I'm back. I think.

Hello. It's been a busy couple of weeks. All is good if not a tad tiring. I trust everyone had a good Christmas. My actual Christmas was quite nice. The meal was pretty much what my mother would have done. Christmas was always lasagna, meatballs, sausage and pork. Pork is one of the secrets of a delicious sauce. My sisters outdid themselves. They made a variation of a calzone. A calzone is essentially bread with, typically stuffed with cold cuts and cheeses but you can make it with any kind of stuffing. It' essentially a folded over pizza. My sister made hers with swiss chard. I remember working at that bakery/deli back in the 70's and they were the only place making them locally. I'm sure there were other Italian places making them but they weren't as common as they are now. In Italian calzone means pants or pant leg. The first ones I saw were similar to a pant leg in shape but others make them in a crescent shape. If you make it with cold cuts it's good to lay the cold cuts on the flattened dough then roll the dough up jelly roll style.

Typical calzone
 

My sister made one that looked pretty much like this one.

And the inside looked pretty much like this one does.

Then there was the deserts. The fried ribbons of dough coated with sugar and cinnamon. They look more or less like this.

  
The there were the little ricotta pies.

Last but not least there were my personal favorites, pizzeles.

My other sister made these and she nailed it. She made them just like my mother. Very light and quite tasty. She made a vanilla batch and an anise batch. I've gained a pound and a half just writing about the stuff. There were other things as well but these were the highlights. One thing about Italians, we love our food, and there's always way too much. My mother would have been proud of my sisters. It was a wonderful meal some of which I still have in my possession. Tucked away in the freezer.

We're in for some snow on Thursday into Friday. As of this writing they are saying anywhere from 6-12 inches. I do not get whipped into a frenzy when snow is predicted. It's wasted energy. You can't stop it and if you live in an area such as New England, it's going to snow in the winter. People crack me up when they act so surprised when they hear it's going to snow.

That's the least of our problems. As much as I love the city of Boston there's one thing that's not endearing. The traffic. A few years ago we endured the "Big Dig". A 15 billion dollar project that took down an expressway, added a very nice bridge and another tunnel under the city. I'm sure there were other things but this project lasted almost twenty years. Did it improve things? I don't know but it does look nicer. 

Well there are three tunnels that run under the harbor and they are closing one for repairs. They say it will be closed from Dec. 27 until March 12. Well that's just great. I don't have to use any tunnels in my daily doings though I do use the Zakim Bridge and the Ted Williams Tunnel when I go to Cape Cod or Martha's Vineyard. My main concern is that people will be rerouted and some of those people will be travelling through my city. It's bad enough that we have three exits in the city from the major north south highway in eastern Ma. People get off the highway in my city if their destination is just north of Boston. The center of town is just one big mess between 7 and 9 in the morning. It's not an easy area to get around. Some of the roads around here, including Boston, were laid down 300 years ago. Designed for horse and buggy travel not for the 21st century.

Well hopefully I'll be back here on a more regular basis. It's getting late and I do have to work tomorrow. I'm outta gas. Oh Beth in case you didn't see a comment I left on one of your blogs. I do have something else to send you. I'll get to the post office in a few days.
That's it. I'm done.
I'm outta here.