…as you can see from all cases of bloggers arrested, or threatened from the police.
My (obvious) advice to them is: quit blogging, move to a free country (like USA), and resume blogging from there.
Good luck, Sandmonkey.
I don’t know how to explain this to our non-Italian readers.
Annamaria Franzoni, an Italian woman who has been sentenced to 16 years of prison for brutally killing her 3-year old son, will not serve a single day in jail.
In 2002, she bludgeoned multiple times her son’s head. In 2004, she was sentenced to 30 years, and today the appeal court reduced the sentence to 16 years.
I know my limits, so I know I’m not able to explain to our non-Italian readers how this was possible.
A few years ago when I was a resident of California I took a trip to New Mexico.
While there I went to a restaurant and had my first taste of a sopapilla, or a ‘pressed dough, like a tortilla, made of flour, baking powder, salt, and a solid fat.
This dough is deep fried until “golden brown and delicious” (like a doughnut), causing the dough to puff and crisp, and creating a large air pocket in its center.’
It was love at first taste.
It was simply heavenly biting into that fried dough and putting some sweet honey on top.
I really wondered why the restaurant even bothered to put dessert items on the menu.
I went back to California and searched earnestly for sopapillas.
I figured the word was Spanish so they would be most likely to be found in Mexican restaurants.
I searched all the Mexican restaurants I could find.
Finally I asked a Mexican friend if she heard of any restaurants that sell them.
“A sopapilla ? Is that like a torta (sandwich) ? I’ve never heard of it.” and with that I gave up my search.
I thought I would never eat a sopapilla again.
Now, years later, I find myself to be a resident of the state of New Mexico which seems to be the only state which serves sopapillas in many of it’s restaurants.
I can eat them whenever I want. How great is that ?
Sopapillas, after all, are New Mexican cuisine and not Mexican at all.
A recipe for sopapillas:
SOPAPILLAS
Sopapillas have been a New Mexico favorite for hundreds of years.
Derived from Indian fried bread, they are generally served hot with cinnamon and honey for dessert. Light and scrumptious! Makes approximately 20.
1 3/4 cups sifted flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
2 tbsp solid vegetable shortening
2/3 cup cold water
1 cup corn or canola oil
honey and/or cinnamon sugar to taste
Sift flour, baking powder and salt into a mixing bowl.
Cut shortening in using two knives until it forms a coarse mixture.
Gradually add cold water.
Mix together just enough to hold together as you would if making a pie crust.
Turn out on a lightly floured surface.
Knead gently until smooth.
Cover and let dough sit for five minutes.
Roll into a rectangle about 12″ x 15″. Dough will be very thin.
Cut into rectangles about 2″ x 3″ in size.
Heat oil until a drop of water sizzles when dropped into it in large skillet.
Drop a few sopapillas at a time into the oil.
Turn them over three to four times to make them puff up evenly, then fry for two to three minutes on each side, until they are golden brown and puffed up like small pillows.
Dust with cinnamon sugar or pour small amount of honey over the sopapillas.
Serve hot.
Many people know the name of the shooter at Virginia Tech. And many of those will also know some details about his days in high school and college, but what about the victims ? Some heroes were created that day. This post is written in tribute to one of them, Professor Liviu Librescu. Following is an article found at globeandmail.com:
In a letter addressed to Prof. Librescu’s wife Marlena, one student described how he climbed out the window, but paused on the ledge to look back.
“I saw your husband still standing there. He was holding the door closed and looking over his shoulder to make sure everybody else was safe. It was the bravest thing I have ever seen and I will always remember his courage,” the student wrote.
Another simply wrote: “I think he saved my life.”
He will be missed.
I watched this on TV a few days ago.
In this clip, Bill O’Reilly is called racist by journalist Joanne Ostrow because he calls illegal aliens illegal aliens and not “undocumented immigrants”. PC at its extreme…
By now pretty much everybody has heard of the tragic shooting at Virginia Tech.
Today many people, both in the United States and abroad, have been saying that the awful incident was caused because there is no gun control in the US.
The tragedy in Virginia Tech has been used by many calling for a complete ban on handguns in the US. I think they are all wrong.
What happened in Virginia was caused by one completely deranged lunatic. If he were not around there would be no tragedy. He is the cause, not the guns. The guns did not shoot themselves. Therefore
banning guns won’t do anything to stop the next tragedy. The crazy lunatics who want to kill will still be free. If that person wants to murder a lot of people and then commit suicide after he/she will do it regardless of whether guns are available or not.
I don’t know if there is a right solution to use to avoid tragedies like this, but I do know that it is not a ban on all guns.
Having said that, I send my deepest sympathies to the families and friends of the victims.
One thing I never worried about while living in the United States before I moved to Italy was getting paid by my employers my salary when I was supposed to, be it weekly paychecks or a bi-weekly direct deposit into the bank.
Sure I kept records of when I did actually work, but this was more for the accidental errors the employers might make in my paychecks rather than the intentional ones that are common in Italy.
Most of the jobs I had in Italy simply did not pay me on time.
These were legal jobs with only one being a nero or under the table.
I had to send E-mail after E-mail begging fto be paid my salary.
I had to do numerous telephone calls only to listen to the same excuses about how my information is wrong in the computer, the computers are down, the banks are slow…all reasons why I could not be paid.
There were bills to pay, and it’s not as if the bill collectors will wait not for their bills to be paid.
If I weren’t married while I was in Italy with a working husband I would probably be in jail somewhere because I couldn’t pay my bills..
How could a country even function like this, I often thought to myself.
Needless to say after my stay in Italy, when I returned to the United States I really began to appreciate the fact of timely paychecks in the US.
I remember after my first temporary job in the US I proudly said to Buzzurro: “Look! my paycheck arrived IN THE MAIL one week after I worked!”
He smiled, but my mother was in the same room and thought I was nuts for saying that.
Americans who have not lived in Italy cannot comprehend how a person can have a legal job for a relatively large employer and not get paid on time.
Yesterday I received an Email from a friend still in Italy.
After months of searching for a job in December 2006 she found one.
It was with a large department store in Italy.
She was very happy.
She liked it and got along well with the customers.
Now she isn’t so happy with it.
Why ?
She hasn’t been paid since day one of her job.
That was four months ago.
She’s been working for 4 months without any financial reimbursement.
What is the reason for an Italian employer to not pay it’s employees their salaries when they state by contract that they will ?
Are they hoping the employees will simply forget that they are owed tens or hundred of dollars ?
Are they hoping to get rich on the few cents of interest they get by not paying the salaries ?
Do they want their employees to miss time from work while they are in court doing a bankruptcy hearing ?
What is the reason ? I never understood this, and I still don’t.
