In Love with France, At Home In Italy

Sent:  Sunday, August 01, 2010 To:  DF, my gourmet-cooking neighbor Subject:  PLUMS galore! Missing you! Well, here I am, all by myself (except for a million plums), drinking a Finkbrau alcohol-free beer, and thinking what all these plums might become in the magic hands of you-know-who. In fact, I have a dream of cooking with you here in this beautiful kitchen. Hope it comes true.     In the meantime, thank you for being so generous to J with your cooking gifts. There's lots of good food here, but your "restaurant" is still Number One with me!---baci, d PS: I didn't pick for two days, and look what happened! In response to my plum photos, DF wrote: What great pictures! I think you have to get a cart, a babushka, and your plums and go to market! You’ll never be able to use them all. But look on line for plum compote recipes as well as all the baked ones. It’s been fun for me to have your husband to table...he loves to eat, unlike B, who eats to li...

Well, the idea was that the new, slow-growing grass that they planted (and had to REplant after all the ants carried the seeds to THEIR house) would overtake all the weeds and the not-so-good grass. I was plenty skeptical, but waited a while before stepping in to try to help that fantasy along. One of my lifelong aspirations has been not to have to weed our ever-deteriorating US driveway, and here I am on our Italian terrazza in the same boat. Oh, well...   Actually, I recognize a certain symmetry, here. At the  beginning of my 3 months at the house, J caught me on camera while I was fiddling around with the plants along the low stone wall that flanks our entry driveway. So what's so relaxing about weeding? Well, it seems to be my way of settling in and reconnecting. I know that when I get back to the States, one of the first things I will do is to start puttering around with the plants, both indoors and out. And yes, I'll probably resume weeding what can only loosely be ...

Hi, I forgot to ask you if the Oprah magazine was a hit or a miss. I am currently trying to transfer my messes to the homes of other people, if I can get away with it, so let me know if you want any more magazines or if I should donate them elsewhere.  It was worth all the years of the magazines just to adopt the life-changing concept of the "risk-for-the-week" that I got out of the issue I loaned you. It was part of a letter from a recovering anxiety-ridden hypochondriac/agoraphobic who worked herself up to being less phobic about life, and to being able to handle a risk for the week. Sometimes I now even take two or three risks, and so far, so good!  January 30, 2011

An article by Rachel Donadio in the Jan. 22, 2011 New York Times caught my eye: "Surreal--a Soap Opera Starring Berlusconi." These lines particularly hit home: "Italy remains a land where complex networks of connections and family ties can still, as in feudal times, count more than merit or position, whether in getting a job or a bank loan. In my experience, Italians have a highly sophisticated understanding of power dynamics, a keen sense of whom you have to say yes to, and with whom you can get away with saying no." We have been learning this the hard way, but we are lucky to have Italian friends who are generous enough to teach us how things work here.  Another entertaining source of wisdom on the subject is Beppe Severgnini's "Bella Figura." He says that Italy is neither hellish ("too much style" for that), nor heaven ("too unruly"). "Let's just say that Italy is an offbeat purgatory, full of proud, tormented souls ...

La dolce vita here is just what the doctor ordered. Our big news is that after an Italian-style long wait and many false promises, our pizza oven arrived. If it had come at any other time, the company that restored our house would have put it together and built the surrounding structure, but now we are bumping up against a holiday, when no self-respecting worker will do anything. Ditto for every saint's birthday, and believe me, there are plenty of them. So all fantasies of baking delicious stuff will remain unrealized for a while. Apparently once the thing is revved up, it takes about 2 minutes to cook a rustic pizza. The recent delivery plan was quintessentially Italian: first, we were told it would be all set up when we got here. (not so much!) Next, we get a message the day we arrive, saying, "it's coming this afternoon at 4. Please be home." (ha!) Then they called to say that they were on their way, but once they saw how bad the road was, they turned around and...

You've probably heard  the saying "where there's smoke, there's fire." Well, in our fireplace here--not so much. We were excited to inaugurate the fireplaces, had the local farmer bring over some nice wood, and were all fired up to do it when we realized we had no matches. I had one pathetic used Hanukah candle that I had brought over for birthdays, but even after many schleps to and from the gas stove with my little candle, praying for a Hanukah miracle, and many years as a girl scout, I see that I have no future as an arsonist. Bummer! We also realized we had no fireplace tools of any kind, either, so we should consider ourselves lucky not to have burned the house down. Maybe we will fare better tomorrow once we start playing with matches. It's true that, as J was happy to remind me, I am way too neurotic for candles, and tend to worry that matches will light themselves, sparking disaster everywhere. A propos of my paranoia, when I asked our architects if i...

Having recently sung Handel's "Messiah," when I looked out the kitchen window at our neighbor's sheep, I heard myself singing, "There were shepherds abiding in their fields, keeping watch over their flocks by night. Then suddenly...": bang, bang, bang, bang, bang ! Five shots rang out in our otherwise silent countryside. What could this mean ? That somebody would soon be having wild boar stew! Actually, 22 somebodies, according to Farmer G, who says that that was how many had been killed nearby in one day. Flash forward a few days:at dusk on Xmas Eve, we decide to take a little walk in the woods. But when I  see a car parked off the trail and hear shots and notice our wild-boar-ish-colored clothing, I think it may be time to head back to the ranch. After all, I want to make it to 63. Of course, as Goddess of the Hunt, I'm supposed to know what's up, but this is Italy, where rules are made to be broken. Just the same, I'm glad we got out of the...

       Remember that great line from "When Harry met Sally": "I'll have what she's having" ? Well, that's what J said when he saw the piece de resistence from the dinner in the  movie, "Big Night."  Every year, he and best friend B look for another memorable New Year's cooking project. N and I are urging them to immortalize, in some form, their culinary exploits. We even figured out a title: "Two Shrinks in the Kitchen." Well, alas, this year there were two shrinks in their RESPECTIVE kitchens, which is not quite the same, so it was up to N and J to put it all together, as U and I cheered them on. This one really was a winner! As usual, J likes to try complicated things that he can research and make his own. When I asked him about his sources, this is what he said: http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Timballo-230467 "This is the recipe I found on Epicurious on my iphone.  It's from an issue of Gourmet magazi...

Epiphany! Tomorrow is Epiphany Day here. That means that everyone is entitled to be home waiting to have one. Of course it goes without saying that you and I have them all the time, and don't use that as an excuse to do niente. But as my mother put it so UNpolitically correctly, this country is full of "those lazy I--talians," so what can you expect? To answer your question about whether we made it to any wild boar roasts, nobody invited us to any boar-related events. But then again, they didn't shoot us, either, so I am grateful. And unless I have any epiphanies tomorrow, I won't be eating Bambi's mamma, or any hares or bunnies or squid or little game birds or duck, with the exception of the occasional piece of foie gras. Spoken like a true hypocrite, no?

Carissimo B, I just read our horoscope in today's local paper, and for once, I could actually understand it, and it's good: "A very positive day for work--you showed the capacity to create more favorable circumstances to score points and obtain what you want. But don't let yourself be carried away by enthusiasm. Remain vigilant until you have reached your goal. Big successes in love!" Actually, when I tried to type that last sentence, at first I wrote "BUG successes in love." Maybe that was a Freudian slip? The good news is that there seem to be way fewer bugs in the house. Not sure if it's just the season, or if they've decided to take a powder because of the nutty woman who keeps ushering them out via her cup-transfer system (that is, when not squishing them outright with the Giornale dell'Umbria--the source of such insightful horoscopes as the preceding). The problem with randomly killing bugs is that they could be Kafka, or Charlotte...

 N sent me this message concerning the current state of affairs back at home in America: Hi D, I recall once seeing a postcard that said, "The weather is here.  Wish you were beautiful."  The first one of those sentences fairly well describes the situation: the (winter) weather is here.  We had a brief but intense thaw after the monster pre-Christmas storm, but now that last bit of warmth is history.  As a result, I pile on the coat, boots, gloves, hat, etc., and go forth with M muttering under my breath and dodging the ice patches on the sidewalks.  However, events here seem to be proceeding more or less as planned, including the regular appearances of my co-dog walker and the fact that N did indeed come to clean this morning.  So, assuming you manage to get home without getting shot or having any Nigerians on your plane attempt to detonate their underwear, everything should work out. To:  N  Subject: Keeping the home fires burning ...

Remember when you asked me what I was going to do with all those plums? I don't think I gave any details about the misadventure I alluded to in "reaching down INTO a ditch is better than getting stuck in one," so they are included here.     My neighbor in America, D, who is the very best cook and also a marketing genius had some ideas for me (see way below). She was SO right about me and the plum situation. On Saturday, we walked through the woods to a festa in B, a tiny village of 54 people, of whom I knew 2. This being such a small world, these same lovely people often pop up on my very limited traffic pattern.      One, I first encountered after stalling and falling into a ditch. I didn't know who the heck she was, but we met as I was walking home after having to abandon the car in the middle of what can only loosely be termed our "road" (and with the non-working phone with which I had intended to call Farmer G for help). Something made me say to ...

Trinny and Susannah , aka the "What Not to Dress" police have done it again. Last week they took on the entire uniform industry, trying to make women who have to wear them not feel anonymous, androgynous, and terrible. This week, they went after the British bum--a body part no one could bear to face. The two modeled nude for an art class to see their reactions to their own posteriors. Next they got 8 representative women to bare their bums and get them slathered with cold plaster by an artist dude who turned them into sculptures that they could contemplate. Then they did a clothes and attitude adjustment that resulted in Bum Pride for all. What a show! And it sounds EVEN funnier when translated into Italian. Aug 5, 2010

 In the 2.5 years that this former ruin has been inhabitable, we have been trying, with mixed success, to convince the local fauna that this is now OUR house. A pacifist at heart, I have on each floor a special bug transport system that consists of a plastic cup and a special designated art postcard that I slide under the "cupped" insect in question, whom I then usher out the door. The downstairs postcard, the first piece of mail I ever received here, is from a former student telling me about what a wonderful time he was having studying French in Paris. The upstairs card is a night scene of a couple in evening dress dancing alongside the Leaning Tower of Pisa. To have someone as thorough and wise as V to clean our house every few weeks is a great privilege, but unlike me, she is NOT a hoarder. Therefore, if I want to keep something whose utility is not readily apparent, I must hide it from her. My bug transport system falls into that category. The problem is that when I...

It's been quite a day. I had illusions of possibly making it to tap class, if everything was packed and ready to go, but what was I thinking? Who knew that I'd be depooping my shoes, instead of obsessing in my usual, crazy, pre-travel manner? The other day when I was taking M to the vet for his annual check-up, the instruction was to BRING a stool sample, NOT step in one! And definitely not to track it into the house shortly before the headmistress of the Rome school to which J consults was about to sleep over. I was too busy to deal with the shoes then, so it got left until today. I thought I had a good de-pooping strategy, but it kind of backfired, so I decided to ask an expert--the Internet. No pearls there, but at least some good laughs, which I really needed. If you ever need a laugh, google "how to get dog poop off your shoes." Unfortunately I also needed to google "how to dry patent leather shoes after they got soaked during the de-pooping process,"...

 “For, lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone; the flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land.”    Well, I'm not so sure about the voice of the turtle part, but at least I haven't heard any gun shots from wild boar hunters, lately. I'm thinking that the wild boar survivors are busy making the next generation of future boar sausages. My hope has been to catch la primavera here during Spring Break, and then get one in  the States on our return. So far, so good!  On a gray day before all the flowers are in bloom, it is easier to appreciate the simple lines of the house. At the left are the new kitchen and pergola, upstairs loggia, and my bathroom, which were made in the space formerly occupied by an old pizza oven and animal quarters. The far right is the oldest part of the house, where the animal troughs have been transformed into a guest room. If you look closely, you ca...