Category Archives: everyday life in Umbria

Outing to Florence

Yesterday morning I woke early to the sound of construction. Not so unusual around here. They had backed a truck down Via Grilli to take out debris from a house being renovated. Sounds pretty ho hum but look at how tight the space was!

DSC03863

We had planned a day trip or gite fuori la porta in Italian which means a short trip outside the gates, to Florence to visit our friends Ron and Linda. We met them around 5 years ago before they moved from Virginia to Florence. They are very happy there and we planned to meet them for lunch. We had not yet used the train to go so we drove to Terontola to the train station and took the 9:30AM train which arrived at just before 11AM. Nice trip. We met Ron and Linda and had a bottle of Prosecco in a lovely piazza at an outside table in a glass enclosed area. The weather was spectacular, in the mid 60s F and bright sun. Here is the Duomo under renovation in anticipation of a papal visit later this year.

DSC03866

I had asked Linda to take us somewhere where I could buy ingredients (foreign) that I can’t get in Umbria. I have forgotten the store name but will get it from her. I got lots of things I couldn’t have gotten to include Thai and mexican things. Here is a picture of my haul.

DSC03871

We had lunch at one of their favorites Trattoria Porcospino (porcupine). We could sit outside. The proprietor knows Ron and Linda and is a big USA booster but a little strange in an OK kind of way. The food was good and so was the company.

We walked to Ron and Linda’s apartment. On the way at an outside vendor along the leather market I spotted a nice leather tote bag. I had been wanting to get one and lamented that I had not sent any over with our stuff. This was much more fun. I bargained and am happy with my purchase. It is periwinkle blue and reversible so it can be a pale beige. Nice soft leather and it included a blue purse. Here it is!

DSC03870

When we went to our Italian lesson this morning my teacher remarked it was a color for spring. So OK with me. Bring it on! Our lesson was good (I guess). It is sometimes frustrating but I am trying. We have moved from 9AM to 10-12AM on Thursdays. Much more civilized hour and when we are done we can lunch. We went just over the Tuscan border to La Pieve Vecchia in Monterchi. Pretty old building with a lunch menu for 12 Euro to include 4 courses. And they were really good! We decided to become regulars and go after all of our classes…for the next 20 weeks!

Calagrana has reopened!

Leave a reply

Today is Sunday, clear and cold with pretty blue skies. Susan and Gary told us that Calagrana, one of our favorite restaurants has reopened after being closed for much of the winter. Alberto, the chef and co-owner with his wife Ely, had taken a catering gig in Wales to make some extra money since winter is so slow here. He’s back and cooking! So today we went for lunch.

There was one table there when we arrived and one table set for fourteen! We were urged to order before they showed up, which we did. Alberto out-did himself. One of the menu choices was little plates for antipasti. There were probably ten different things. Each coast 4.50 Euro. We each ordered two or three. Then most of us ordered the roast chicken. Here are pictures to make your mouth water.

Susan ordered polenta with roasted tomatoes and little cakes made from chickpeas with a dipping sauce.DSC03841

I had little roasted onions filled with onion and gorgonzola and goat cheese with sprouts on roasted beets. DSC03842

Luther had baked cod cakes, vitello tonato, and something he can’t remember but liked.DSC03843

Our roasted chickens.DSC03844

DSC03845

While we were eating another guest informed us that we had a puncture in our tyre. That’s British for a flat. Something to look forward to. Here are the valentines day cupcakes Ely made. So pretty!
DSC03846

We walked out and I snapped a picture of the stone guest house and views. This is an Agriturismo as well as a spectacular restaurant. It is a working farm as well. It has beautiful rooms and in summer is a dream! Go to their website to see more Calagrana. Susan and I agreed that the Niccone valley, where Calagrana is, is the prettiest valley in Italy. Even in the dead of winter.

DSC03848

DSC03849

DSC03852

Now for the fun bit. Fixing the flat. New car to Gary. It, like most cars has no spare. It had the little kit that you squirt something in and then plug a pump into the cigarette lighter and pump it up. It worked well and wasn’t too hard. Fortunately we were in a beautiful place, in the warm sun, and not on a busy highway.

DSC03850

DSC03853

When we got back home the Piazza was filled with little kids in costumes throwing confetti at each other. From upstairs I watched some of the events and plays for the kids I guess. Another puzzling Italian thing.

DSC03859

DSC03862

Italian lessons

Today we started our Italian lessons together with Susan and Gary. Lingua Piu is the name of the school. It is in Citta di Castello which is not too far from here with relatively easy traffic and easy parking as it is in the top of a strip of stores.

Prior to this Susan and Gary went to a language school in Perugia. Perugia is not user friendly. It is big and congested and there is no parking. The classes were dead center of the hilltop town. In order to go they had to drive circuitously around the city, park in an outlying lot. Take the MiniMetro to the center and walk to the class. Then reverse. All together it took most of the day. We were trying to avoid that hence the school in Citta di Castello.

Gary and I are sort of at the same level and Susan and Luther are about the same as well. So we decided to pair up. They give Gary and I an hour class first and then Susan and Luther for an hour. I have mixed reactions to the lesson. It was essentially conversation. I guess that is OK but I was hoping for some more structure. I would benefit from some grammar book-type work so I learn the “Why” of it all and learn the proper grammar. Otherwise I have no idea why something is said the way it is said. I think the theory is that if you say it enough then you know what is right. Doesn’t really work for me. But I will give it a try. I am sure it can’t hurt.

Otherwise not a lot happening. It is gray and dreary with temperatures at night around freezing rising up to the 40s during the day. Tomorrow and Wednesday are supposed to be a little warmer with highs around 55 or so. I am getting quite used to Centigrade for weather temps. Something I never did when we lived in Germany.

We also made reservations for our first trip! It has been over 15 years since we visited England and there is a daily flight on RyanAir every day from Perugia to just north of London. We made air reservations and then I made reservations with the National Trust to rent a cottage on an estate in East Anglia for 5 nights. It is on the east coast and we have never been there. We will go in March. Paul, our friend across the Piazza is taking care of our boys. He is a retired veterinarian and I am sure he will take good care of them.

Bay leaves

One ingredient I’ve never found here is bay leaves. They just don’t have them in the store. Well I found out why. Everyone has a laurel tree and they just pick the leaves off!! I don’t have a tree but a friend brought a branch to me. Who’d have thought it!

DSC03835

Yesterday we had a big cold front come through. In the morning it was almost 60F but by afternoon it had dropped to near freezing. In the process we had a big hail storm and very strong winds.

Tiber_jan2015

DSC03837

This time last year we were just winding up our house hunting trip. A lot has changed since then!

Deruta ceramic pick-up and home improvements

Today was a busy day! We headed out this morning to the “home depot” – OK it’s called Leroy and Merlin – I have mentioned it before. We bought shelves for our pantry and a shower rod and curtain for the guest bathroom.

This bathroom has a tub. It has a hand held squirter. It was hard to take a shower without a curtain and since this is the one guests will use we wanted to make it more user friendly. Now, with the rod and curtain you can stand in the tub and use the squirter to wet and rinse. Still not the best but way better than having to sit in the tiny tub. It is a clear-ish curtain with a pattern. Looks OK.

DSC03830

The new shelves for the pantry I put together myself. This allowed me to store all the buckets, mops, brooms that Vera uses when she cleans. Plus a lot of other things that needed a place. Still plenty of room for more.

DSC03829

Next we were off to Deruta to pick up a ceramic piece I had ordered back in December. I needed it to be a specific size because it needed to fit into the shelves behind the counter in the kitchen and allow the sliding door to open. I measured 15 centimeters. Back in December the man helped me find an oblong shallow dish that looked like it would do the job. I got to pick the colors and design I wanted so it is a one of a kind piece. I got the word it was ready so we picked it up. Here is a picture plus two others showing how it sits on the shelf.

DSC03826

DSC03831

DSC03832

Finally here is a picture of the amphora that Don and Jodi brought us last week as a gift. Apparently over at the recycling place near them people often throw these away. They offered to grab one for us and bring it over. And here it is! Very pretty.

DSC03828

Cooking, kitchens and fireplaces in my Italy house

So, we are having guests for lunch tomorrow and it has again, been an adventure. I planned a classic chicken stew which is American comfort food and non-threatening in every way. Of course it called for boneless chicken thighs. Not happenin’ in Italy. So I bought the closest thing. They just chop the crap out of the legs so there are splintered bones throughout. I did my best to de-bone them but I will warn my guests of possible hidden bones. Here is the stew.

DSC03808

Next I wanted to make Panna Cotta. This is a classic Italian dessert so I figured it would not be hard. The first hurdle was the gelatin. In the US it is powdered. Here it is in hard sheets. Plus I had to look it up on the internet (thank you that there IS an internet!) and got a picture of what I needed. Then I found it at the Coop. Then I had to guess how much to use. The recipe calls for strawberries over the panna cotta. They don’t have them here at this time of the year but I had a great idea that I could put some of the frozen cranberry sauce I made for Thanksgiving on it. I bet that will work great. I hope it turns out OK.

DSC03807

This was the first time I spent a lot of time sitting in the kitchen. That got me to thinking about cooking in the big fireplace here. I opened up the wooden doors and peered up the chimney. Scary.

DSC03813

I also noticed that it was once a cooking fireplace. Note the iron hook to hang meat or pots from…Cool!!

DSC03812

Now I am pretty psyched about this. I think what needs to be done is that the wooden doors need to be removed and I need to have a custom wrought iron with glass door made. Uh oh… costly… well we shall see. Here are the existing doors and the fireplace behind them.

DSC03814

DSC03810

Finally a note on the ridiculous refrigerators here. They are sooo small. And we got a big one! I knew of this before we came but, maybe you didn’t. And to boot, the freezer is not frost free. Frost free!!? what is that?

DSC03809

Yea verily, this is the entire inside of the frig.

Lastly I got a lovely, olive wood cutting board that a friend made for me to my exact measurements. It covers the drain on the sink that I did not want and gives me more working space. Here it is!

DSC03815

Follow up

So today we returned to the Dipartimento di Salute to finalize our health insurance. We could not ‘jump the line’ as we thought but this day was far calmer with fewer people waiting. After only about 40 minutes we went in to see LL.

What a surprise! She was quite nice to us. But she really opened up when we began discussing restaurants that we had been to. I guess food is a subject close to her heart 🙂 given her girth! We were given cards and assigned a doctor. We asked for the one Susan and Gary have. The only glitch is that our Permissi run out in June so it is only good until June. We have to go start up our Permissi process again and then they will extend it until the end of the year. Our doctor has hours and you just drop in. I’ll let Luther go first so I see how it goes.

On Sunday we drove to Citta della Pieve. It is very close to the Tuscan border and is a very pretty hill town. I was impressed that it was a really active place with lots of people about. Nice bars and outside spaces. Here is one of the pretty streets.

DSC03797

We found one of the restaurants that we had read about called Zafferanno Pievese.

DSC03804

The menu had a surprise on it. Hamburger!

DSC03799

But WOW was it expensive. Note the price above. I guess since it was made from the famous Chianina beef with bernese sauce and to top it off the Famous Onions of Cannara. Perhaps it was worth the price. I resisted ordering it. Maybe if we go back. Below are our two appetizers. They were good but a lot of food. I did not care for my primi but maybe it was just the ingredients. Luther liked his steak.

DSC03801

DSC03802

It was a fun day!

Italian medical coverage

Sorry it has been too long since my last post. I have been thinking about how to describe the experience of getting medical coverage here. I probably can’t get it across but here goes.

On Monday, Wednesday and Friday between 8:30AM and 12:30AM the health department is open to enroll people for insurance. Susan graciously volunteered to accompany us. We arrived about 8:15AM and took a number. 65. I spent a long time looking at this so I thought I’d scan it in for posterity.

65

We looked around and the seats up and down the hallway were full. There was no place where the numbers were displayed to tell who was being waited on. There were several numbered doors. Only door number 1 was handling health insurance. Coincidentally Joseph and Paul, our American neighbors were ALSO there. They had arrived at 7:40AM. We hadn’t realized you could come early. SO there we all sat along with untold numbers of Italians and other nationalities. A Large Lady in a purple tunic sweater and black leggings, heretofore to be known as LL was taking people in, one at a time. I should mention that the numbers are never called. It was up to the people waiting to police themselves. Whenever the door opened whoever thought they were next would go in.

Joseph and Paul went in and when they exited related that LL had no calculator, pencil or piece of paper on which to figure out how much they had to pay for the insurance which is 7% of your income. A small gray haired woman would come in and out and run to the front office to use the calculator. Such inefficiency!

Time passes. The Italians around us were just as annoyed that they had to wait so long as we were. It was very Kafkaesque. I should mention that around 10:30AM or so the numbers in the machine ran out. People would come in and look at the machine with no numbers, look around the hallway, look back at the machine. The gray haired lady at one time announced that when the numbers ran out they were taking no more people. So as folks came in, someone would tell them they were too late and to come back another day.

After about 3 hours (!) we got to go in. LL is said to be the meanest person in Umbertide. She apparently spends much time screaming at other people on the phone. I had brought in the statement from my Social Security as proof of my income. Luther does not yet get his so we just claimed mine. Again, the gray haired lady came in, took the figure of the income, ran to the front office and ran the numbers. 1,065.22 Euro a year. There was an issue with our Permessi because they run out in June and the insurance is for a year from January. At first we thought she was going to tell us we couldn’t get the insurance but Susan explained that the Italians raise objections but generally that doesn’t stop them from going forward. I guess they just like to complain. So we told her we’d start the process of renewing our Permessi.

Now we were told we need to take the number of Euros we owe to the post office and pay it. They will give us a receipt which we are to bring back to LL. We are told we can jump the line once we have the receipt. We decided we would come back on Thursday to pay and then return Friday.

Thursday we head over to the post office where we take a number. When Luther went to the window the lady said we needed the bank account number that the money was to be deposited into. Wouldn’t you have thought that the LL would have given us a number when she said we had to pay at the post office? But no. So we went over to the health office. We could hear voices behind door number 1. Luther knocked. The door opened a tiny crack. LL peered out and told us to come back Friday between 8:30 and 12:30. We quickly explained we needed the bank account number. She closed the door in our faces. We stood there wondering if she was coming back. Well she did, with a number written on a torn scrap of paper.

We returned to the post office and successfully paid the money. We did not go on Friday so I cannot yet tell you we actually GOT insurance. Tomorrow is Monday and we will return to jump the line and see the LL. If she does give us our insurance then we get assigned a doctor who will oversee our health. The good news is we get to do this every year!

We had some fun on Thursday with Susan and Gary. We visited a winery but we had made an appointment so they arranged a tour. We tasted the new wine in the big vats. That was interesting. It was still cloudy because the sediments had not settled. Pretty interesting. It was actually pretty good and you could tell what it would be like when it matured. They provided plates of tasty bits of food to eat as we tasted the five wines. One white and four reds. We purchased several cases and headed for lunch in Bavagna. The man at the winery called ahead and told them to treat us nice. We had a nice lunch. Sorry to say I forgot my camera!

Today, Sunday we are off to Citta di Pieve which is a nice hill town. I will NOT forget my camera today.

New car caviar!!

Well it finally happened. We got a CAR!! Gary gave us a ride up to Citta di Castello and we picked up our shiny, very white, VW Golf. It is pretty basic but should be a good car for us here. Plenty of room for four people and luggage, or toting stuff. It gets about 60 miles per gallon which will be great and it is a diesel engine so fuel is “cheaper”. Since we arrived here last June the price of diesel has fallen from 1.48 Euro per liter to 1.32 now (about $5.00 a gallon). To top that off the Euro has fallen from 1.49 to about 1.18 now. Anyway, we are very happy with the Golf.

DSC03795

DSC03796

It would have been good of them to mention that new cars here come with ZERO gas! We noticed on the Superstrada and quickly got of with the range on the odometer at zero. We lucked out and found a station but not without some angst on our part! Apparently this is normal but we didn’t know.

We immediately went to the grocery store to buy big heavy things we couldn’t buy without a car. We got a couple of cases of wine and 4 bags of pellet for the stuffa.

When we got back we made an appointment with Marco who owns some buildings just across the river. He has a bunch of underground garages and we are looking into renting one. It will be for the Porsche eventually but right now we can use it for the Golf.

Other than that exciting news I mentioned in my last post that it was Epiphany. Sure enough, they had a gigantic rally of the Vespa club in the piazza. There were hundreds!

DSC03786

The Christmas tree was sawed up into little piece on the 7th, the day after Epiphany. They sawed off all the limbs, then chopped up the trunk. Much faster coming down that going up. They also took up all the red carpets and removed all the lights in the streets. So it is now bleak January. It is really quite warm right now. I was out on the patio and it was like spring. We hope we have some good cold snaps because it is needed to kill off the bugs that infected the grapes and olives last year.

Here is a final photo of my Bolognese sauce cooking on our stove in my Mom’s big ole cast iron pan. Just nice.

DSC03794

Befana

Today is Epiphany. I looked it up and it is the day the Magi came to the baby Jesus. The day before Epiphany is called Twelfth-night or Twelfth-day and marks the end of Christmastide. In Italy the Eve of Epiphany is when Befana comes bringing gifts for the children.

The Piazza was filled with booths selling things. Many of them seemed to be linked to Befana. I noticed LOTS of stockings for sale like we are more used to seeing at Christmas.
DSC03772

DSC03773

So I looked it up on Wikipedia and here is what it says:

In popular folklore Befana visits all the children of Italy on the eve of the Feast of the Epiphany to fill their stockings with candy and presents if they are good. Or a lump of coal or dark candy if they are bad. In many poorer parts of Italy and in particular rural Sicily, a stick in a stocking was placed instead of coal. Being a good housekeeper, many say she will sweep the floor before she leaves. To some the sweeping meant the sweeping away of the problems of the year. The child’s family typically leaves a small glass of wine and a plate with a few morsels of food, often regional or local, for the Befana.

Pretty familiar. I liked the sweeping away the problems of the previous year. In Umbertide Befana arrives in an Ape (pronounced app-ay). One of those little 3 wheeled vehicles with a truck bed. How perfect! They attached a chair for her to sit in and she throws candy to all the children who surround the Ape. It drives around the Piazza. There was a band of course. The Ape beeped it’s horn as it went.

DSC03777

DSC03780

DSC03784

I was shooting these with my zoom from our house so they are kind of blurry but you get the idea.

I am not sure if there is any activity associated with the Epiphany. I heard the church bells ringing this morning at 8AM. I believe there is supposed to be a feast.

Luther is now fighting the cold I had. We also are waiting for Emanuele to bring some packages of things I ordered. Last night when Luther went into the kitchen all the lights went out when he turned them on – there was a POP sound. uh oh. So hopefully Emanuele can fix them.