We’ve been in Croatia for the last (almost) couple of weeks.  Our original plan had been to take the ferry over from Venice to Rovinj, about 3 Euro-hours or 75 miles across the Adriatic.  But we backed out when I went to the dock and noticed our boat was named “The Minnow” and the Captain kept calling the first mate “Little Buddy.”  Somehow it just seemed too risky, especially since there were a lot of boats with skull & bones flags right outside the Venice harbor.

Instead we jumped on a bus and took a four-hour ride through Trieste and down the Istrian peninsula, disembarking in the center of Rovinj, a fishing village now catering to visitors.

But let’s go back to why we traveled to Croatia anyway.  There are a few reasons.  I had originally traveled through this area in 1972.  I was in a dilapidated VW bus I’d bought with a couple of friends in Amsterdam and we were driving through the southern end of Europe and were on our way to Athens via Spain, Portugal, France and Italy.  The van itself had a rusted out hole in the floor and if you lifted up the board you could watch the road underneath pass by.  This saved us many pit-stops on our journey.  Anyway I remember riding down the Dalmatian coast and being overwhelmed by how gorgeous it all was.  At the time this was Tito’s Yugoslavia.  There were beautiful red tile villages nestled against small harbors and always rugged mountains dropping right down into the ocean.  It reminded me of  Big Sur only with little villages everywhere serving fresh branzino.  The coast road was one lane and we got pulled over by a uniformed guy who was holding up a sign by the side of the highway that said “Stop.”  He walked over to the van, and told us the only word of English he knew, “Speeding.”  There was no point in arguing so we gave him $5 and a pack of Marlboros and continued down the road..

Anyway, Croatia has remained for me a place that was worth re-visiting.  Of course it has changed.  The one lane road down the coast has been replaced by an amazing highway.  Fast, easy, smooth and missing the gorgeous views.  Yugoslavia is now gone and a terrible war took place here in the 90’s that the country still seems to be psychologically recovering from.  This is the war that gave the world the term “Ethnic Cleansing” which really is just another term for genocide.  The economy is now dependent on tourism and all the young folks have learned English so that they can get a job.  Dubrovnik is in the process of learning to “manage” tourism so it doesn’t become another Venice, but that will take time.  We purposely  booked rooms about 10 miles south of Dubrovnik in another fishing village so we wouldn’t be faced with all those crowds daily.  We’ll head into the city via water shuttle tomorrow, but our hotel operator purposely told us not to go until then because yesterday and today there will four different cruise ships docking, while tomorrow there won’t be any.  Each of those ships dumps about 2000-3500 tourists on the Old Town section for these 8 hour bursts.

That said, this country remains extraordinarily beautiful.  We have avoided any of the bigger cities (Zagreb, Split, and Dubrovnik) instead choosing to hole up in rooms with a view.  Below is the view from our rooms in Rovinj, Hvar (an island about an hours ride off the coast of Split), and Cavtat (outside of Dubrovnik).

So you get the idea, the beauty here is overwhelming.

Speaking of interesting things in Croatia I’ve included a picture of Katrina Graber-Kitarović.  She has been voted Ms. Croatia.  No I don’t  mean she won a beauty pageant.

Ms. Graber-Kitarović is the President of Croatia.  Here’s a few more pics of their president:

Is there really anything else to say (that wouldn’t get me in some deep trouble).

Now contrast that with this pic of our president getting ready to frolic in the sun.  I apologize to all the readers since it may take years to get this image out of your head.

Additionally, while the Fabulous Miss K and I were walking along the harbor we did spot  the Croatian Minister of the Navy cruising by on one of their new destroyer-class boats. As I mentioned Croatia is not a wealthy country and it appears they have had to cut their budget for military uniforms and quite severely.

So how’s the food here in Croatia?

Well, the fish is fabulous and the local wines can be excellent (Mike Grgich of Grgich Hills in Napa also has a winery here in Croatia, where he’s considered a bit of a hero).  That’s it. I recommend visitors really pack it in while they’re in Italy because its kind of downhill after that.

Italy is, as everyone knows, extremely beautiful, but Croatia can definitely hold its own in that regard.  Let me just close by sharing a few shots.

and finally, the mother of all Sunsets.

 

 

Well, not really.  We’re in Croatia and I’ll have more to say about that in some future posts.  But I realized that I have a few more things to say about Italy and Bologna specifically.

I  wanted to share that the Fabulous Miss K and I did spend a day visiting a cheese making farm in Parma and made a surprising discovery.  The place actually is a big cow farm (somehow ranch seems very inappropriate in Italy unless you’re filming a spaghetti western).  The cow farm is on the site of the cheese making facility and all the cows live indoors so massive amounts of rolls of hay are brought in to feed them.  Most of the cheese making space is actually cow-space and hay space.  But inside the cheesy part of the place (which is actually pretty huge) they make dozens of 55 Kilo (110 lbs.) wheels of parmesan cheese every day. These wheels are big enough that if you stuck an axel to them you could use them to make your Lamborghini roll, if you know what I mean..   Cheese making is actually a pretty simple process (if you know what you’re doing) and their method was surprising close to the mozzarella I make at home, though of course it was on a much bigger scale (for example I have 0 cows and rolls of hay at home on Geary Drive.) Giant brass cauldrons of milk are mixed with salt and rennet and some left over whey from the last batch and they’re cooked until you get the curd.  You separate the curd from the leftover whey and then you form and press it, cover it with wax and let it age.  Eventually it ends up grated on your pasta, salad, or cheeseburger.

One final note that was totally surprising about making the cheese… and it could change my life… well if soft skin changes your life anyway.  As I was looking in the cooking cauldron of cheese-to-be, the Cheese Master invited me to stir the pot with my hand.  I did as I was told.  Now it was hot, but not unbearable for a few seconds. The cheese makers have their hands in the pots many times during the process because getting a feel, literally, for the proto-cheese helps determine when its ready for the next stop.  So I put my hand in the cauldron and the amazing thing is after rinsing off my hands my skin was very soft.  I mean very, very soft, like a baby’s cheek soft.  My hands were the softest they’d been since I was about 14 months old.  Why?  I learned it’s the whey.  Somehow it acts as an enzyme and you feel like somebody just sprinkled Adolph’s meat tenderizer on you.  And it lasts for days.  For the next three days after this I kept shaking my own hand because it felt so good (also because no one else would.)  Caution: if you are a competitive judo-guy or gal and like to split bricks and chop wood with your hand stay away from this stuff.

So where do we get this milk whey?  Well the Fabulous Miss K and I make our own yogurt about twice a week at home and then we strain it to turn it into Greek yogurt, leaving behind a whole bunch of whey that we never know what to do with.  I’ve tried using it in baking, smoothies, etc. and I still have too much which I usually just toss.  (I’d feed it to our pigs and cattle, but we don’t have any pigs or cattle).  Now I’m going to take the stuff and apply it to my hands and feet regularly.  God only knows what will happen if I put it on my face.  I’d like to figure out how to put it into a hand or face cream and see what happens.  I’m not sure but I think this is how Estée Lauder got started.

Later that day we also made it over to a prosciutto makers.  Touring a prosciutto processor (what do you call a place where prosciutto is made anyway?) is kind of bizarre.  What you have is thousands of the rear legs (or hind to use pig-part talk) slathered in salt and more fat (because pigs aren’t fat enough on their own) and then hung on a rack where they cure for 14 months.  That’s it.  I’m assuming the rest of the pig is sent to someone else for a nefarious reason and that ultimately it will make someone pretty happy. In the curing room there are hundreds of these racks each holding hundreds of pig legs.

We also went to farm in Modena where they’ve been making real balsamic vinegar for a 150 years.  I say real, because almost all of the balsamic we get isn’t at all authentic.  What we get is usually a mix of a little real balsamic from Modena with red wine vinegar, added coloring and flavoring, preservatives, etc.  Oh, and it usually doesn’t even come from Modena although its labeled that way.  You’ve heard this story before.

The stuff we saw is aged in small barrels for 5, 12, 25, or 50 years, or more.  It’s made only from red wine that is slowly boiled down and then added to the cask.  Over time the cask itself deteriorates and adds more flavor.  This family starts a new casks whenever there’s birth in the family.  The cask is then named for that person.  The oldest one shown in the front of the photo below has actually been  aging for about 85 years.  Whenever they draw anything off of  it (and only in the smallest amounts on special occasions), they replace it with the stuff from the next. generation and so it all keeps aging on and on.   Then they backfill that casket, right on down the line.  You can buy a 6 oz. bottle of the really old stuff but it costs about $300, so its not for everyday use.  We did get to taste some of the 45 year old vinegar and yes, it was much, much better than average.  And no you shouldn’t use it like the white vinegar to get stains and smells out of your gym clothes.