Donna in Rome

Siamo nel campo architettura/edilizia/costruzioni (non trovavo una categoria adatta qui).

Si tratta di un sovraccosto per questo tipo di lavorazione delle lastre di rivestimento di un palazzo.

Has anyone else ever had this problem? Yesterday I was selectively cleaning out my inbox: certain types of messages, certain senders, the "read" return messages, spam, etc., when all of a sudden it deleted the entire past 10 months of incoming e-mails. So, OK, I lost all the recent stuff I might have needed for work, but I figured at least the box is lightened. But now it doesn't show me the incoming mail. I see it being downloaded and the beep signal that it's arrived, but nothing shows up.

It was already doing that last trick sometimes recently. I would figure the box was too full and delete some stuff, and then everything would show up. But why now, after cleaning it out?

What can I do?

(I'm not talking about Yahoo! mail, which luckily is separate from my Outlook Express.)

...a stainless steel or epoxy (or other painted) interior?

My old oven (stainless steel interior) has just broken down and I'm looking for a new one, but can't find any info on advantages, disadvantages, or health hazard comparisons for these options.

One that doesn't have vanilla pudding mix as one of its ingredients?

I can't find that over here in Italy. They do have pudding mixes, but they're different from American ones in size and ingredients, plus you can't find a real vanilla flavor one. I don't want to try experimenting with an Italian pudding mix, maybe adding vanilla extract, and then find the final consistency or flavor of the egg nog is wrong, ruining the whole batch.

What foods and ingredients do you cook and eat regularly or always have on hand now, but were never served in your family when you were a kid?

Also, what foods and ingredients have you eliminated from your diet, which instead your mother used to prepare and make you eat?

I mean out of choice, NOT due to non-availability or for health reasons (for instance, pesto didn’t exist in the U.S. when I was growing up in the 50s-60s, and a lot of American products aren’t available over here).

When I was growing up, my Mom never used, cooked, or served garlic, olive oil, cream cheese, yogurt, honey, lentils, artichokes, eggplant (aubergine), chickpeas (garbanzo beans), anchovy paste, coarse salt, rosemary, basil, sage, curry spices, or hot red pepper (peperoncino). My kitchen, on the other hand, is never without them.

Things I have never cooked (and probably never will) include turnips, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts, cabbage (except for raw, in slaws and salads), sweet potatoes, cooked carrots, and a number of meats – all things my Mom cooked fairly often. Only in the past few years have I found a couple of recipes that enable me to eat broccoli, something else that used to be on my “hate” list.

What about you?

What do you think is the reason for this sort of behavior/dependency? Do you think creative people (artists, writers, etc.) are more prone to hoarding and collecting things? Judging by my own habits and those of artist friends of mine, we like to have our lives and homes/studios/offices filled with all sorts of neat “things”, for various reasons: purely aesthetic pleasure and/or decorative purposes, simple curiosity, the idea that some things “might come in handy” for art projects or inspiration, and who-knows-why-else.

Also, it seems to me that growing up with “trasher” parents (or, later on, spouses) who throw your stuff out (often without consulting or telling you) because they see it as “just useless junk” only makes things worse, and you may find yourself overcompensating and seeking to recover or replace former possessions – even toys from your childhood – that seem to “haunt” you, simply out of nostalgia and a lingering sense of loss.

What do you think?

Esiste come parola? E se sì, da quale lingua viene?

So soltanto che non è inglese. La parola viene usata da diversi anni dalla Braun e dalla Moulinex, per esempio, per i loro frullatori manuali.

Se faccio una ricerca su google, in molti casi me la cambia automaticamente in "primer" che è, invece, un'altra parola.

In Italian it simply means "cookies" (or "biscuits" in British English -- plural, in any case: "biscotto" is the singular form), and Italy is not that famous for its cookies, that's for sure. Most of them are hard, dry, and much less varied and flavorful than American ones.

So what makes "biscotti" different from "cookies", and why do they seem so popular? Or is it just another baseless Italophile lingo fad, like "panini" (which simply means sandwiches -- again, plural) -- again, not something Italy is famous for or particularly specialized in?

The tastiest, most varied and spectacular cookies and sandwiches are made in the U.S., not Italy.

Now, pasta and risotto are another matter...

I mean like when you make vanilla sugar by inserting a vanilla bean or two into a jar of sugar until it takes on the vanilla aroma and flavor.

I'm wondering if it's possible to do the same thing with cocoa powder, or if the vanilla beans would be too moist and sticky for the fine powder, ending up getting entirely coated with it and that's that.

Does anyone know? I've got a bunch of vanilla beans and am currently making vanilla extract and vanilla sugar. Any other ideas for my "vanillafication" project?

In response to an answer of mine to someone else's question on baking cookies and making fudge, a couple of kind people have sent me a fudge recipe.

So I thought I'd expand it a bit and ask the specific question: do any of you have good (tasty, good consistency) fudge recipes that do NOT contain any of the following ingredients (which I cannot find over here)?

- unsweetened baker's chocolate

- corn syrup

- evaporated milk

- marshmallow cream