Saturday 16 July 2022

La Dolce Vita

 Italian for "The Sweet Life". Here are two more of my library books 

Donna Leon "Trace Elements". This is the first of her novels I have read, featuring the Venetian detective Guido Brunetti. I really enjoyed it - good plot, good dialogue, and great descriptions of the city of canals. I found it witty and enjoyable, and plan to read more of these *****
The second book is by a husband&wife, restauranteurs Giancarlo Caldesi and his wife Katie. He suffered from Type 2 diabetes for 10 years, then went onto a low carb diet, losing 4 stone.
Eight years on, he is fit and healthy and his diabetes is in remission. This book, which only came out last year, is a selection of low carb, tasty recipes to help with weight loss and the management of diabetes - and all of them fast
The book has a good section by diabetes specialist Dr David Unwin - with helpful explanations about nutrition.
 It has two weekly menu plans [weight loss and maintenance] colourful pictures of all 100 low carb recipes, and recipe suggestions for feeding the whole family not just one person [or a couple] 
I particularly liked the look of quick brown bread made with coconut flour [very similar concept to soda bread - no yeast, but eggs and baking powder used as raising agents] And the recipe makes a loaf, baps, breadstick or foccaccia.
Pasta is replaced with pezzi - the Italian word for pieces - made from shredded bits of Savoy cabbage. This sounds as if it has a bit more 'heft' tp it than the spiralised courgettes popular as a spaghetti substitute!
There is even a section about covid and lowcarb too. You can find many of the recipes on their website I plan to check some of these out. This book is well written, and has a good index. I know I keep banging on about indices - but they can save so much time when you are looking things up [esp when writing book reviews]  I think that this book is a really good complement to Michael Moseley's blood sugar diet.  *****. Yes, you can enjoy the Sweet Life without a lot of refined sugar! 
One final thing - I am glad to have discovered Donna Leon. We watched the final Montelbano the other evening on the BBC. Bob and I have greatly enjoyed Andrea Camilleri's novels about this Sicilian detective. Our girls gave us a holiday in Sicily when we were 60. BUT the final programme really upset me. I really did not want it to end as it did. Not giving any plot spoilers - but I was quite frustrated by Salvo's behaviour, which seemed out of character, somewhat selfish and unkind. 
Am I alone in this - or were others disappointed by the way it all ended?


8 comments:

  1. I too have discovered Commisario Brunetti. There is an accompanying cookbook but it is Not necessarily suitable for low carb! I loved Montalbano but can't remember the last episode.

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    1. Oh but I can read the cookbook and dream [Give me a Nigel Slater book and I am like on of Pavlov's dogs!]

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  2. re Montalbano: yes! He's always been a flawed character, but what a cruel way to dump Livia. And his new sweetie was very blah, not interesting at all. I believe this is the way the books end too and it's hard to understand.

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    1. From what I understand, this is not how the books end, there are two as yet un-filmed. 8 million Italians tuned in to watch it when it was shown there, and many of them were Very Disappointed apparently

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  3. Oh I need to get that diabetic cookbook — I am always looking for something to feed Mr. Stubborn — thanks for sharing!

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    1. I do like cookbooks with decent pictures, so I can see what I am aiming at.

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  4. I'm not familiar with Montalbano but I sympathize if the ending is not true to the book and not acceptable. One of my favourite books is "Christy" by Catherine Marshall, which is based on a true story, and one day it showed up on TV with a different ending, which had me fuming!

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    1. Did you read Catherine Marshall's first book, "A man called Peter"? It was a biography of her late husband. That was made into a film starring Richard Todd. In a subsequent book, CM describes her frustration when the director wanted to change the facts to suit HIS plot! I enjoyed Christy too

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