Ceci n’est pas un blog de cuisine: Strawberry Jam

Just to makes things clear at the outset, this is not a blog about food.  Or wine.  Or cooking in general.  It is, however, a blog about this wild toboggan ride commonly known as Life, and a big part of mine has to do with food, wine, and cooking in general.  So, there you have it. And now back to our regularly scheduled program.

The allure of Rolex watches is undeniable. Renowned for their precision, luxury, and timeless style, Rolex has become a symbol of status and success. However, owning a genuine Rolex watch comes with a hefty price tag, making it unattainable for many watch enthusiasts. This is where Rolex replica watches come into play. In recent years, high-quality Rolex replicas have gained immense popularity for their exceptional craftsmanship and resemblance to the real deal. In this article, we’ll explore the world of Rolex replica watches, where to find the best super clone 1:1 copies, and what you should consider before making a purchase.

The Rise of Rolex Replica Watches

The demand for Rolex replica watches has grown steadily over the years. These replicas have become more than just imitations; they are often referred to as “super clones” due to their astonishing accuracy in replicating the original Rolex design, movement, and functionality. The rise of super clone Rolex watches can be attributed to several factors:

Affordability: Authentic Rolex watches come with a price tag that often exceeds the budget of the average consumer. Rolex replicas, on the other hand, offer a cost-effective alternative for those who desire the prestige of a Rolex without breaking the bank.

Quality Improvements: Advances in manufacturing techniques and materials have enabled replica watchmakers to produce highly detailed and meticulously crafted super clones that are almost indistinguishable from the genuine Rolex timepieces.

Accessibility: With the advent of e-commerce, it has become easier than ever to find Rolex replica watches online. Numerous websites and sellers cater to this growing market.

Where to Find the Best Super Clone Rolex 1:1 Copies

While there are numerous sources for Rolex replica watches, it’s essential to exercise caution when making a purchase. Counterfeit products and low-quality imitations are abundant in the market, so it’s crucial to do your research and buy from reputable sources. Here are some tips to help you find the best super clone Rolex 1:1 copies:

Reputable Online Sellers: Several trusted online stores specialize in high-quality replica watches. Look for websites with a good reputation, customer reviews, and clear policies regarding the quality and authenticity of their products.

Ask for Recommendations: Seek advice from fellow watch enthusiasts who have experience with replica Rolex watches. They may recommend trustworthy sellers or websites.

Study the Details: Pay close attention to the product descriptions, specifications, and high-resolution images provided by the seller. The best super clone Rolex watches will closely resemble the authentic models, down to the finest details.

Reviews and Feedback: Read reviews and feedback from previous customers to gauge the quality and reliability of the seller. Genuine customer testimonials can provide valuable insights.

Warranty and Return Policy: Ensure that the seller offers a warranty or return policy, as this indicates their confidence in the product’s quality.

Considerations Before Purchasing a Rolex Replica

Before purchasing a Rolex replica watch, it’s essential to consider the following:

Legal and Ethical Considerations: Rolex is a protected trademark, and selling counterfeit Rolex watches is illegal in many jurisdictions. Ensure that you understand the laws in your area and the potential consequences of owning a replica watch.

Your Motivation: Be clear about your reasons for buying a replica. If you’re looking for a quality timepiece that emulates Rolex style, a super clone 1:1 copy may be a suitable choice. However, if your intention is to deceive or pass it off as an authentic Rolex, this is both unethical and potentially illegal.

Maintenance and Care: Just like genuine Rolex watches, replicas require maintenance to ensure their longevity and accuracy. Be prepared to invest in regular servicing.

Conclusion

Rolex replica watches, especially super clone 1:1 copies, have become a popular choice for watch enthusiasts who appreciate the elegance and craftsmanship of Rolex timepieces but may not have the financial means to own an authentic Rolex. While replica watches offer an affordable alternative, it’s crucial to exercise caution, do thorough research, and buy from reputable sources to ensure you receive a high-quality product that meets your expectations. Keep in mind the legal and ethical considerations surrounding replica watches and enjoy your Rolex-inspired timepiece responsibly.

Certain experiences are so overwhelmingly paradigm shifting that when you have them you feel like your very molecular structure has been altered somehow and you know instinctively and viscerally that you will never be the same again.  When you move overseas, for example.  When you become a parent.  When someone you love dies unexpectedly.  When you are bit by a radioactive spider and suddenly look buff in a skin-tight unitard. When, for the first time, you make jam.  Jam?!?  Yep.

Pick your berries

Saturday morning found me itching
To get on over to my grandma’s kitchen
The sweetest little berries was cooking up right
And then we’d put them in a canning jar and seal them up tight

I have learned lots of things since moving to a farm:

1. There’s a reason that there are no farmers amongst the annual Forbes 500.

2. Roosters do not crow at dawn, but all effing day (and night, if the mood should hit them.  The day I decide–after 20 years of vegetarianism–to eat meat once again, I will personally throttle a rooster with my bare hands and devour it with much vindictive satisfaction.)

3.  “A woman’s work is never done.” is one of the truest aphorisms ever uttered.

4.  If you want beef that isn’t chock full of antibiotics, hormones, and other stuff you wouldn’t want your dog to eat, you’re going to have to pay more than two bucks a pound.

5.  There is immense satisfaction to be had in growing good food, preserving good food, and serving good food.

Chop your berries

We have Smucker’s, Welches, Knotts Berry Farm
But a little homemade jam never did a body no harm
A little local motion is all we need
To close down these corporate jam factories

And that last little nugget of wisdom is all bound up in a jar of homemade jam, which has to be one of the easiest thing to make in the history of cooking by fire.  With just a little fruit, sugar, and—that most precious of ingredients—time, through some sort of mysterious culinary alchemy you end up with row upon row of jewel-toned glass jars shimmering on your pantry shelves.  Eating a slice of fresh hot bread slathered with sweet butter and homemade strawberry jam brings on such a feeling of life satisfaction that if, in that exact moment, an asteroid were to drop out of the sky and pick you off, you would feel no regret.

Cook your berries

Yeah, we have a little revolution sweeping the land
Now once more everybody’s making homemade jam
So won’t you call your friends up on the telephone
You invite ’em on over, you make some jam of your own

I find the act of making jam meditative…all the time I pick and wash fruit, peel, chop, and otherwise prepare it, sterilize the glass jars, and slowly stir the simmering mixture as it lets out its pectin and begins to thicken into jam, I reflect. I reflect on the abundance of what the earth offers. (When she damn well pleases.  The moody wench also likes to send late freezes, hail storms, and record rains. See item number 1 above.) I reflect on how often the most soul-satisfying food is the simplest.  I reflect on how many generations of women before me have “put up” food to feed their families, and how in this modern world of the information super highway and molecular gastronomy and Vibram Five Fingers this art remains largely unchanged.

Eat your berries

We’ll be making jam
Strawberry jam, mmmm-mm
If you want the best jam
You gotta make your own

And mostly I reflect on who will be eating this jam, this sparkling jar of distilled love.  My boys, whose favorite part of jam making is climbing the fig and apricot trees or going on blackberry picking expeditions along the tracks in the woods.  My friends, who know that due to a Aspberger-like social akwardness I often substitute gifts for hugs, but the sentiment is the same.  My guests, who have given me so much over the years in exchange for my modest offering of fruit, sugar, and time. And myself, who sometimes needs just a quiet moment with some simple strawberry sweetness to survive this wild toboggan ride of a life.

Eat your berries again, this time with feeling

Aw, one more time
Oh, makin’ that jam
Yeah, Strawberry jam
If you want the best jam
You gotta make your own

–Strawberry Jam song lyrics by Michelle Shocked

Falling off the wagon: Easter eggs, Italian style

I think there is a moment in life when you realize you have finally, after many close shaves, hit bottom.  When you have to have the courage to take a good, long look at yourself and admit that you have a problem.  That your habit is ruining your health, jeopardizing your family life, alienating your friends, and compromising your career.  That point when you suddenly realize that you, like Liz or Betty or that really emaciated model whose name escapes me right now, are an addict and it’s time to reclaim your life and self respect.

I am about to take the first step.  Hello, my name is Rebecca.  I ate all my children’s Easter candy.  Again.

L’uova di Pasqua

It’s not really about candy.  It’s about chocolate, since Easter candy here is almost exclusively huge chocolate Easter eggs, which are hollow and hide a surprise (usually a little toy or keychain) inside.  My sons got 22 of them this year (we have many, many relatives).  Each of them weighs about half a kilo.  That’s a lot of chocolate, and a pretty big temptation for an avowed chocoholic like yours truly.  It’s like holding a gamblers anon convention in Vegas.

The diabolic chocolate eggs

Every year I say to myself, “Okay, this is the year you are going to show some self control.  This year you are going to break up all those chocolate eggs into little pieces and freeze them for future baking.  And donate some of the chocolate to starving children in the Third World.  And throw a big dinner party and make a huge pot of chocolate fondue for dessert.”

Instead what happens is that those damn things sit there, in their shiny mylar wrapping, calling to me.  It wakes me up at night.  It interrupts my work.  It becomes an obsession.  So I say to myself, “Okay, one.  You can eat one egg.”  I make a tiny incision in the back side of one of the egg wrappings with a really sharp knife, and, with surgical precision, cut away a little piece.  It’s Venchi.  Milk chocolate.  It’s really good.  So I grab the egg, rip the paper to shreds, and proceed to stuff the rest of the egg by handfuls into my mouth, all the time keeping one eye on the door should my husband or children walk in on this spectacle.

Note the mesmerizing mylar decorative paper

Luckily, my kids are still kind of fuzzy about numbers above ten, so they don’t really notice that their eggs are slowly culled as the days pass.  Plus, I give them the toys, which is all they really care about anyway.

Unfortunately, my husband is not that fuzzy about numbers above ten, and is horrified to discover that his wife has managed to put away about 10 kilos of chocolate in less than a week.  I really think it is one of the few times in the almost 20 years I have known him that I have felt real shame.  That and the three times I crashed the car which increased our commercial van insurance – one sure insurance rate.

Why, why can’t they eat the disgustingly unappetizing Easter candy we have in the States here?  I mean, if my choices were yellow sugar covered marshmallow chicks and black jelly beans, there wouldn’t be much of a problem.  I have a vague recollection of liking those things when I was, oh, five, but the very thought of eating them now makes my stomach turn.  It’s funny how we grow out of food.  I also used to love that peanut butter and jelly together in one jar stuff and Oreos.  Thank God my taste buds have matured, though my self control has remained what it was in kindergarten.

Even more of a temptation when not encased in mylar

We also have a momentous amount of chocolate in the house around Easter because we throw an annual Easter egg hunt.  We began when my oldest son was born (I think he was barely walking the first year we held the hunt), and every year the party gets bigger and better.  I love the Easter party, though we rarely have decent weather.  Usually, about 100 people huddle under our porch watching a driving, freezing rain come down and wait for a ten minute window in which the kids can book into the garden and collect the sodden eggs.

After years of trial and error, and running over months old rotten eggs with the lawn mower, we have, for the past couple of years, only hidden plastic eggs (which still get run over with the mower in August, but just make a terrifying noise without the sickening stench).  We hide a couple hundred of them, and inside each one is a little chocolate egg that the finder gets to keep and take home.  I buy those little chocolate eggs in bulk, and strangely seem to overbuy every year.  It’s uncanny.  Call it fate.

My boys with their Easter baskets ready to take to Mass for the traditional blessing; their chocolate eggs are in the center

Of course, that’s far too much sugar for my babes, so the sacrifice I make for them is to consume them all myself.  Sometimes, as a parent, you have to take the bullet for your kids.

The Easter egg hunt is a very popular party with our set because of the novelty.  They don’t do egg hunts in Italy; it’s very much an Anglo-American tradition, as far as I can tell.  Since my elder son was born, I have been really working hard to bring a little bit of American Childhood to Italy.  We have the Halloween party, Thanksgiving Dinner, the Christmas Cookie Decorating get together, the Easter Egg hunt.  We haven’t had a Fourth of July shindig yet, but I think it’s just a matter of time.

Only Italians would use a bottle of wine for scale

I find it strange, and a bit out of character, that I put so much weight on these American holidays.  There are lots of different expat profiles here in Italy, which run a vast gamut of different living abroad experiences.  There are those who live in a kind of Anglo-American bubble:  they don’t speak Italian, may not even send their kids to Italian schools, don’t socialize with Italians, and are very shaky on Italian law, politics, and pop culture.  I suspect they live here primarily for the food.  Some in this group, mostly those who have found themselves residents here through marriage or career, also live in a state of suspended animation, passing most of their time and funnelling most of their resources, to those periods that they go “back home”.  Home being that place they left, oh, twenty years ago.

Then there are those on the complete opposite end of the spectrum, who have glommed onto Italy with all the passion of the newly converted.  They refuse to speak their mother tongue, even when introduced to fellow English speakers, have nothing good to say about their home country, which they visit once every ten years during which visit they annoy all their friends and relatives touting non-stop the joys of living in Italy, have nothing bad to say about Italy, even when the utility bill comes, and wouldn’t eat at McDonald’s even if you held a loaded pistol to their temple.

After a brief stint as a passionate newly converted (until my first utility bill came, which set me in a pining-for-home rut for awhile), I have settled at a place pretty much right smack in the middle.  I love the country I live in now, but also have some nostalgia for the one I left years ago.  When I am in the States I tend to make pasta and change into clean clothes to run to the grocery store.  When I am in Italy, I prepare pancakes for breakfast and drop my kids off at school in sweatpants.  I have one foot here, and one there.  And both my hands in the chocolate eggs.

Venchi milk chocolate Easter eggs. Say that, and you've said it all.

Food for the soul…Torta di Pasqua

I have a little confession to make.  Each year, right around Easter, I am reminded of this deep love I harbor which surfaces in a cyclical fashion with the coming of spring.  I mean, not your normal “Oh, I love that sweater on her” or “I just love to curl up on the sofa in front of a roaring fire” kind of love, but that obsessive, slightly creepy “I want to start a life with you and buy you presents” kind of love.

Which is weird, since the object of my ardor is a foodstuff.

Though, to be honest, I’ve noticed that my passion for food is growing more acute as I have become a middle-aged mother of two and things like heavy drinking, recreational drug use, and sleeping around no longer seem appropriate.  Let’s just say that eating is one of the few joys of life left to me.

Torta di Pasqua

And Easter in Umbria offers humanity a dish which represents, in my opinion, the apex of culinary accomplishment.  Its ne plus ultra.  Its climax. (Ok, now I am getting creepy.)  My friends, I present to you Torta di Pasqua (also known as Pizza di Pasqua or simply Torta al Formaggio).

Literally seconds from the oven....

The recipe

This savory cheese bread is a traditional Easter dish around these parts and the recipe varies from family to family and is a closely guarded secret handed down through the generations.  However, from what I can glean from years of attentive observation, there are a few key ingredients used in all its variants:

1. a farmwife, between the ages of 62 and 87
2. an amazing amount of lard
3. an outdoor wood-burning brick oven
4. an astounding amount of lard
5. eggs, and a lot of ’em
6. an astonishing amount of lard
7. parmeggiano, pecorino, and swiss cheese
8. an insane amount of lard
9. some other stuff, mainly flour and salt

The Preparation

The preparation of this dish begins weeks before baking day, as the farmwives start to hoard their eggs (News flash:  farm fresh eggs keep forever, and they don’t have to go in the fridge.  Things you discover when you move to the country.) as they will be using literally dozens to turn out the numerous mushroom-shaped loaves.  I suppose you could even say the preparation begins months before, when they butcher their annual hog at Christmas and put aside the lard (Did I mention the awesome amount of lard? For an explanation as to my non-dogmatic interpretation of vegetarianism which allows for the occasional lard intake, see here.) they will later need for the dough.

Kneading the dough

Preparing the pans for the oven

Surveying the oven-ready loaves (note the dollops of lard dotting each one...did I mention the lard?)

The big day

Early on the morning of baking day, the women light the fires in their woodstoves and knead together all the ingredients to make the rich, cheesy bread dough.  This is then divided into at least a dozen different tins (many of them refitted industrial sized sardine cans) and left to rest and rise near the warmth of the oven.

Getting the wood stove up to temperature

Sardine can reincarnated as baking tin

Before the flames

Once nicely double or tripled in size and rounded on the top, they are placed into the oven one by one with a large wooden paddle, an olive branch blessed during Mass on Palm Sunday is tucked in with them, a quick prayer to Santa Rita is said (the gist:  “Santa Rita, please let our loaves rise””), and the oven door is sealed with mud.

A surprising number of baking tins fit in that oven

After the flames

When they are done, they should have risen over the sides of their tins to take the shape of giant cupcakes and are shiny and golden on top.  As you can see, sometimes Santa Rita is a cunning vixen and they don’t rise as much as the bakers would like…leading to the naming of the saint in much different–and probably unprintable–terms.

Despite olive branches and appeals to heaven, the loaves didn't rise as much as hoped

The elixir of the gods

To slice into one of these torte fresh from the oven is to experience bliss. The lard (did I mention the incredible amount of lard?) yields a short, crumbly crust on the outside and a moist, savory crumb inside dotted with melted cubes of swiss cheese.  Some recipes use a bit of pepper in the dough, which I enjoy, though it’s tough to get just the right amount without overshadowing the cheese flavor.  Our aunt, Zia Anna, gets just the right amount, for example.  And I love her for it.

Crispy outside, moist inside

It’s otherwordly freshly baked, but can also be frozed and toasted for weeks afterwards…still delicious, though will not bring you to ecstatic tears, which a steaming hot slice certainly can do.

Cast and crew: from left Zia Anna, Nicolò, Nonna Emma, Zia Viola