Category Archives: everyday life in Umbria

Freccia Tricolore

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The title of this post is the name of Italy’s famous flying team. It means the tri-colored arrows — tri-colored for the colors of the Italian flag. It is recognized as one of the best aerobatic air patrols internationally. They fly Aermacchi MB-339 single-engine, two-seat advanced training and light tactical support jets. There are ten jets, nine fly in formation and there is a single outlier. We were thrilled here in Umbria to be paid a visit by this famous team. They headquartered at the Assisi airport for the week, flying practice runs over the countryside and doing two air shows, one in Perugia and the other in Foligno.

I should also mention, in the time since we moved here the Perugia/Assisi airport has really grown. There used to be only 3 or 4 flights a week but now we can fly from there all over Europe. And it is so easy to use. Twenty minutes south of us with easy parking and only 2 gates. It makes air travel fun again!
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Last week Paolo, our cabinetmaker, finally finished the work. His last thing was a built in cabinet with shelves into an odd triangular shaped space in the main hallway. When we moved in it was empty with no molding so I assume something was built in and removed by the seller. There was also an ugly spot on the wall that had been hidden. Our painter, Luca, fixed this when he painted but the space cried out for something to fill it.

Here is the finished cabinet. I think it looks nice. I will find something else to put on the empty shelf. And we will use the cabinet below to store the bags of pellets in the wintertime. Good place to hide them.

Lunch today was a panino. We had gotten a sample of flooring for our new kitchen and had to return it today. On the way home we picked up some nice prosciutto, both cotto (cooked) and crudo (cured). Prosciutto is just the word for ham here. I also bought a delicious ciabatta bread. Did you know that meant slippers? It is for its shape. The bread is chewy and really tasty unlike much Umbrian bread.

Very nice. Ciao !

Spaghetti alla Siciliana

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I was, for some reason, craving this particular pasta from Sicily. A super simple dish which comes together very quickly. All you do is take about 6-8 anchovies in oil and put them in a pan with a couple tablespoons of olive oil and cook mashing them until they melt into the oil. Add a handful of pine nuts and cook a bit, then a chopped garlic clove and a handful of soaked and drained raisins or sultanas and a few stalks of minced parsley. I also put in some hot pepper flakes (natch😉). Cook the spaghetti and drain, saving some water, and toss into the sauce with some water as needed to make a creamy sauce. Serve with grated cheese if desired. Super fast, super easy, and super yum.

It pushed my pasta craving buttons perfectly. Tonight, southern fried chicken and potato salad! I’m nothing if not eclectic. 😄

Tomorrow we lunch with friends at Calagrana. We had a lot of big storms yesterday afternoon into the night. The world nearby is washed clean after weeks of drought and it is beautiful now. Clear with brilliant blue skies and puffy clouds. It is very cool with highs about 22C today and downright chilly in the night. Loving a break. The heat will return.

Here’s a picture over by Assisi up on Monte Subasio. My friend Doug Hunt took it. It is the road to his house. The colors are amazing and the world so clean after the rain. Enjoy! 💕 Umbria is so beautiful!

How can it be so hard?

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You’d think, living in Italy, it would be super easy to get a pizza to go, wouldn’t you? Well, you’d be wrong. Tonight we were excited to order pizza to bring home from our favorite pizza place, Degusto. They have delicious pizza with puffy chewy crusts. We had perused their on-line menu and chosen our delicious pizzas. We called and they said they weren’t doing any take out tonight. 🙄 Ok then. We tried the next one we like, Pizzeria Planet. We called at 7:15. The earliest we could get a pizza was 9pm. Ok then. So we reluctantly gave up. It IS Friday night. And it IS almost August, high summer, high vacation time. I think next time we will try it in a Tuesday. This is the one I chose. 😢

Saturday, and as in all Saturdays I went to the market. The weather is being perfect since we got out of our heat spell. Temperatures in the high eighties and it goes down to 60s at night. No need for AC to sleep. I took it easy today. Stopped by to see my favorite grocer, Angelo, and then for a cappuccino at Bar Mary to say hi to my favorite barista, Irene. I got my favorite cappuccino senza schiuma. It’s coffee without a ton of frothed milk like a normal cappuccino. I sat outside and watched the world go by.

Here’s a recent sunset from the terrazzo. Quite pretty! Buon fino settimana a tutti!

Pranzo with our Italian Famiglia

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The story of our Italian family is a long one. In a nutshell, it started as soon as we moved into our last apartment. The place was full of the dust of construction and everything needed cleaning. My friend Susan introduced me to Vera, who cleaned her house. A super interesting and intelligent woman from Bosnia originally and then Slovenia. To avoid an arranged marriage (Islamic parents) she fled to Italy and became a nanny. She met her future husband, married and had two beautiful girls. And she began her own business.

Vera cleaned for us and we engaged her to chat with us in Italian after cleaning. Time passing and we became good friends. Eventually we were adopted by Vera and family and we adopted them. We all love good food and relish the different cuisines. Not normal for Italians. So that’s the back-story.

Sunday Lunch was the first in months. I hadn’t seen Vera since February. Now that we have a table and furniture we asked them for Pranzo. I decided an American lunch was the best thing given the heat. The menu was chips and salsa to start, sweet and spicy. Pulled pork sandwiches with hot sauces and coleslaw, grilled hot dogs with the fixins. Potato salad. And for dessert, peach tiramisù.

It was so nice to see everyone again. I had missed them so much. It was a lot of fun. Here are some pictures. Graziano is very tall and has made some tall girls! And beautiful redheads.

Buon appetito!

Weekend

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My new, favorite Italian word is….telecomando. Somehow it makes me feel like the captain of a Starship. What power I have here in my hand! I won’t keep you waiting, it is the word for remote control. I guess I’d heard it before, but now I’ve got fans with telecomandi — I assume that’s the plural(?) — so I’m feeling mighty powerful 😁

It’s still hot but it will be slightly less for the weekend. Then it goes back up to 39. But happily, after that it is a more livable 32ish. My salad last night was a burrata tomato salad. Burrata is a cheese made from the byproducts from making mozzarella. To me it is richer than mozzarella. I served it with cold cannelloni beans.

My next salad project will be a Panzanella, probably for tomorrows dinner. It is a classic Tuscan salad which uses up stale bread. Frugal, those Tuscans. It is only good when the tomatoes are at their tip-top in high summer since they are the star ⭐️ in the dish.

I have invited our old friend Vera and her family for domenica Pranzo. We havn’t seen her since maybe February? Vera and I love to cook. I showed her how to make American style ribs and how to cook a whole turkey. I have made Mexican and Indian for them as well. The whole family are very adventurous eaters. This is not the norm for Umbrian Italians. Due to a lack of a convenient upstairs kitchen I’m doing an American style BBQ. We will start with Salsa and chips, one spicy, one mild. I can make pulled pork in the slow cooker ahead of time, which won’t heat up the house. I’ll grill hot dogs. I made homemade BBQ sauce (hard to find here), and then we will have some salads, coleslaw and potato, and finally, a new-to-me fresh peach tiramisù. I’ll try to take pictures. I hope it isn’t terribly hot upstairs. 🤞

Buon fine settimana a tutti.

Salad saga

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Since it is too hot to cook much, we have been eating pretty much all salads, all the time. Last night it was an Insalata all Greco — Greek salad. Can’t go wrong with that. Night before last it was a salad of hard boiled egg, tuna, tomatoes, cucumbers and cannelloni beans drizzled with olive oil. Tonight it’s cold pasta with sautéed garlic shrimp, green pepper, new red onions, pickled zucchini and celery. I topped it with a little homemade ranch dressing with plenty of fresh herbs.

Tomorrow is market day. It is also the peak of the heat spell. So I plan to get up and get to the market bright and early before it gets too hot. Stai fresco!

We’re havin’ a heat wave 🎶

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Yup. Italy is one of the countries in Europe that’s getting slammed the next week or so. I was feeling especially sorry for the tourists in Rome and Florence. Man is it HOT! 🥵 They predict 40s starting Monday. 42C Wednesday — that’s 108F. Compound it with crowds of sweaty people and waiting in-line (no shade) to get into the sights it will be miserable.

It is natural for people to want to see the “Big Three” major sights (Rome, Florence and Venice) especially on their first trip to Italy, but I strongly advise against it in any hot and high season. Especially this year with an over abundance of tourists after Covid. So what if you’ve got to wear a jacket? It’s so much better than what is going on here now. I was talking to my Italian teacher yesterday and she got rather worked up about it all. She is adamant that Italy needs the tourist dollars, and it does, but why can it not be spread out into regions with less crowds and just as amazing things to see? Not to mention you’ll see the REAL Italy. These mega tourist destinations will be a very sad initiation to Italy. There are so many undiscovered places. Tuscany is always overrun. But Umbria, Le Marche, Abruzzo are all wonderfully uncrowded and all in the center, equally easy to reach. Go to the “Big Three” in winter, late fall, or early spring, and in summer the countryside and small towns.
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In our new apartment we are getting used to managing the temperatures. I open the windows at night when it is this hot at 10pm-ish. And leave them open all night. I’ve got fans in every room pulling the cooler night air in. I watch the morning temperature closely and shut all the windows and shutters when it hits 80 outside. It stays fairly cool inside. It doesn’t get above 80 when the temperatures outside are mid nineties. The fans help a lot. At night we decided to move upstairs to the sofa bed. There are two AC units up there but that’s a big room with no doors and open stairwell to the downstairs so it doesn’t get terribly cool. But better than downstairs. Also, a bonus, it’s very quiet in that area.

Today I got out early (for me) to the market. I bought a bounty of veggies. Tomatoes, peppers, lettuce, arugula, cucumbers, potatoes, squash.

Believe it or not, between us we eat about 30 tomatoes a week.

Another thing I have to do is figure out how to make meals in this heat. Italian kitchens are usually tucked away from the main living areas. That’s good and bad. Our kitchen has a door to shut it completely off. Until today I thought that was stupid. I also have a very big hood that really pulls the heat out. So shutting the door, opening the windows and using the hood keeps it mostly cool and isolates the heat in that room. I still try to cook early, while it is cool, for dinner that night.

Today, when I came back, I roasted three tomatoes with garlic and I pressure cooked cannellini beans. Our dinner will be pasta, tossed with this sauce, beans, basil, pecorino cheese and bread crumbs. Served room temperature.

I also made pesto. I have four plants and they are all doing very well. I keep it producing by snipping the branches just before they bloom. I go down to the two itty bitty leaves below the big leaves. This allows those small leaves to grow and it doesn’t get rangy and ugly.

Remember my puny tomato plants. They are heirloom American tomatoes. A gift from my friend Joanne. Just look at them now! They look a bit messy. The basil is beside the olive tree. There are three tomatoes and a jalapeño plant. The tomatoes try to encroach on the pepper so I keep them tied up. I figure the tomatoes will ripen when we are on our cruise in August/September. My luck! My house-sitters will benefit.

I have a post half written about our upstairs kitchen reno. That is upcoming. Keep cool y’all! And Buon fine settimana! A la prossima!

It’s July alright.

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The heat has finally hit. It could, and probably will, get hotter but this is hot enough for me! In July Umbertide is really jumping. Jumping as much as it ever will. All the people with holiday homes in the hills around here are back. And all the people who rent rooms, villas and apartments are here too. The bars, markets and restaurants are full. Supermarket parking lots have a plethora of license plates from all over Europe. On certain days it’s like grand central station when the weekly rentals change over and everyone new is buying groceries.

It’s really no wonder that so many people come. Although Umbria is not famous like our next door neighbor, Tuscany, it is just as beautiful. It is quieter with less tourists, an oasis of Italian food, wine and beauty. This picture was taken on a farm just outside the Umbertide city walls. The girasole, sunflowers, are a big crop here for their oil, but also a big part of our July landscape. 🌻

Posted on the Umbertide Facebook page. Photo by Pietro Migliorati.

Here are a few terrazzo pictures. First one is of our fish, Qua and Quo, who are increasingly more friendly because they know where the food comes from. The rest are garden pictures and the new rug. Captions below the pics. As always click for larger versions

Qua and Quo – at breakfast
Margarita. Italian for daisy.
Lavender
Dwarf Japanese maple
Tomatoes! Can’t wait!
Baby jalapeño
I swear the olive is twice it’s original size!
New rug and pillows. Finito!

I sat outside all day yesterday. There was a lovely breeze. I just need to get Pino, the electrician, back for some outlets and lighting outside. Oh and to fix the lights that don’t work.
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All y’all stay cool!

R.I.P. Qui

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Sadly I must report the loss of our fish, Qui. I found her/him floating in the “pond” this morning. He was fine yesterday. The cause of death is not known. Sad to loose him/her. We are trying to decide whether to get another. Qua and Quo are doing fine.
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We had friends over for dinner last night. We are still working our way into entertaining upstairs here with no kitchen. I decided three salads would be nice since it was hot outside. I did all the hot cooking, rice, toasting pine nuts and coconut etc early in the day. Then later I assembled what could be done ahead of time. The last minute stuff was just before our guests arrived and I took all the salads up on my cart on the elevator to the 3rd floor. It all worked out perfect. Our guests have sold their home here and are leaving for a new life in Florence. The are ever thoughtful and brought a beautiful, shade loving plant for us. We will miss them 😢

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Tonight we had a nice mozzarella di bufala with the amazing new tomatoes.

Ciao for now!

L’Arte del Caffè

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By day it is a lovely bar just across the street. Quiet. Outside tables. Nice bariste. Since we live here now it’s nice to go there for a caffè or an aperitivo. Now that it is summer we are learning it has another side entirely. Like Doctor Jeckle and Mister Hyde. By night, it is party central. But thankfully, so far, not often. You might want to turn your sound down a tad. 😉

Blessedly it will end around midnight.
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An addendum to my last post about the infiorata. Thanks to my friend Doug, who accompanied us, I have an update from my last post from Spello. He tells me that La Schelta (The Choice) my favorite, came in second. The crucifixion one with the extreme perspective came in first. To answer my own question, they use over 1.5 million flowers in the creations. Not sure if that includes artichokes, bay leaves etc.

Buon weekend a tutti!