In November Cathy, the Director of the English International School, Modica and I were interviewed for an article in the Ragusa Province magazine Freetime and I thought you might like to see a couple of the photographs:
Cathy [right] and me at the school
Welshwoman at the chalkface in Sicily,
talking about an American festival.
Photos: Simone Aprile and reproduced here with his kind permission.
If you are in Ragusa, you can see the article, our newsletter and more pictures in the December - January edition of Freetime but if you are elsewhere and can read Italian, the text of the article is here on the school blog.
You didn't expect me to get close enough
to take a decent photo, did you?
There I was, almost ready for bed at around 1 am this morning when I glanced at the pillow and - eeeeeek! - there was this creature making itself comfortable. All right, I know it's not big, by spider standards, but it's a tarantula to me!
At first, standing well back, I tried to persuade it to just go away and, when it took no notice, wondered if perhaps it would appreciate being spoken to in Sicilian dialect . Alas, my invocation to "Avattinni a cògghiri cardi" = "Go and pick cardoons" fell on deaf spider ears - or hairs- and by 2 am I was a desperate woman.
At that time of night in a flat in Italy, you can't use the vacuum cleaner tube, try to frighten the creature with noise or even scream for fear of disturbing the neighbours, so I'm standing there, still starkers, trying to work out what to do when I realise my pyjamas are under the pillow! This is not the only pair of pyjamas I own but I was too freaked out to remember that at the time. Having what I thought was a brainwave, I managed to pull them out from under the pillow under the spider with a walking stick but this caused the spider to move and then I didn't know if it was in the pyjamas or not. Finally I remembered the other pyjamas and decided to don them as if ever a situation required clothes, this was it!
Being thus attired seemed to make me braver and next, I fetched my oven gloves and proceeded to strip the bed because no way was I lying down on it if spiderman or woman was still there. Still with the gloves on, I lifted the mattress several times to look under it but there was no sign of signor/a ragno there either. Now only the pillow cases remained to be examined inside so I poked about in them with the walking stick and managed to slip them off using this, too - because I had to change them, didn't I? I mean, could you sleep on a pillow case where this creepiest of creepy crawlies had made itself at home?
By 3.30 am I just had to lie down but I kept the light on and did not close my eyes for a minute, knowing that our unwelcome guest was probably still in the room. Then, suddenly at 4 am there it was under the bookcase - I might have respected it had it been exploring some books - but it escaped yet again. By this time Simi the dog, who had slept through most of the drama, had begun to take an interest and, once she was on the bed too, I felt safer so nodded off uneasily. We woke up to bright sun but I'm afraid the Italian proverb, "Se il ragno fa il filato, il bel tempo è assicurato - If the spider is spinning its web, you can be sure of fine weather"was no comfort to me at all!
Every autumn in Britain, I would make a batch of apple chutney. For American readers, chutney is a kind of thick salsa which is, however, a preserve. The word "chutney" comes from Hindi "chatni", meaning "strongly spiced" and it was the colonising British who began eating spiced mixtures, probably as condiments, in India. The custom spread to other colonies and tropical fruit, too, began to be incorporated into some of the recipes. Then the travelling British decided they wanted spiced mixtures of fruit and vegetables which would keep and so began adding vinegar and large quantities of sugar. Eventually they brought their recipes and the word "chutney" back to Britain.
And now I am carrying on the tradition of chutney making in Sicily! Sadly, it is wasted on most of my Sicilian friends who abhor the British habit of mixing sweet and savoury ingredients and when I point out that they do it themselves in several dishes such as coniglio in agrodolce [sweet and sour rabbit] they just shrug their shoulders and say that is different. Anyway, I brought my preserving pan and extremely long-handled wooden chutney-mixing spoon from Britain and I haven't given up yet!
On Saturday - better late than never - I made my first batch of apple chutney here in three years: Once again Rosa was the willing "gofer" and once again I used a mixture of Granny Smith and Golden Delicious apples in the absence of cooking apples. The recipe I use, from a Jennifer Paterson book called Feast Days [published long before her incarnation as one of the famous Two Fat Ladies] calls for white malt vinegar, but as I like apple chutney to be quite dark and you can't get malt vinegar here, I used a mixture of red and white wine vinegars. I don't leave the chutney to cool before potting it but pour it straight into sterilised jars and then I leave it covered with a clean tea towel for twelve hours before putting on the lids, which I line with greaseproof paper, just as my mother taught me.
This time it took ages to cut out the "hats" as my pinking shears has seen better days and is getting hard to manoeuvre but all will be worth it when the flavours have mellowed after a month and I can use the chutney!
Oh, and this is a 2002 photo of me making chutney in Carson City, Nevada, USA., where a friend had cajoled me into giving a demonstration!
I always get depressed when it's time to take the Christmas decorations down but one advantage of living in Italy is that in February we have the Carnival season to cheer us all up again.
In Termini Imerese [Palermo Province] where the townsfolk claim to have the oldest carnival tradition in Sicily - it dates back to 1876 - this year's promises to be so much fun that it will be "the end of the world": As usual, eight floats will be in the processions, six of them in competition with each other and two which will be non-competing. These last are the children's float and the float carrying u nannu e a nanna [grandfather and grandmother], the grandfather being a hale and hearty fellow while the grandmother is a rather gaunt figure in a frilly dress with lots of lace. This float traditionally leads the procession and on Shrove Tuesday the grandparents are burned in the town square - but don't worry, as they are made of papier-mâché! This burning is believed to ward off evil spirits and symbolises the renewal that is spring.
The floats in the competition will contain allegorical figures and in one there will be a model of Mr Monti, who will be portrayed drinking wine, perhaps in an effort to forget the economy for the duration of the processions.
One thing is certain: nothing - not even the current economic crisis - is going to stop the Carnival at Termini Imerese!
The Termini Imerese Carnival runs from 12th - 21st February 2012. There will be music and entertainment throughout the event and the processions will take place on Saturday 18th February, Sunday 19th February and on Shrove Tuesday, 21st February.
The video shows part of a performance, in happier times, by Antonello Tonna, the talented catanese pianist who survived the Costa Concordia disaster. Signor Tonna toldBlogSicilia that he had been working as an entertainer on cruise ships for many years but that, although he had previously survived a force 10 storm at sea, he had never witnessed anything like what happened off the Isola del Giglio last Friday night. Clearly, he thought his last moment had come and he said he thought he was actually living scenes from Titanic.
I am sure that you will join me in sending good wishes to signor Tonna and all the survivors and that your hearts, like mine, go out to those who were lost or injured and their loved ones.
This recipe, a sort of Italian cottage pie, is from a book calledCucina Low Cost. Only garlic and onion are cooked in olive oil prior to adding the meat but, in addition to the mince - in this case, a mixture of beef and pork but it could be mince of your choice - there is an ingredient I had never heard of before, pasta di salame. I was rather irritated with myself about this but was comforted by the fact that none of the Sicilians I asked knew what it was either. I did an internet search and, although I found some recipes requiring this ingredient, none of them told me what it was. "From the best supermarkets", said a note in one of these recipes but no one had heard of it in the local supermarket. By this time, I had begun to suspect that we were probably talking about a sausage mix and at my next stop, the butcher's, this was confirmed. My butcher seasons his sausage meat with fennel seeds, sage and red wine so some of this to put in the dish seemed a great idea to me!
One thing I don't miss about Britain is most British cheese and I cannot stand cooked Cheddar cheese, so I was happy to sprinkle a mixture of ragusano and grana cheese over the top of the dish. Oh, and some 'strattuwas stirred in with the meat, onion and garlic, too.
I was pleased with the result and will definitely be making this again.
Every two weeks, the blogosphere comes alive with something called a Blog Off. A Blog Off is an event where bloggers of every stripe weigh in on the same topic on the same day. The topic for this round of the Blog Off is "If you could turn back time...".
We've all done it, haven't we? At certain moments, we've all thought, about trivial events or life-changing ones, "If only I had...", "If only I hadn't..." or "If only I had said / could say...". Here are some of the the things I might change if I could turn back time:
I wish I could have come of age in an era when women wore hats - it would have spared me so many stressful moments on bad hair days
and I often wish I'd become a housewife and a mother instead of a career woman:
The garden shed my grandad made into a "little house"
for me to play in
I'd like to be able to say that if I could turn back time I wouldn't have broken a flowerpot over my friend "Wrecker's" head when I was four - she got the nickname because she broke all my toys - but I'd be lying, even 58 years later.
"Wrecker" sitting on my car [which she didn't break!]
Being blessed with curves was not an advantage in the late 1960s so I'd change the fashions of the Mary Quant era.
And I wish I'd spent more time studying and less living it up at university, but to have done so would have been to have denied being young.
If I could turn back time I would have spoken out more often about some situations and kept a wise silence about others. The advice in this early twentieth century postcard is not a bad maxim:
"I have often regretted my speech, never my silence."
I also wish that I had learned to live within my means long ago and had not, in Mr Micawber's words, "blighted the blossom".
If I could turn back time, I would have come to live in lovely, Baroque Sicily sooner but we tend to forget how "life" can get in the way of our plans and dreams.
Duomo di San Giorgio, Modica
We can, of course, never know how things would have turned out on "the road not taken" and perhaps it is better thus so I would like to end this post by telling you about a happy moment that I would change only by prolonging it:
I do not know how old I was but probably not more than two or three. I was standing with my mother at the top of Christmas Steps in Bristol, UK and we were waiting for my father.
Christmas Steps: such a wonderful, Dickensian-sounding name for a little street full of secondhand bookshops, as it was then, and in my mind, it snowed every time we went there.
And suddenly there was my father, walking up the steps towards us and beaming at me, holding his arms out. I loved him so much at that moment and as his arms and warmth envelopped me I felt so safe.
If I could turn back the clock, I would make that moment last forever - as, indeed, it has, in my heart.
"I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
The roads diverged in a wood, and I -
I took the one less traveled by
And that has made all the difference."
- Robert Frost: The Road Not Taken
Below is the full list of bloggers participating in this week's theme:
A transport strike of goodsvehicles has more or less brought Sicily to a standstill today, with intercity roads and ports being blocked all over the island. This, in turn, has caused the closure of some petrol stations and long queues outside those remaining open, while some pupils were unable to get to school and supermarkets quickly ran out of milk, bread and other fresh products.
The stoppage, called by Forza D'Urto, a new movement made up of members of Autotrasportatori Aias, the Movimento dei Forconi [an agricultural workers' movement] fishermen, businesspeople from the agricultural sector, indignati and others, is intended to be a peaceful protest that will not hurt Sicilians but will make people all over Italy realise that something must be done about the current economic crisis. The banners of trade unions or political parties will not be displayed during the protest. The organisers say that the movement is for all Sicilians who are tired of bureaucracy and corruption of all kinds and who wish to reclaim their rights. Italy's main trade unions have, however, distanced themselves from the movement in statements issued today.
Members of the movement are particularly calling for a reduction in the excise duty on fuel, which has hit their industry and, consequently, Sicilian producers and exporters, hard and the strike is scheduled to last for five days, ending at midnight on Friday-Saturday night.
On the day that Italy has had its credit rating downgraded by one of the absurd ratings agencies, I thought I would share with you the cheerful news that, if you happen to live in the town of Ragusa, there is no escape from the eurozone crisis, not even when you reach that great financial market in the sky.
TheCorriere di Ragusareports that, on New Year's Eve, while everyone else was preparing to celebrate, the city councillors of Ragusa held a jolly meeting at which it was decided to increase the cost of burials in the city's cemetery from €20 to €50, that of entombment from €31 to €100 and that of exhumations - necessary because after a certain period your remains are removed to a slot in the wall - from €23 to €100.
As Dorothy Parker famously said, "You might as well live."
Update: Clarification in view of comments Perhaps I should clarify that the costs mentioned above are for the physical acts of entombment, burial and, eventually, exhumation. They do not take into account the additional costs of the cemetery plot or the funeral.
This excellent recipe is in one of my favourite cookbooks, La Cucina del Sole by Nancy Harmon Jenkins. I altered it in only one detail by adding a little cut-up lardo [white bacon] with the potatoes. The result was better than ever!
A few hours ago, ANAS S.p.A. [the organisation which manages Italy's roads] and the Province of Ragusa made motorists in the area very happy by announcing that the requirement for them to have snow tyres or to carry snow chains in their vehicles when travelling between the cities of Modica and Ragusa from 15th December - 15th March has been dropped.
In an area where winters are generally mild and snow is a rarity, the ruling has been regarded as absurd and anyway, soon after it came into force there were no snow chains to be had anywhere in Ragusa Province!
From now on motorists will only be required to travel with chains when the meteorological conditions necessitate it - that is, in....er.... snow.
You do not need to understand Italian to appreciate this satirical video about the situation. Needless to say, the footage in the first part was not shot in Ragusa! I also thought you might like to see some of the local scenery.
Il Clandestino, Modica - Bufera di neve sulla Modica - Ragusa
I'm a sort-of retired language teacher from Cardiff, Wales, UK, now trying to make a new life in Sicily. I'm not growing vines, making olive oil or restoring a palace stone by stone!
