Equi Terme in Winter · May 29, 05:14 PM by James Martin
I’ve always thought the Lunigiana spa town of Equi Terme was a bit dreary in a compelling sort of way. Once the rains brought out a few buds, the picture emerged that I had in my head, Equi Terme framed by emerging life.
The Last, Bittersweet Gelato in Aulla · May 20, 09:41 AM by James Martin
Today we paid the internet bill. High speed internet, just a dream when we bought the house in the Lunigiana, is not only a reality now, but one that truly does make a travel writer’s life a whole lot easier.
Unfortunately, we stopped in Aulla for our final gelato before buttoning up the house and heading for California via the Rhone Valley of France tomorrow morning. I had the “new” flavor that’s hit the streets, the chocolate fondente, a bittersweet chocolate. It fit the mood.
One of the last things to do was have lunch with an expat at C’era Una Volta on the outskirts of Aulla. €12 for the worker’s lunch. The Amatriciana was full of that Mediterranean pork flavor that you don’t get with “the other white meat” that’s had the flavor wrung out of it in America. The bollito di manzo was far better than the one I had in Bologna, the capital of cucina Italiana, or so they claim.
I’m gonna miss this place.
Eating Local in the Lunigiana · May 10, 02:48 AM by James Martin
As an American who grew up in the fertile Midwest and now resides in alternate three month periods on the west coast and in the Lunigiana region of Italy, I am often quite amazed at the degree to which Italians eat local foods, especially here in the Lunigiana.
We had dinner with our Italian neighbors last night. There were nine of us. When we entered the dining room, we noticed two huge cups of the type you might expect to win if you were the owner of a major sporting organization—except the larger one had a little pig on the platform that held up the whole structure, which included two half-naked babes intertwined to elevate lasciviously a cup that would have held the salad for all nine of us.
What did Armando and Francesca do to win such enormous monuments to perfection?
Salami.
Yes, they not only won a prestigious contest for their salami, they came in second as well.
So we sat down for dinner. Out comes a big pot of polenta. Who’s polenta? Alcedes. He’s sitting across from me and lives in the apartment adjacent to us.
The hunter that brought down the cingiale, or wild bore that makes up the topping for the polenta isn’t at the table, but everyone knows him.
For desert we have salami from the king of queen of salami, but it’s chocolate salami, so you don’t have to gag at the thought of ground and spiced pig for dessert. Then there’s the homemade mirto, or mirtleberry liquor, made by Angelo, the Napoleatano on my right, whose wife was born in Sardinia, where mirto is one of the most popular liquors.
At dinner everyone complains about the bees that have taken to swarming the village. They make the DOP Lunigiana honey we eat with our yogurt at breakfast.
They also complain about the water. Every once in a while it runs reddish brown. Then folks start taking out their cell phones. Alcedes has a picture of the brown water flowing like wine in the kitchen sink. Angelo tops him with a movie (with sound) on his cell phone, documenting the number of minutes the rusty water runs into the bathroom basin before it clears. There will be a revolt soon, I figure. It is claimed (I think; by this time the wine was severely interfering with my limited Italian) that some folks have refused to pay for water.
Eating local. Eating sausage fatto a casa. Sometimes I don’t think life can get any better, even considering the occasional spurt of brown water.
Then we start talking about Berlusconi and Bush.
Hairspray - The Italian Edition · Apr 30, 08:16 AM by James Martin
50 years ago most Italian farm houses didn’t have indoor plumbing, I’m told. Now, most of them are Bed and Breakfasts or Agriturismi. Lots of things have changed in 50 years. Can you think of something that hasn’t?
I can. It’s the nauseating, fetid and malodorous stench of hairspray.
Yes, my mother is visiting. How did you guess?
Here’s a tip for those of you with mothers. Have them visit you in a month in which the weather is good enough for you to stand without shivering in front of a wide open pair of shutters leading to a garden loaded with flowers that give off a sweet perfume. This month is not April.
I mean, I can’t believe that the egregious stench of hairspray hasn’t been changed one iota in 50 years. I understand why they’ve altered the odor of the gas you cook with. It’s hideous for a reason—you smell a gas leak and it makes you think something is really, really wrong that requires your immediate attention.
But why should a similar noxious odor accompany a product made for the purpose of gluing your hair together in entirely unnatural ways that appeals to folks of a particular age? This is what I don’t understand.
Get inside a car with a woman devoted to the sticky goodness of hairspray and the ensuing process is not unlike the dreaded “endless do-loop” in programming; if you open the car window so you can breath normally, then her hair (the “do”) becomes unglued, and there needs to be more hairspray applied, which means the window needs to be opened more or the car driven faster to get more fresh air into it, which necessitates even more hairspray…
But hairspray works wonders along the byways of Italy, Sardinian bus drivers have told us. A generous cloud of the stuff aimed toward the license plates makes them just glossy enough to be difficult to read by those automatic ticketing machines that are popping up alongside Italian roads faster than poppies lately.
Bet you didn’t think I could turn this story back to Italy, did you?
Liberation Day in Italy · Apr 26, 04:50 AM by James Martin
So we were on our way to our market town of Aulla this morning and apparently there’s been an invasion. American soldiers in jeeps have pulled off the road and are conversing with Italians. Motorcycles pull up, decked out in camouflage colors.
No, the uber-busy D.C. war room isn’t sending actual troops to invade Italy in WWII garb because they’re too financially strapped to finance modern uniforms, it’s the weekend of liberazione. Liberation day was yesterday, the 25th of April. People were out at festas then. Today they’re dressing up.
Aulla was totally leveled by the Allied forces during the war, except for a portion of the apse of the church. When they excavated there, they found wandering Saint Caprasio’s tomb, as well as an unexploded American bomb. Nearby, the town of Serricciola was leveled entirely by the Nazis.
The resistance here in the Lunigiana was legendary. The attack on Serricciola was made in retaliation for the resistance’s fine work in making German tanks unfit to be started up, I’ve heard. War sure changes the langscape…
Coincidentally, April 25th is another day of war remembrance half way across the globe:
On 25 April 1915, the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZACs) landed at Gallipoli in Turkey where thousands lost their lives.
The soldiers’ bravery in that campaign has become legendary in both countries. I am not one for patriotic fanfare, but, if you’re a Kiwi or an Aussie, you can’t help but feel the emotion of this story.
Oddly, the Austrian/New Zealand commemoration is associated with food and the Italian one isn’t, as far as I know.
ANZAC biscuits are described by Syrie Wongkaew, About.com’s new guide to Australian / New Zealand Food who gives you a good ANZAC biscuit recipe in her personal blog Taste Buddies
Peace be with you.
Moncigoli - Sagra di Cigola · Apr 25, 07:02 AM by James Martin
Ok, so today, Liberation Day in Italy, we went out to lunch at the Sagra di Cigola in nearby Moncigoli. On the way back home our neighbors were out on their steps and called us over for some coffee. We told them where we had been.
“But where can you eat in Moncigoli?
“We went to the sagra.”
What sagra?
“Um, I don’t know.”
Then Armondo piped up, “onions!” he bellowed.
“No, that’s not it.”
“Yes, onions!” he repeated.
“I’m pretty sure that’s not it. Ah, I know! Cigola.”
“Onions!” he said.
Well, if you Google long enough, you’ll find that cigola is dialect for a particular kind of red onion found around here, also called Cipolla di Bassone, that is good in Pinzimonio, the other thing being celebrated at the sagra. We, of course, finding all this out after the fact, did not order the Pinzimonio, but admired it from afar, where people munched on all manner of raw vegetables including little red onions called cigola.
Here’s some of the stuff we ordered and took a picture of, an extra step which amused the locals no end:
In the center is chiodo di maiale, a kind of pork sausage cooked on a hot terra cotta plate called a testo. It’s in the picture still sitting on its testo. Our neighbor tells us that this is what you are supposed to eat in November and December when you slaughter your pig, not in springtime. She mimicked gagging just to make sure we understood that this dish is simply not eaten by folks of reasonable intelligence outside of the slaughter season.
Moving on, the dish to the left is something that stumped me when it came to the table. Fave con pancetta e formaggio, Fava beans with pancetta and cheese. I had imagined a steaming bowl of favas flavored with bacon and dusted with cheese. What I got is what you see. This was, after all, a celebration of the raw…
(An interesting side note here: raw favas are especially toxic to a small number of Mediterranean people who suffer favism. Yet they are revered by most around here. Interestingly, if you suffer favism, you are probably immune to malaria. The world is in balance in ways we sometimes don’t recognize.)
On the right you’ll recognize simple bruschetta with tomatoes.
What’s missing is the goat and polenta. Imagine that, and the whole spread you see in your mind cost us €23.
I hope you ate as well as we did. Even considering the out of season chiodo, we didn’t gag a bit.
Lunigiana Landscape - Spring Blooms · Apr 23, 12:05 AM by James Martin
Tourists come to see trees in bloom. This is what they might see on their way to eat at the magnificent Spino Fiorito
Pontremoli Fairs and a Day Without Rain · Apr 21, 02:41 AM by James Martin
The festival season has arrived, at least in Pontremoli.
It was about time. Yesterday was the first day we’ve had in a while with sunshine and no rain. Pontremoli was alive with festivals. The flower festival, Bancarelfiore, filled various piazze of Pontremoli with color. There was also la Mostra mercato dell’artigianato e dell’antiquariato, an antiques and art fair, and a book fair, all at the same time. And the Porsche club had an exhibit of bright and polished cars in another piazza. Fun was had by all.
We had lunch at the tiny Oca Bianca, a new restaurant that sometimes surprises you with innovative dishes. I had seared Canadian bison with Himalayan sea salt. Yum. €14 if you’re counting, the most expensive dish on the menu.
Oca Bianca does another thing that’s nice. Instead of offering a menu turistico of boring food like pasta pomodoro and grilled chicken breast, they offer a spread including most of the local specialties of the Lunigiana with beverages for €17. Not a bad deal and a great introduction to what’s unique about the Lunigiana region of Tuscany.
Waterlogged in the Lunigiana · Apr 18, 05:12 AM by James Martin
For those of you on your way to northern Tuscany to enjoy the explosion of springtime, we’ve just had a heck of a rain overnight. Looking out at our garden landscape, there is now more or less a permanent river with waterfall leading down the hill to the garden area in the back of the house.
Once again, the rain knocked out the Internet for a few hours.
Fields are flooded, as are some roads. The prediction was for a little rain. We got that and more. Way more.
We now return you to our regularly scheduled program.
Rain Pounds the Lunigiana · Apr 11, 02:18 AM by James Martin
The rainy night before last I was awakened by a crash. I went back to sleep. In the morning Martha cried out, “we have a problem!”
Which, of course, means that I have some manly work to do.
So there, leaning over at a drunken angle, was much of our kiwi arbor. The rest was in chunks on the sidewalk.
Yes, kiwis are popular here.
The arbor had been held together by bailing wire. Really. I’ve probably used that phrase for years to describe badly maintained old cars and other things that were cobbled together, but this is the first time I’ve used it to describe reality.
Italians are known for hand-crafting fine things. Evidently kiwi arbors aren’t on the list.
What could I do? The supports were heavy, and mostly still held together. One had unhinged completely. I pushed that one off the sidewalk, along with some smaller bits. My job was done, until someone else manly enough to get the arbor erect again came along to help.
Then more rain fell. Just about lunch time, the internet went dead. I tried lots of things, some of them quite manly. I unplugged. I booted. I unbooted. I cussed up a storm. Still nothing.
So, I called Fabrizio. No answer. Finally, we get in touch. The entire network in Italy, he tells me, is down—because of the rain. At five it comes back. Of course, I couldn’t really hear him all that well—the telephone lines seemed just as screwed up. I could hear several conversations going at once.
And it’s still raining today…
