Il Forno

IMBB25: Pasta c'anciova e muddica

I love bread.

Not something hard to say, when your blog is called "the oven" and was originally started with baking in mind rather than food in general, as the focus rather turned out to be. (I never could keep my mind concentrated on one single topic, too much interesting stuff out there.)

As much as I love bread, I hate wasting it. In part it must have to do for my passion for it, but I rather believe that my maternal grandparents are to blame (or praise, depending on your point of view). Having lived through WWII and food rationing, they had a careful attitude to food waste, yet not guilt-ridden like the grandparents of a few school friends I got to know better during my childhood. If you exclude bread, that is. I cannot remember a piece of bread being thrown away: stale bread would always be used somehow, eventually as bread crumbs if no other idea popped up. I can still se the huge brad crumbs jar in my grandparents cupboard as if I had it before my eyes.

Fabulous Favourites Festival: WBW 21 + IMBB? 26

I have to admit that when the let's just give this a try idea for Is My Blog Burning appeared on my blog over two years ago I hardly suspected that so many would follow suit, in an explosion of gastronomic blogging events for all tastes. To be honest with you, I was almost surprised to see those first brave bloggers join me on the first edition of IMBB? One of the first events to follow suit was Wine Blogging Wednesday, born from the mind of Lenn over at Lenndevours; WBW has gone a long way from its first baby steps, becoming the best virtual wine blogging event out there. I love to peek at the bottles the various blogger choose for each edition, often discovering wines unknown on this side of the pond.

This month Is My Blog Burning and Wine Blogging Wednesday have decided to join efforts: Lenn and me are bringing you the Fabulous Favorites Festival taking place on Friday May 19.

What is the Fabulous Favorites Festival exactly, you might ask? As my granddad liked to say, wine and food should always go together and so we are asking you to:

1. Pick a favorite bottle of wine from your cellar and create/cook a dish that goes with it.
2. Pick a favorite dish from your collection and seek out a wine that will pair with it.

and if you're feeling particularly brave, or maybe want to impress someone and blog about it at the same time you could always 3. create an entire wine-food pairing menu for the event. If you do you'll have us all in awe, I promise.

We hope that we'll encourage the cooks among you to have a go at the corkscrew and tasting glass and similarly to see a couple of you wine experts drop, lay aside, your precious Riedels and pick up a pan.

Join us on Friday May 19 for the biggest and wildest wine and food pairing seen on the blogsphere!

... and while you are at it don't forget to buy some extra bread for IMBB25: Give us this day yesterday's bread hosted by Derrick at An Obsession with Food this coming week-end.

Vacanza

As many of you have noticed there has been a huge gap in my posting lately... I have been even worse than my usual erratic poster reputation.

There are some moments when blogging becomes a background thought in the hustle of daily life, and when that hustle grows for a series of events you had not entirely expected you really don't think that much about your beloved blog anymore. In the past weeks my efforts have been concentrated on a few different "projects". One is a long-term and not directly food related change which has been long needed, the other is definitely food-related and as soon as it is finished you'll be the first to know. The former, if everything goes to plan, will probably result in a few interesting news for this blog: if anyone who is graphic design savvy reads this and would like to have a go at redesigning this blog (and a little more) please get in touch with me at ilforno@gmail.com .

To cut a long story short, the above will also mean that posting will remain occasional in the future, yet keep an eye open for upcoming announcements... especially tomorrow.