The more I blog about Torcello, the more I think of to say (and I’ve got photos galore) so this may keep going for a while. But I’m going to jump ahead to the best part – what happened in the cathedral of Santa Maria Assunta (my best church visit ever).

The Torcello cathedral celebrated "il millennio” (its thousandth anniversary) last year – it’s the oldest monumental building in the lagoon and is such a gorgeous place with everything I love about Venetian sacred architecture….lots of old glowing marble, a magical Madonna mosaic on the golden apse, multi-coloured mosaic floors, an ancient wooden ceiling, fresco fragments here and there, and Byzantine carvings with peacocks and flowers and twining grape vines.

So I was already blissed out just strolling around the cathedral when I looked over and saw two of the Torcello cats walk in the church, one a lovely long-haired fluffy cat and the other a cute short-haired tabby. They went over and climbed up onto the pews (it was a very cold day and I figure they wanted to get off those cold marble floors).

In front of the Torcello cathedral are the ruins of the 7th century baptistry – a round and romantic hole-in-the-ground that in December 2008 was filled with water. Not sure what's so fascinating and attractive about these ruins but I stood and looked at this for a long time.

In the early days of Christianity, it was common to build a separate baptistry so that believers could be purified before entering the church. Two of the most famous free-standing baptistries in Italy are the one in Florence across from the Duomo and the one in Pisa with its amazing acoustics. At some point, churches began including the baptistry as a chapel or separate room that's inside the church itself.

This week's PhotoHunt theme is "Bags."

A big paper shopping bag is one of little Maria's favorite toys:

My orange cat LuLu loves bags too:

You can find more Photo Hunters and join the hunt here.

Thanks for visiting and have a great Halloween weekend!

This is the smaller of the two churches that remain on Torcello and was built in the 11th century to house the body of the third-century virgin martyr saint, whose body and that of her nurse and fellow martyr, Santa Maura, were brought to Torcello in the 10th century. Santa Fosca was a local girl of sorts, from Ravenna, who was enormously popular in the Middle Ages (there’s also a church dedicated to her in Venice in Cannaregio).

This is a perfectly harmonious little Byzantine church built on a Greek Cross plan with a wooden ceiling and very little decoration inside. There’s something very magical about the simplicity of the interior of this one. The porch connecting Santa Fosca with the cathedral was added in the 16th century.

Our ingredient of the week (pumpkin) was selected by Deborah, whose blog is Old Shoes, New Trip. Deborah visited Scotland this summer and has been sharing photos and stories from her trip.

Tis the season for pumpkin! Sometimes I have to remind myself that a pumpkin is a vegetable and works just as well for savory dishes as for sweet. It's easy to get in a pie rut with pumpkin. I was intriqued when I found this recipe since I love hummus, but I have to say, I like hummus made with garbanzo beans better. The flavor of this hummus was great - it was the texture I didn't love (think baby food). But I'm glad I tried it. It definitely helps to serve it with something crunchy (toasted pitas or crackers) and the pepitas help too. MarciaB made pumpkin hummus this week too, and she put some garbanzo beans in hers - a great idea that I'll do next time I make this.

Other Small Bites cooks are listed here. Next week's ingredient is olives.

This week's PhotoHunt theme is "Tied."

Found this laying on the ground in a parking lot. A bit mysterious - purple beads and pretzels tied together with a piece of white string. I thought it was probably an art project that some kid had dropped.

But later, I found out that it was a necklace that people were wearing at a World Beer Festival that had taken place nearby. The pretzels are to cleanse the palate in between beers. Go figure. :)

You can find more Photo Hunters and join the hunt here.

Thanks for visiting and have a good weekend.

I only found a few shrines there but wow, this first one might be my all-time fave. I'd like to copy this one for my own garden. It doesn't look like it would be too hard to build.

What a great use for a tree stump.

I also like this empty niche on the side of the cathedral.

I saw a "Work Underway" sign at the vaporetto landing on Torcello, but I didn’t know that this work was so controversial until I read the book, Venice: The Tourist Maze , and learned about what the locals refer to as "lo scempio di Torcello" (the ruination of Torcello). In 1999, a plan was unveiled to widen the vaporetto landing and the fondamenta along the main canal and rebuild them with modern materials. The book reports that by May 2000, posters were plastered all over Venice and other lagoon islands that read:

"Goodbye Torcello! The Magistrato alle Acque is spending 28 billion lire to devastate the island with cyclopian works in steel and reinforced concrete. Of the very ancient charm of the island there will not remain a trace. Visit it while you can, because before too long you won't recognize it anymore."

Our ingredient of the week (pecans) was selected by Sheri of the blog As the Seasons Change. Thanks Sheri!

I love to make roasted spiced nuts for parties and for the holidays, but almost every recipe calls for cooking high-fat, high-calorie nuts in a bunch of butter. So I started looking for a recipe that was a bit lighter and found one from Emeril's new show on the Planet Green network. These nuts are roasted in oil, not butter, and I lightened it up even more by cutting the amount of oil in half. I also changed the spices a bit by using Aleppo pepper instead of cayenne.

Aleppo pepper, from Turkey, "has an Ancho-like flavor, plus a bit of tartness and a nice bite" according to Penzey's Spices which is where I bought it. Cayenne would work just fine.

Anyway, this is my favorite Small Bite I've made so far. Very tasty with a glass of wine or a cocktail. Recipe is below.

Other Small Bites cooks are listed here. Next week's ingredient is "pumpkin."

This week's PhotoHunt theme is "Free Week (Share Any Photo)."

No surprise that I'm going to share a few favorite scenes from Venice.

I love this cathedral (Basilica di San Marco)~

I love the leaning bell towers~

And I love the hidden courtyards~

You can find more Photo Hunters and join the hunt here.

Thanks for visiting and have a good weekend.

When you get to Torcello, the first thing you see is a shrine to Madonna right there at the vaporetto landing. In the distance, you see the campanile of the cathedral. Turn around to see how vast and lonely and beautiful the lagoon looks.

To get to the piazza and the churches, you walk about a third of a mile along the main canal. The modern brick sidewalk you walk on is a bit controversial (more about that later). You don’t have to walk very far before you begin to see cats. Lots of cats! The Torcello cat colonies are what I expected to see when I first went to Venice but didn’t. There are cats in the gardens, cats hanging out with the young girls working at the souvenir kiosk, cats lounging around the piazza, cats on the rooftops of houses, even cats inside the cathedral!

So the three highlights of my December trip to Venice were the Joy Singers concert in the church of Santo Stefano, my daytrip to Padua to see the Giotto frescoes, and the day I spent on Torcello. And I can’t believe I haven’t written about Torcello yet! It’s mainly because I took so many photos that day and it’s taken me a while to go through them and also because I just didn’t know where to start, it was such a wonderful day with my best church visit ever.

It’s easy to get there from Venice. Go to the vaporetto stop on Fondamenta Nuove in Cannaregio and catch boat LN (Laguna Nord) which is the express boat to Burano. There you change boats to line T (for Torcello). The whole trip takes about 45 minutes to an hour and it’s a fun ride. You’ll pass San Michele, the cemetery island, with its beautiful Renaissance church, cruise past Murano and then by a number of romantic and mysterious abandoned lagoon islands with ruins on them. You can enjoy the crazy colors of Burano either before or after the trip to Torcello.

But why go to Torcello? Lots of reasons (and it’s going to take many blog posts to share them all) but in the words of writer Henry James, go to Torcello because enchantment lurks there. That’s pretty much it in a nutshell.

The photos above show Giovanni Bellini’s Virgin and Child Enthroned with Saints, in the church of San Zaccaria where there are almost always a group of people gathered in front of the painting in rapt silence. So many recognizable Venetian details in this painting: the gold mosaics above the Virgin, the red and white marble floor, the mascaron on the top of the throne, a Murano glass lamp hanging down, the Lombardi carvings surrounding the scene, all the glimpses of veined marble. The architecture in the painting is connected to the actual frame itself with tiny glimpses of trees and skies on each side. Everyone is so quiet and beautiful, and only the young angel looks out at us.

On many of the "must-see in Venice" lists, San Zaccaria is a church with lots of layers and art that spans the centuries and styles – it’s a fascinating place but even someone not into churches should pop into this one and spend 10 minutes or so with the Bellini altarpiece, one of the great masterpieces in the city.

One of the San Magno churches, San Zaccaria was founded in the 7th century and then rebuilt after an 1105 fire. The church we see today was built in 1456-1515 and parts of the older churches were incorporated. The façade is a blend of Gothic and Renaissance styles, and the church has an enormous collection of art from Gothic to Baroque. The campanile (12th century) is one of the oldest in the city. San Zaccaria was John the Baptist’s father; some Byzantine emperor gave his body to Venice as a gift, and it's inside the church too.

Our ingredient of the week (smoked salmon) was selected by MarciaB, whose blog is Happy Trails to Us. I ended up making salmon cakes with unsmoked pink salmon since I had a pouch of it that I needed to use. Plus, I love seafood cakes (fish, crab or salmon) and wanted to try to make them.

A number of "country cooking" restaurants here in NC serve salmon cakes for breakfast. You can order them with your eggs and toast instead of bacon or sausage. When I see them on a menu, I almost always get them.

I modified the recipe on the package and they came out great. Very tasty and easy to make. For a party, I'd put these in little buns or biscuits and make sliders. The recipe is below.

Other Small Bites cooks are listed here. Next week's ingredient is "pecans."