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A woman in Italy accused of murdering great-aunt with spaghetti



A woman in Italy is awaiting trial after allegedly murdering her great-aunt — with spaghetti.


Paola Pepe, 58, was arrested after she allegedly force-fed Maria Basso the pasta dish at a restaurant in Sicily in December 2022, Nine reports.


The 80-year-old, who was susceptible to choking, died two days after eating the meal after it became lodged in her airways.


A police investigation was launched after Pepe changed Basso's will to name herself the sole beneficiary of her great-aunt's estate in the days prior.


The NZ$823,420 inheritance was to go to charity before it was amended.

Been on diet the last year and a half but occasionally has a cheat day and today is one of those days. Mess of Rotten Ronnie's chicken nuggets and fries for supper when it gets here.

No weight loss today and my heart will protest for sure

I was at Whole Foods Market yesterday morning returning an Amazon purchase. It was before lunch and the cooked foods weren't available... no pizza ready either. I've been eating less beef lately, but I passed the refrigerated section and curious when I saw ground Bison meat on sale. Okay, let's do it!

From what I read, Bison meat is an excellent source of protein, rich in B vitamins, high in iron, selenium, and zinc. The package listed 10% fat.

I fried up a Bison burger for lunch today and found it cooks differently than beef. I had the skillet temperature on medium, a normal setting for beef hamburgers. Not much fat coming from the burger. Noticeably, the texture was different and it broke when flipping it a few times. When pressed, blood oozed indicating it wasn't cooked enough.
If you've pan fried flank steak, you know it takes much, much longer to cook down to the center... Bison is much the same.

So, how does it taste?
I read it has a mild flavor. That's about right... I've got enough meat for 2 more burgers... maybe Friday and Saturday.
I'll be sure to have the windows open to let the smoke escape!

More than a decade ago, when I wanted an English muffin, I would split it, lather on some real butter, toast it so the butter drips off the edges and then drop a slice of Provolone cheese on top. I could eat a few a week.
Times have changed and I'm consuming less than one English muffin a month, toasted first then adding butter substitute made from Canola oil and lightly sprinkling Parmesan cheese on top.
Options would be a slice of tomato or a few pieces of Hass avocado.
Dinner tonight included sauteed Chinese eggplant (we call them purple airplanes due to their long skinny shape) with celery and it's been a while so I topped them to the English muffin.
A healthier way to butter my bread.

Merry Christmas! I hope yours has been great. Mine was excellent. Good food, good company and some great gifts.

My sister and her fiancée gave me new pots and pans, and my mother gave me World of Warcraft cook book. 216 pages of the best food from Azeroth, so I am excited to dive into that and cook some great stuff.

Speaking of cooking great stuff.. I have so many ideas with food, that I might need a full week to test all my ideas. One of them is to cook some bacon until it's 30 seconds from being burnt, and then set it to cool off. Then, I'll use my chopper to grind it into dust, and then mix it into some salt, so it'll become bacon salt. Or - maybe I'll just grind it onto fine bits, to sprinkle that on food!

I also want to make my own chilli oíl, but I am guessing it isn't that hard to make. Just take some olive oil and shove some chillis into it, and leave it to infuse for about a month or so. Maybe longer..

I also want to make my own jerky, but for that I need a dehydrator, which I don't have yet. Maybe that's my next purchase..

I exercise a lot of restraint on purchases from Amazon as it's too easy to buy 'things of convenience' as opposed to 'things of necessity'. So far I'm drawing the line with food purchases. I won't do it. The same rule applies with deliveries of food. I'll go out for pizza before I would call for delivery. Seriously, Jabba the Hut would call Domino's... I won't.
Actually, I wouldn't eat Domino's, but that's another story.

Now that the weather is cooler, I would consider something edible from Amazon... like chocolate as a gift for someone. I've heard horror stories from people who bought expensive confections that were melted into 'drops of sludge' when they came off a truck in the middle of a hot summer day!

The dollar stores, another weakness... there are several a few miles from me and Bagel chips with sea salt is a favorite of mine... They don't always have them, so when in stock, I'll get 5 or 6 bags. The same for a few caffeinated drinks without sugar.
I always go through the section with kitchen gadgets. I'm looking for a thin blade knife to replace one I used to curve so it perfectly cuts watermelon. My purchases this year were several 4 inch and 6 inch knives that were an amazing value. Also, I got a few paring knives. I'm guessing the blades on those are 3 inches long with a small moulded plastic handle. Although dollar store purchases, they have much thicker blades and better quality than the ones from a few years ago.
Tonight it was a pear on my list and the paring knife worked great!
paring a pear.

Last year, I blogged about a $10 toaster I bought and put it in the powder room (where the toilet was wrapped in plastic and not being used) only because there was a vent fan in the ceiling. The new appliance emitted a plastic smell that needed to be used a few times for the smell to go away. The kitchen is tiny and I don't often make toast so, months later, it's there next to the Waterpik.
A few days ago, I wanted to toast some sliced Italian bread. The bread was much wider than sandwich bread so I have to switch the slices to get both ends toasted. It's an acquired skill not to burn your fingers flipping the bread. The setting is 'just right' so I don't need to make any adjustments and actually get evenly toasted bread.
I started the toaster and my phone rang. It was a contractor with questions about a recent order that required 2 minutes for me to open a drawing to answer his question. The fan was on so I didn't smell anything, but when I hung up and when back to check, the room was filled with smoke and first part was severely burned.
What was strange is hidden in the ceiling, the vent pipe is connected to the other bathroom with a "T" fitting so both exhaust to the roof in the shared pipe. Somehow the smoke was filling the other bathroom too!
They are on either side of a hallway where I have a smoke alarm. I closed both bathroom doors and turned on the window fan. Thankfully the alarm didn't go off panicking my neighbors.
The bread was so charred there wasn't anything worth salvaging and I had to toast two more slices. The bathroom wreaked of burned (burnt if you're across the pond) for a few days and now all is well.


Speaking of toast. I see Donald Trump Jr. appeared in court for a second time. He and his father's attorneys were unable to explain how a Trump building listed with the Securities and Exchange Commission and architectural plans as 63 floors is advertised as 72 floors.

A few news services mentioned 'Trump is toast' and that they may want to consider getting new lawyers, as his team seems to continually blow up his defenses in his various legal disputes.

A while back, I bought some cashews in a plastic jar with removable lid. when the cashews were gone, I decided to clean and reuse the container. Sometimes, it's for storage of workshop parts, screws, bolts, washers, etc. This time, I decided to use the empty to hold Ginger Snaps. The brand I buy (from the dollar store) come in a bag so I figured it would be easier than clipping the bag each time I wanted a cookie.

The cookies have sugar so I only have 1 or 2 a week and noticed after a month, they aren't as crunchy as when the bag was first opened or when clipped every time I opened. Obviously, it's the air in the container making them stale where I'm unable to close tight like the bag.

As kids, my grandmother baked so well, that neighbors would come to watch her, taking notes as she kept all her secret recipes in her head!
My brother told me she used to work in a bakery and that's where she honed her cooking skills.

As far as her cookies go, when we visited, she would wrap her freshly baked cookies (chocolate chip were her best) in wax paper and aluminum foil for us to bring home.
We weren't concerned about sugar then, so the cookies weren't around long enough to become stale.

Something to note... her secret for soft chocolate chip cookies was substituting orange juice for milk in the recipe.

After hearing about all its health benefits I decided to give it a lash Wednesday night.
Since my local butcher didn't have bones, fancy that a butcher without bones, beats me
but anyways, I decided to go with a chicken carcass, a broth and leave roasting marrow bone for another day instead.

After roasting the carcass for 40mins I then popped it into the slow cooker, an hour later I went to bed but not first without lifting the lid to give it a stir, yuck did it stink
hoped it taste better then it smelled.

After 12hrs it was done, after allowing it to cool I took a taste, not bad, at least its drinkable.
Have to admit there was a bitter taste which mad me question had I over used the apple cider vinegar or perhaps too much black corn pepper.

As the day went on I began feeling sick, all night long I had become very unwell, hardly slept a wink
next morning I had to ring into work to let them know I wouldn't be in.
At this stage the broth should of Gelled, it had not but instead there was what seemed like a cloud of some sort of fungus was growing within the jar, growing by the hour, still ungelled so at this stage I doubt it shall.

At this stage I'm convinced I've poisoned myself .....
but since you can't kill a bad thing, as you can see I'm still here
not rightly better but thankfully I've survived the worst.
Anyway......
I don't yet want to give up on bone marrow broth or roasting so if anyone is familiar with the recipe I'd appreciate anyone's advice as to where could I of gone wrong
I'm guessing the apple cider vinegar unless of the fault was with the carcass.

I went out for my morning walk and see someone had dropped 2 bagels in the parking lot expecting to feed the birds.
Some black crows were picking, but strangely no takers.
The reason why... the bagels were stale, as in hard like stone.

I started breaking a bagel into small pieces and throwing out to the birds who quickly ate them up. A squirrel wanted in on the action, so I threw a few larger pieces his way. He grabbed one, climbed the tree and returned for another.

To my surprise, some white birds with long bills came and chased the crows away. They had some difficulty with the size of the pieces I was breaking off for the crows, so I pinched them in 'pea' size chunks and they began to fight over them, eating as fast as I could toss them to the group.

I could see other birds in the nearby tree waiting and after the white birds left, they came over and started feeding. The whole event was more than 30 minutes and both bagels were gone!

I didn't get much walking this morning, but the birds got breakfast on me!