For more information about the products I used, and further more, take a look at the website: www.pelindaba.com
It is an unusual and interesting farm on San Juan Island, which has undertaken many activities, follows particular ways of production and provides a wide range of peculiar products.
You know that…with flowers you can also cook? It could be pretty intuitive, ok, but I’ve never tasted a floral food. Therefore, I decided to try a new recipe, and cook it on my own. Telling my mom this idea, she told me that some of our relatives from America, who came here three months ago, brought us some products with lavender. What better news? (Moms do usually have a lot of secrets in their draws!)
Then, I started looking for some recipes using lavender, and I decided to try with this one:
Chicken with Herbes de Provence
Here is the recipe:
Ingredients:
4 chicken boneless breast halves (with skin)*
3/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1 tablespoon herbes de Provence**
* Do not remove skin until after baking, as the skin helps to retain moisture in the meat.
** Herbes de Provence – An assortment of dried herbs said to reflect those most commonly used in southern France. The mixture commonly contains basil, fennel seed, lavender, marjoram, rosemary, sage, summer savory, and thyme.
Place chicken breasts, single layer, into an ungreased 13×9-inch baking dish.
In a medium-sized bowl, combine olive oil and the herbes de Provence together. Pour marinade over chicken breasts. Cover and marinate at room temperature for 20 minutes or refrigerate to marinate longer (turning meat over several times).
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. (180° C.) Bake, uncovered, 25 to 30 minutes or until a meat thermometer registers an internal temperature of 165 degrees F (juices will run clear when cut with the tip of a knife); basting several times during cooking. Remove from oven and serve immediately.
These are some products that my relatives gave us.
Lavender Gourmet Pepper: use in cold or warm salads, in soups, on grilled meats and chicken, and in any recipe where an exotic pepper would enhance flavor.
Organic Culinary Lavender: is produced solely from the very first harvest each summer for optimum flavor. It is then twice sifted and sorted by hand. Used over the centuries, culinary lavender has a longer pedigree than rosemary, for which it can be readily substituted in any recipe. Uniquely among herbs, it also works quite differently as wonderful flavoring in baked goods and other sweet foods and beverages.
Lavender Gourmet Honey: infused with Pelindaba’s culinary grade Provence lavender, this honey is delicious on toast or scones, as a glaze over pound cake, as a sweetener in tea, and in marinades for roasted meats an chicken.
Lavender Gourmet Sugar: made with Pelindaba’s culinary grade “Provence” lavender, this sugar is delicious in whipped cream, in breads and cakes, or in sprinkled on fresh fruit.
In my recipe, I used “Lavender gourmet pepper” and “Organic culinary lavender”.
Looking for some information about Interflora, everything seemed perfect: tens of partners, hundreds of countries, thousands of shops, millions of euro: an organized system that involves people and money, surprisingly simple if you just take some news from Internet.
Such organization has stirred my curiosity, so I decided to ask directly a floral shop’s owner how this service works and what he things about it. Did I do the right thing? Sure, I did! I had some interesting answers that, first of all, confirmed that you should never take ads or information (given by the company itself) as gospel truth. The shop where I went offers Interflora service since 1960 and people that go there use it: around 1000 customers of this shop exploit it every year. But the positive aspects are not particularly registered by the shop itself: Interflora offers just a computer, it has to pay a fee per month and there are no relevant economical advantages. The owner I interviewed told me: “It is just as a nice thing to place on your shop window.” When I asked him an opinion about it, he said it is just a service addressed to people, not to the shops, and at the same time there isn’t a rigorous selection from the shops, because they have not the same products, the same quality and the same skills in doing arrangements, but they have the same prices. So, people often complain about the results, because flowers or plants that reach their destinations are different from what they expected: they had figured their expectations out on the shop where the delivery order has left.
To cut a long story short, this service has the only purpose to build a big business or, better, bigger and bigger: the more associates it has, the more it earns: such a simple, clear, straight-line project, isn’t it?
Put up your own hand if you have never seen this symbol! … None of you? I could have bet on it! The winged Mercury is the historical icon of Fleurop-Interflora, well-known all over the world thanks to more than 100 year of life: since 1928, Fleurop-Interflora is the National and International service of floral tribute delivery and it is present in more than 150 countries, with more than 58.000 shops all over the world.
Flowers, in this extent, are not seen anymore just as elegant creation of nature, but as a way to make money, exploiting their shapes, their variety, their beauty, in order to build a huge market, and going further the personal pleasure, as we’ve seen, for example, in the case of Mr Francesco Mercandelli or Mrs Ivana. It doesn’t mean it is “the worst way”, it is just…different: different conceptions, different point of views, DIFFERENT manners to use the SAME thing.
Let’s see something about its history and how it works…
In 1908 the florist of Berlin Max Hubner had an intuition that turned out to be a success, further than any other expectations. He had three main goals:
Then, his ambition became a reality in 1928, during the years between the two Great Wars, years dominated by big passions and technological advance. Only in 1960, during the economical boom, the slogan “Fiori in tutto il mondo” (Flowers all over the world) was born, and in the following years the number of florists incredibly grow. Thanks to the website www.interflora.it, created in 2004, everyone has now the chance to give flowers or plants as a present. Then, with the march of time, it has fought trying to enlarge its market share. “We want to strengthen the position of Interflora among the floral shops” – claims the President of Interflora Italia Sandro Bragheftoni – “we want to offer, beyond the delivery and the technical arrangement, also a project concerned with fundamental concepts for the actual market: sale, communication and marketing techniques. We want to broad our distribution system, not limiting to 2.200 shops, but getting closer to 5.400, as French shops, a country with a density of population very similar to ours”. A big change that tries to develop technologies, and a world projected to the globalization.
The mechanism: everything happens in few hours: you can send them and in a very short time they are received, in every Italian or foreign place that has Interflora service.
Therefore, it gives you the chance to reach quickly everyone you want, in almost every part of the world, with an appreciated and scented present. Is it your mother’s birthday and you are studying or working abroad? Are you celebrating the first anniversary with your partner that is unfortunately far away? Do you want just to say thanks to a friend?
You could order in three different ways:
Easy, isn’t it?
But it is not finished here: there is something for everyone!
Are you a shop, in some way linked to flowers? Have you got a website? Would you like to reach millions of people around the world? Well, you should join a partnership with Fleurop-Interflora.
You can get up to a 12% commission with our products: the more you sell, the more you earn! And there are no taxes to become a partner. You would receive all the necessary tools, add specific links to your website and check the statistics online, in order to follow your business in every moment. Fleurop-Interflora would provide everything, from the order, to the delivery, to the billing: you should just sell.
If you sell Fleurop-Interflora products through your website, your visitors would buy them, because they are offered by a leading company, and you can be sure to address your customer to an reliable partner.
Look at some Fleurop-Interflora ads, not only Italian: some of them are really funny! Enjoy it!
Bigger and bigger: our trip follows this path! Vincenzo Dascanio is pretty famous, bien sure! But someone has surpassed him, reaching success, fame, money… Mr and Mrs, he is Giorgio Armani, one of the most notorious fashion designer of the latest years. As we all know, his production deals with
CLOTHES…
…SHOES…
…BAGS…
…SWEETS…
…PERFUMES…
…and althought most of these have in common flowers, it’s not enough: : one section of his huge shop, in the center of Milan, (Via A. Manzoni) is dedicated to blossoms!
This is not a common shop, you wouldn’t find a normal bunch of roses or some colored tulips, too trivial! This the reign of the “floral design”, where a blossom is not just a blossom, but something more, something that is concerned with creativity, style, elegance, taste, care, study of the details… in one word, DESIGN.
Asking one of the oddest thing happened, the manager of this floral section has told me that some people ask if it is possible to put them in a suitable bag, in order to travel without ruin them, just because people believe they are so well-done to be artificial!
With regard to his activity, he makes also some compositions for private citizens, companies, hotels like Park Hayatt and Principe di Savoia, fashion shows, special events like Fiera del Mobile, or “special” just for you: for the dress and the location, the wedding rings and participations, it’s all up to you; but for floral decorations and, obviously, for the bouquet, it is necessary to hire a Flower Designer, and who would be better than Armani to personalize with style and to interpret with elegance one of the most unforgettable day of your life?
The production has reached also the far East: Emporio Armani has opened in Hong Kong, China, in Chater Road, where Massimiliano Fuksas designed an unique store. For Armani Flowers, the vases are realized by a transparent plexiglas that provides an extreme lightness to the environment, giving the illusion that the flowers float in the air. The same concept is kept also for Armani Cosmetics and Armani Books.
Armani, hence, has expanded his range of products and has done it in his own way, having the idea to use blooms in this brilliant manner. Brilliant, and profitable as well(!): he is targeted it at very few people, people that do appreciate quality and beauty, but that are able to spend a lot of money. But, as we say here in Italy, even the eye wants its own side! Don’t you think so? :-)
For every “Mr Francesco”, proud of his family shop, there is another one who wants to became…bigger! This is the case of Mr Vincenzo Dascanio. At only 21, he was the director of Armani Fiori, where he created a new style and made the concept reach really high levels. But it wasn’t enough for him: now, at the age of 34, he is the owner of three shops: the main one is here, in Milan, in Piazza Missori (with more than 1000 mq, a huge store!); then in Florence ,and the latest opening has been in Bergamo, an historical city chosen as the third pole of style and glamour, on the 7 November 2009. The building in Milan, instead, was not chosen by chance, because it is full of history: there, 80 years ago, there was the first shop of flowers: a tradition developed in the best way ever, we could say!
Dascanio’s floral creations are unique objects that become, without the shadow of a doubt, design objects, integral part of the spaces, in a constant research of exclusiveness, that catches your attention for its incredible beauty. That’s what happened to me when I entered the store: plants from all over the world, shining and refined, where you can breath the scent of the geniality, which anything leaves to the chance…
This could be a sort of ideal place against the chaos of this frantic city, where you could enjoy pleasant relaxing moment and keep in touch with nature: plants, flowers, candles, perfumes, but also accessories and furn
iture… everything is finely refined, sophisticated, just to delight all of your senses. The ground floor, indeed, is dedicated to the interior design, where you (mostly!) dream to have that furniture in your own house.
But all of this has a cost, it goes without saying! I could say that you could go there only if you had broken your piggy bank, but it should have been very, very full!
The average prices are pretty high and, instead of Mr Francesco’s shop, for instance, the main target is people who have taste and also floating assets, of course! But you could definitely say that you would have a unique, original and wonderful floral creation, made just for you!
These are some of his creations for some events…
Visit the site to take a look of this elegant world! www.vincenzodascanio.it Enjoy it! :-)
Someone is looking for glory, others do things for passion, others for necessity, others just to add a symbolical meaning: the purposes can be different, but the common denominator is that a person may do things not only for himself/herself, but also for other people: a small group, a BiG group, the WHOLE world.
Milam, for this aspect, provided some interesting examples. We’ve already seen the “case” of the sweet lady I met, Ivana, who prefers to focus on her beloved hobby, just for her own pleasure. Another example, instead, would be interesting. It reminded me a designer quoted during a class of Design, ISAMU NOGUCHI: he started doing lamps with paper made by rice (in Japan this kind of paper is widely used!) just for him and his friends; then he made a company and now is really famous all over the world. Surely, the man I’m going to deal with is not so famous, neither had addressed his work to the “all”, being content to supply only the Milanese market.
His name was Osvaldo Mercandelli, the founder of “Fioreria Mercandelli” in viale Sabotino, Milan. I learned about him from his son, Francesco Mercandelli, who now run the shop. He told me that his father has been always passionate about flowers and he had a small private garden behind their house. Growing up (a marriage, a wife, children…ordinary things, in short!) he needed a job, and what would have been better to join a passion with work? Therefore, at the beginning of the ‘30s, he decided to take over this shop, that presents himself as a perfect “little jewel” of that time: it was furnished by an architect who took his inspiration by Piacentini, Portaluppi, Breuer. Mirrors, archs, columns, marbles…everything is remained as it was (the shop is also one of the historical buildings, recognized by Comune di Milano), except the times, that obviously have changed: the market is not limited anymore to the neighborhood, when they knew each other, when an important man came every day to send a flower to his lover (as Mr Francesco told me), but it expanded to everyone who wants a refined and personalized service that this shop can offer.
buy roses
get annoyed quickly
react in a bad way
Therefore, who this business is addressed to? To a very resticted area of people, who sometimes buy flowers just not to be annoyed anymore; consequently, the profits are really low.
There is also someone who is fed up with them enough to create a group on facebook: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=42793713434
Yet, others seem to be kinder…
…What’s your position?
What: the smallest floral business
Who: street vendors of roses
Where: Milan
When: from 20 pm to late night
Why: to survive
The unauthorized sale of roses in Italian cities is an “ethnic” phenomenon of the latest years. The trade is run by people from Bangladesh, who invented this clever “business of survival”. The sellers are hundreds and no one has properly “a vocation”: they need this job because they haven’t got the residence permit, or they have just arrived in Italy. To sell a rose, they don’t need to know our language or to have any contract. They haven’t got any organization, but their motto seems to be: “To everyone his own money”. The roses, hence, are the perfect “waiting room”, before the documents and a real job.
In Italy, the most part of people from Bangladesh lives in Rome, Vicenza, Venezia and Milan, and each of them comes from a different region of their homeland. Who lives in Milan, comes from the district of Madaripur; from the capital, Dhaka, they arrive to Vicenza; in Rome, they come from Shariatpur, Dhaka and Comilla. The street vendors of roses are the “invisible” part of this community, (which officially counts 41.631 people regularly residents), and, without any documents, they don’t exist statistically, although they are the most evident part, living most of their life on the street.
They strive to sell them to absent-minded lovers at restaurants, at corners, while walking or just chatting, often with NO results: NO consideration, NO sales, NO money.
What about the income? The vendors buy the roses during the morning at the general markets of flowers: a bunch of 20 roses could costs from 8 € to 20 €, in periods as the Christmas time. They manage to sell each of them for 2-3 €, but often also for just 1 €. The result: few on Mondays, a little bit better in the week-ends; a maximum of 20 € per night, enough to survive, not to live, neither to reach their family, so far away from Italy. However, it’s not even said that they manage to sell.
But they still have a dream: a stall. At Comune di Milano 277 fiorists are registered: among them, 33 are foreigners and 23, almost the 10% of the total number, come from Bangladesh. Really slowly, these street vendors take over a kiosk and finally can sell flowers as stallholders. The market price of a kiosk depends on several elements: position within the city, pedestrian crossing, proximity to a lighter. In Milan, kiosks in the suburbs cost around 20-25.000 €, while near cemeteries or in the centre they overpass 100.000 €. Till now, obviously, people from Bangladesh are buying those ones in the suburbs.
As I said in my introduction, my mom loves blossoms: if you want to get her angry, try to let a ball fall on her flowerbeds (as I used to do when I was younger, but just by chance,of course!) ;-) I’ve never thought to find another person who I completely didn’t know and who is so fond of flowers as my mom (but, above all, who has been so kind to let me ask her some questions!).
This “HER” is a quiet old woman who I met in a shop, by chance, just while I was wandering to catch up something interesting for this blog. Her name is Ivana, and she told me she has always had the passion for flowers. She was so proud while she was telling me how she takes care of them, so sweet in her answers as only an old lady can do when someone asks her to talk about her life. She also told me that the thing she likes most is to plant the seed and let the bloom grow up: the simplest thing of the world, but extremely important for her. This is her PASSION, and it makes her complete and satisfied: what would it be better?
These are some photos she sent to me:
Every time she can, she goes to her old farm of the XVIII century in Piemonte, where she has a big garden with lots of plants!
But she also likes paintings: she can paint pretty well, and guess what her favourite subject is?!
This is, instead, a picture I took with her:
Shall we bloom? 
