Another Hit from Nigella Express, Adventures in Waste Yarn, New Knitting Thingy, Italy

Chicken Schnitzel from Nigella Express
I was just talking to Erika on the phone (hi Erika!) and told her I was going to update my blog, so here goes. Unfortunately, I had to return Nigella Express to the library, but I was able to print out the recipe for Chicken Schnitzel with Bacon and White Wine here. (The photo is below.) The only change I made was instead of using garlic oil, I used olive oil and then threw in some minced garlic when I deglazed the pan at the end. I didn't want to put the garlic in with the oil at the beginning, because since the bacon fat gets so hot, the garlic would burn and get all nasty. The green beans are Haricots verts au maître d'hôtel and the wine is a 2006 Chateau Ste Michelle Riesling, which was only $8.98 at our friendly neighborhood liquor store. The chicken schnitzel is actually very very good. Besides, how could anything pan-fried in bacon fat be bad?

Knitting
All I have to do for my left glove is the hand and fingers and then I'm ready for the elastic and then I am finished! Before I made the right glove, I had never done a project that required waste yarn and I had no idea what it did or anything but now I know and it is really cool.

Do you see these red stitches? (The yarn is from my socks.) This is the exact spot where the thumb will go!
Below are my new knitting gadgets. They are like little pieces of telephone cord (does anyone even have telephone cords any more?) and they wrap around my needles to keep them together and keep my project from slipping off in my bag. I was using rubber bands, but these are much easier and cuter. Plus, they don't snap off and hit me in the eye.
A (Mental) Trip to Italy
Unfortunately, I don't get to go to Italy in the near future and I've never been there, but I have gotten to spend some time in Venice and Rome thanks to the biography of Lucia Mocenigo by Andrea di Robilant and the film Artemisia. I picked up Lucia at the library last week and have really enjoyed it. It's the kind of history book I would have like to have written had I stayed in history--it has a narrative and I could actually feel the time period. Turns out, this kind of history is not written by "real" historians. I don't care because before I read this book I had not given Italy during the Napoleonic era much thought. Now I know a lot more about it and I enjoyed the trip.

Yesterday I watched Artemisia, a French film about the Italian Baroque painter Artemisia Gentileschi. I took a summer art history class in 2005 and the professor suggested this film and I have just now gotten around to watching it. The things I liked the most about the film were the colors and the costumes. Almost all the colors were beautifully muted (like the Sistine ceiling before it was cleaned) but the costumes were very intricate. The movie was worth watching but I probably wouldn't watch it again and again.

Judith and Holofernes, Around 1620
This beautiful (and, admittedly, gruesome) work played an integral part in the movie. This is the version of Judith and Holofernes that we had to memorize for our Renaissance/Baroque/Rococo test. I hope your day is better than his.