And here we’ve arrived at Part II! In this portion of the trip, we visited the most locations in the shortest amount of time, and yet it felt the most leisurely. INTERESTING VACATION FACT FOR YOU, HUH? This portion also contains my favorite place in Italy: Pompeii! Here’s another interesting fact for you: Did you know ancient Pompeii was filled with perverts? IT’S TRUE! Just wait until you see how much these people loved dicks. Continue reading
Monthly Archives: June 2011
A Long, Self-Indulgent Dispatch From a Vacation, Part Two: Pompeii, Positano, and Capri
Filed under Italy, Non-Gwyneth
A Long, Self-Indulgent Dispatch From a Vacation, Part One: Rome and The Vatican
So, this has nothing to do with Gwyneth Paltrow. Sorry. But maybe we need a bit of a break? A break from Gwyneth Paltrow is something the internet DEFINITELY needs. So, I apologize for derailing the blog for, like, ever. We’ll get back to the cooking soon! (Don’t worry, we’re well ahead of schedule on the recipes, anyway.) But for now, do you want to hear a lengthy, self-indulgent story about a wonderful trip someone you probably have never met took to Italy? Of course you do! So, let’s go to Rome.
First things first, I should explain some background: I went to Italy with my two sisters, Nikki and Sara, our Aunt Dana, and our grandma. There were a couple reasons for the trip. Our grandpa died a year ago almost exactly, my grandma was doing a writing seminar/adult summer camp/strange thing in Tuscany this summer, and also we just all wanted to go to Italy. So, we did. Lesson learned: any excuse you can make up for yourself to go to Italy, take it. Continue reading
Filed under Italy, Non-Gwyneth, Uncategorized
Well, Hello Again, America
Rejoice, blog fans (if there are any of you left), for I am once again on native soil!
I am weary, jetlagged, battered, bruised, bandaged, and 10 pounds heavier.
I got propositioned for sex in exchange for drugs in Rome, I climbed ancient ruins I wasn’t supposed to climb in Pompeii, I swam in the Mediterranean, I helped get a 15-year-old kid from Louisiana into a nightclub (and helped him not get kicked out, as well), I fell in a canal in Venice and took an ambulance boat to the emergency room, I watched the most brutal sport I’ve ever heard of in Florence, and I took the drunkest plane ride of my life to Paris.
It was amazing.
Don’t worry, I’ll go into much more detail of all the best moments in the very near future, once I get around to actually writing about it all. For now, I’m attempting to catch up with everything I missed, which is completely overwhelming and I may just turn right around and get back on a plane. I also returned in the thick of Moving Week – my house is filled with boxes, I’ve already lost one roommate (and am losing another AS I TYPE THIS – don’t go, Lindsey!), and will, by the time the week is done, have lost two of my closest friends in Portland back to the frozen clutches of the Midwest. I also have to move myself into my cousin’s apartment, which will be hectic and awful and painful, considering my aforementioned Venetian injuries. But, as always, the spirit of Julie Powell will hold my hand, as she went through a similarly chaotic moving situation during her Julie/Julia Project. And she still managed to cook while living out of boxes! Damn you, Powell.
So, have no fear, the Danny/Gwyneth Project will soon return as regularly scheduled. Ugh.
Filed under Non-Gwyneth
Greetings From Italy
Let’s give this a shot.
I write to you from my phone, connecting through the hotel’s spotty wifi. If you’re reading this, a miracle has occurred.
Currently I am lounging on our hotel terrace in Positano, sunburned and resting after a day spent exploring the island of Capri. I’ve got a glass of wine, and I’m basically as content as a human can be.
To help you set the scene, I have attached a photo of the view from our hotel room (maybe? I have no idea how any of this is going to work). It is designed to be cruel and make you jealous, SORRY. I never pretended to be a good person.
Anyway, how are you doing? Well, I hope. Good to see you haven’t broken the blog while I’ve been away. Do not fear, a MASSIVE post-Italy recap is planned. Too much insane stuff has already happened. (Teaser: A man, looking not unlike Ron Jeremy, may have propositioned me at a bar on the first night. The line, “I’ll get a hotel room and give you the night of your life,” was spoken.)
But for now, I have to go to dinner, and then to what promises to be the cheesiest club in Europe. I hope you are well, even if I have no idea who you are.
Filed under Italy, Non-Gwyneth
This Is Where I Leave You
For the moment, at least. Tomorrow, bright and early, I leave for a 10-day trip to Italy, so the Danny/Gwyneth Project will have to go on hold. So for the near future, things are going to be less Julie Powell and more Elizabeth Gilbert. God help us all.
I will do my best to provide updates – maybe one or two brief interludes, depending on internet availability – but no promises because, hello, I’ll be jaunting around Italy. You can expect a full report when I return, at the very least.
For those of you distraught at my imminent departure (I’m sure), think of it this way: This is exactly something Gwyneth would do. Just pretend I’m off in search of the perfect bottle of olive oil, or whatever. I’m just doing research to better understand my subject.
Adios. (That’s Italian, right?)
Filed under Non-Gwyneth
The Great Bacon Taste-Off
This weekend’s experiment in duck bacon was not nearly the monumental experience I had hoped for, after over a month of agonizing over the difficulties of obtaining the ingredient. It was like losing my virginity, but only after receiving a numbing shot of Novocain straight to my penis. (Yikes, probably best to just stop reading here, Grandma.) I couldn’t even be sure I knew what duck bacon tasted like, as the only sample I got was mixed in with a pot of other ingredients.
So a bacon taste-test was in order! This stuff is so expensive and hard-to-find? Let’s see how it matches up to other kinds of bacon, more readily accessible but therefore less special. To see how it stacked up, read on. Continue reading
Filed under Basics, Gwyneth Miscellania
Duck, Duck, More Duck
Well, the time has come to jump into duck. Gwyneth’s cookbook is filled with duck-themed recipes, and I have yet to try any of them. Mostly because the majority of the duck recipes require duck bacon, a notoriously hard-to-obtain ingredient which has been written about on this blog far too much, but also simply because duck just isn’t that pleasant to cook or eat in the summer. It’s so rich and buttery and thick! Much better in the winter. But Friday I returned home from work to find two boxes of duck bacon and six legs of duck confit in my fridge, so thus my fate was sealed: Duck Cassoulet.
The picture in the book makes this look pretty damn appetizing, I must say, and Gwyneth also says it’s a great “one-pot weekend supper.” Which sounds perfect for someone who hates dishes as much as me! Unfortunately, Gwyneth is flat-out lying to us. This isn’t even close to a one-pot supper. In fact, I would go so far as to state that this recipe calls for the MOST dishes from any single recipe thus completed. At one point, I had three burners AND the oven going at the same time. So, no. Not even close. Continue reading
Filed under Main Courses
I Didn’t Expect Today’s Post To Be About Homosexuality, Either
Oh, boy. What a week. First I finally place an order for duck bacon (only to realize that I didn’t order NEARLY enough, so now I’m going to have to go through all that again in the future) — which should be arriving tomorrow, patient readers. And then the new GOOP comes out and it has THIS headline: “Homosexuality in the Bible.”
Ummmmm. Let’s look into this a little more closely. Continue reading
Filed under GOOP
STRIKE THAT, REVERSE IT
GUYS. IMPORTANT UPDATE TO THE LAST BLOG POST THAT WAS SUPER BORING AND PLEASE JUST SERIOUSLY SKIP IT FOR YOUR OWN SAKE:
I FINALLY MANAGED TO CONVINCE D’ARTAGNAN TO ACCEPT MY CREDIT CARD AND I NOW HAVE LITERALLY $100 WORTH OF DUCK BACON COMING TO MY DOORSTEP.
That is all.
Filed under Gwyneth Miscellania
You Might as Well Just Skip This Post
This isn’t going to be exciting. And if that opening line doesn’t draw you in, I don’t know WHAT will. I did some cooking last night, but I wanted something easy, that I could have as leftovers for a few lunches this week. So I made White Bean Soup, and it was fine, and that is that. I guess I’ll give you more details, but, I’m not joking, this is going to be pretty dull. You’ve been warned. Continue reading
The Danny/Gwyneth Project 