sweet nothings...

Looks yummy.

Mmm...Fantastic!

Hey, have you seen MyOpera folks added a couple of tools under "design" to customize the blog background and the blog header?
The old way is still valid, the new tools are for those you can't handle HTML/CSS code or want to make quick tests.

At least, you can cook risotto I need some right now. So bad...

Unfortunately I could not taste your cooking but from your blog posts I liked almost any of your recipes. Besides, I am not picky about food. Mushroom risotto is one of my favorite meals.

I cook for myself but I don't enjoy it and then mostly I am not in the right mood.
Yes I am suspicious of recipes I don't know. And I am traditionalist. But you cook a lot of good stuff to be Scottish

cailleach writes:

Ha, what's wrong with a diet of brose,limpets, skirlie and crowdie? (all washed down with iron bru)

Question: why the strange guy who cuts grass in Bart's school (The Simpson) is scottish?

Side note: that character is dubbed in italian with an accent from Sardegna (the island).

English version:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fgzC-l_lmUU
(and I understand Willy better than the others, given the accent )
Italian version:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oOTq-fFTWvU

In Italy everything is dubbed, there aren't subtitles anywhere. During time it became an art inside an art, meaning there are good actors dubbing foreign actors for life, so you always listen the same actor with the same voice.
That is good because Italians aren't good with other languages on average, unfortunately many things get lost in the translation. For example many jokes are difficult to translate. That is the reason why they dubbed the scottish as sardinian, that was to keep somehow the "situation" english-scottish vs italian-sardinian.

You know, the fact that in Scandinavia they don't dub anything is for two main reasons:
1. cost (you don't have to pay actors to re-act the movie)
2. those places basically don't have a strong local culture so they live in the shadow of the english-speaking area.
On the opposite, in France they say "ordinateur" instead of "computer".

You don't get the point. In the whole Norway live less people than in Milano and surroundings alone. You can easily see that english is less spoken/known in the bigger european countries like France, Germany, Italy etc. It is not a matter of choices, it is mechanical. And you think everybody speaking english is a good thing ONLY because you are a native speaker. The others see it as "cultural colonialism" and there are even laws against the use of english. During Fascism all the english rooted words had been translated by law.

Watching movies or TV with subtitles is completely different. You get something more and something less. Like I said, it is better to watch it in the original language because if you understand it enough you can understand the "shades" that are lost or even changed in the translation. It is worse because if you must rely on subtitles you lose much of the action, besides like I said the dubbing (when it is good enough) it is much more than a translation, it is like re-acting the movie.

"italian" Willy speaks with sardinian accent. Not in sardinian the language that would be like gaelic scottish. BTW there are several variants of sardinian.

Hamish writes:

Strange that miscasting - I don't remember the Scots declaring war on anyone apart from the English or trying to conquer the world! We also get on very well with the Welsh and Irish (for fairly obvious reasons) as anyone who has ever been at an international rugby match will know. Even with the Italians!

Admittedly however we were excellent regular and mercenary soldiers and seamen from the Middle Ages up to modern times.

Actually before the roman colonization the Celts were divided in tribes always fighting each other, more or less like the american natives. The Romans adopted the tactics of "divide et impera" (put your enemies against each other and rule over them) and so they succeeded in conquering all the celtic territories meeting little resistance (besides the famous episode of Caesar's campaign in France). Back then Scotland was populated by a pre-celtic people, the "Picts" and the Romans built the Adrian's wall to keep them out. Following the fall of the roman Empire the british islands and Ireland were colonized by german tribes and vikings from Scandinavia. All these people kept fighting each other till today. See the irish plantations, the English confiscated land from catholic Irish locals and populated it with protestant settlers from Wales and Scotland, with the resulting conflict that is still going on.

looks to be a soothing comfort food