Summer in Sexy Italy
The latest article on street fashion in Italy was recently published at Slow Travel. Go have a look.
2 comments August 21st, 2007
Archive for August, 2007
Putting it by … at Barzotti
This week past Olga and Ivano started to can tomatoes. I thought you might like to see how they do it, since it’s done here as it was done in 1900 or earlier, and it is vital to their well-being. For Ivano a meal without tomatoes is only a snack. I’ve cooked French cuisine for him to have him say, “It was very good, but it would be better with tomatoes.”
The gather the tomatoes for a while and keep them in their “fondo” or ground floor do-everything room. The tomatoes get sweeter and sweeter for the wait.
After a dip into boiling water, they’re skinned and put whole into sterile bottles with salt.
The big oil barrel is rolled out and placed on a trivet. The bottles are laid inside, it’s filled with cold water and Ivano builds a fire under it.
Here’s what it looks like when it’s full. My legs were scorching from the fire burning hotter and hotter.
After about an hour and a half, they’re done and they are taken out and Olga tests to be sure they’re sealed They go onto the shelves in the fondo and wait for winter. It takes several days to put by enough tomatoes to make Ivano happy.
As I walked back home I saw that instead of cluttering the garage with them, they’ve used a place under the scaffolding to cure the onions this year. That can’t be all of them. Even tomato lovers use more onions than that.
4 comments August 20th, 2007
What I am eating in August
The genuine Greek salad, as I found it when eating in Mykonos in 1984.
This summer there’s one difference. Instead of chunks of plain fresh tomatoes, the tomatoes are made up into Ligurian tomato salad. The tomatoes are chunked, sprinkled with salt, a finely minced clove of garlic goes in, and then it is doused with good olive oil. When eating it on its own, I add a generous amount of finely sliced fresh basil, but for Greek salad I do not. The bowl of tomatoes is covered with a clean dishtowel and left to marinate for at least 30 minutes.
To assemble this Greek salad, which I love to have composed rather than tossed, I peel and chunk a cucumber for the first layer. Over that goes a similar amount of the tomato salad, then a layer of finely sliced onion, a layer of crumbled Feta, and last a handful of dry-cured black olives. This has made me happy five times this week! One other time I sliced everything very thin instead and layered it onto a dry-grilled piadina– a dead ringer for a flour tortilla. A bit of oil and then roll ‘her up. Cut in two and tackle with your hands.
It makes me feel like a Greek island goddess.
7 comments August 18th, 2007
A splendor we once knew
This is an advertisement in a magazine from 1937. I don’t care how much you pay for it, I have not seen a car this beautiful in the past thirty years. Where did we go wrong?
3 comments August 18th, 2007
When is your vacation?
I am editing to say that the link is showing the shadow where is the tote bag much darker than when it left my computer. So, I have altered the photo to reduce contrast. Click through and you will see the soft-sided tote bag I used.
I’m posting this not to acquaint you with what I used to look like, because those days are gone and they could make me weep. The reason I am posting this is because this is the day before I flew back to the United States after a three-week trip through Italy and a Greek island.
What you see at my feet is everything I took with me and everything I bought to take home. I swear it. Lest you think it was only possible because I was small and wore only shorts and bathing suits I will list what’s in there insofar as I remember. I remember pretty well, because I have lots of photos of that trip. The friend who went with me is 5’-10” tall and she carried the same small tote that I did—I bought two and gave one to her.
I took with me a hot pink button front gauze skirt and a matching T shirt. I also packed an elasticized strapless flounced sundress printed with small posies in white, khaki, pink and green. I wish I still had it. There was an unconstructed purple linen jacket with 24 buttons down the front. I do still have that. I carried a pair of wide-legged khaki linen pants with self-embroidered hems and a couple of tank tops. I threw in 2 pairs of men’s white cotton boxer shorts and a couple of men’s small white cotton T shirts, one of them a tank. You can see the cross-check voile shirt in hot pink and the hot pink linen short shorts that I wore on Mykonos. I had a purple one-piece bathing suit, too, and a tiny, lace, short nightgown. Four bras and four panties ends the list. I brought and wore strappy Bernardo sandals with beads across the toes and I bought the ones in this picture from the famous Greek poet/sandalmaker in Athens. I also bought a long, white gauze dress in Mykonos.
Everything was folded into thirds and then rolled up. The rolls were packed so that I knew where to reach in and find everything. I had a full complement of grooming aids—shampoo, conditioner, sunblock, moisturizer, but no makeup in those days but mascara. I carried one guide book and my friend carried another. We each took a paperback and swapped. We borrowed clothes, too, which may sound unlikely, but my shin-length dress made a skirt for her and her white big shirt made a jacket for me.
The shopping bag is filled with what I bought: jewelry, gifts, whatever. I chose on the basis of being to carry it.
We toured churches and historical sites in Italy and we always dressed for dinner. We never wore shorts in cities, but we certainly did at the beach resort. Our hotel at Mykonos later became famously the hotel in “Shirley Valentine” and the manager was a lot like the Tom Conte character. I, however, was not the chosen woman of the week.
It was one of the most fun trips I ever made. The freedom was remarkable. I knew I’d never pull that off in winter, but hey! It was summer, 1984.
13 comments August 14th, 2007
Maier Lemons, indeed!
After a really tough week it’s absolutely heartening to open the mailbox and find a letter from a friend far away. How much more wonderful, then, is it to open the letter and find that it is a little work of art, a unique way chosen to give you a recipe you wanted?
If you remember, a couple visited me from Switzerland a little while back and Jon made a lemon and mint butter sauce for green beans. I told you I’d share when I got it, and today I did.
This is what I found when I opened the envelope.
And this is what slipped out of the little holder. The yellow strip is a bookmark that carries the shopping list for making the dish. Now how beautiful is this? Pretty terrific, yes? And the beans were delicious beyond description.
Thank you, Jessica!
The images can be seen full-sized if you click on them.
3 comments August 13th, 2007
I live in a dump
If you are a sensitive soul, come back in a day or two.
The following is what happens when you live in Italy and your neighbors are having the roof replaced, then comes August and the roofers go on a two week vacation. One night after midnight the heavens might open and you may spend hours finding buckets, moving furniture, taking down paintings, throwing down Ralph Lauren white bath towels and yelling, “Not that much rain! No one asked for that much rain!”
That wall lamps was flowing like a fountain. It carries 240 volts and has a 200 watt bulb inside. That water in the bucket has run through the attics and it and everything it is in smells like mouse pee.
I was going to spare you, but maybe you’re wondering why we aren’t eating well lately? I asked the insurance guy this morning how to get rid of the stench and he said open a window. Right. Can you tell I’m bitter?
8 comments August 10th, 2007
Wouldn’t you buy this if you could?
I would.
Click over to eternallycool.net to see the best souvenirs from Italy so far… except maybe a mate, wine or oil. Unfortunately, they aren’t being produced.
6 comments August 9th, 2007
Bulletin: coffee may be good for women
The BBC published an article that explains this.
12 comments August 7th, 2007
Anniversary: The Pump Guy
This is the second post in the life of this blog. It was published two years ago and is still one of my favorites. He still lives down the road and I have since met his dad, who says, “Yes, he’s an intelligent man, but you should talk to his son. He’s even brighter.”
On about the 4th of July, two policemen came to my house with a letter from our water cooperative saying by force of law we were not to use potable water anymore for watering gardens and plants or washing cars or outdoor furniture. There would be a fine of 500 euro for any other than domestic use.
I went to my nice Baldicchi neighbors and said, “I have to buy a pump like yours, no matter what it costs, so I can take water from the river.” Certo! Their cousin down the road sells and installs pumps. Now, why didn’t I guess that they’d have a relative that did everything? Of course they do. As far as I know there are no nuclear physicists among the Baldicchi clan, but then one doesn’t use them much at home.
A couple of days later came the cousin. He is a stately man of about 60, and expert at the whole subject. We discussed where it would go, how the electricity would be reached, how much hose I would have to have, and he said he could be back Monday and it would be working that evening. He returned Friday, instead, but he was as good as his word for the rest.
Time passed, and I heard nothing more. Yesterday he returned to check out the system and see that it was all satisfactory, so I asked him why I hadn’t gotten a bill. I told him if I sold the house I would need to sell the pump with it and I would need proof of when I bought it and how much I paid (400 euro or about $500, but better than a fine because it works.) He said, “Tomorrow.”
And today it was. We started to discuss the difference among US checks and Italian checks and why Italian checks can so often be bad. From there, he went on to criticize the Italian government and the way the world runs. OK, I am used to everybody talking about politicians and taxes; it is the commonest thing in the world here, but I am not used to a demonstration using empty mineral water bottles to illustrate the basic fallacy of modern human life!
“There is one common thing among all peoples,” says he, “one thing that overrides everything. The only perfect law is Nature’s, and it works because every positive has another and equal negative side. We can’t be one people and we can’t save the world without concentrating on philosophy. Every people and every nation must develop wise men who study with their equals from every part of the world to discover what is that central focus of human life.” All this time he was moving water bottles from the recycling bag to show the center point (blue) and the seeking peoples– Arabs, Chinese, Africans, western countries, obviously skipping a lot of them because I didn’t have that many clear bottles. I could, however, see those yearning wise men and women talking, talking, maybe moving bottles around as they sought one common truth.
“I am not optimistic about the future. If I were told that if I died for it, humanity would find truth and live better, I would die, but I don’t think anyone is dying for any truth. They are dying for nothing.”
I find these occasions pretty amazing. I have heard searching and pointed discussions among electricians and plumbers and farmers and now pump guys, the kind of men that one expects to talk about soccer. They’ve read. They think. They care. They can’t all be like that, but I’ve met dozens whom I have heard talking about philosophy and with an understanding of world politics that impresses me.
I am equally impressed that I can understand them and ask the right questions and make myself understood. I don’t know if he is right. I don’t know if he moved the water bottles the right way. I don’t know if there is one single overriding truth. I sure wish I could be watching the wise ones when they start the search, though.
4 comments August 7th, 2007
