SABATO MUSICALE

Enjoy:

Fabio Concato - Fiori di maggio

A SINGLE FOR L'AQUILA

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

Donna d'Onna

Today sees the release, on radio and on digital platforms in Italy, of the single “Donna d’Onna” [“Woman of Onna”] a song written by singer Gianna Nannini and writer Isabella Santacroce in honour of the Abruzzo earthquake victims.

First performed by Gianna Nannini, Laura Pausini, Elisa, Fiorella Mannoia and Giorgia at the concert, “Amiche per l’Abruzzo” at Milan’s San Siro Stadium on 21st July 2009, the song as a single precedes the release of the concert double CD on June 22nd.

The song takes its title from the town of Onna, which was destroyed by the earthquake which struck L’Aquila and its surrounding area at 3.32 am on 6th April 2009, killing 308 people and making over 60,000 homeless.

Gianna Nannini spoke of her visit to the area which inspired the song:

“When I went to L’Aquila I met many women and the pain in their eyes made me cry. I’ll never forget their embraces. And women symbolise the future.”

Proceeds from the concert CD will go towards reconstruction work in Abruzzo.

SWEETBLOG

I was delighted to receive the "Sweetblog" award from my Sicilian-Canadian friend Lucia and I'm also delighted to be able to pass it on to ten other bloggers.  These are all sweet blogs written by sweet people who brighten my days:

Secret Forest, whose first blogversary is today.
Finding life hard?
Miss B from California
Nobody Important
Mountain Girl's Musings
Mopsa
Daydreamn World
Garden Cat Cottage

And I would like to include two very special, very sweet, blogging cats:

Alex, who keeps his "hooman beanz" Nick out of mischief

and the always entertaining

Gatto 999 .

Thanks, Lucia!

THE "MINI" SEASON

Early summer is the season of the mini fruit in Sicily.  Usually mini pears are the first to appear but yesterday I found these delightful little peaches:

It occurred to me that maybe they don't look all that mini in the dish so I put one next to a normal-sized nectarine:

VEAL IN CARROT PUREE

If you object to cooking veal or live somewhere like the UK where it is ridiculously expensive, you'll just have to skip this post - as I do with "fishy" recipes!

I adapted this recipe from a magazine.  You are supposed to steam it all and, when I decided to try it, I thought I'd be able to steam everything in my wok, for which I have a rack.  But could I find the rack?  No way!  So the recipe became a roast instead and was probably the better for it.

First you pound together a few thin slices of Italian lardo - which is a kind of mostly white bacon - with some chopped, fresh herbs.  I used the ones I had, which were rosemary, sage and thyme.  The lardo will soften and can be mixed well with the herbs.  Then you are supposed to use this mixture to lard an 800 gr piece of boneless veal topside [magatello].  Now, I don't have a larding needle so I started to make holes in the veal with a skewer but soon realised that they weren't going to go deep enough and that it would take all day.  Nothing for it but to plunge in with a knife.  Then I stuffed the herb mixture in as best I could, using the skewer to jab it down.  Then you chop up some carrots, a couple of sticks of celery and 2 small onions in a processor.  Put the veal on a piece of foil in a roasting tin and put the chopped vegetables around it.  I brushed some olive oil over the veal , then chucked a glass of water and a glass of white wine over it.  I also seasoned the purée.  Cook at 200 C for an hour , then for half an hour at 150C.  Cover with foil if it's getting too brown at any stage. When the veal is cooked, let it rest while you purée the vegetables.  I used a hand blender for this.  Then slice the veal and serve.

MIRACLE IN ALBANIA

Image: Wikitravel

Although I am not religious I do believe that there are miracles.  It's just that sometimes we don't recognise them because the miracle we are presented with may not be the one we hoped for at a given time. Rosa, who returned on Sunday from a sad journey home to Albania, has no doubt that she witnessed one, and, having heard her story,  neither have I:

Rosa and her husband had travelled to Albania the previous weekend, having received news from relatives that Rosa's sick mother had taken a turn for the worse.  Rosa arrived on the Sunday and, seeing her, her mother seemed to rally, so much so that Rosa made prepartions to return to Italy on the Tuesday.  But the sea was rough and all ferry crossings to Brindisi had been cancelled from the Monday.  On Tuesday the ferries lay at anchor in the port and the situation was the same on Wednesday and on Thursday morning. 

Thus it was that Rosa was at her mother's bedside when the old lady died on Thursday afternoon.  No one in the port town of Vlore [Valona] can remember the ferries being grounded for four days running before and Rosa is convinced that God had a hand in it.

I'm sure you will join me in offering condolences to Rosa, my steadfast helper and friend.

MUTLEY

Even now, I keep hoping it isn't true, that Rob will suddenly appear and tell us that it was all some huge, Mutleyesque joke, that "reports of his death have been greatly exaggerated". But I know that this is not going to happen.

Rob, the author of MUTLEYTHEDOGSDAYOUT, died peacefully in his sleep on Friday and my heart goes out to his family and his partner Kate.

I never met Rob but we corresponded and I regarded him as a friend. His blog was outrageous, anarchic, satirical and always funny and I never understood why Rob was not snapped up as a comedy writer by the BBC or "Private Eye". I guess the answer to that is that Rob was too modest, too nice, too British to push himself. And now the mainstream media's loss is ours, for the blogosphere will be a duller place without him.

Thank you for the laughs, Rob. If I had a pint of "Old Lesbian" to hand, I would toast you with it. And say hello to Mutts* for me.

You can leave a tribute to Rob here.

*Rob's beloved pet, the real Mutley the dog, who died last year.

SABATO MUSICALE

Enjoy.

Alessandra Amoroso - Immobile

AN ICE CREAM FESTA

The Florentines are having a gelato festival and how I wish I could attend!  What's more, they say one of their reasons for staging the festival is that ice cream is actually good for you.  I knew there was wisdom in the ice cream diet!   Here is the link to my Italy Magazine article about the festival .  I'll be cheering it on from here:

THE PYJAMA GAME

Before coming to Italy, I hadn't worn pyjamas since I was a child.  But it one day occurred to me that all my women friends here seem to be pyjama rather than nightie ladies and when I was in hospital I soon realised that there is no way of clambering into a high Italian bed elegantly in a nightie. [This matters when there are no bed curtains to give you a moment's privacy!]

So now I'm a pyjama convert, especially when I see ensembles like this one:

And I just discovered that one of my all-time favourite songs is from "The Pajama Game" - how about that?

THE INVISIBLE WOMAN

The Scirocco had stopped blowing, the sun was out and there were five empty tables outside the Fagione Bar at 3pm.  So I stopped to have an ice cream - I'm on the ice cream diet - at one of them and there I was, minding my own business and  enjoying the whole strawberries in the gelato di fragola , when an elderly gentleman drew up the chair opposite me, without so much as a "Posso?" or "Buona sera."  I did wonder why, when there were four free tables, he had to come and sit at an occupied one but my meditation was cut short when he raised his walking stick in order to lay it across the table and, in doing so, bashed me over the head with it.

"Sorry, I didn't see you", said he, breezily. 

Now, I know that it is the fate of all womankind to become invisible to men at a certain age, but he could hardly have failed to register my presence at all!  I just said it was OK and went on eating my ice cream but then he lit up a cigarette, which annoyed me more than the walking stick incident.  I took my ice cream to another table but am still fuming that I had to be the one to move.
  

It did occur to me that perhaps he had sight problems but I stopped feeling charitable when he clearly recognised his friend who suddenly appeared out of nowhere.  When I left the bar, this second gentleman followed me and asked me for the price of a cup of coffee.  You may imagine, reader, what I said to that.

QUIZ: SICILIAN PROVERBS - 16

A mixed bag tonight and, as usual, all you have to do is match the proverbs 1 - 6 with their meanings a - f.  Answers will magically appear below when you highlight the space indicated!

1.  Tuttu 'u munnu è paisi.

2.  'N' arbiru nun si tàgghia â pprimu cuoppo.

3.  Çiurietti e prirricaturi duoppu Pasqua nun anu sapuri.

4.  Giudicari e 'nniminari, Diu sulu lu pò fari.

5.  Amuri è amaru, ma ricría lu cori.

6.  La scarsizza fa lu prezzu.

a.  Love is bitter but it reassures the heart.

b.  Broccoli and preachers have no taste after Easter [ie., there is a season for everything].

c.  Scarcity fixes the price.

d.  All the world is a village.

e.  A tree isn't felled at the first cut [ie., you must be persistent to achieve a goal].

f.  Only God knows how to judge and predict the future.


Highlight the space below for answers:

1d, 2e, 3b, 4f, 5a, 6c.

IT'S AN ILL WIND....

I did not have a good day yesterday:  the Scirocco was raging so I sulked because I couldn't put any washing out, my container plants were not only having to put up with me, but with being blown over every five minutes and, although the temperature was 29 C, I felt cold.   I brought two of the plants in for the night but the ungrateful things decided to sulk as well so tonight they will just have to grin and bear it.

They are not the only things to fall over, though, as, entering the greengrocer's yesterday afternoon,  I fell flat on my face. I'm not hurt but am achey and it's true that, the older you get, the more a fall shakes you up. The greengrocer and his assistant were very kind, helping me up and getting me a chair and water. But oh, the sheer indignity of it!

Then the newsagent - the same one that does not stock ice cream in the bar - had run out of carrier bags and that was enough to put me back into  a bad mood.  Perhaps I am particularly tetchy when I go in there because of the ice cream situation but when I spend 20 euros on newspapers and magazines, I don't think it's unreasonable to want a bag to carry them home in.

But then came solace as, the Scirocco having blown me along to another bar, I discovered  an ice cream called biscottino.  This not only has biscuits atop, but in it , and of course, purely in the interest of blog research for you, dear reader,  I had to try it:

SABATO MUSICALE

Enjoy:

Laura Pausini - Volevo dirti che ti amo

AN INTERVIEW WITH GINO

Today I interviewed my friend Gino the artist for Italy Magazine.  Regular readers may be interested to learn more about Gino  and, if you have not yet "met" him, do pop over to the mag and make his acquaintance.  There are some new pictures of Gino's for you to look at there, too.

Don't forget that you can see more of Gino's work here.

WALKING THE LINE

An elderly lady who lives along the road here is in the habit of flinging her arms around me every time she sees me, as if I am some long-lost relative who has returned with a fortune.  She then remarks upon my pale skin and light eyes and proceeds to ask all sorts of personal questions which I avoid answering by changing the subject.  She doesn't mean to offend;  she is just interested. Today I saw her as I was crossing a busy road and, besides the usual bear-hug and interrogation - right in the middle of the road - I got a lecture because I hadn't walked exactly on the zebra crossing lines.  "You'll get run over!" she kept exclaiming mid-hug, quite oblivious to the fact that we were both likely to flattened by a motorist losing his pazienza while we were holding up the traffic.  Inside every Italianised Brit there's a daring British jaywalker so she did not reform me.

My own pazienza ran out when I saw that, in one of my favourite haunts, the Edicolè bar, they still haven't ordered in any gelati. 

"It seems early in the season to us", said a waiter.  "It might rain or be windy." 

When have wind and rain ever put off a gelato-lover? Sometimes I think this seasonal eating can be taken too far....

I took my custom further along the via Sacro Cuore

and reminded myself that I'm in Sicily, where  I can stand in the sun near a traditional drystone wall and exquisite roses:

PLEASE REMEMBER THE ARANDORA STAR

This is a link to an article of mine published in Italy Magazine yesterday.  In the article my friend, Margo Giovannone, tells readers about her Italo-Welsh childhood and how she later went about tracing her Italian relatives in Arpino, Frosinone [Lazio]. 

Margo Giovannone’s grandfather was interned [as an "enemy alien"] on the Isle of Man in World War II, along with Italian men who lost their lives in the Arandora Star tragedy of 2nd July 1940. Margo is a committee member of the Arandora Star Memorial Fund in Wales and, as the seventieth anniversary of the tragedy approaches, she asks us not to forget the Arandora Star.

Thank you.

LIQUID GOLD

I chanced upon a farmers' market in Modica Bassa on Saturday:  there were stalls piled high with cheeses, tables teeming with purple broccoli, artichokes so fresh they looked as if they would get up and dance and all sorts of other spring produce.  October's olive oil was being sold  for 5 euros a litre and the texture of this traditional bread was too perfect to resist.   In times gone by shepherds would have carried bread such as this for it did not go off for many days.  They would have softened it with a little olive oil. 

Traditional, handwoven baskets were on sale too:

Further along the Corso I stopped for a gelato:

A perfect Saturday morning!

SABATO MUSICALE

Enjoy this from Catania's own Carmen Consoli:

PICCOLO MONDO MODERNO

There I was standing at the counter in the Altro Posto at lunchtime  when a pleasant young man came up to me and asked, "Are you Patti?" He  introduced himself as Enzo and  after a second it dawned that this must be the Modican gentleman I talk to every day on twitter.  He'd told me he was coming home for a long weekend but we hadn't arranged to meet.  It turned out that he had known my student Giuseppe, who was with me, since the latter was ten years old so we all had a jolly chat.  Isn't technology amazing?

I'd gone to the Altro Posto to get this tiramisù to celebrate Cathy's birthday at the school:

And here's Cathy [ second from left] with students Graziana and Giuseppe:

This is the present I bought for Cathy.  And now it's over to you, dear reader.  Can you guess what it is?  I'll tell you tomorrow.

The Muppets and Spike Milligan - Small World

Update - 8.5.10:  The mystery object is a thingie to hang your bag from when you're out and about and don't want to put it on the floor: