I first became suspicious when each new post seemed to harvest a great deal more 'hits' than my known modest audience would account for and the same 'referring pages' cropped up time and time again. This makes me wonder why Google do not simply abandon any semblance of stats on the pages of blogspot or buy up something like 'statcounter' or 'sitemeter'*, although 'analytics' does not suffer from the same problems. As a way of doing even basic analyses on the traffic through a website on blogspot, these stats are worse than useless; of course no-one running a site that generated income/revenue would expect to gain an insight into the traffic from such basic details but for those of us who blog for blogging's sake, it is galling to learn that you cannot trust even these basic stats. One can only recommend that bloggers do not click on of the links listed in the 'referring pages', to do so will only promote more of the same.
Ever since my first expedition into Europe at the ripe old age of seventeen (Europe had only recently become a destination for xenophobic Brits with the arrival of the package tour to Spain, and the sun, in the late sixties), I have had a penchant for collecting glassware; initially beer glasses purloined from bierkellers and, more recently, unusual spirit bottles, brandy, grappa, vodka etc. German breweries pride themselves on the distinctive shape of their 'logo-ed' glasses and I only wish that more had survived the intervening years 'twixt initial 'possession and now. Pride of place, then and now, goes to the quite exquisite half-litre glass from the Weihenstephaner brewery (in Freising, Bayern), the oldest continuously functioning brewery in all of Christendom, founded in 1040. The glasses favoured by the Dortmund-based DAB brewery in the seventies were an exquisite play on the champagne flute as beer glass.
I had been told by an innkeeper friend that, after the initial 'donation' by the brewery, such glasses needed to be paid for by the publican in the event of breakages etc. As a result, I would always offer to buy a glass which attracted me rather then just steal it outright. I think the innkeepers were genuinely surprised by my offers for I never did pay for a glass and I invariably acquired a clean one, not the one in which my beer had been delivered. The only glasses that I ever 'stole' were from the Stiegl Keller, the 'brewery tap' ** of the local lager in Salzburg, Austria. I only stole those because. in part. there was no-one to ask, in part because you poured your own beer from the cask but mainly because your fellows (women) would come with purposely empty handbags to carry away even the one litre, earthenware 'Steins'. I well remember the hand luggage search at Frankfurt-am-Main, I had a bag full to brim with purloined beer glasses, in the wake of the Munich shootings in '72. After a strict 'body search', I had visions of my entire collection, some twenty or so glasses, that first year, being confiscated, lock, stock and barrel. They didn't even unwrap them from the copies of the 'Frankfurter Allgemeine' that I had wrapped them in to prevent breakages; they were obviously inured to such theft of their heritage.
Once I started cooking, especially with olive oil, I have looked out for especially distinctive bottles in which to store my olive oil; bottles that would look good on my kitchen counter. When I realised that even Italian producers bottled even the 'extra virgine di olivia', extra virgin olive oil, in clear or semi- clear bottles, there was little point is doing otherwise. Olive oil deteriorates in sunlight and so should be bottled in 'black' bottles, like 'Cordon Negra' Cava but it never is, at least in my supermarket!
And so I have stored my olive oil in grappa, both 'di barolo'. 'di pinot' and 'di barbera', bottles, in 'Kaufmann Signature' vodka bottles, in Hine cognac bottles, in Slivovitz*** bottles; in any bottle that looked decorative alongside the tall, thin glass jars that hold the dried pasta. I have recently come across a variety of Grappa, 'Pagannini', lousy name but what do you expect, it's imported by 'Yildal International GmbH, Hamburg'****, but which has the most beautiful, "chemist's flask" bottle; It is currently only imported in the 50cl variety. I am just waiting for the one litre variety! Only for the bottle, you understand, only for the bottle!
Quite obviously, the answer is to store your olive oil behind the closed doors of your kitchen cupboards, which I would, except..........my kitchen cupboards have no doors; I like my dried beans, lentils, aceto balsamico di Modena, my canned plum tomatoes, my Kalamata olives***** to be readily to hand without all of that opening and closing of doors! Besides, you almost always leave a door open and end up banging your head against a sharp corner, which leads inevitably to that common ailment, 'trauma violento di cucina'.
You see; I cook Italian, I speak Italian! And I provide phoros! (The lamp is courtesy of Lombok, the Spanish-style ashtray courtesy of the 'Casa Imperial Hotel' in Seville******* :)
* Sitemeter has gone down in my estimation since it has allied itself with an 'internet marketing company' which merely increases the likelihood of unwanted spam
** The traditional name for the pub which invariably sits alongside a brewery in the UK. There is a famous one in Wandsworth, London which is adjacent to the 'Ram Brewey' where 'Youngs' beer used to be brewed, although sadly no longer. I still miss the horse-drawn delivery drays which were such a feature of my youth and the bane of motorists on the A217, impatient to get to work!
*** If you want a sensory treat, take a just-emptied bottle of Slivovitz (Eastern European Plum Brandy, Serbian is best) and cork it tightly. Leave, unopened for five years. Remove the cork. Sniff. The aroma of plums is just simply and intensely divine!
**** GmbH; I just love the German for 'Limited Company'; 'Gesellschaft mit beschränkter Haftung', although, strangely enough, I have never heard it spoken aloud by a native; 'gay, emm, bay, haa' perhaps? Which is almost as amusing as VolksWagen, 'fow, vay'.
***** Interestingly, the Greeks, Kalamata olives (black, and therefore ripe) come from Greece, have the highest consumption of olive oil on the planet: I would have expected the Italians would hold that honour. It must be the copious quantities drizzled on the traditional Greek salad****** which accounts for this.
****** The recipe for a Greek salad is: Four tomatoes of truly gargantuan proportions, sliced thickly; one Spanish onion diced equally thickly (Tip, the more tear inducing the onion, the better the salad); some chunked cucumber, hidden expertly underneath the onion; a generous portion of feta cheese, torn by hand into small chunks by a sweaty, sexually deviant goatherd; a liberal smattering of black peppercorns, crushed between the teeth of said sexually deviant goatherd; one half litre of Greek olive oil. Serve with a 50cm 'round' of 'peasant' bread and a litre of Retsina. Finish with a pint glass full of Metaxa, three star brandy and frequent immersions of your body in the warm waters of the Aegean. Definitely works for me, every time.
******* Which, despite tales of cockroaches in the kitchen, is a truly wondrous place to stay. An original 'major domo's' house (the Prince's palace is on the opposite side of the street) in Moorish style, it is an exquisite example of all that is good about 12th century Arab living; just don't eat the food!
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