Live Like an Italian? Orto, Schmorto · Jun 26, 06:03 PM by James Martin
I don’t know what it is about Italy, but I do know that Italy has rubbed off on me. You see, each year we spend many hours on our Italian balcony (on days whose numbers are dictated by the phase of the moon) watching tanned and toned Enrico wrestle the soil beneath us into a vegetable garden, an orto of monumental proportions, lettuces here, beans there, zucchini flowering at the perifery, tomatoes snug in their little tripods.
So this year Martha bought the lot adjacent to our California home. I can tell you why. It was a garden, an orto of similar proportions to Enrico’s. It has a shed, a chicken coop, a watering system (disconnected, its tawdry tubes proudly erect, clacking together in the evening breezes). Grapes of an indeterminate type tangle tantalizingly on the trellis.
So this morning, the first morning of our ownership, I, like Enrico, turned the soil by hand in the corner of the garden that still had shade. I felt my flab ripple. Just a little. I felt the sun on my ample forehead. It was hot.
But, for a moment I was a gardener. Or at least I was the one who did the earth moving. Martha will plant the seeds. It is a reversal of the usual dictates of gender.
I will soon be picking little things to eat out of my garden. Or, that is the, ahem, dream. Actually, it is supposed to be over 100 degrees for a while, which means pretty much everything in and near the garden will likely commit suicide, except for the gardeners and probably a few sassy gophers.
But it’s a start. By the time we pay somebody to build a fence, fix the watering system, and trim the fruit trees I’ll have so many tomatoes in my garden I’ll have to start selling them.
Anybody want a $500 tomato? Eating like an Italian doesn’t come cheap you know.
Filed in: Living in Italy Food
It's Clean out the Fridge Time · Jun 18, 12:33 PM by James Martin
Tomorrow we leave our humble abode for Bassano del Grappa, then on to Austria for a few (evidently rainy) days, and finally to Frankfurt, where the big steel tube will carry us to the US. That means it’s the last supper in the Luniagiana. For a while.
I’ve already had the appetizer. Yes, I sliced a few thin strips of Armando’s Lardo and laid it reverently on some very dry toast. I nibbled and washed it down with an artisanal beer made near here, in the Garfagnana, out of farro: La Petrognola. It’s like a sweet stout. Good for cooking; we found it in a stewed chicken we had in Lucca, and just had to ask. A few years ago farro was just about gone from menus, but today is starting to appear in everything.
Martha is removing all the cheeses we have yet to eat from the fridge. They are numerous and, in some cases, colorful—or at least more colorful than they were when we bought them. We will dig through them. There will be prized bits to eat. There is also some salami for the red meat eaters present (which would be me).
We’ve had our “real” meal at Feudo dei Malaspina in Pallerone. Pasta with porcini, then stuffed vegetables and spinaci al burro for me, spaghetti with lemon and ricotta for Martha, with a second of grilled chicken and the spinach. So, we don’t have to eat much.
It is a sad dinner. But I like it when we clean out the fridge and make a meal out of the better bits. It’s a challenge and a closure.
If you are not tired of hearing about lardo, here’s something I found that I like: You’ll gain weight just looking at this post. Lardo
Filed in: Food Living in Italy
We Won a Torta! · Jun 16, 11:16 AM by James Martin
Ok, I figure we’re finally socially acceptable. We’ve won the torta you see all dolled up in transparent frippery over there in the left.
It went like this. We were in the car a couple nights ago with Armando, who, as you remember if you have enough spare time you don’t mind wasting reading this blog, was singing in the Lunigiana chorus over at Terrarossa castle.
Armando informed us that this was a charity concert. Evidently there’s a network of folks here in the Lunigiana, many of them nuns, who work with unfortunate children in countries the developed world could care less about because they don’t do adequate trade or hobnob with our power figures enough. Poor ones, in other words.
Well, it turns out that between Martha and I we had exactly 1 bill between us. €50. No change. We were worried.
So we sat three hours at the concert, hearing enough free music to sate us, especially as I had lost the feeling in my buttocks. Then they herded us downstairs, where there was enough food to feed the army my father was always going on about. We ate. For free.
So, when I saw the donation basket, I kinda felt obligated. After all, it was my adapted community. So, I did what any red-blooded American would do with the €50 I had.
I asked for change.
It took nearly all they had, a sad fact in itself. Then I gave them €20 back. The old women manning the basket nearly swooned. I though maybe they thought I was being some kinda pretentious rich foreigner for a minute, then they suddenly started stuffing numerous and uncounted raffle tickets in our hands as if the torn off strips of paper were incriminating evidence and the cops were on the way. We had no idea there was a raffle.
So we stuffed the raffle tickets in Francesca’s hand—Armando’s wife—telling her to win something for us. We were heading home. It was, after all, nearing midnight and we were early risers. Well, I’m an early riser anyway.
The next morning Francesca shows up with the prize. So I’ve won an Italian raffle. Well, third prize anyway. We distributed bits of the torta to our little community on the hill. I feel like a king.
I wondered for a while what first prize was. Now I wonder if women can “man” a basket. I wish I was better at English.
Filed in: Food Living in Italy
OMG! I Saw Barack Obama in a Train Station Bar in Viareggio! · Jun 12, 01:52 AM by James Martin
We were on our way home from Lucca and had to stop in Viareggio to change trains. We scoped out the bar in the station. There he was. His head was bigger than you might have imagined. He is slim. Impossibly slender. Stick-like even. Oh, wait…
Viareggio is known for its carnival celebration, carnevale. The Obama mask, shown above, was quite popular. I had a peach flavored ice tea without any ice; it, too, is all the rage in Italy.
Filed in: Italy Travel Living in Italy
Simple Italian Food - Pasta with Onions · Jun 9, 11:09 AM by James Martin
If you live in Italy long enough, you get to know darned well what makes the food distinctive. You use as few ingredients as you can get away with and still have something on the plate. You depend on the freshness and flavor of those ingredients to make the dish tasty. You eat it with a decent wine. You eat it outdoors if the weather is fine.
Today Martha made a recipe we first learned about in Sardinia. How many ingredients? Well, you have some spaghetti (ours was ala chitarra), olive oil, grating cheese and onions.
You simply cook the onions (in this case the reliable Tropea onions we get at the store plus one of indeterminate heritage our neighbor gave us) for a long time in a little olive oil. Martha cooked them half an hour. Don’t let them brown much if you can help it, just let them get limp and flavor the oil. Cook the pasta, then combine everything. Dust with the cheese. Serve.
How hard was that?
Tonight we’re having salt baked fish. Rinse a whole, gutted fish in water, put it in a pile of salt—letting its tail stick out, cook for 400 degrees F or 200 C for 25 minutes or so. It’s primitive. It’s delicious.
Or we might grill it, if the winds don’t kick up. Primitive, too.
(I’m going to miss my fish guy and his little truck. I head to California in two weeks. Dead fish pieces hacked by an idiot and trapped for an indeterminate time in Styrofoam trays. Yuck.)
Filed in: Food Living in Italy
Lunigiana Traditional Music - Il Coro Lunigiana · Jun 6, 11:43 AM by James Martin
When my neighbor Armando invited me to his chorus practice, I had no idea of what to expect. Armando makes fine salami from the pigs he raises here in the Lunigiana, but singing?
So, on a moonlit night we followed him in his moto as we navigated the dark and windy roads of the Apennines. We arrived at a former Capuchin monastery, part of which is now an agricultural school for high-school age kids (some of who stay there the whole week). We had walked to the monastery before. It was much longer in the car.
We entered a side door to what appeared to be the church. It was full of trophies and memorabelia from the many concerts given all over the world by Il Coro Lunigiana.
And the sound! Ha! What sound! Layers of it. You should hear some.
May I present Il Coro Lunigiana, The Video
Filed in: Living in Italy The Lunigiana
Cantine Aperte at Cantine Lunae in Castelnuovo Magra · May 31, 12:52 PM by James Martin
We had a great time at Cantine Lunae in Castelnuovo Magra, where the Colle di Luni Cantine Aperte was celebrated. Somehow, of all the pictures I took, this picture reminds us most that the star of the show was the wine (The music was great, the lardo man was overwhelmed with demands for his thinly sliced lard, but the wine was the thing)…
Cantine Aperte means “open cantina”, where tastings and (sometimes) entertainment like the band in the picture take place. We ate the food of the region as well. And they gave us these neat pouches that hang around your neck so that you have a place to put your wine glass when you need your hands free to grab some of the free food.
In Italy, wineries aren’t like they are in California. Here, wine is an agricultural product, and many wineries are underwhelming if you go to them thinking they will be palaces of wine snobbery. Often you must reserve ahead for a tasting and tour. Cantine Aperte is a repeated festival that allows folks to just show up and taste. The Cantine Lunae is a place that reminds one of California in that they have a fine shop and tasting room as well as a museum of old wine implements. I’ll write more on them later. Right now it’s time to sit back and have some of their fine wines for dinner.
Filed in: Food Living in Italy
Tawdry Toilet Tales from the Travel Twitterverse · May 31, 05:34 AM by James Martin
I’ve grown to like twitter. Where else can your laptop be wakened by a tweet from Lance Armstrong wondering on his last hotel day in Italy what those pull cords in Italian bathrooms do:
what’s up with these cords/strings they always have in Euro bathrooms? Is it bad if I tug on them whenever I pass by?
Lance, if you fall, you pull the cord and….I think something happens…
Ok, so here’s where the story starts falling apart. I have to admit I’ve pulled a few cords in my lifetime, by mistake or with a purpose, and never has a single event taken place which can be attributed to those actions.
So, what’s supposed to happen, I’m told, is that someone in a position high enough to have keys to your room hears some alarm emitted from the ol’ master panel, rushes in, helps you up from where you’ve fallen, and takes the appropriate secondary action of getting medical help. Or as Jessica (@italylogue) says:
Those are emergency cords. Like, “I’ve fallen & I can’t get up” cords.
While Italian law mandates such cords, there seems to be a general consensus among twitterati that there is no law to mandate further action resulting from pulling those cords. I imagine hotel employees quickly come to the conclusion that tourists don’t fall in bathrooms, but rather take inordinate pleasure in pulling any string they find dangling from bathroom walls. So they ignore the constant buzz from their master panel. Or turn it off.
Not always.
Erica (@Moscerina) adds a lurid tale of her own:
I pulled one by accident at FCO and machine-gun holding carabinieri came into the women’s bathroom to find me.
Sure, the carabinieri don’t have guests to welcome and toilets to clean. Thus they’re free to break down barriers with their manly gun thingies any time they hear the buzzer. And FCO is an airport, so all is forgiven.
All of this had me rushing to my very own bathroom in Tuscany to see what my cords did.
Guess what? They ring the doorbell when you tug them. Honest. And you have to tug them HARD.
But I also discovered that they end about three feet above the floor. If I have trouble in the shower, I’d better not fall flat. Best if I slump against the shower wall while fishing for the cord and hoping for the best.
Then I’ll have to wait while someone in the house runs to answer the door. Another 15 minutes for that “gee, who’s playing tricks on us?” delay. Only then could I expect an angel of mercy to throw open the bathroom door to check on my collapsed form.
After all, it’s not like you can expect the carabinieri come to your rescue every time the doorbell rings.
(I’m @wanderingitaly, if you’re interested in following my scandalous scant scribblings)
Filed in: Italy Travel Tips Living in Italy