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Ready to move?Ever wanted to stay in a gingerbread cottage? Well, you probably can't, but Sykes Cottages has at least made it look like you can stay at the famed fairytale cottage from Hansel and Gretel. Yep, the company has included the cottage as part of its offering, with features like a 'live-in witch housekeeper' and an 'extra large oven.' Oo-err. Check out the whole enchilada over at the Sykes Cottages website.
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Food as ArtIn the late 1970's I was a young vice-consul in Milan, beginning a love affair with Italy which continues to this day. As I tell people any chance I get, living in that country changes one’s life. It makes you look at everything differently, starting with history: Italians are the cynics they are because they’ve seen everything already. I remember reading an article in a Rome paper about a plan to restrict car traffic in the congested center of the city, and the journalist pointed out that the first politician to decree foot traffic only inside the walls was Julius Caesar. So no matter what happens, especially in politics, the average Italian knows that it will be nothing new. But another way Italy changes you is with your relationship with food. Food is an important part of Italian culture, perhaps—dare I say it?—more important than art. Though in fact you could say that it is art. I remember my business lunches with Italians always started with a serious discussion of the menu, and if I was a visitor in the hinterland, the locals urging me to try some regional specialty. Italians know their food and they take it seriously. Which brings us back to the young vice-consul in Milan. One time, I don’t remember the year, I found myself traveling to the wonderful city of Parma, which was part of my territory, to represent the consulate. I had been to Parma many times, always building my schedule around a lunch with some local contact. Many people, perhaps me among them, believe that Parma has the best food in Italy, though that debate is better saved for another time. But we’ve all tasted parmeggiano reggiano, perhaps the best known of Italian cheeses, which takes its name from the city and the region. The event I was sent to was organized by the consortium of parmeggiano reggiano producers to honor the cook book author Marcella Hazan. Mrs. Hazan was born in a town in the eastern part of Emilia-Romagna, Parma’s region, but lived most of her life in the States after marrying New Yorker Victor Hazan. The cheese producers were thanking her for promoting Italian food in America, and she certainly did that. Her books are, in my opinion (and more importantly my wife’s, since she is the real cook in the family) the best books on basic Italian cooking you can find in English. After she received her certificate of appreciation, there was of course, a fine lunch. I still remember that the first course was a classic local dish, tortelli d’erbette, but instead of the waiters serving it from the usual silver platters, it was scooped from hollowed out wheels of parmeggiano reggiano. I was very impressed. But the highlight of the lunch was being seated next to the delightful Signora Hazan. We talked food, of course, though I recall that she just picked at what was put on her plate. I also remember that even though she lived in the U.S., she was more comfortable chatting in Italian. She also showed her roots by smoking a lot, but it was the '70s, back when it was not just legal in restaurants but normal. I was already a fan of her books, but the encounter with Marcella made me get the new ones whenever they appeared. Sadly, the final one--Marcella Cucina--has appeared, since Marcella Hazan passed away in September at the age of 89 at Longboat Key, Florida. Mangia! The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
Are you ready for a Highland Fling? If you've been itching to make a real Renaissance raucous at the Texas Renaissance Festival in Todd Mission this fall, well, you're in luck. The Quail Bell Crew is proud to announce that we're giving away free tickets to TEN COUPLES for EACH of the following dates: November 10 (Roman Bacchanal) November 17 (Barbarian Invasion) November 24 (Highland Fling) December 1 (Celtic Christmas) Names will be drawn at random on Tuesday, when winners will be contacted via email. Don't miss your chance to geek out over one of the most fascinating periods in history! *Squeal* The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
Puppy Love at the 17th Street Farmers MarketProducers and Stylists: Sidney Shuman, Shannon Minor, Amy Gatewood, and Lindsey Story Photographer: Jasmine Thompson Model: Monika Burbridge Fashion Designer: Mariah Harrison Make-up Artist: Deniz Ataman QuailBellMagazine.com "RVA style" means many things to long-timers and newcomers alike, but today our fashion shoot producers and stylists decided that it meant Mod for our model, Monika. Monika is wearing a parasol-print dress by designer and VCUarts student, Mariah Harrison. And where is her cobblestoned location, you ask? None other than Richmond, Virginia's Historic 17th Street Farmers Market, a place where beer-lovers convened on November 3rd for the 3rd Annual Bottom Brew Festival. And like any good Virginian, she has a pup in tow. -CS
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The Pudgy DictatorIllustration cred: Liz Cleaves I've entered the game of pricks
with knives in the back of me Our community shared the backyard, no doubt driving my conservative dad nuts, and proving him a hypocrite if it didn’t. Lucky for him, the community’s rambunctiousness ended with my stepbrother and me. He was towheaded and average sized, nothing shouting athletic about him, despite my dad’s best efforts; either way they were secondhand efforts, worn down after my resistance. My stepbrother would have loved nothing more than to have my resilience. Even though that’s an exaggeration of the real case: a love they and everyone else found odd. I loved games. Not games of sport. Games of strategy. Games with stakes beyond a point in a column. Games where one action figure disposed of another action figure, but the powers based on his appearance. Fighting tournaments where I fudged results against my own rules, giving precedence to whoever I simply thought looked cooler. Games at school where we made paper robots with fantastical statistic and no balance; those games often ended in stalemates or people beginning to care less. I drew components of games on file cards, tried to print them, failed miserably. My friends and I tried to start companies to develop games. Sometimes they had real-life stakes. I got put on the detention bench for three days because one game (it involved fighting food items, and I will give you a solid gold pair of cowboy boots if you can guess the name) resulted into a crossover with a deadlier game called dogfighting, the rules of which were, “Don’t be the fourth grader who gets thrown to the ground first." This game was something my dad could understand: a notion of masculine honor, sprouting from a debate concerning whose French fries had stronger psychic powers. They were games about making rules, then me breaking them as I saw fit, no different from any dictator. And nobody wants to be ruled over by a pudgy fourth grader, so the best games were winnable mainly because we had no idea what we were going for. The best game my stepbrother and I probably ever took apart in we called “Wild Onion Farmers." There were no monsters. Stakes, certainly. We were attempting something akin to actual pioneers: making the land comprehend our vision for it. And, boy, did it never comply. Sticks we were trying to make fenced sections sank in dirt or snapped, or were uneven. We picked it and used them as sort of economy that was barely memorable. And this game we played together. We put aside petty differences to make our frontier habitable. Soon the wild onion ran out and so did our interest in the game. Or rather, our chewing the onion became cause for concern. I suppose my dad probably said something nice, like, “Get those damn things out of your mouth." My dad also felt the need to control games, and once he joined our game, we found some other way to entertain ourselves. He didn’t seem to understand that our insistence on playing game were a point of disappearance. He, too, had games. Our family became invested in games as a unit when we began watching "Jeopardy." I’m not sure when it began, but it caught on. They sat on leather couches while my stepbrother and I sat on the floor, experiencing four drubbings a month, the days when my dad had custody of me. I fared better than he did because I had five years on my stepbrother and spent a lot of time as a second grader sucking up encyclopedias. |
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