Tuscan Pici

Watching the travel DVD Inside the Tuscan Hills, a PBS documentary by Dakkan Abbe, introduced me to a type of pasta called Tuscan Pici Pasta.

On two Sunday afternoons, my little girls (8,6,4,2) made this pasta for the rest of the family.

I give each child a cup of flour, an egg, a dash of coarse salt and a tablespoon of oil. They slowly mix the ingredients until they form a ball. The girls enjoy kneading the dough.

We let the dough sit for a half hour. I ask the girls to tidy a little while I make the sauce. (The last time I sauteed an onion, added a pound of ground beef with pressed garlic, drained it a little and then added two cans of diced tomatoes, two cans of sauce and a couple of anchovies.)

We have a lot of rolling pins. After the half hour wait, each girl flattens her dough with a rolling pin and cuts even strips.

They roll the dough between their palms to form snakes.

They rest their pasta shapes on the cutting board dusted with corn meal.

The pasta cooks up quickly in salted, boiling water.

The girls are very proud when Dad and the older children come home and we have a special dinner waiting for them.

Next time, I'll have to take a picture of the finished project.

Keeping Score

Reminiscent of Leonard Bernstein, San Francisco Symphony's conductor, Michael Tilson Thomas has a series called:

Keeping Score: MTT on Music

You can watch the episodes on line.

Thomas does a great job opening up the meaning of this Soviet composer Shostakovich. I've also watched the Tchaikovsky and Ives shows. (The Tchaikovsky episode is available at Netflix.)

Fine art shows are best screened before showing them to children. The Shostakovich episode contains footage of a modern production of Shostakovich's opera Lady Macbeth. I thought the visual images were too much.