Thankful for Nutella

Every fall I make a Nutella Pumpkin pie and in recent years I have also been making it for Thanksgiving. I love it so much that I have mentioned it on the blog before and you can see the recipe here.

How the delicious Nutella spread found itself at the center of a European food labeling battle earlier this year is most interesting. Headlines started popping up such as, "Italy's meltdown over EU Nutella ban that never was: Warning from Ferrero boss Francesco Paolo Fulci spreads panic about nation's favourite indulgence", from the Guardian and "Italy fears for Nutella with new EU food labels" from The Boston Globe and my personal favorite headline:

"In Europa la battaglia della Nutella" (the battle for Nutella in Europe) from Italy’s La Stampa. Below is a quote from this article from former Italian diplomat and current VP of Ferrero, the company that has been making the beloved chocolate hazelnut spread since the 1940’s. I should also mention here that this article was in Italian and I used Google to translate it, so….

The effect is disruptive you can tell by the strength of the reaction of giant cakes. "We put in a straitjacket, it is not serious," exclaims Francesco Paolo Fulci, vice president of Ferrero, accurate in painting nightmare scenarios, "for manufacturers of chocolate, and those sweet panettone", all intended to 'go out of law'.

Oh, those poor sweet panettone! I know what he means. I think. The onset of stricter European food labeling rules led to the formation of the “Hands off Nutella” committee whose aim was/is to combat what one official described as “nutritionist fundamentalism”. You go Ferrero S.p.A.!!! Hands off!

Knowing all of this makes me feel somewhat smug while using this anti-nutritionist fundamentalism spread. You should read through a couple of those articles, they are hilarious. In them you'll find out about the Italy soccer squad Nutella connection, industrial espionage, mention of Michele Ferrero's private lab in Monte Carlo and the top secret nature of the Ferrero plant in Alba, Piedmonte.

Happy Thanksgiving and don't let the nutritionist fundamentalists bring you down!

10 Year Anniversary

It's hard to believe that Trolley Nights have been happening for 10 years.

From the South Main Memphis website...
Downtown’s South Main Trolley Night is celebrating its Ten Year Anniversary!

On Friday, November 26th, from 6-9 PM, get away from the crazy mall traffic and head Downtown to join in the festivities. Bring the out-of-town family to a unique Memphis neighborhood and enjoy old and new Trolley Night traditions.

Listen to strolling carolers, drink some cider, find some Black Friday deals, have a great meal (that you don’t have to clean up after), and in the spirit of the Season pick an Angel from the Salvation Army Angel Tree on Friday night and give a gift to a child or senior in need.

South Main Trolley night is also sponsoring MIFA’s Meals On Wheels program through December. Meals on Wheels provides hot meals each weekday to over 1,800 Memphis area seniors, who are homebound due to illness or disability.

I'm Slower than the Trolley; Mortified Poppy

I think of myself as an observant person. It seems I'll have to revise that notion now. I stood at Madison and Main waiting for the Medical Center - Madison Avenue trolley today after lunch. Nothing was wrong with my car, well nothing I care to acknowledge anyway. I just thought I'd take the trolley back to work for fun/to be supportive/to be "urban", whatever. Turns out the Madison line trolley has been out of service since the middle of September. I did not get that memo. Did you? The MATA website posted a news release on September 10 but I do not regularly check the MATA website for trolley news. Odd but true. Click on the release below to enlarge:


Then I found an MBJ article from October 17th about the Madison line repair work and replacement buses. This is the way it will be until further notice.

In other transportation news, Poppy and I went out to walk at noon today. She's been wearing her Chevron-like dog boots for a few days but we have been walking behind the law school mostly. Today we walked right down Main Street and must have gotten comments from 400 people about her boots. No one suspects she's had surgery and they think I'm one of those whack jobs that dresses dogs up. So, there were a lot of comments like, "why is she only wearing those on her back feet?", and "Oh, look that dog is wearing shoes!" and also some sly snickering, whispering and pointing. I initially tried explaining everything to people who commented but soon got tired and just started smiling back inanely. I think I'll just do what the old man does in Moonstruck:

Five Favorites for Friday

Union Street Bath House Facebook Page You like?

Sparkling Like a Diamond -a recipe for Gingerbread Tiramisu

Eye Prefer Paris - how can a door be this beautiful?

Artbutcher : Hydro74, vote for your favorite bike racks and other cool stuff

Life as I know it from Memphis is obsessing (you do still have followers!)

Dog Boots and Chickens

As I mentioned in an earlier post, Poppy had surgery a couple of weeks ago for a stomach ulcer. Yesterday she had her nasty little stitches removed and then her little belly promptly popped open last night. So back we went to the vet today to have her re-stitched. She's not happy with this because re-stitching means wearing the Elizabethan collar and having her back feet wrapped up again so she can't scratch her stitches out. Further, in order to try to keep her foot wraps clean the vet suggested I put plastic sandwich bags over them. I did that and let me just say I won't do it again. Not only is it a pain to do every time we go out for a walk but they don't really work that well. Someone else suggested baby socks which sounds better except for walking in the rain or in the dew soaked grass in the morning. So, I found the above pictured boots at Hollywood Feed today which are waterproof and can be adjusted with the velcro straps to fit her stick-like back legs. While these may solve my problems I'm unsure as to Poppy's reaction when she sees these things. They are not exactly attractive and they vaguely resemble the Chevron logo. I know that when I told her I'd buy her some boots she was thinking more along the lines of a nice pair of Aquatalia's or maybe some La Canadienne's.

As if buying these ridiculous dog boots wasn't weird enough, on my drive back to the office I went down a street in midtown I'm sure I've never been on in my life. I turned down the street purely to get away from the pokey driver in front of me. While driving down this odd avenue I happened to look to my left just across a vacant lot and saw a bunch of chickens (Mary - there were boy and girl chickens in this particular herd) strutting back and forth. I don't normally see chicken flocks in the middle of town so I was surprised and had to stop for a picture because I knew no one would believe me.

Court Square Christmas Tree Competition

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas. Christmas lights started being installed on Main Street this week and the Center City Commission and Rotary Club announced this Christmas tree competition:
First Annual Court Square Christmas Tree Competition
December 6 - December 18
The Memphis Rotary Club and the Center City Commission are very excited to announce the first Court Square Christmas Tree Competition!

Memphis-area businesses are invited to participate by purchasing and decorating a Christmas tree, approximately 12 feet in height, for display in Downtown's historic Court Square during the holiday season. The public will vote on the top three "best" trees, and the winners will be honored with a teacher initiative grant given in their name to the new Memphis College Prep Elementary School in Uptown!

Each tree will cost $250, and each company may have its corporate logo on display in front of its decorated tree. Private security will be provided in Court Square during the display period, which will begin with a tree lighting ceremony on December 6 at 6 p.m. in the park.

Click here for complete contest information.

Don't miss this opportunity to light up Downtown Memphis and be a part of a beautiful and fun new tradition for the entire community! Reserve your tree by November 24!

Please contact Dawn Vinson at (901) 575-0555 or Taylor Hughes at (901) 526-1318 by November 24 to reserve your tree.

Lost in Translation

My boyfriend travels all the time and he sends me links to places he has been and interesting things he's seen. Most of the time the links he sends are in French, German or Spanish. Google automatically translates the pages into English which as you may know is always, uh, a little cumbersome. Last night he sent me a link to a restaurant called La Ferme (The Farm) in Louviers, France.

Here is the English translation for the chef's specialties page:

"The chef's specialties: the back of small cod trawl reggiano risotto, the rustic house and his pot with onion marmalade dessert bread lost his grandmother Henrietta. Winter in the fireplace, you can find the infinite happiness of a true gourmet chicken in the pot, a perfect veal kidney and perfect lamb shank with fresh thyme and meat and poultry cooked in a wood."

And then there was the translation from the home page that read:

"From the terrace you can admire the courtyard surrounded by walls, with the center, its pigeon and schedules that allowed owners of yesteryear to live here in perfect autarky."

How I envy a life of perfect autarky and what about the poor grandmother Henrietta? And so until I learn another language I am at the mercy of Google translator which as you see is at least entertaining if not accurate. I have completely abandoned studying Italian, my preferred language to learn, for French which has not been easy for me. I was trying at one point to learn them simultaneously with disastrous results. I suspect if I could speak French I would possess the infinite happiness of a true gourmet chicken in the pot!

DOWNTOWN Dining Week

Click here: DOWNTOWN MEMPHIS - Dining Week for all of the details. DTDW continues through this Sunday the 21st.

What kind of meals can you expect? Well, here's the three course meal from Chez Phillipe just one of the many fine restaurants participating:

First Course - Butternut Squash Soup (Chili Pumpkin Seeds, Styrian Pumpkinseed Oil, Snipped Chives) Or Caesar Salad (Baby Romaine, Marinated White Anchovies, Sourdough Crustini, Parmesan, Classic Dressing)

Second Course - Shrimp Fricassee (Flageolet Beans, Tarragon Nage, Baby Turnips) Or Steak Frites (Seared Flat Iron Steak, Black Truffle Butter, Pomme Frites)

Third Course - Crème Brulee (Caramelized Apples, Almond Macaroon, Burnt Sugar) Or Baked Alaska (Banana Ice Cream, Chocolate Ganache, Crumbled Vanilla Wafers, Chocolate Rum Sauce)

Assorted Mignardises

I had to assemble a lexicon to understand a few items above, thought maybe some readers would like a guide as well:

Styrian - from the state of Styria in Austria

Flageolet beans aka fayot, are small immature kidney beans with a history that dates back to the 1800’s in France. The are very hard to find in the US but are sometimes available fresh, dried, or canned. The bean is available in a variety of colors including white (flageolet blanc), black (noir), yellow (jaune), red (rouge) or green (vert), taken from: http://www.gourmetsleuth.com/Dictionary/F/Flageolet-beans-6227.aspx

Tarragon nage - the best defintion I could find for nage said it is a French stock made from herbs, vegetable or fish

Mignardises - bite sized desserts, like petit fours

Looking For a Job?

The Union Street Bath House has an opening for a parilschik. I'm sure there will be some pretty tough competition for this coveted position. Good luck Yuri and I'm glad your mother is better. So now you come back to Memphis the Tennessee, yes, and open your most supreme banya?

Sunday Supper Inspired by Pranzo di Ferragosto

I watched an Italian movie today called "Pranzo di Ferragosto" (Mid-August Lunch, 2008, filmed in Rome). I love this movie for it's skillful way of presenting multiple layers of issues all in a very short 60 minutes. The female characters reminded me of my grandmother and my great aunts and the food, which was central, was enough to make me go to the store to try to recreate one of the dishes. The main character Gianni was guzzling white wine by the bottle so I broke out a Pinot Grigio I had on hand to accompany lunch which was flounder, roasted potatoes and an arugula salad. Watch the trailer:

Near the end of the movie Gianni makes fish and potatoes for the old women and my version of it became today's lunch. I bought the flounder at the Midtown Farmers Market on Union. The potatoes were cut into quarters and boiled for 5 minutes. Then I placed them in a baking dish with olive oil and sprinkled them with rosemary, fresh thyme, salt and pepper and off they went into a 425 degree oven for 20 minutes. After 20 minutes I added the flounder to the baking dish, arranging the potatoes around the fillets that I had sprinkled with Old Bay, salt, pepper and lemon juice and put it all back in the oven to bake for another 15 minutes. The arugula salad was a very simple mix of arugula from Fresh Market, thinly sliced red onion and a light drizzling of caesar dressing.

The Ruffino Pinot Grigio came from Joe's. Post-op Poppy, who is doing great, came sniffing around my plate and ended up with a small piece of fish and a niblet of potato. Don't tell her dottore, per piacere.

Finally Feeling Like Fall Photo; What is 61 Years Old and Still Fresh and Original? Answer Below

Photo of south side of Court Square looking east this rainy, cooler morning.

Answer: The Memphis College of Art 61st Annual Holiday Bazaar is next Friday, November 19 from 6 to 9 pm and Saturday, November 20, 2010 from 10 am to 3 pm. This much-anticipated event features thousands of pieces of original artwork for sale in time for the holidays.

Unofficially the oldest bazaar in the city, MCA's market has become a mainstay of the holiday season and offers shoppers one-of-a-kind gifts and artwork made by students, faculty, staff and alumni. Sculptures, paintings, pottery, ceramics, glass, jewelry and ornaments are only a few of the items for sale.

Shoppers and guests will have the opportunity to bid on a variety of items by local artists and merchants during the Holiday Bazaar’s Silent Auction. One hundred percent of the proceeds go directly to MCA’s scholarship fund. The Silent Auction closes Saturday, November 20 at 2:30 pm.

As always, the Holiday Bazaar is free and open to the public. All proceeds benefit MCA's scholarship fund. Click HERE for more information.

Five Favorites for Friday

Again, a photo that has nothing to do with aything. I just like the Men at Work sign. I've skipped a couple of Fridays I believe, so I'm getting back to my regularly scheduled Five Favorites list...

Flip Flop France - expat day to day in Lyon, France.

Dachsies Rule - the dachshunds found an escape route from the jail yard.

TasteSpotting - a visual potluck and gateway to lots and lots of food blogs.

Norococo has some fantastic photos of the Peanut Shop on Main Street, including the antique roaster and Mr. Peanut himself, of course.

JenSized - she un-friends a friend on Facebook

Sweet Potato Gelato Research

Anyone who keeps up with this blog already knows about my love of gelato. This love had been unrequited until a few months ago when Miss Cordelia's starting selling Bravo gelato from Nashville. Right now they have added sweet potato gelato to their standard trio of chocolate, strawberry and pistachio. I had to try it so I went with no delay to Miss C's at lunch today and picked some up. It's good. No, it's better than good, it's intoxicating, smooth and super rich. It doesn't taste like a sweet potato casserole or a baked sweet potato and I'm sure that if I didn't already know what flavor it was I would have never guessed sweet potato mainly because you don't expect vegetable flavors to show up in frozen desserts. Nevertheless, it was great and I highly recommend it. I ate the entire container of this by the way which has put me in a sort of gelato stupor.

River Inn Cooking School; Sweet Potato Gelato; City Market Grocery & Deli

Downtown photo totally unrelated to the post topic. Just trying to get back into the swing.

River Inn Cooking School 14 -15 NOVEMBER, 2010 Holiday Themed Cooking: Learn to make scrumptious hors d’oeuvres, canapés and tapas style preparations for holiday cocktail parties. You will learn how to build terrines with foie gras and figs, smoked salmon roulades filled with goat cheese, seared tuna with Asian sauces, oysters in the half shell with accompaniments and sauces as well as rich chocolate desserts. I don't know about you but I could use a few pointers on perfecting my terrine building skills. Foie gras and figs - sounds delicious to me.

Miss Cordelia's has a sweet potato gelato from Bravo gelato which I will have to try for blog research purposes of course. You can also donate canned goods to the Feed the Need Food Drive at Miss Cordelia's until November 21st.

Check on City Market's progress on their Facebook page. Can't wait! The interior bright colors in their ground floor space (66 S. Main) make that corner so inviting.

Quick Thing for Artists

An interesting article in the Memphis Daily News prompted this quick post: Are you an artist? What kind of space do you need to live and create? Artspace Projects would like to know. TAKE THE SURVEY

So Where Did I Leave Off...

Oh yes, the blog. Life gets in the way of the blog from time to time. The last blogging I remember doing was snapping photos of Pinnacle people and railing against insidious drivers downtown. Shortly after that my life was on a totally different trajectory due to months of planning a monumental change that was then on the verge of being put into action. My life version 2.0 was on the launchpad. Then in two short weeks it all fell apart. Then one week after that Poppy became super sick and had to have surgery. She has a stomach ulcer but is doing ok now and is healing. So once again the blog took a backseat.

What’s been going on downtown? I’m trying to get back up to speed and console myself a little by highlighting downtown shopping – always a happy topic! The Season is upon us I fear and the big retailers are as obnoxious as always by being bright and early with the Christmas music and décor. I haven’t started seeing the onslaught of champagne and perfume commercials yet but they’ll show up soon enough. The Pilgrims no doubt would have hated being eclipsed in this way. I was Out East the day after Halloween and saw that someone had put up their Christmas tree and it stood there in the living room window garishly sparkling and twinkling. That’s 55 days of looking at the Christmas tree. 55. That’s 30 days too many in my book. Anywho, here’s some good downtown shopping to think about for consolation, Christmas or both:

National Ornamental Metal Museum Holiday Show and Sale now through January 9, 2011. If you've never visited their gift shop, you should. It's full of a wide selection of very unique items.

Hoot + Louise has an array of gift ideas under $50

Don't forget to check in on the interesting items at Red Fish Gallery Gifts and Glass in the Pinch.

Looking for Made in Memphis items? Try Sache

My boyfriend bought me a chic sweater from Lansky 126 last week and while there I noticed some great handbags and accessories. And don't forget that the Peabody gift shop just off the lobby near the west side has some great jewelry and bath products.

Other shops:
Charlotte Jewelry , Delphinium , Muse. I just bought my mom a Virgins, Saints & Angels cross for her birthday from Muse and she loved it. Shelton's and Christine by Shelton just a few doors from Shelton's on Main Street, American Apparel, Coco & Lily and Victoria's Secret in Peabody Place.

C215

I'm in need of inspiration, so watching someone who is compelled to do something and does it well sometimes helps. N'est-ce pas?