Pictures!

I finally got around to loading some random photos from my camera to Picasa.  You can see Fabri, Gaetano & I bottling the wine we made back in October at the end of the Wine Time album.  I am dressed ridiculously in Fabri's soccer clothes, so that's always good for a laugh.

A couple of weeks ago we made Bugia at Fabri's parents' house.  Bugia is basically fried dough with powdered sugar on top.  It's a dessert typical of Carnivale.  You make the dough and then you flatten it out with a pasta press.  Then you sort of knot it in a particular way and fry it in oil.  We actually made batches two Sundays in a row.  Fabri and I have been completely bombarded by desserts and I'm gaining weight again instead of losing as I had been.  Boooooo!

Part of the dessert problem is that when we go to friends' houses for dinner they always make dessert(s) AND when people come to our house they always bring desserts!  The worst is when we go to a friend's house, they serve us dessert and then they make us  take some of the dessert home with us!  Basically it doesn't matter that we don't buy or make desserts, we still get thwarted and end up tubby!

Here a picture of the cake our friend Roby made when her and her husband Lorenzo came for dinner one night.  It's pretty cute but she left the ENTIRE thing at our house.  The frosting and designs were done in marshmallow.  She had to buy special dye paste to get the colors, but she was sad that she couldn't find red, only orange.  I think the effect is still pretty good though. Speaking of Roby and Lorenzo, when they were over for dinner Fabri told them how we were going to rent a truck to pick up my shipment from the US in Milan.  Lorenzo's Dad apparently owns some sort of trucking/courier company and Lorenzo had to go near Milan to pick up something related to that.  He said they had a big truck that would hold everything no problem and he would be happy to take us to Milan to pick up my things.  Well Fabri and I were excited to accept because that saved us about 150 euros for renting our own truck and that meant we wouldn't have to drive the truck either.  So on Monday we met at 11 am in Savigliano in front of the Motta's house and headed out.  We stopped a little after noon at an Autogrill for some sandwiches.  We arrived at Lorenzo's stop outside of Milan just before 2.  We had to wait about fifteen minutes but then they brought out these sheets of plastic with the forklift and stuck them right in.  Then we headed around the Milan beltway to the other side of the city.  An hour later we were driving around looking for CFG Overseas, the company with my stuff.  We had to call their office because it's actually impossible to find without directions from the company.  There isn't even a sign visible from the street!!  It's behind another building and we didn't see the sign for the business until we were in their parking lot.  First Fabri and I went upstairs and saw the jerk who we've been "working with."  He seemed pretty scared of us.  Fabri and I both were wearing angry faces.  We asked him how much the additional bill for storage was going to be and the guy said it was only about 20 euros which is sooooo not right, but makes us happy.  We have two theories on this.  Either he was lying because he was afraid of us and we're going to get a crazy high bill in the mail or the American company that I complained to (who never responded) spoke with them and they discounted the fee based on that conversation.  Either way we haven't actually gotten the bill yet, but if it's something we're not willing to pay, we will be contacting an attorney again.   The most important thing is that we have my stuff!!!  It's already unpacked and organized.  Some things got packed up and put in the basement and the boxes are still on the balcony, but the house does not look like a tornado hit it.  I haven't brought the boxes to the recycling yet because it's been raining all week!  Hopefully this weekend it will be nicer and then we will clean off the balconies.   One last thing,  I have set up my blog so that some of you will get an email when it's been updated.  There are only 10 slots for email addresses for this feature (which is dumb).  Please let me know if you got the email or if you didn't and would like to.  Otherwise keep checking back for new updates!