OUT AND ABOUT

MEDLAR JELLY

Nespole abound so I made a small batch of this, using the miracle machine I bought last year.

TRAGEDY IN GELA

This is an article of mine which was published in Italy Magazine yesterday.  It's an upsetting story and I cannot stop thinking about it.  What desperate loneliness this woman must have felt:

In an incident which has shocked all of Italy, but particularly the South, where family ties are strongest, a thirty-year-old woman drowned her two children in the sea at Torre di Manfria, Gela [Sicily] on Friday: just after midday Vanessa Lo Porto drove to the sea with the two boys, aged nine and two.

In stunningly beautiful surroundings she walked into the sea with them and let them go, then, according to some reports, tried to drown herself. According to these reports, her instinct for life took over and she managed to return to the beach. What is certain is that she walked back to her car and called the police, who maintain that she did not try to drown herself.

The body of the older child – who was autistic - was found immediately but that of his brother was recovered on Saturday morning.

Lo Porto was taken to hospital and is under sedation. She had been separated from her husband for some months and one theory is that she was suffering from depression because of this. Recently she had been given the news that her younger son was also autistic.

On 16th April she had left a positive status update on facebook, writing,

“When you cannot go back, you must think about the best possible way to move forward. You cannot choose how you feel, but you can always do something to ensure you feel as well as possible.”

A latter-day Medea or a desperate woman in the darkest depths of depression?

The investigation continues and the funerals of the two boys will take place today.

SUNDAY SUPPER

I'd bought some thin pork chops and wasn't sure what to do with them.  I'd also found some agretti - a type of cress, which I've shown you before here - and was wondering what to do with that.  I had some oranges, honey, sage and  white wine.  This is what I came up with:

Pork chops with oranges and agretti

Crush a clove of garlic and brown it for a minute  in 3 tablesp olive oil in a wide pan.  Add 4 thin pork chops and cook for 3 - 4 minutes on each side.  Lift the chops out and put them on a plate.  Now add a little white wine to the pan - about 5 fl oz, I suppose - and deglaze.  Add the juice of an orange, a tablesp of honey - orange-flavoured is nice - let it all bubble up and then put the chops back in.  Grate the rind of another orange over them, then segment the orange and add these pieces to the pan.  Season and add some sage leaves and agretti if you have some.  Serve immediately with salad.

SABATO MUSICALE

Enjoy:

Vasco Rossi - Sto pensando a te

POLLO AL SALE

Every now and then you come across a cookery book with recipes that you just know will work.  Some instinct seems to tell you that this book is for you.  I found such a book in the supermarket the other day.  It contains recipes from Cotto e mangiato, a cookery series which is incorporated into a lunchtime news peogramme every day. 

Last weekend I decided to try the chicken cooked in salt.  My butcher suggested I use two halves of a hollowed-out chicken rather than a crushed one, so that's what I did, with excellent results.  This video of the recipe from Italia 1 is in Italian but you'll be able to follow it even if you don't speak the language at all. Benedetta Parodi sprinkles a little water over the salt-covered chicken before putting it in the oven at 200 C for 1 hour 40 minutes.

WE ARE FOUR....

.... me as a blogger and my little blog, that is.

It seems a long time since I sat down and tentatively wrote my first post and so much has happened since then.  Each of us who moves to a new country must find our own salvation, it seems to me and blogging was mine.  Even someone like me who is fluent in the language and who has many friends in their new land can be lonely at times and my blog alleviated that loneliness.  What is more, it gave this basically lazy soul a little discipline, for every day I had a fixed appointment with writing.  My blog has, indirectly, brought me paid work, it has taught me a lot about technology and it has been, and remains, fun.  But most importantly of all it has made me many friends all over the world and tonight I want to thank all of you who read us.  Won't you join me in a coppa di frutta over at the Altro Posto?

SEASONAL FRUITS

I love buying fruit of different sizes and shapes, so lemons that look like apples and little lemons are a delight to me:

Now the fruit lorries are teeming with nespole [medlars or loquats] and some of these look so imperfect that they would not be sold in the UK.  There's nothing wrong with the taste, however, and after the medlars we will have nectarines, peaches and all the abundance of summer.

Making the most of what the season has to offer and then being ready for the next crop is a good way to live and somehow helps you to make peace with time.

NOI DUE

Hi, folks.  It's Simi here!

I just want to let all my fans know I'm better and it was nice of everyone to ask about me.  If you look closely at this pic of me in my favourite chair you can just see the sore place on my cheek where the nasty insect bit me. 

I scratched it a lot at first but I stopped when mummy said we might have to get one of those plastic collar things.  A girl doesn't want to look silly!  The vetty-man gave me some antibiotics and I didn't bite him this time.

Here I am with mummy.  I help her write her articles, you know.

And here's a song my mummy plays me when we have cuddle-time.  It's Mister "Jones the Song" from where we used to live.



Have a good week, fans!

Love from

Simi xx woof!

SABATO MUSICALE - FOR MY DAD

My Dad died 37 years ago today and I miss him.

FELLINI AND THE FEMINIST

This is an article of mine which was published in Italy Magazine on Monday:

Photo from fOTOGLIF

Well, who’d have thought it? Admittedly, Federico Fellini was well known as a ladies’ man but feminist academic Germaine Greer does not immediately spring to mind when one imagines his partners. And yet why not? Perhaps it was inevitable that two of the most unconventional people of their time should have been attracted to each other.


Writing in yesterday’s Guardian, Greer recalls meeting Fellini in 1975, when someone suggested her for a part in Casanova. It was fifteen years after La Dolce Vita and five years after the publication of The Female Eunuch. Greer, then aged 36, arrived at Cinecittà perspiring in the summer heat. She was wearing a flimsy dress and no underwear. Fellini at 55 was fascinated and asked her to read the script with a view to playing Madame Chatelet .

The two began to discuss the script and Fellini went to see Greer at her Italian home, packing his pyjamas in an overnight bag. They continued to talk about the script and Fellini, already suffering from a heart condition, made his own supper of a plain risotto. They went to bed but throughout the night Fellini made calls to his wife, the actress Giulietta Masina.

Days later Fellini gave Greer a present of electric light for her tiny house, sending his own workmen around to do the wiring. They did not see one another often, largely because of Greer’s work commitments, but they continued to discuss his films and Greer seems to have acted as a sounding board for the director. She has never forgotten him and calls him “a many-sided genius”.

THESE FOOLISH THINGS....

'Tis the season to be melancholy and that's how I felt when I saw a man for whom I have feelings - he doesn't know about this - strolling in the April sunshine with his new love today.  I decided to go and buy something I didn't need but, it being 1 pm, only the newsagent's was open.  So now I have yet another baking tin, coutesy of the magazine with which it came "free" [if you paid an extra 7 euros]. 

The moral of this tale is that you can be a fool at any age.

But at least you can bang a baking tin about and make a lot of satisfying noise!

As the inimitable Dorothy Parker put it:

"Travel, trouble, music, art,
A kiss, a frock, a rhyme-
I never said they feed my heart,
But still they pass my time. "

- Dorothy Parker, Faute de Mieux.

APRIL EVENING

An April evening and it is warm enough to sit on the terrace of the Altro Posto and have a colour-coordinated coppa di frutta:

GREEN TOMATO ANTIPASTO

Here's what I did with the small green tomatoes I found the other day:  First I sliced them thinly, then put them in a bowl with some cut-up sundried tomatoes [not the ones in oil] chopped mint, sprigs of thyme, crushed garlic, seasalt, black pepper and a little sugar.  I chucked some balsamic vinegar over the lot and left them in the fridge.  I drizzled some olive oil over before serving.

SABATO MUSICALE

The film Basilicata Coast to Coast has been released in Italy.  Here is the trailer and the song, Mentre dormi, which Max Gazzè dedicated to the film's director, Rocco Papaleo.

NEW SPECS

All the better to see the wrinkles with.

The photo was taken at Raffaele's which, on Saturdays, is a place full of temptation:

AND TODAY I COULDN'T RESIST....

.... these small, green tomatoes:

AN UNEXPECTED EASTER PRESENT....

.... from my old friends at the Altro Posto bar when I popped in for some water today:

What's inside?

The Altro Posto was the bar where I became a "regular" when I first arrived here.  The staff made me feel at home and I'll always be grateful to them for that.  Recently I wrote about this experience here.

JUDAS TREE

These are in bloom all over Modica. 

Such an inauspicious name for such a lovely tree.

PER L'AQUILA