It's snowing here! I have started the Christmas sourdough bread, Pane Rustico. Legend has it that this bread dates back to ancient Rome. . .whether or not it is true, I have no idea. It isn't a flat bread but it is a sourdough bread made from fermented grapes so it is at least plausible.

The drought did in the eggplant crop, so I am not sure if I will make caponata for Christmas Eve. I only budget fifty dollars for the two days and store bought caponata is expensive as well as inferior to homemade. Eggplants from the grocery store are often very bitter and I don't always have "male" eggplants from which to choose like I do if I am growing my own. Okay, so there aren't really "male" eggplants, but eggplants have a dimple at the blossom end. The dimple can be very round or oval in shape. The round ones that look like a belly button (innie) seem to have more seeds and tend to be less meaty, so I select the oval barely-dimpled eggplants because the seeds are what make the eggplant bitter.

We don't do the Feast of Seven Fishes (La Vigilia or vigilia di magro,) . . .it's more like the antithesis of that or the "Feast of Seven Porks" with all the cured meats and cheeses that we only buy once a year. I used to do the fishes thing. . .from mussels (drunken soldiers), herring, seafood salad, shrimp scampi and stuffed calamari to smoked salmon and sometimes baccala and stuffed sole florentine. The year I ended up wearing a scalding hot pan of stuffed calamari was the end of the Feast of Seven Fishes and the beginnings of the Feast of Seven Porks which is a whole lot less work and lets me concentrate on the Christmas day lasagna: homemade sauce, meatballs (ground veal, It. pork sausage and beef ground together) and pasta.

Here is a blog that seems to have food on the mind, too. . the hungry blogger.