Category Archives: everyday life in Umbria

Big soup

Today was the small local market. The only vegetables I can get there are the winter growing ones. Things like cabbage, kale, leeks, radicchio, some lettuces, Brussels sprouts. Also an odd thing called Gobbi. Also known as cardoni and cardi in Italian. And cardoons in English. So far I have not bought any but, since it’s seasonal and kind of special I will the next time I see it. I have found a recipe and how to trim it.

I did buy some very pretty cabbage and radicchio for my planned minestrone soup. Here is a picture.

Did you know minestra means soup and if you add -one to an Italian noun it means it’s a big one? Thus minestrone is “big soup”. I made a pot today. I had bones I saved from a chicken so I made a nice stock. Into that I put onion, celery and carrot, the traditional oduri in Italy. Then a can of tomatoes, a potato, a zucchini, pinch of pepperoncino flakes, chopped radicchio and cabbage and simmered for about an hour. I added a can of cannolini beans and some little pasta. Then I cooked it a bit more until the pasta was done. Served with a drizzle of good Umbrian olive oil. Yum! So healthy and warming.

To remind myself that spring is not TOO far away I bought a bouquet of yellow tulips to cheer my kitchen!

Buona domenica!

Leave a reply

“Buona domenica.” It’s what you say here instead of “have a nice weekend”. The reason for this is because, generally speaking, stores are open Saturday, businesses and schools too. So people don’t get the whole weekend off, hence “buona domenica!”

Oh sure, some of the big box stores are open on Sunday just like in the US. But the smaller places like banks, businesses, family owned places close on Sunday. It is a day for families to get together for a big lunch. Either at home or in a restaurant.

Speaking of restaurants, since they are usually open on Sunday for the big Pranzo, they choose another day of the week to be closed. Monday is a popular closed day but it could be any day of the week. They do this throughout Europe. In Germany it is called ruhetag or day of rest. There is no equivalent word in Italian. It usually catches Americans by surprise so be sure to check that your restaurant of choice is open the day you want to go!

Househunters International comes to Umbertide!

Leave a reply

Just before Christmas Househunters International came to town to film Joseph and Paul, our neighbors across the Piazza. Luther and I had applied also but they rightly picked them. They are tremendous Umbertide boosters and were very proactive in showing the town in the best possible light.

I found the whole process very interesting to watch. They spent 5 days filming around 10 hours a day. They did a lot of B-roll filming of them walking along our little river path, through the pretty arches and visiting the Saturday Kilo-0 market. Then they filmed in their art gallery, Gallery Grefti, and in the local Jazz club. They, of course, saw three houses, one of which was theirs. The show producers wanted to have a moving company come and empty all of their belongings and furniture from their present apartment and put it all back! But Joseph and Paul objected. They had an alternative which was to see the apartment beneath them which has been vacant for years and was similar to theirs. I enjoyed watching them film and even got filmed with Joseph in the Gallery.

If we hear from the HHI people telling us of the air date for the show I will be sure to post that here on the blog. We cannot see the show here so I hope they will send DVDs.

Then, at the Kilo-0 market we again saw cameras. “what the??” we said. Well they were filming a TV show shoot in one of the stands. Cameras, lights, sound equipment, police! My my, Umbertide is getting a LOT of press lately! 🙂 turns out it was a show that takes place in Gubbio normally.

2016 begins

Leave a reply

I have been busy what with the trip back to the US and other holiday type things. I felt the need to do a little catching up.

Our trip back home was nice. It was great to see my Sister and spend the holidays, not to mention two significant birthdays (hers and mine) together. We stayed with her on top of her mountain in the Blue Ridge of Virginia. It is beautiful there. We had warm weather and lots of fog. More likely cloud as in we were up in them at 3,700 feet. She fixed many of my favorite things to eat to include a gorgeous standing rib roast and chili as well as several southwestern and Mexican things. These were all things I had missed in Italy so it was great. I was sad to leave after six days.

We had gone to the US with two ginormous suitcases. One was mostly packed with Umbrian specialties like olive oil, lentils, faro etc to give away as gifts to friends. Then we did some shopping for things we cannot get (or are hard to find) in Italy to fill up the, now empty, suitcase. Mostly things like heavy duty aluminum foil (they have very flimsy foil here), ziplock bags, medicines and spices. Carolina rice is a special rice we like so we stocked up on that and pozole for southwest recipes. We also got some things for friends. And I bought some new clothes. A lot of it I had ordered online in advance and had them sent to my sister.

During the trip we had time to catch up with many friends and family. We got to see all my nieces and nephew at a lovely Christmas dinner in Old Town. I also got to meet Alex, Niece Rachel’s boyfriend, and congratulate my nephew on his recent engagement. Lovely family. Thanks to Mike and Anne (Luther’s brother and his wife) for a lovely dinner!

Another thing on my list to do was visit a couple of ethnic restaurants in hopes of getting that spice I craved. Alas, I was disappointed in both of them. Maybe my tastes are evolving? nah…

We had a beautiful view of the Alps on the way from Germany to Rome. Much more snow on the way back than on the way over to the US.

We’ve been back for six days now and our jet lag is mostly over. The logistics of the trip worked fine. The air tickets were half the cost of tickets coming from and returning-to the US. I have NO idea why this would be but it was good for us. The car park in Fiumicino turned out to be great. Very efficient and quite cheap; only 38 Euro for 13 days and included the shuttle to and from the airport. A very easy and convenient way to use the Rome airport.

Our weather has settled into the typical cold and damp winter. The final days of the Christmas season were this week with Befana, the witch, visiting the children to bring candy or lumps of coal. We celebrated with a lovely lunch at Calagrana. There were about 14 people there.

And finally, last night I decided to try cooking on our kitchen fireplace. I am slowly getting the hang of using this fireplace. It takes a while for it to warm up enough to draw well so I keep the glass doors closed for the first couple of hours. Then I slowly can open them and use the fire to cook on. Last night it was Spigola or Sea Bass. Easy to do and it came out crispy and fluffy white inside. Future plans will be grilled vegetables, steak, lamb, other fishes and bruschetta. Maybe even flat breads. I am on the lookout for an iron pot.

Here is the fish-a-cookin’.

Buon Anno to all! I hope it is a Happy and Healthy 2016!

End of Autumn, beginning of winter, fireplace, l’Imacolatta and Christmas!

Leave a reply

I am very late with this post. It has been pretty busy here. First a final farewell to Autumn color.

And a hello to winter. It has gotten cold here. Real wintery. Snow on the distant mountains.

Our town Christmas tree looks nice. Smaller but there are more lights.

Along with the tree and the lights, Baba Natale came to our town to visit the kids. A wonderfully chunky horse pulled the kids in a cart. Isn’t he magnificent?

We went for a short break to Chianti last week. Two nights. Pretty there with lots of fall color still. We stayed in Locanda il Gallo in a little town called Chiocchio. Fun to say – chee-ooch-che-ee-oh. It was comfortable and we ate there both nights. Quite good food. We also visited about 5 wineries. I enjoyed the pretty Tuscan scenery. This picture from one of the wineries.

We got our new fireplace doors in the kitchen. Yesterday we built a test fire and it burned pretty well and the chimney drew. We have arranged to buy wood from a friend of ours whose husband who will actually bring it up here to our house. Nice! Also more pellets for the stove and Luther won’t have to tote them up the stairs.

First/test fire.

Other mundane things. We did a shopping trip to the big IperCoop for supplies and gifts. It was surprisingly empty considering the proximity to Christmas. Never in America!

We went to a new installation at Galleria Grefti. Our friend Joseph has teamed up with Francesco and opened a small art gallery down the street. Interest is great with lots of potential artists showing their works. This new one is sculpture made with wire and chickenwire. There was even a nearly full-sized rhino. The gallery is a nice addition to Umbertide

Our downstairs neighbor was so proud that he scored all the “seconds” from the market for free and somehow with the language difficulties I ended up with a crate of apples. Not sure how I can use them up! I made two cakes yesterday and took him one of them.

We went for pizza at Calcio e Pepe our new favorite place here in town. They are just so welcoming and Italian! They have great pizza too! They are from Napoli. There were families with many kids there so it was boisterous and happy and, did I mention, Italian?! The proprietors know us and we get many double kisses.

December 8 is l’Imacolatta or Day of the Immaculate Conception. We looked it up and discovered we were wrong about what it meant. Turns out it is the day that Mary was conceived to her mother. I had thought it was Jesus’ conception but was confused as it is only two weeks before his birthday. This picture shows the procession of people who walk through the streets following the priests. The band plays music. I leaned out my window to get this. Sorry it’s blurry.

And finally, I will be spending the holidays with my sister in Virginia. I am pretty excited about going back to the US after a year and a half. Doing a bit of shopping. Eating exotic things!! Reservations at Raisika (spicy Indian fare) YUM! I am not religious but I still like to wish folks Merry Christmas! Please accept it in the spirit it was offered. Merry Christmas to you all!

Thanksgiving number two in Italia

Leave a reply

Happy Thanksgiving a tutti! Susan and Gary again hosted a bunch of folks for the Thanksgiving feast. You can take a look at last years feast in the Archives. We again had Calagrana Agriturismo make our turkey and all the antipasti. The turkey wasn’t as big as last year. “Only” 28 pounds. Beautifully cooked. I brought the mashed potatoes and cranberry sauce. Joseph and Paul brought two pies, Susan made a pie and Jim and Denise brought a tart. The attendees were eight Americans and six Italians. Some of the Italians came last year. One named Fabio, brought his parents this time. A fine time was had by all. We were, as stuffed as the turkey. Fabio lamented that there was only ONE Thanksgiving a year! He is a real fan.

Susan’s table. Photo by Susan.

Pictures from Calagrana of the bird in progress. Photos by Ely.

Antipasti. Photo by Fabio.

Fabio’s mom with the finished product. Photo by Fabio.

On actual Thanksgiving we went shopping in Colestrada at the Ipercoop. It was pretty quiet. We noticed signs everywhere advertising Black Friday. Thank you America! It is kind of odd because they don’t have the Thanksgiving holiday to make the Friday date significant like we do. All the European Amazons had huge sales too.

On Friday we got our town Christmas tree. It is much smaller this year. There was speculation among the Americans that it was small because the town had bought a bunch of lights to string above the piazza, spending their tree budget perhaps? It is a pretty tree though. Not sure when they will decorate and light it.

Feels like winter now!

Leave a reply

During the night we had strong winds and rain. It was a cold front which finally chased our beautiful weather away. Oh well, had to happen sometime. BUT I was surprised to notice to our northwest … was that snow on top of the mountains?! The mountains are a little taller than our nearby ones up there so I guess it was just high enough that the rain fell as snow.

This is Thanksgiving week back home and we are again invited to the feast at Susan and Gary’s house. We decided to move it to Saturday for the convenience of the Italians who are invited. So far it is: Susan and Gary, me and Luther, Denise and Jim (visitors from the US), Simona and Simone, Fabio and Fabio’s parents from Milano. Simona, Simone and Fabio were there last year and enjoyed it. Fabio’s parents don’t speak English so Susan is seating Luther next to them so they can talk. I am making the cranberry sauce again. Denise and Jim brought the fruit with them. Yay! Ely is again cooking our turkey. Should be a nice celebration and I am looking forward to it. Missing my sister though. It is such a family holiday to me. But I’ll be seeing her soon so that takes some of the sting out.

The Umbertidese are gearing up for Natale or Christmas season. They have strung small lights across the piazza and up and down the little streets. I looked at my blog from last year and see they brought the tree November 22nd so we should be seeing that soon.

Tasting the oil

Leave a reply

On Saturday we drove over to Calagrana where Ely is being held hostage by her son who has broken out in Chicken Pox! She put some of the Olio Nuovo into two small tins for us to try.

First I toasted the bread on the stovetop (wish I had had a fire to toast it over!) until it was nice and charred.

Next I drizzled the pretty green oil over it.

My report. It was delizioso!! Peppery and acidic. Nothing like I have ever had in the U.S. Ely tells me it is best used for drizzling on bruschetta, soups, meats, or salads rather than using it for cooking.

We are enjoying a really, really beautiful November here. The temperatures are near 70F every day with bright blue skies. We are so lucky! It has been nothing like the last two years which, the locals say, were very uncommon.

Here is the river with the changing trees.

Finishing the picking and our visit to the oil mill

Leave a reply

What a day! We started out early to Calagrana to begin picking at 9AM. Ely had an appointment at the mill for between 2:00 and 2:30. There were seven trees left to pick. The crew was: us, Ely, Ely’s friend Catarina, one other woman and the gardener. We picked non-stop until around 1:00 when we were pretty well finished. We left Ely to load up two vans with the boxes of olives and we were to meet her and follow them down to the oil mill in Pierantonio, the next town down from Umbertide.

The mill was a busy place! It being all new to me I was fascinated. Ely and Catarina drove the vans onto the scale. They weighed them and then we unloaded the olives. Then they moved the vans back onto the scale to be weighed empty. Turns out we picked 700 kilos of olives! Next they load the olives into a giant vat and the olives are sucked down from the bottom where they climb a sort of ladder and blowers blast the leaves and stems away. Next they go into the washer and up a ramp and into the hoppers. There were essentially five hoppers so they could process five people’s olives at once, each in turn being finished into oil. In the hopper there were big, round blades that blended the olive paste for 45 minutes. While this was going on as each other hopper was ready they turned a handle and the paste drained out, under the floor, and was separated into the glop, the oil and the water. The oil then trickles out, through a filter and then into the containers.

It was fun watching the other people as they waited for their oil. Everyone was happy and smiling at everyone else. The olive harvest is a happy time! The work is done. The trees have done their work as have the harvesters. Happy customers carried heavy containers of oil to their vehicles. There was an amusing group of 5 “boys” (all looked to be in their 60s or 70s). They had a shared grove and they worked together to harvest it. Then they had to divide it up. It was amusing to see them watching that scale like hawks to be sure no one got more than anyone else!

The final numbers for Ely’s harvest were…700 kilos of olives, pressed into 88 liters of oil or about 12%. So 12% of the olives were oil and the rest – skins, pits and water. Ely was happy but not ecstatic. It was a good-ish year.

Here is the off-loading of the fruit from the vans into the big vat.

The vat filled up with “our” olives.

The ladder where the leaves are blown off.

The washed, de-leafed and de-stemmed olives.

The hopper full of our olive paste. This was after about 45 minutes. You can see the pooled up oil on the right of the container.

Anticipation!

Here it comes!

Liquid gold. So fine!

Finally, after Ely got home she drained a little into a glass jar for me. I will pick that up tomorrow and we will have some bruschetta. I’ll report on that next.

Helping with the harvest!

Leave a reply

I was so excited to find out our friend who owns Calagrana was harvesting her olives and needed help. I had a couple of reservations as to whether I could hold up to the physical effort (not as young as I used to be!) but thought the opportunity was too good to pass up.

We didn’t leave Umbertide until around 11AM so they had been working a couple of hours. The olive grove is way up on top of the mountain spread out around a lovely casale (big farm house) owned by Ely’s English friend. Ely and Alberto tend to the trees and manage the harvest and production and share some of the oil with her. A win-win situation. She had a neighbor helping her plus a couple of other pickers and the gardeners of the grounds. Her neighbor had brought what Ely called a basher. It had long tines which vibrated in different directions. You lifted it up into the tree to get at the high branches and it shook the olives down.

We helped spread the big, green nets to catch the olives and put up stakes to hold up the down-hill side so the olives wouldn’t roll off. We hand harvested the lower branches. There was a mixture of black, fully ripe ones and green ones. The mixture makes the oil more flavorful. We worked until about 1:30 and had to leave because my Italian class was at 2:30. Also we discovered that you must dress in layers as the morning is very cold and by noon it is hot in the sun while working (we were baking). Dress like an onion, Ely said. We told Ely we’d come back tomorrow (properly dressed this time) to help finish up and accompany the fruit to the mill for the crush. Here are some pictures:

Luther managing the nets.