Rick Bailey's Blog: Stuff happens, then you write about it, page 3

A Foot in the Farberware

Piscialetto. It’s an odd name for a restaurant. A compound word: piscia + letto. Read piscialetto as a verb, wet the bed. Read it as a noun, bed wetter.  If it’s a joke, naming a restaurant that, I don’t get it. But I’m interested. We’re walking by this new restaurant in Rimini when Tizi notices…More

A Walkabout

We park by the mercato coperto in Rimini. It’s a Sunday morning. We’ve come in search of wine, chocolate, and cookies or pastries to take with us to lunch at Tizi’s cousins down the coast.   In the five-minute walk to the wine and chocolate shop, we pass half a dozen coffee bars that are open…More

Want a Slice?

I knew I was supposed to like it. I wanted to like it. But the whole experience left me wondering–What’s the big fuss? Is this all there is? No, not first sex. I’m talking about first pizza. It seems unthinkable that I could have reached the age of 12 or 13 and never had pizza.…More

And for lunch . . .

Major thanks to Alba Montanari for taking us to lunch in Novafeltria yesterday. It was a day full of delectable surprises, sights, and delights.  Alba drove, Tizi rode shotgun, and I took the backseat, which was fine with me. Tizi and Alba go way back, I mean WAY back, to single digits, to pre-school and…More

Beyond Baloney

At the half-way point in our stay, we make a pilgrimage to Bologna.  From San Marino it’s about an hour by car. We plan to arrive a little after the morning rush hour. At the airport we turn in the rental we’ve been driving for three weeks and pick up another car for the rest…More

Here Boy!

The sign in the front window of the Marchi store in Santarcangelo is small and succinct: “No pipí. Grazie!” An arrow at the edge of the sign points down, at the brick wall, the side of the building, immediately below the window.  At first I thought, That’s kinda cute! There’s something about the word pipí.…More

Getting Verbal

An incident. At the Rimini Autostrada automated drive-through pay station. Tizi and I were driving back to San Marino from Pesaro. At the Rimini exit, my ticket was repeatedly rejected. Three times a gentle automated female voice told me to introduire il bigletto, that is, introduce (insert) my ticket. I did, to no effect. But…More

Hey, Siri–Take a Note

A while back I went to a friend’s book launch. It was at a public library. She read a few passages from her book, we had coffee and cookies, then, seated at a table in the back of the room, she sold and signed copies of her book. For each reader, on the title page…More

A Legumious Lunch

Every so often the local market sets out a basket of pinto beans, still in their pods. So you have the pleasure of unzipping them and harvesting the beans. These beauties are from Mexico, traveling all the way to Southeastern Michigan. And they are tender and fresh and would probably be good eaten raw with…More

Fast and Easy

It’s lunch time, 7 above zero in Southeastern Michigan. On a day like today I like to have pasta with ragu. Shown here, a dish of campanelle with a quick sausage sauce. It’s not far down the road from the sauce I learned to make at my mother-in-law’s side. Hers was a long sauce. This…More