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Voltaire beveva 40 caffè al giorno. E pare che in risposta a chi gli contestava l’abuso abbia dichiarato: “bevo 40 caffè al giorno per essere ben sveglio e pensare a come tenere a bada i tiranni e gli imbecilli” aggiungendo poi “sarà senz’altro un veleno, ma un veleno lentissimo: io lo bevo già da settant’anni e, finora, non ne ho mai provato i tristi effetti sulla mia salute …”
Visto l’andamento attuale … che avesse ragione lui?
Considerando anche il fatto che i suoi caffé erano una sorta di miscela con la cioccolata … a me ne mancano parecchi …
Oddei, questa cosa della cioccolata… mi ispira tantissimo!
Ispira da matti anche me!!
Cioccolata is irrisistibile 😉
Le sue parole sono sempre attuali!!!
Ma 40 caffè mi sembrano eccessivi 😉
In effetti sì … Luisa … 40, per quanto miscelati con cioccolata, sono davvero troppi.
Però come dici: le sue parole sono sempre attuali! Verissimo!! In pratica con i suoi caffè riesce a tener svegli anche noi 😀
Coffee stipulates the brains, that’s why so many writers use it. I also love to have my two or three cups of coffee in the morning. Lately, I drink them with a bit of cinnamon. Hmmm! Delicious!
Cinnamon!!
Here I am! I think cinnamon is delicious exactly as you do Olivia!
So I learn that you are used to loving and drinking several cups of coffee each day! That’s fantastic!!
Yes, coffee stimulates the brains! And as for me, I have to say that it also gives me energy
True, Claudia. Coffee gives me energy too, that’s why I drink it in the morning. It wakes me up and gets me going. I drink it with a bit of cinnamon powder, instead of sugar. Cinnamon is a very good and healthy spice, better than sugar.
Oh sure!
I don’t use sugar and am trying to reduce it as much as possible.
I love the taste of cinnamon in general, therefore also with chocolate of course, but also as a perfume: for example the fragrance we have for home is cinnamon and orange.
But believe me when I tell you that I can eat cinnamon with gnocchi: this is a “recipe” from my grandmother who was born in Veneto.
Oh I am sure that cinnamon with gnocchi tastes good. I have never tried it, though. Do they still offer this dish, for example in restaurants of Veneto?
In restaurants I do not know, but many people still cook them here you can find some picture and the “recepy” explanation.
However my Granny did not use butter but Grana Padano cheese that is known as Parmesan. So we simply make a sort of mixture “powder” made with sugar, grated cheese and cinnamon. With the heat of cooked gnocchi this mixture melts and it delicious!
And also despite what it is told with the recepy, we eat gnocchi zucchero e cannella not only for Carnival.
I went to the site you indicated and looked. The gnocchi with cinnamon look good. I am sure they are delicious, too. A recipe for Mardi Gras, on Carnival, how interesting. In Russia, there is Maslenitsa week, the equivalent to Carnival, and the special dish are blini, some sort of pancakes. They can also be prepared with butter and cinnamon.
What a beautiful coincidence that your Blinis are also with cinnamon!
In reality, the gnocchi I was talking about are not really for Carnival, we eat them at any time.
The typical Carnival dessert for us are frittelle.
I had never heard the name Malenitsa before. And do you also use to dress up in masks? Do children celebrate?
Maslenitsa is a whole festival week, also called “butter week”. Every day has its special ritual, according to tradition. You can look it up in Wikipedia.
Oh, this is absolutely interesting!
Butter week!
I will definitely take a look at more information.
Thank you so much Olivia!
It is a very lively and colourful festival, celebrated all over Russia.
Olivia I read that “during the Maslenitsa, characteristic sweet pancakes made with butter and eggs, called bliny, are made, which are generally round and recall the shape of the sun, perhaps also because the period of the Maslenitsa coincides with the end of winter.
The climax of the festival is on Tuesday (Shrove Tuesday), a joyful farewell to the snow in anticipation of the coming spring.”
I love the idea of recalling the shape of sun! This is absolutely joyful!
Actually, it is an old pagan Slav festival, dating back more than thousand years. And Slavs still love to celebrate it today.
An old Slav and pagan festival you say?
It is worth investigating to understand how traditions have merged over time: I think it is a bit like it happened for Christmas, which combines the Celtic tradition with the Christian one.
For us, Carnival is typically the period following Lent: a specific period of the Catholic religion.
The Russian Orthodox Church appropriated this old pagan Slav festival to make it more “Christian”. It used to be a nature ritual in the old days, with Slavs celebrating the beginning of spring. They burnt an effigy, “Lady Maslenitsa”, to drive winter out. This effigy was made of straw.
THANKS Olivia!
Very interesting indeed!
So does Lady Maslenitsa represent winter?
Maslenitsa was celebrated on the vernal equinox day. It marked the welcoming of spring, and was all about the enlivening of nature and bounty of sunny warmth.
This pagan festivity as held to honour the pagan deity Veles (or Volos also), patron of cattle and farming. People associated him with a bear or leshy (wood-goblin), therefore, the bear was a sacred animal possessing magical healing power. Some even thought of a bear to be a creature stronger than the Devil himself. Dancing like a bear around the house was supposed to protect it from burning down.
The name of the holiday, Maslenitsa (derived from maslo, which means butter or oil in Russian) owes its existence to the tradition of baking pancakes (or blini, in Russian). They are essential to the celebration of Maslenitsa.
On the one hand, hot, round, and golden, pancakes, as people believed, embody a little of the sun’s grace and might, helping to warm up the frozen earth. In the old days pancakes were cooked from buckwheat flour, lending them a red color, making the significance even more evident.
On the other hand, the circle has been considered a sacred figure in ancient Russia, protecting people from evil. Hence the habit of going on horseback around the settlement several times, decorating a cart wheel and carrying it on a pole along the streets, and dancing the khorovod (round dance). Such ceremonies were believed to butter (in Russian, the figurative meaning of the verb “to cajole”) the Sun and make it kinder.
Pancakes also symbolize birth and death; in old Russia a pancake was given to a woman in labour, and is a ritual funeral repast in many homes.
At Maslenitsa, pancakes are baked in very large quantities to be used in almost every ritual, they are given to friends and family all through the week. Pancakes are served with caviar , mushrooms, jam, sour cream, and of course, lots of butter. To view the recipe for real Russian blinis, click here.
Lady Maslenitsa:
Children and grown-ups assemble a Maslenitsa doll out of straw and old woman’s clothes. They place it on a pole and go dancing in khorovods, afterwards the doll is carried to the top of a snow hill. On the last day of the festival, the doll is burned.
So I would say, yes, this doll represents winter. People want to get rid of it.
This is all very fascinating indeed!
What might seem like “simple” pancakes becomes a symbol multiplied to the nth degree, the circle, the sun, the red color, the butter … nothing is casual and everything leads back to Spring, a bit like a rebirth.
I have read with a lot of interest and curiosity and I am really fascinated by this tradition that I did not know.
Thank you SO MUCH Olivia!
You are welcome, dear Claudia. I am fascinated by Russian folk festivals and their origins in pagan times. On the 7th of July, I will publish an article about “Ivan Kupala” on my blog. Wait and see!
Oh good! Thanks! So I will wait for July 7 with a lot of curiosity: I know very little about pagan traditions.
They are fascinating, Claudia. I try to dig them up in their original form, many of them have been transformed by Christian rites. However, I want to see how the pagans celebrated before being converted to a new religion that was alien to them..
Yes Olivia, I also find them very fascinating and I discovered the mixture of pagan and Christian rites by deepening the subject and doing a research on All Saints’ Day, Halloween, Nos Galan Gaeaf and Samhain.
These ancient rituals can be found all over Europe and Russia. I suppose, in Asia as well.
They intrigue me a lot!
Do you know others?
In general, all the equinoxes were celebrated by ancient peoples: spring – summer – autumn – winter.
I have another post coming up about the autumn equinox, on the 23rd of September in Russia, but it is not about any rituals, I simply mention it in my post about an autumnal scent of NEW DAWN (Novaya Zarya). And I combine it with some songs about autumn, naturally, since I love music.
Oh GOOD! So I will wait to read your coming post.
Your combined posts with images and music are always so deep and interesting!
I love music as well! <3
Images and sounds go well together because they both stimulate emotions.
I totally agree. I also like very much images and sounds.
With this video how about taking a journey with me, in time as well as in space?
It is an interesting video, Claudia. I had heard the name of “Duran” already, but never listened to the music. It is also the name of the internet magazine, where I publish my English articles about Russia. “The Duran”. Have you visited it?
That’s why I was impressed when you told me about The Duran and asked if there was a particular reason for the name.
The search led me to a YouTube channel but you told me there are no videos of yours, right?
It does not astonish me at all that the search led you only to the youtube channel of the Duran and not to their news site of the same name.
When I tape “duran” into google, I can also find only the youtube channel, google has hidden the site in their search facilities because it is a pro-Russian site. Google is censuring pro-Russian sites. You won’t find them.
Here are my articles that I have published on the news site THE DURAN. My articles will lead you to the site. It would be nice if you could give those two Greeks some support (if you agree with what they are doing).
I only publish texts, I do not do any videos, Claudia.
https://theduran.com/author/olivia-kroth/
THANKS Olivia!
Following your link I saw that your articles are so many!
Well done!
My attention immediately fell on the article about walrus serenades and I fell in love with the idea and also with the images!
Yes, the walruses are one my favourites. In the article (on my blog, not on the Duran), there is a video about walruses responding to music on a bypassing ship. They follow the ship and dance and grunt to it. Hilarious. I will try to find it, then I will place it here, if I may do that.
Off cours you are welcome to share here!!
I just had a look and saw that the two Greeks included the video in my article on the Duran. I will place it here anyway, it is so hilarious. Every time I hear and see those animals dancing and grunting to the music, they make me smile.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mEv-DLSDIco
MANY THANKS Olivia! The video is funny but I also find it very sweet!
I looked at it several times because as you rightly say it makes me smile, and therefore makes me feel good.
Yes, Claudia. It is sweet, those grunting animals at the end of the video, saying “thank you”. That is what the Russian guy on board of the ship says; “They said thank you”, and the woman laughs.
Oh thanks for telling me!
I hadn’t been able to understand the words by myself.
Quaranta non sono pochi, ma con la cioccolata tutto sommato … 😉
GIUSTO Paola!!
Come dire … se si fa, si faccia alla grande!! 🙂 😉 😀
Quaranta no…ma tre sicuri e tutti americani. Sono abituata ormai. L’espresso me lo faccio raramente.
Apprezzo particolarmente il primo caffè ☕ del mattino. 😄
Anche io cerco sempre di assaporare il primo caffè del mattino. Per me però americano solo quello, gli altri espresso!!
Tre sicuri direi che è perfetto Luisella!