Serendipity: two Vaud gold winners at Mondial du Merlot holding weekend openhouses Morges, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Two of the top Merlots in the world, named late Thursday 25 November at the Mondial du Merlot in Ticino, are grown quite close to each other in canton Vaud. The competition, in its third year, had entries from […]
Archives for November 2010
The woman who will never bake another pumpkin pie
This Thanksgiving note came in from the American side of the family early Thursday, as the US holiday was getting underway (photos may follow, if she can bear to send them). Names changed to protect the first-time-for-pie granny: “I’m baking 2 pumpkin pies to take to Mark’s & Susan’s tomorrow night. Terry [daughter] couldn’t believe […]
Swiss Alpine garden fresh pumpkin pie
We harvest 20-40 pumpkins from our Alpine garden every October, dry them for a month on the warm stones of the veranda to harden them off, then store them in a cool dark area for winter eating. We grow them at 1,100 metres altitude, on dirt mixed with a good dose of the neighboring farmer’s […]
Tipping conundrum overlooks the small coins
I just wandered through a list of how to tip, how much, where in the world, on the blog Political Calculations, which borrows from some previously published travel and food gurus to create a chart. It seems pretty accurate to me, based on my own travels. One thing is often overlooked in discussions about tipping, […]
Cuba Diaries, Isadora Tattlin
When I wrote about North Korea (Nothing to Envy: Barbara Demick, Real Lives in North Korea) six weeks ago, several people reminded me that there are similar areas of the world that are still frozen in the middle of the last century. Isadora Tattlin’s Cuba Diaries is about four years spent in one of those […]