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Last night, I made some cookies that Jeff and I had in Siena this year for the first time. They are called ricciarelli.

We first stumbled on ricciarelli in the middle of a long afternoon walk around Siena. As had become our habit in Italy, we delayed lunch until that magic hour when everything closes in the afternoon–any time after 1:30pm is risky in our experience.

No lunch + steep medieval streets = grumpy!

So, thank goodness for La Nuova Pasticceria, which supplied us with these delightful, almond-based treats. After this run-in, we started to see ricciarelli on desert menus and in other stores. But we never saw them outside of Siena.

In any case, I’m happy to report that our version of ricciarelli is excellent. The next batch will have some orange zest…so I’ll have to report on that. Here’s a photo of the finished product. These cookies are perfect for Christmas desert with milk. They are chewy and sweetened with honey and vanilla and powdered sugar (yum). Enjoy.

A couple of signs caught my eye this week, and fortunately I had my camera handy. The first is a set of window signs that we have seen above a Burger King in the outer Sunset District. “Stinky Burger King” is one of our favorite phrases now 🙂 And don’t miss the “smell smell smell” sign! Oh, and the “get ZITS” sign!!
Now, this second sign is typical of the hole-in-the wall restaurants in the Tenderloin District. I particularly like how the word ‘restaurant’ runs off the page. It reminds me of the posters I made in elementary school. And it certainly gives me confidence that they use only the choicest cuts of meat.

So, perhaps this is old news by now, but our rain Wednesday made me think about a story I read in both the Examiner and the Chronicle that just captured my imagination. The story concerned a small town–Rattenberg, Austria–that 700 years after its founding has decided that it is sick and tired of winter darkness. It seems that the same mountain nook that has shielded the town from enemy attack also blocks direct sunlight between November and February. Sixty other nearby Alpine towns suffer a similar fate.

The solution for Rattenberg: 30 mirrors mounted on a hilltop in such a pattern that light is directed into select common areas of the town. The cost: $2.4 million.

Now, the 440 residents of Rattenberg believe that bringing sunlight into their town will reverse the decline in population, particularly the young people that move away. Before committing these funds, however, I suggest that the Rattenbergers visit an urban club or disco to watch what young people do when the lights come on at closing time–they scurry, lest they be seen under the unflattering fluorescent lights.

The lesson? Perhaps Rattengerians aren’t that good looking, and turning on the winter lights could decrease the population even further. I’m just tossing that out for consideration.

In rebuttal, Buster (below) would like to point out that sunbeams are quite nice, thank you.

For this show, I selected six images from my “Venice at Night” series. These images evoke a feeling of the serenity you discover wandering the narrow back streets of Venice after the crowds have returned to the mainland for the night.

We went out to dinner this weekend in Union Square…a perfect excuse to see the stores all lit up and the Macy’s Christmas Tree in the center of the square. All we needed was some snow.