ROME 23/05 – Day 02: Eating in and eating out

06:03 was sunrise. 20:12 will be sunset.

On this Feast of St. Athanasius the Ave Maria bell should ring at 20:15.

A big shout out to Bp. Athanasius Schneider, whose name day it is.  Check out his book.

US HERE – UK HERE

What to report from my Roman Sojourn?

Today Holy Mass was for a man with stage 4 cancer.  May God give him and his friends and loved one many graces to persevere.  Through the intercession of Bl. Pauline Jaricot, if it be God’s will, I pray that he will receive miraculous healing, sudden, complete and lasting.

I’ve been very social lately.   Quite a few people have been in contact to meet up and I’ve rather uncharacteristically made more social engagements than for quite some time.   This resulted in eating out more times than during my last few Roman Sojourns.  That has taken some pressure off of my stove, though I enjoy the tasks of cooking (except for dishes).

Here was something I had “in”.  Insalata caprese.  I was in my favored “deli” and the mozzarella looked so good and oozy that I had to have one.

This is an object lesson about how we human beings react to seeing things.  We tend to want what we see.  This is why it is important to maintain “custody of the eyes”, especially in regard to certain alluring things.

The other day a new restaurant opened in a space that had an eatery I had frequented for some decades.  I had the pleasure of being their first paying customer: as they were setting up for their first evening, I bought a glass of wine, thus making me their first paying customer.   The wine that time was the same as the wine in the photo below, from lunch yesterday, a Lazio white called “Arciprete”.   Yesterday lunch was with a young man from NY who has been a reader for some time.  We met at this new place.

I was favorably impressed.  One of the things on the menu for starters is fava beans with pecorino!   This is super Roman!

The key is to eat the raw beans with the same amount of cheese.  The white wine, dry and minerally, binds it all together in springy Roman perfection.

For primi we wound up having two courses, each divided in two so we could each try more than one thing.  This was interesting and quite good and hearty: a Milan-Rome fusion, risotto with saffron, alla milanese, and Roman ossobuco with marrow.

Serving the coffee in little moka pots is a little gimmicky but fun.

The evening took me to a favorite neighborhood place for another meet up.  This resto has Roman and Sicilian dishes.  Behold their sea critter soup.  I hadn’t had it before.  It was terrific. (NB: All mussels and clams were open.)

My friend had a spaghetti concoction with critters of the sea.

The waiter nearby was dressing out an orata.  Gotta be careful with those orata bones, sonny.

Lest I be overwhelmed with food, my main course was an appetizer: a small slice of eggplant parmigiana and caponata and an arancino (which I opted to take home).

You’ve seen my favorite flower stand by day.  Here it is by night.

My freesia has gone to its reward.   I want to pick up more tomorrow after Mass and post office errand.

It rained most of yesterday afternoon and evening.

Tonight it’s going to be eating in: LEFT OVERS!  Do not pity me.  No, really.  Don’t.  That’s not so bad, since that means tidying up  slices of sausage and a little taleggio and gorgonzola, some olives and a few remaining marinated anchovies and the tail end of a good red.  Should I make a spaghetto? Or maybe two? … Nah.  I could make aglio olio pepperoncino with just a touch of acciughe. Nah.  Another day, for lunch maybe.  Although… it is also a great dessert option.

Meanwhile, I worked on the QGD a bit today (so many lines to look at – how do they do it?  For one thing they start when they are FIVE and then don’t stop for several DECADES) along with my daily quota of puzzles.

Here is a puzzle for you.  White to move.  Your eye sees that black’s king is still centralized, uncastled.  You see that black has offered a queen trade, hoping to simplify into an end game to get those pawns moving without that terrifying queen to deal with.  Black’s M40 episcopal sniper rifle is zeroed in long distance on the g pawn and his M252A1 81mm rook can fire for effect on h4 when Her Majesty wanders away.  And what are those ponies doing back in the Rank 3 Corral?  They’d be a lot more useful if they were centralized, especially against an inevitable black pawn storm on the king’s side, charging when the whistles blow, afraid to be shot if they don’t run forward to pick up the rifle left by fallen comrades.  Such drama on these boards.

What to do?

NB: I’ll hold comments with solutions ’till the next day so there won’t be “spoilers” for others.

Will you visit the Dominican sisters’ shop and see what is available? Help them out.

Please remember me when shopping online. Thanks in advance. US HERE – UK HERE  These links take you to a generic “catholic” search in Amazon, but, once in and browsing or searching, Amazon remembers that you used my link and I get the credit.

And I hope you will get some chess gear.  I heard from someone that a bunch of the seminarians at the North American College are playing OTB, which warms by beady black heart.

Chess is a thing.

I can imagine St. Athanasius spending evenings playing chess while in exile.   Of course he didn’t have modern chess, did he.  He died in 373.  But I can picture it, him drinking coffee (which he didn’t have any coffee as Preserved Killick would say) out of one of my Clement XIV mugs (who wouldn’t be Pope for well-over another thousand years).  St. Athanasius, too, would have suppressed the Jesuits (who also wouldn’t be founded for another thousand years).   But in exile he would have been playing chess with coffee from a Clement mug because that’s the sort of guy he was, no question!  I see him now: St. Athanasius scanning through my little online shop for Papa Ganganelli gear: HERE and ordering one of the shirts with the text of Clement’s Bull that suppressed the Society, sending one to St. Hillary over in Poitiers.  Maybe sending a Custos Traditionis shirt to St. Basil of Caesarea.  So many things to choose from, but always using Father Z’s links when shopping online.

Thanks, Athanasius!

And thanks to all of my benefactors who made this time possible  You are dear to me.  Mass for your intention Thursday at 0700.