a little late

Oh...is it New Year already?  Happy New Year.  I'm a little late.  Or maybe I'm early for next year.  I didn't say which new year I wish you happiness.  Like that stale, yet painfully true Italian joke about tradesmen:

man A:  my plumber said he'd come to do the work on Tuesday.  Today is Saturday and I still haven't heard from him!

man B:  ah, but he didn't say WHICH Tuesday.

If you're wondering where I've been for the past month since it's obviously been better than hanging out on a computer blogging, I just have two words - pizza oven.

We've revived an old italian tradition (or is it a custom?  I always confuse the two).  In the olden days, each little mountain village had a communal wood oven for baking bread.  It would be fired up once a week and everyone brought their bread to bake.  David's been playing around with tons of new bread recipes and he thought this sounded like a good plan.  Forno Aperto we call it -- open oven.  In the past month we've had 3.  An Open Oven day goes something like this:

For several days before the event, David makes pizza dough, just a little.  (yeah, I way oversimplified what David does to prepare dough, but that's his story.  He can post that on his blog)

On the day of, people come with their dough to prepare....

while someone (usually Gino and David) prepares some farinata (a kind of pancake made from chickpea flour, baked and covered with olive oil, salt and pepper).  

So we start eating, and maybe have a glass of wine (or two)

Then everyone has to chip in.  The pizza dough comes out and one by one everyone makes a pizza with all sorts of toppings of their choice.

And we eat them.  Once everyone has had enough, then it's time to take the coals out of the oven and put the bread in.

Some people just stand around and watch at this point...

Then we have the obligatory hang out time whilst the bead is baking

And then,  ecco ci qua

bread.

So that's where I've been.  That and, well, the whole Christmas thing happened which looked like this

Yeah, ok, crappy photos.  Sorry about that.  Except for that one of Lina with the homemade noodles.  That's a cool picture (David made that one).  Great noodles.

Oh we also had no internet for almost a month.  The internet people said they'd come on Tuesday....