Trip to Todi

Today we went to Todi, a little town in the province of Perugia, in Umbria region. We have these American friends, a recently retired couple, who have rented a three bedroom apartment in the center of Todi for 3 months. They kindly invited us to spend some time together and we couldn't say no.

We were planning to leave the house at 9 o'clock in the morning, but being a typical family with little kids of course we didn't manage getting on the road before 9:40.
There was some traffic but no queues on the highway, so it was fine, except for one idiot! He was driving a black BMW X5 and was trying to pass us from the right hand side, which, of course, is not possible, this is not England! My husband didn't let him pass and the idiot got mad! When it was possible we did change the lane and let him pass to our left, thinking that now he will go ahead on his road to hell leaving us in peace. We were wrong. He didn't pass us, but placed his car next to ours, VERY close to ours, dangerously close, and kept his speed equal to ours, blocking us behind a motorbike for a couple of minutes. This was not enough, he even drove ON to our car, forcing my husband to make a sharp motion towards the right, nearly out of the road! The idiot tried to push us out of the road, can you believe it???? And assuming that he was not blind, since he was given a driver's license, he must have seen the two little kids sitting in the back of our car, yet it meant absolutely nothing to him. After some time we somehow got in the left lane again, one car ahead of him, and when we could we came back to the right lane to continue in our own pace. This idiot came like a lightning out of the blue again and passed us at only millimeters' distance, so close to us and so fast that though our car is a huge SUV it shook with the wind of his BMW. Then he got lost in the distance... Everything lasted about ten minutes, but they were my worst ten minutes on the highways of Italy. I have sworn, and cursed him. I had taken his plate number but it is of no use. This is Italy, you NEVER find any police on the highways when you need them. And the streets and highways are full of idiots like the one we met this morning. I don't understand why they keep wondering about the reason of the huge number of accidents that happen in Italy every year. They should just watch themselves driving! It is obvious. They drive like maniacs.

Anyway... We did arrive at Todi around 11.15. We went to the apartment of our friends for a while. Then we went out to the narrow streets of the tiny town. It is a quite beautiful little medieval town with its stone buildings with thick walls, narrow streets, streets of tens of stairs, streets that suddenly open into a piazza, little and crowded restaurants, cafes on either side of the streets, flowers hanging down from the little balconies that open to the narrow stony streets, huge stone buildings with little shops squeezed one against the other... They took us to a typical restaurant and we ate very well, sipping our red wine from Umbria. I chose some long flat pasta with black truffles as my first dish. It was delicious! My second dish was a plate of entrecote cooked medium-rare and sliced, placed over a bed of fresh spicy rucola, and washed with the sweet-and-sour balsamic vinegar.. absolutely to make you lick your fingers. My favorite was my side-dish though. I ordered some eggplants prepared in a way that I had never tried before. They had sliced the eggplants in half a cm thick disks and then grilled them. Afterwards the eggplants were placed on a little plate. Over them there was some extra virgin olive oil. They were topped with toasted pine nuts and raisins (also the raisins were toasted). And on the very top there was a layer of freshly grated pecorino cheese. I recommend the eggplant lovers to try this recipe, definitely a winner.

Instead of eating some dessert at the same restaurant we preferred to go out and get ice-cream somewhere else. After a short walk and some rest at the apartment of our friends we got on the road home towards 5 pm.

Italy (but especially Tuscany and Umbria) is full of beautiful little towns that make the foreigners (Americans, Germans, and the others) fall in love and come back again and again. I should admit, they are right, it is a beautiful country.

Went shopping

This morning, seeing the beautiful weather, I left everything as it is in the house, prepared my son and got out. When it is sunny outside, even the little one doesn't want to stay at home, points continuously at the window trying to tell me that he wants to get out.

We came downtown, parked the car in front of the office of my husband and went for a walk. I wanted to buy a new pair of shoes for the little one, but since he cannot walk yet the soft summer shoes are not for him. He has to suffer in his thick but appropriate shoes at least one more month until he begins really walking.

After this failed attempt of buying shoes for him, I listened to the advice of someone who reads my blog and decided to buy some things for me. I spent over a hundred euro in one shop and was satisfied with the things that I bought. The problem is when I am out shopping for something for the kids or my husband I never think how much I spend, I just take whatever is necessary and beautiful for them. Yet, when I have to buy something for myself I don't manage to buy expensive things, I always go for the cheaper ones. Why??? If I do manage to pay a bit more than what I had in mind, I get this guilty feeling, as I did also this morning, although the things that I bought were absolutely necessary and in fact I had to buy them a long time ago.

On my way back to the office I bought also some material to make a dress for my daughter. When I finish it I will put its picture here. It will be really pretty. I am planning to finish the dress for her birthday, which is less than 2 weeks ahead.

The wisdom of "The Little Prince"

I have serious reason to believe that the planet from which the little prince came is asteroid known as B-612.

This asteroid has only once been seen through the telescope. That was by a Turkish astronomer, in 1909.

On making his discovery, the astronomer had presented it to the International Astronomical Congress, in a great demonstration. But he was in Turkish costume, and so nobody would believe what he said.

Grown-ups are like that...

Fortunately, however, for the reputation of Asteroid B-612, a Turkish dictator made a law that his subjects, under pain of death, should change to European costume. So in 1920 the astronomer gave his demonstration all over again, dressed with impressive style and elegance. And this time everybody accepted his report.

From "The Little Prince", by Antoine De Saint-Exupéry

Yes, the grown-ups are like this. It doesn't really matter what you say, or do, as long as you do it the way they want you to do it, obeying their rules and formats.

You can remove the grown-ups / they in the former sentence and put Europeans / the-western-world / the- ones-that-think-to-know-everything / the-ones-that-have-the-power / the-ones-that-have-the-money etc., and the sentence will still be sound.

I love "The Little Prince". His wisdom is universal and ever valid. You will find more of his wisdom in my blog in the future. In the mean time, maybe you want to check out the book below :-)

Determination ending in desperation

I decided to study computer engineering/science when I was 11. I didn't only decide what to study but where to study, too, at that early age. When I was telling everybody that I would be studying computer engineering at Bogazici University in Istanbul, the ones that didn't know me well (they were yet to discover what a determined and hard-working student I was) were just making a grin saying 'Sure, everybody wants to study there, but only a handful can get in'. After 7 years and a two-step university entrance exam there I was, exactly where I had told them that I would be. The only strange thing was the reason why I had said at that early age that I wanted to study computers. It was not because I was in love with computers or anything (hey, it was 1980 when I made my decision, not everybody had a computer then). It was simply because I was hearing people talk about computers, and how difficult it had to be to study computer engineering and how intelligent the guys that have chosen computer engineering were. The guys? The guys! 'Why the guys, but not the girls??', I thought. I was intelligent. I had determination. I adored mathematics. What else was necessary?? Being a boy? Nope. I had found my profession, and I went for it.

We were 60 that were admitted that year, and if I don't remember wrong, we were only 4 or 5 girls. Not that it disturbed me, just the opposite: I enjoyed the friendship of boys more than that of the girls at that time. In a short while I became one of the boys, too.

After 3 years of computer engineering I got accepted to the computer science department of University of Bergen in Norway and transfered there although I had only one year left for graduation in Istanbul and I lost a year (or gained a language; depends if you want to see the empty or full part of half a glass of water) by transferring to Norway. 13 years after this change of location I even got my PhD. I was not living in Norway any more at the time, I had already moved on with my life and got married, moved to Italy and even made one baby. But my passion for computer science was not changed, it has never changed.

I know that I have chosen the correct profession for me, and when I am given the chance I show that I am good at it, too. Yet, I don't have a job where I can use my knowledge, especially my specialty (parallel computing; subject of a future post maybe), and this is killing me. I feel like I have no future in this country when it comes to finding a proper job. A job, any job I can always find, but not the job. And this is killing me.

Barbecue season is opened

Finally spring has arrived. Not that we had an extreme winter this year, it was abnormally warm the whole winter. And now it is too warm for April; last Thursday it was 31 degrees C here in Florence!

This weekend seeing the beautiful sun I decided to benefit from it and did 4 machines of laundry, all dried out under the sun in a few hours. I love the smell of laundry dried in fresh air. In the winter I hang them on a rack in the attic or put some small pieces on the radiators (my husband doesn't like it, but it is quite fast to dry socks and stuff), which create a lot of humidity in the house..

Yesterday I also did some gardening, planted some new flowers in pots and put them in my front balcony, planted some herbs and placed them in the rear balcony which my kitchen opens to. I also changed the pots of some flowers and my daughter helped me. She likes playing the gardener with her mother :-)

We opened our barbecue season as well yesterday: a big piece of beef-steak as high as two-fingers, the way traditional bistecca alla fiorentina is supposed to be, cooked rare, delicious Tuscan sausages and the inevitable eggplant prepared as my father-in-law prepares it. We like inviting our friends to barbecue in the summer and we always prepare our special eggplant. Everybody loves it. Now I will give you the recipe of this delicious and easy way of enjoying eggplants.

You need eggplants, better if they are the purple short and fat type, fresh basil or mint leaves, some garlic boats, white wine vinegar, sea-salt and extra virgin olive oil.

Cut the eggplants in their length without pealing off their skin. The slices should not be too thick (they wouldn't be cooked well on the grill), and neither too thin (they would get burnt immediately). The right thickness is about 4-5 mm. Place the slices side by side on a pan, layering them with sea-salt. Leave them aside for some time so that the bitter liquid of the eggplant comes out. Then wash off the salt, squeeze them slightly and dry them completely placing them between two clean kitchen towels and pressing over a little. Next, place the dried slices again in a pan, pouring some extra virgin olive oil on each layer making sure that each slice gets oil on it. While the eggplants are getting barbecued cut the garlic boats in thin slices and put in a deep bowl. Add the basil/mint leaves and the vinegar. The grilled slices of eggplant are put in this vinegar-garlic-basil/mint mixture and mixed a few times before they are eaten so that each slice soaks in some vinegar. Buon appetito! :-)

Don't read this if you are on a diet!

I love experimenting in my kitchen and today I had the perfect occasion. I had chocolate from two Easter-eggs, two bags of cookies that were about to go soft and a whole package of mascarpone cheese whose best before date is tomorrow! I have been surfing the net for a suitable recipe in which I could use all the materials that I wanted to get rid of. Finally I found an all chocolate cheesecake recipe that seemed OK. But of course I had to adapt this recipe to the ingredients that I had at hand. I sat down to work...

One of the bag of cookies was of type quaresimali, with chocolate, in the form of letters of the alphabet, something that you can buy only around the time of carnival here. The second bag contained cookies made of corn flour, quite good to accompany a cup of black tea actually. I placed all these cookies in the blender and after a few turns I had the cookie-flour for the base of my cake. In the mean time I had already melted about 200 grams of butter and left it aside to cool. I mixed the cookie-flour and the melted butter with a tablespoon of dark cacao. After covering the bottom of my springform pan with baking paper I pressed this mixture to cover it evenly and baked the base for 10 minutes in 175 degrees C.

While the base was in the oven I began preparing the fill. In a bowl I mixed 250 grams of mascarpone cheese and a cup of sugar. I added 2 tablespoons of flour to the cheese-sugar mixture instead of only one as written in the original recipe. Then I added 5 eggs one by one, mixing very well after adding each egg. I substituted the sour cream with two tablespoons of full-milk yogurt. Finally I added the melted chocolate and 1 ml of vanilla extract. After tasting the mixture I decided that it was too sweet for my taste (must be the chocolate from the Easter eggs; milk chocolate, nobody likes it in the family, that is why it was left uneaten until today). So I added one full tablespoon of dark cacao. Looking in the box of cacao I noticed that very little was left. I thought 'What the heck..' and added the rest of the cacao as well :-) I poured the mixture over the base and rolled it into the oven at 220 degrees C. After 15 minutes I took the temperature down to 150 degrees and put the timer to 45 minutes. Right now the cake is still cooking. So I cannot tell you yet how this experiment turned out. But I will add a picture here as soon as possible, and tell you what the family members thought about my all chocolate cheesecake.


The all chocolate cake was delicious! We all ate two slices each yesterday. But next time I will try to make it with a different base, maybe a thin layer of pan di spagna with cacao. This one was rather heavy for our taste. We are not used to eating so much butter. (14.04.2007 10:03 AM)

What's the language of your thoughts? And your dreams?

Mine have different languages. If I am thinking about someone or something in Turkiye I find myself thinking in Turkish. If it is a problem that I have in Italy, it is an Italian friend, then, of course, I think in Italian. Sometimes I remember stuff from the good old days in Norway. But in this case there is no fixed language for my thoughts. It depends on the actors of the little play in my brain. If they are Norwegians with whom I used to speak in Norwegian, then it is definitely Norwegian that they also use in the play. If the play has something to do with my studies, my adviser (who was also Norwegian by the way) at the university, the language is English. When the actors are my Turkish friends in Norway, they speak Turkish, naturally. However, I should admit that the language that I use the most in thinking is not Turkish as one might expect, it is English...

When it comes to my dreams the situation does not change much, gets worse ;-) Why? Because I sometimes find myself dreaming in German in addition to my Turkish, English, Italian and Norwegian dreams! I studied German as my second foreign language for 6 years in secondary and high school. Since I have never used the language I have forgotten most of what I knew before. Yet, it all comes back to the surface in my dreams.

In which language do the infants that cannot speak any language yet think and dream???

Existential question about my blog

I simply don't know what to write in my blog. I see people that have very interesting blogs, informative blogs, culinary blogs, business oriented blogs, diary-blogs.. I don't know what I want my blog to be.

In the old days I had begun keeping diaries at different time intervals. Every time that I started I ended after a day or two. So, I know that I am no diary writer.

I like taking photos, but I don't think I am good enough (neither is my camera) to publish my photos here. Hence, no photo-blog..

There are many culinary blogs, I don't see the need for another one, though I love cooking and among friends and family I am known to be quite good at it.

I am not an artist, either. I do knit and sew and do crochet etc, and I used to paint, and I would love to learn how to play the guitar (I have one). But these don't make me an artist.

I cannot write a business oriented blog since I don't even have a job. OK, maybe this is not totally true. I do some work for a mathematics professor at the University of Florence, and I also assist her course (numerical computing), but this cannot be considered a real job, can it?

So, what remains for me/my blog???

Easter weekend and more..

Another Easter has passed. This year, for a change, we went to the country house of my in-laws. Every year we eat the Easter lunch with them, so the only change was the change of house. I have other plans for next year though ;-)

Anyway, it was nice. We were lucky with the weather, quite sunny and pleasantly warm on Sunday, little bit misty yesterday. Sunday morning me and my daughter went out in the garden (I call it for simplicity as garden; it is a big piece of land with olive trees and in a corner my father-in-law grows also potatoes and some other vegetables). We played football first, then we went all around the land collecting flowers. There were many different flowers mostly in different shades of violet. When we came back to the house our shoes and trousers were all wet because of the morning dew on the grass.

Me and the kids spent two lazy days, lying on the sofas watching TV, playing cards, going for a walk around the house, sleeping, reading, eating, whereas Gabriele and his father had to work in the garden cutting wood, removing the cut branches of the olive trees, preparing the grill.

In Italy when people get together for any reason, Easter - Xmas - new years' eve - birthdays - celebrations of any kind, they EAT. They like having their visitors around dining table instead of serving them only a cup of coffee and some sweets in the living room... So we also ate this weekend, lamp - the classical Easter meat-, but also chicken and pork. I had made a pineapple cake as the dessert of our Easter lunch, they loved it. I had also prepared a sweet Easter bread (paskalya çöreği in Turkish). Though I made it for the first time in my life it turned out quite delicious and we ate it not only at breakfast time with our coffee but also dipped it in our Vin Santo after dinner.

Today I am at home with the two kids. Iris' school doesn't open before Thursday. I am planning to go downtown and visit a Spanish friend of mine in the afternoon. She just had her second daughter a couple of weeks ago. Maybe we take all our four kids and go out to a park, we will see.

I should do something about finding a job soon. I am becoming (or am I already???) a housewife and I don't like this (no offense to real housewives, the ones who have chosen to be only housewives, but I wasn't planning to become one, so it is unacceptable for me)!!!

The "Bree" in me, Part 2

I told the cleaning lady to vacuum-clean the mattresses of our beds last week. She said 'Sure, I do it from time to time, I can do it also today'. Great. I was in the kitchen, as always, while she was doing the cleaning. I noticed that she didn't go to the storage room where we have the stuff for cleaning and the different pieces of the vacuum cleaner, but I heard the vacuuming in our bedroom.
- She is not vacuuming the mattress with the piece for the floors, is she?
I found myself thinking... Then I waived that question off saying to myself that any person able to use her brain a little bit would not do something so stupid. Well, she turned out to be not one of those people. I found it out on Monday when I told her to vacuum the sofas in the living room with the little piece of the vacuum-cleaner which is made for that purpose, and adding: 'You used that piece to clean our mattresses as well, right?'. The answer was 'No'.

You cannot clean the dust and dog-hair and food rests and whatever else is on the floor with one brush and then use the same brush to clean the mattress that you sleep on for God's sake! This is not cleaning but dirtying the place that you lie down. If I enjoyed sleeping with all the dust of the house I would sleep on the floor.

Yes, I am a cleanliness freak, I accept that. When I go out in one of my balconies I either use some other slippers that are to be used only in that balcony, or clean under my slippers before getting in the house again. I have all kinds of detergents for each bathroom, the kitchen, the refrigerator, the floors etc. The list can be made longer, but enough of that.

However, I think that being a person of order and system is not something so bad after all. For example, I am extremely precise in whatever it is that I do, be it a knitting job or a software that I write. I would sit at my computer for hours in order to make my little piece of program code perfect, or take down a knitting project just for correcting one single loop knitted wrong many lines before, though nobody else but me would recognize the mistake. You can always be sure that you would get my best if I have said that I would do something for you. And this is not bad, is it? :-)