SILLY WEEK - "ALIVE" NOTICES

It is the custom, in Sicily, to place death notices outside the house of the deceased and on special notice boards outside churches.  But in June one Nino Carbonaro of Modica had to have a batch of "alive" notices printed, for a rumour had gone around town that he was dead and people kept calling his wife to offer their condolences.  Even though he drank coffee as usual at his local bar, shopped in the supermarket and took medical certificates confirming that he was alive to work, no one would believe him.

The notices read:

He's alive and kicking.

NINO CARBONARO

Contrary to rumours put about by gossips, who should spend their time on more intelligent matters.

Photo: Corriere di Ragusa

ICE CREAM OF THE WEEK

Mandarin and peach.

SABATO MUSICALE - ON SUNDAY

Enjoy:

Giusy Ferreri - Ciao, Amore, Ciao

ACQUA E ZAPPUDDA

"Acqua e zapudda fannu cipudda" - "Water and hoeing produce onions".

- Sicilian proverb

It must have taken a lot of both to produce this enormous specimen from the "onion town" of Giarratana.  I put a "normal"-sized onion beside it and photographed it in a basket with other oniony things to give you a better idea of its size:

I wonder how much I'll cry when I peel it?

BROWN RICE SALAD WITH CHICKEN AND MELON

I found this recipe in July's Alice Cucina, where Gerry Scotti is pictured going into raptures over it.  My serving dish is not as elegant as the one that Scotti is holding and I didn't cut twirly bits of the melon as a garnish but my, the taste was good!

ITALY MAGAZINE ROUND-UP - 7

Here is my pick of the past week's Italy Magazine articles:

If you are a physically energetic person and, unlike me, are fond of the countryside - like, perhaps, my friend Sally - and are also an Italofile, there are some new trails in the Dolomites that might interest you.  If, like me, you are a city person you might prefer this exhibition and these other summer events in Milan.

American reader Nick Calvano told me the wonderful story of how he found his Italian relatives via the internet.  Part 2 of the story is coming in the mag later this week so do stay tuned.

Clooney and Canalis kept us all guessing again - will they or won't they and will it be this week?  Come on, George - do a Sarkozy! Finally I gave up and went in search of a nice animal story. Ahhhh....

For my Patti Chiari column, I explained what happens when I tell visitors from the UK that we are going to tour the syphilis museum.  Read the article to find out!

Happy reading.

MY NEW ADDICTION

I just cannot resist the mandarin flavour and it comes in little portions so you don't even have to feel guilty!

SILLY WEEK: SILLY PACKAGING

I find it very easy to be silly - in fact, I've almost made a career of it - so I was delighted when the Man in a Shed announced the second annual Bloggers' Silly Week.  What's the point of it?  To report silly things and to be silly!

To kick off, I have to say that I am not one to get particularly worked up about environmental issues but this packaging of a magazine strikes me as not only wasteful but extremely silly.  In Italy, nearly all magazines come like this and Italian "Vanity Fair" is the worst offender, for it has the tightest plastic wrapping and there is usually nothing extra inside it but a facsimile of the cover.  Strangely enough, if I buy a magazine I want to read it, not spend half an hour hacking it free.  But perhaps that is silly of me.

SABATO MUSICALE

Enjoy:

Ligabue - Un colpo all'amima

ICE CREAM OF THE WEEK

How about .... cinnamon and coffee?

FRIDAY FUN - I WRITE LIKE...

I found this over at Liz's blog.  You paste something you have written into the thingamy and it tells you who you write like.  I just had to have a go so I pasted in part of a blog post and here is the result:

I write like
H. P. Lovecraft

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

H P Lovecraft? Well, Wiki does say he wrote weird fiction...


Then Simi wanted a go so we pasted in her latest blog post:

Liz, who apparently writes like Cory Doctorow too, will be thrilled to know she writes like Simi!  Like Liz, we didn't know who Cory Doctorow was either - no offence, Cory - so we looked him up.  I always knew Simi was an intellectual.

Finally I pasted in part of one of my Italy Magazine articles and I'm sure my colleagues there will be pleased to know this:

I write like
David Foster Wallace

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

MAXI-FRUITS

From mini-peaches to these maxi-nectarines from Emilia-Romagna:

Only three would fit into my largest bowl!

COLD POLPETTONE OF VEAL

This veal polpettone [which is a kind of meat loaf] from a recipe in this month's La Cucina Italiana, turned out a bit crumbly but it did not, as I thought it might, fall apart.  Again, I can't reproduce the copyright recipe but I can tell you that it contains minced veal, breadcrumbs, grated grana cheese and lots of basil.  The zucchini, which were cooked with it, should really have been cubed but I declined to spend the evening doing that and opted for the processor instead.  I liked the simple way of preparing the cherry tomatoes to accompany the dish:  just spread the tomatoes on oiled baking paper on a baking tray, prick them with a fork, drizzle with lemon juice, season with seasalt and cook them for about half an hour in a hot oven.

Actually the polpettone tasted good hot, too but it is just the dish for a sweltering day.

THANK YOU, ANNE

My friend Anne in Oxfordshire is very creative and she has designed this lovely award for her friends and commenters, of whom I am proud to be one.  Anne has a very pretty blog and she takes great photos of her travels, so do go and have a look if you don't know her blog already.

Anne and I have never met but blogging brought us together and we often chat on Messenger.  Anne is always there for me, worries about me if I don't post for a couple of days and phones me when I'm down.  Thanks for the award and thank you for being such a good friend, Anne.

ITALY MAGAZINE ROUND-UP - 6

Here is my personal pick of last week's Italy Magazine articles:

The magazine is running a summer series about romantic films set in Italy and we feature a "golden oldie" and a newer film on alternate weeks.  Last week was "golden oldie" week and I had the pleasure of being able to write about one of my own all-time favourites, Roman Holiday - the one in which Audrey Hepburn famously gets her hair cut "all off" by an initially reluctant Roman hairdresser and in which Gregory Peck falls for her but remains the perfect gentleman.  [Sigh - where did they all go?]

For "blog of the week" we featured When I Was Your Age - A Memoir, Rosaria D'Ambrosio Williams's blog about her journey, as a young woman,  from Italy to America and the people she left behind.  Regular commenters here will know Rosaria as "lakeviewer".

One of the first Italian cookbooks I ever bought was Valentina Harris's Italian Regional Cookery and I still use it often so I was delighted when Valentina shared her delicious recipe for peaches in white wine with ice cream with Italy Magazine's readers.  I'll definitely be making this soon!

For my "Patti Chiari" column I had fun putting together some of the idioms and turns of phrase in Sicilian dialect that I have learned since coming to live here.  I hope you enjoy them, too.

Since starting to write for the mag, I've done a lot of research into the tragic Meredith Kercher case and have become interested in it.  On Friday I summarised Amanda Knox's Oggi interview for our readers.

I've always been interested in the Medici so this was one of my favourite news stories of the week and this tale of a "wild goose chase" has to be the other.

Happy reading.

SILVIO DOES IT AGAIN

This is an article of mine published in Italy Magazine today.  I am reproducing it in full here because I am outraged and it will be "old news" by the time I do next week's round-up of this week's stories. I would like to ask my sparring partner James and his anti-feminist friends how they can claim that feminism was never necessary when a twenty-first century, western leader can make a remark such as the one described here:
 

BERLUSCONI INSULTS FEMALE POLITICIAN

During a visit to the private Università Telematica Ecampus in Novedrate [Lombardy] yesterday Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi insulted Democratic Party President Rosy Bindi for the umpteenth time. Referring to some female students, who had been invited by email, Mr Berlusconi said,

“Here are some beautiful girls who have graduated with maximum marks and they don’t look like Rosy Bindi”.

Later signora Bindi issued the following statement:

“I congratulate the students who have graduated. As for the Prime Minister’s remarks, I will only note, sadly, that among the many signs that his rule is coming to an end we now have this repeatedly wearing evidence of his vulgarity.”

Last night Mr Berlusconi denied that he had said anything vulgar, adding,

“I said that to enter politics it is not necessary to look like Rosy Bindi. I didn’t say whether it was better to or not. Of course we’d all prefer [women politicians] to look like the Madonna”.

Last year Mr Berlusconi told Rosy Bindi, on live television, that she was “more beautiful than intelligent”, causing nearly 100,000 Italian women to sign a petition declaring that the Premier’s sexism was an insult to both women and democracy.

What would you have replied if you were Rosy Bindi?

SOFT, REFRESHING RAIN

The rain we get in Sicily is not particularly soft but Matthias Claudius's words will do today.  It rarely rains in eastern Sicily in July and this afternoon's was the first rain we have seen since the beginning of May.  I have been a typical Brit, amusing my neighbours by standing under the refreshing drops on the balcony.

Sometimes I am homesick for the rain and even for a grey sky [not too much of either, though! ]  What I'll never get used to is rain coming from a cloudless, bright sky.  There is, after all, something quite comforting about a dreary, British sky promising rain and my beloved compatriots' reaction to it - that "Here we go again but we're all in this together", spirit-of-the-blitz attitude that sends us all scurrying home to put the fire on in the middle of summer.  Somehow I can never take rain  falling from a sunny sky seriously.  What's the point of rain if it doesn't make you cold and miserable into the bargain?  I expect a proper performance from my rain.

SIMPLY RED

Rosa, arriving yesterday morning and finding the "no water" situation, insisted I go home with her.  And there, while I showered, she set out a delicious, red-themed lunch.  Well, I don't think she intentionally gave it a colour scheme but I thought it was very effective.  There was pasta with this year's tomato sauce, an Albanian condiment of tomatoes, minced veal, onions and peppers, veal in tomato sauce and anguria.

Grazie, Rosa!

"HABEMUS AQUAM" BY SIMI

Hi, folks.  Simi here!

I bet you didn't know I knew Latin, did you?

My mummy's been grumpy today because the water ran out this morning and the water man didn't come till 8pm!  After I barked at his lorry I decided to check the situation out:

Then I let my mummy get in the bath and she calmed down.

See you soon, fans.  Happy Sunday!

Love,

Simi

SABATO MUSICALE

More of Monsieur Aznavour tonight - my homage as I couldn't be in Venice for his concert last night, where I gather there were some frustrating accoustic problems.  You're still the sexiest Frenchman, Charles!  Let's hear his Italian version of "She":