Sometimes happiness is delivered by the USPS
In addition to getting Oliverage from the lovely and gracious Badger, this week has brought waves of pleasant sensations via my mailbox.
As all of you know, or ought to, I am a serious Italophile. So yesterday I get two of my fave UK magazines AutoItalia and Italia! which are published by two different companies and have a different (albeit UK-centric*) foci. The former, naturally, concerns cars and, by extension, concerns very few of the 188 of you, but it always has cool articles and details on rare and not-so-rare Italian cars.
HERMES SCARVES! VODKA! (Sorry, I had to shout that out to keep most of you from dozing)
The other one is a magazine for the traveler/expat (full- or part-time) detailing life in Italy and where to buy or rent what, as well as what there is to do. For the longest time, I have had a serious jones for buying place in Italy and doing some of my summering there. Not anything deranged like buying a 900 year old Etruscan farmhouse three hours from the nearest human settlement, and then restoring it myself; rather, getting something like a townhouse on the outskirts of a major city (Rome, for all that Rome-ness and pretty nice food and great wine; or Milan, for the modern-ness AND the Alfa Romeo museum in nearby Arese; or Bologna for all the yummy food)
LOBSTER! COCKTAILS! SHOPPING! (Sorry, I had to do that again to keep most of you from fading on me)
Anyway, this magazine is great because it gives you pretty good "on-the-ground" report of the various options you might have in the various places, as well as the great sights to see in cities you may have never considered (Turin, or Vicenza, for starters) and tells you of great hotels, spas, wineries and all that. I think if more people read this magazine, sales of Prozac would plummet. Reading BOTH magazines has led me to fantasize about (and VERY SERIOUSLY consider) doing this.
Another arrival is my new food magazine called Chow. This is to, say, Cook's Illustrated what the Green Berets are to the Army. The articles are hipper, there is a FAR greater focus on cocktails and beverages and "food culture" and in reverse-engineering recipes, whereas CI is more about testing different ingredients and gear (and, without advertising!) and developing--as opposed to deconstructing and reconstructing--foolproof recipes. Also, Chow has that hey-there-babe, slick-o-rama West Coast vibe, whereas CI has that press-on-regardless-we're-not-fucking-around East Coast thing...which only makes sense, since Chow is out of SF and CI is out of Bahstahn. I love them both and, since they only have 6 issues a year each, I just hope they have the good sense to stagger the mailings, so every month my mailbox is crammed to the rafters with yummy goodness.
-Joke
* Which is OK, because I am also an Anglophile.
As all of you know, or ought to, I am a serious Italophile. So yesterday I get two of my fave UK magazines AutoItalia and Italia! which are published by two different companies and have a different (albeit UK-centric*) foci. The former, naturally, concerns cars and, by extension, concerns very few of the 188 of you, but it always has cool articles and details on rare and not-so-rare Italian cars.
HERMES SCARVES! VODKA! (Sorry, I had to shout that out to keep most of you from dozing)
The other one is a magazine for the traveler/expat (full- or part-time) detailing life in Italy and where to buy or rent what, as well as what there is to do. For the longest time, I have had a serious jones for buying place in Italy and doing some of my summering there. Not anything deranged like buying a 900 year old Etruscan farmhouse three hours from the nearest human settlement, and then restoring it myself; rather, getting something like a townhouse on the outskirts of a major city (Rome, for all that Rome-ness and pretty nice food and great wine; or Milan, for the modern-ness AND the Alfa Romeo museum in nearby Arese; or Bologna for all the yummy food)
LOBSTER! COCKTAILS! SHOPPING! (Sorry, I had to do that again to keep most of you from fading on me)
Anyway, this magazine is great because it gives you pretty good "on-the-ground" report of the various options you might have in the various places, as well as the great sights to see in cities you may have never considered (Turin, or Vicenza, for starters) and tells you of great hotels, spas, wineries and all that. I think if more people read this magazine, sales of Prozac would plummet. Reading BOTH magazines has led me to fantasize about (and VERY SERIOUSLY consider) doing this.
Another arrival is my new food magazine called Chow. This is to, say, Cook's Illustrated what the Green Berets are to the Army. The articles are hipper, there is a FAR greater focus on cocktails and beverages and "food culture" and in reverse-engineering recipes, whereas CI is more about testing different ingredients and gear (and, without advertising!) and developing--as opposed to deconstructing and reconstructing--foolproof recipes. Also, Chow has that hey-there-babe, slick-o-rama West Coast vibe, whereas CI has that press-on-regardless-we're-not-fucking-around East Coast thing...which only makes sense, since Chow is out of SF and CI is out of Bahstahn. I love them both and, since they only have 6 issues a year each, I just hope they have the good sense to stagger the mailings, so every month my mailbox is crammed to the rafters with yummy goodness.
-Joke
* Which is OK, because I am also an Anglophile.
Comments
As re. Chow, you're totally welcome. Their site also has expanded articles from the print version, with additional recipes.
Which I know you saw.
-Joke