was GREAT.   We drove up to a lake region where the cold air from the alps is funneled down into the area along a deep lake creating the perfect climate for grape growing.   It is called the Francicorta region famous for the production of Italian Spumante.   We went to the Bella Vista winery – the crown jewel of the region.   I loved this winery being a systems engineer as everything was so carefully thought out and very artistic.   It was both elegant AND functional.   There were these little surprises every where you looked – and pointed your camera.   One sculpture, while it was interesting, didn’t illustrate the WOW factor until you looked at it through your cameral lens – where it became a christmas tree ornament with the evergreen in the background.

I had read the book Super Crunching last year and remembered reading about a guy who had created a model that analyzed number of weather factors of the main wine growing regions of the world to determine where the best wine would be produced.   He had it down to a science.  I inquired about how they used weather “metrics.”   I was told that they cut apart three onions and after three days, the onions that sweat the most, that is the month they are going to get the most rain.   Personally, I think there is a little more to it than that.   I predict it’s more like they have to cut apart these three onions on the second full moon AFTER Christmas (sometime in mid-february, early march).  Then this tells them when the next six months will have the most rain.  I will test it out later this year and let y’all know.

I just loved the geometric design of the winery.   Since I am still working on my own geometrically designed house in Nevada, I got some fantastic ideas.   The triangular tables in their conference areas where amazing.   I loved the pervasive use of arches, circles, triangles, ovals, squares that were everywhere.  I’ve used the similar design approach in Nevada – just not on this grand a scale.

We left the winery and went to the lake for a lunch on an island that was fish, fish, and more fish.   We were served five different types of fish.  Nice lunch.   THEN we were served four more types of fish.   More nice lunch.   Two hours later, extractating ourselves from that restaurant, we headed for the Olive oil pressing plant.   By now, my pants were getting tight.  HOWEVER, I had three pairs on.  As we were told it would be very cold on the boat to the island restaurant.   Recalling the cold dank day the day before, I was prepared.  I am happy to report, today with only one pair of pants on – they are still loose.  How I can go to cooking school, eat for over five hours per day, sit on a bus most of the day and lose weight is beyond me.   I think my regime of exercising a lot and eating healthy may just not be that healthy for me.

The olive oil pressing plant was very small – they were a neighborhood processor that processed all the olive oil for the surrounding olive growers.   At Academia Barilla we learned about three types of olive oils – Tuscan that is very strong and good in soups and on breads.   Ligonia olive oil – that is very delicate and good on fish.  And Sicilian olive oil that is mild and good on salad.   The olive oil we tested at the plant was an extra virgin (only pressed once) and good for salads and bread.   The version I tasted was unfiltered.   That was pretty darn bitter.   More hazing.