Category Archives: Umbria

Clean-up on the terrazzo

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It is time for clean up of the pots and old plants before we can get new plants for the upcoming summer. Oh joy! Summer! I am debating whether it’s too early to uncover the table outside. I’m thinking it is not. Only severe weather will affect it and I don’t think we will have anything VERY severe.

I am thrilled that my tarragon plant is sending up pretty, green, new shoots. Shout out to my friend Joanne for providing me a new plant last fall after my previous one died. French Tarragon is not to be found in Italy. Only Russian, and it has no smell or flavor. It seems strange since we share a border with France. Joanne brought two plants back from Germany for us a couple of years ago. I’m so glad mine survived the winter this time. I do love tarragon chicken.

I have a lot of sweet alyssum that is still very much alive. I usually pull it all up but I’ve seen some massive specimens around here so I’m going to leave it and see. My friend Doug told me it is mostly considered an annual in the US, but since it is native to the Mediterranean it will probably come back. The stems are very green inside.
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Italian phrase for today…”dentro è ancora abbastanza freddo per poter usare la stufa a pellet” in English “inside it is still cold enough to use the pellet stove”. Pronounced…din-tro A ahn-cora ahb-bah-stan-za fred-doh pear eu-sahr-ay lah stoo-fa a pel-let. I should mention my pronunciation that I write here is as good as I can make it by saying it and trying to spell the sound. The A that I put in is really a long A sound, like the a in jay. I couldn’t seem to phonetically spell that.
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Stay safe everyone. Andrà tutto bene 🌈.

Sunny Sabato

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It was sunny when I started writing this on Saturday. It clouded up later but I know for a fact next week will be beautiful. Well…I actually don’t know “for a fact” because the weather reports here are so unreliable. Luther and I follow different reports on-line and they NEVER agree…so we pick the one we like best! It is something I have always wondered about. In the US, in the Washington DC area where we came from, the nightly news weathermen were stars. I always loved Bob Ryan on Channel 4. They are actual meteorologists and they have so much technology at hand and are usually very reliable. Here, the weather report is only reliable for about eight hours ahead of time. Useless.

We went to the grocery store yesterday. Since we are still in the Zona Rossa we can’t go together into the store. So we each grab a cart and go off on our own. They always take our temperature to get inside. We bought all we needed and returned to our side of town. Before dropping of our purchases we drove to FOXX, the pizzeria across the river and ordered pizza to be delivered for dinner last night. This was our first time ordering from them for delivery. Then we dropped off all our purchases as well as the kitty litter and four bags of pellets. Big carry for Luther. I drove and parked and returned via the Saturday market in the piazza. I ran into Jim in front of Bar Mary, he was our realtor and was our first acquaintance in Umbertide. I was saying life was boring and he was pretty funny and upbeat. He’s good with doing fuck-all every day, he said. He gets up. Makes tea and coffee. Reads Facebook, Twitter and the news, and then it’s time to get dressed. After that it’s time for lunch. And so it goes…day in and day out. Very much like my days. I did look up fuck-all and it is a term used in Britain which means “absolutely nothing”. Handy descriptor for most of my days.🙂
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We had very bad news in Umbria this week. 80% of all cases in Umbria are variants. 60% Brazilian which reduces efficacy of vaccines. Since we are not vaccinating at a fast pace it means the disease is getting ahead of us. Our numbers continue to rise and we are in Code Red already. Even here in little Umbertide we are having between 10 and 20 new cases every day. Very discouraging.
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A photo of the sunny yellow Comune building just across Via Grilli from our front windows. I love it in the sunshine.

Phrase. “farà molto più caldo questa settimana”. In English “it will be much warmer this week” Pronounced far-AH molt-oh pew call-doh quest-ah set-tee-mah-nah.
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Stay safe. Andrà tutto bene.🌈

We have news!

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My friend Susan posted some information she found about the vaccines for we Umbria residents.
“There will be 3 ways we can make an appointment for the vaccine: go through a web site, use and 800 number or go to the pharmacy. We are registered by year of birth, so we need the Codice Fiscale to verify. Then we will be sent a text message telling us where and when we get the vaccine. People 80 and over are first up then the rest of us staggered by year of birth. And the vaccines will be given in Umbertide. We’ll see how this all works, but it is at least step One.”

Thanks for posting Susan! It makes me feel we have some organization and plan, since we have heard very little until now.
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Big snow storm coming tonight and it will be the first “actual storm” since we’ve been here. Predicting 15cm of snow. That’s around 6”. For us, that is a lot. I am excited! Pictures will follow…
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Tonight we will be having the regional dinner provided by Calagrana. Delivered to our door. This evening it will be Trentino Alto Adige.

Sentence for today. “per stanotte è prevista neve!” in English, “snow is predicted for tonight!” Pronounced…Per stah-note-tay A pre-vista nay-vay.

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Stay safe ! 🌈

Covid

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A little thing I just realized…this is the first time in my adult life that I don’t know who is playing in the Super Bowl. And I just read that this coming Sunday is Super Bowl Sunday 😏. It is also the next super-spreader event…some advice, Don’t organize a party at home. Don’t go to a Super Bowl party.
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It’s time to update on our Covid situation and also talk about the future of travel to and from Italy. The emergency declaration which allows the government to make quick decisions about Covid issues has been extended until mid-April and it will probably be extended again.

Most of Italy has been rated Zone Yellow. Unfortunately we here in Umbria are Zone Orange, threatening to tip over into Zone Red. We have a steady increase of cases. This morning I read two cases of the new Brazilian strain of the virus were found here. I also heard the worst numbers are in the Perugia province of Umbria. In Umbertide we have a very famous rehabilitation center, Prosperious. Turns out there are 26 cases just in that center alone! It has necessitated the close of our hospital.

Speaking of hospitals, the big medical center university hospital in Perugia, Sibillini, is being hammered. There was a photo with a line of ambulances waiting at the Pronto Socorso (emergency). They have closed it except for Covid and emergencies. They are not allowing any visitors. This is particularly hard on Italians as they expect to practically live in the hospital with their family or friends.

Vaccines. We have heard our age group has been pushed to no sooner than April. They are still vaccinating over 80 year olds and health workers. We visited our doctor today and she says they have no idea what is happening with the vaccine. So we wait. I read an interesting article in the Washington Post about what people who HAVE been vaccinated should be able to do, and not do. The biggest issue seems to be the new strains which are loose practically everywhere now. The UK, South African, and Brazilian strains. No one knows if the vaccine people are getting now, will be protection against the new strains. And no one knows if a person who has been vaccinated can still carry the virus and infect others. This means people who are vaccinated can feel a bit safer themselves against catching it or getting very ill if they do, but they still need to wear masks etc to protect others. Because of the uncertainty I think they still recommend against traveling even if you’ve been vaccinated.

Travel. The EU, and Italy, have no plans to loosen the travel restrictions. In fact things are tightening up even more. The Italian government updates its rules and restrictions about every 2 weeks. And they don’t try to predict any farther into the future than that. So there’s no way to tell when the travel ban will be lifted. My guess is not until most Italians have gotten the vaccine and we have gotten the disease under control here. We are far from that right now. They don’t predict the third group of people (under 60) to be vaccinated until October or November at the earliest. I don’t think 2021 will be the year tourists return to Italy. 🙁
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Flatbread!
Today I decided to make a old recipe I’ve been making for years. Rosemary flatbread. I ordered some dry yeast on Amazon because the stuff you get here is very unpredictable. This is just like the Fleischmans I used to get in the States. So to try it out, I made…flatbread! It was thicker than my previous loaves because I don’t have my big cast iron pan here. Still it was tasty.

Sentence in Italian “Il tempo non è freddo questa settimana” in English, “The weather is not cold this week”. Pronounced – eel temp-o non A fred-doh quest-ah set-tee-mahn-ah.

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Stay safe. Don’t go to a super bowl party! Andrà tutto bene 🌈

Baccalà

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Yesterday was a welcome sunny day. And not too cold. As usual, the Kilometer Zero market was here and instead of huddling under their tents to keep dry, they were sunny and happy like the weather. We ran a bunch of local errands and did some shopping. The nice man I visit normally had what looked like spring onions. I asked him what they were called and he said aglio fresco, or fresh garlic. It was young garlic before it grows into bulbs. He proceeded to tell us all about ways to use it. In a frittata or in a pasta. So I bought some.

I didn’t intend to use it in a frittata or in pasta. I thought it would be perfect in the dinner I had planned for last evening.

I had planned a dish using baccalà. It is the salt cod which you find throughout the world. It was first produced by the Vikings and allowed them to explore widely. They brought it to the Basques who were also renown seafarers and fishermen. Portugal calls it bacalhau. It eventually went to the New World where it became a huge industry in New England.

It is super popular here in Italy. It is found everywhere and is relatively inexpensive. The fish is dried until it is hard as a rock. It is one of Luther’s favorite things. I bought the cod from our fish truck which comes twice a week. It was already soaked and ready to use. I bought it dried once before and soaked it myself. Takes about three days and you change the water out at least twice a day. Much easier already soaked!

The dish is salt cod baked with cauliflower. It sounded interesting and cauliflower is plentiful now. The cod is cooked in cream with garlic and scallions until it can be flaked. In this case I used the young garlic greens. The garlic and scallions are mashed in the cream after it is cooked until thick. Then the cream and cod is mixed with cauliflower, pine nuts, currants and lemon zest and baked.

Here is the finished dish. It was yummy, but I’m not sure I’d make it again.

Italian sentence for today, “Forse andrò a fare una passeggiata” in English, “Perhaps I will go for a walk”. Pronounced for-say ahn-droh ah far-ay une-a pass-ahj-gee-ah-ta.
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Stay safe everyone! Buona domenica!

Fagiolina del Lago Trasimeno

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I wrote about some of the more obscure legumes we can get here in Umbria. One of them is Fagiolina del Lago Trasimeno. The Blog post I wrote in December describes the attributes of this legume and explains the difficulty in cultivating it and hence it’s scarcity. Click the link to re-read the post.

I have just gotten around to using the Fagiolina. I researched recipes and decided to go simple and make a soup. It is really cold now. We woke up to a dusting of snow and it is supposed to go down to -3C tonight. Perfect soup weather. Especially a stick-to-your-ribs soup like this one.

I like the beans. They taste very much like black-eyed peas. Those have always had a flavor to me that was different than other beans. And these have that same flavor. Buon appetito!
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We are still in lockdown Code Orange. Although, we have many freedoms, we cannot leave our own Comune. There are exceptions for very small Comune so they can go to an adjacent one for shopping etc. They are using twelve different statistics to determine your zone color. And they just added a Zona Bianca, white zone. This is what we all want to get to. More freedoms.

Quote translated from Corriere della Sera “But although the overall situation appears to be slightly improving in several regions, at the moment almost none are close to the values ​​to go white. It is necessary to have an Rt (rate of transmission) lower than 1 and the weekly incidence of cases must be below 50 per 100 thousand residents. The control that assigns the bands to which they belong, has already decided that no territory will become white next Friday, considering that the data being examined are those of the previous week (therefore January 18-24). Basilicata, which is the one with the least serious situation, had a weekly incidence of 60.58, close to the required 50, but still above. Sardinia is at 77.89, Tuscany 80.62 and Valle d’Aosta at 93.10. In the other regions the situation is quite different: Bolzano 578.19, Friuli 293.94, Trento 211.31, Umbria 200.22, Emilia 189.75, Marche 183.05, Sicily 180.46, Puglia 165.85, Veneto 152.9, Lazio 136.93, Liguria 124.46, Abruzzo 120.08, Campania 118, 47, Molise 113.21, Piedmont 112.87, Lombardy 110.41, Calabria 102.66.”

So as you can see, we are a ways away from getting out from under these restrictions.
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Italian phrase for today. “Mi piace cucinare. Oggi ho cucinato la zuppa di fagioli.” Which means, “I love to cook. Today I made bean soup”. Pronounced…Me pee-ah-chay cooch-in-are-ay. Oh-gee oh cooch-in-ah-toe la zoopah dee fah-gee-oh-lee. 😋
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Stay safe – Andrà tutto bene 🌈

Pici, fatta a mano

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I bought a bunch of big fat pasta called Pici. It is the special shape common in Tuscany. Our special shape here in Umbria is Strangozzi. So I have to keep it a secret that I’ve gone rogue and am cooking the evil pasta Toscana. Just kidding! I bought it here so it must be OK.

Years ago, on my first trip to Tuscany, we were traveling with my sister and her husband and stopped in a village outside Montalcino. During dinner a nonna carried her small table over beside our table at dinner and began making pasta by hand. I didn’t know at the time that is was the special pasta Pici…fatta a mano…made by hand.

Pici
Pici alongside Strangozzi.

For dinner tonight we had pici con funghi misti. Very yummy.

Italian phrase. “stasera, ho cucinato la pasta” in English, “tonight, I cooked pasta”. Pronounced… sta-sera o cuch-in-atto la pahs-ta. 🙂
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Say home. Wear your masks. Be careful. The vaccine is coming.💕

Smokey lentil stew with potatoes and leeks

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My friend in Virginia sent a recipe for this stew that is from the NY Times. I am a big lentil fan and even though I make soups with lentils often I thought this one sounded a bit different.

And how! It was it different. The key ingredient is the smoked paprika. It adds a big smokey taste. I made it today for lunch and we both loved it. I will make it again as a dinner meal and add some sausage. It is a perfect winter-time stew.

I made quite a few changes to the Times recipe. First off, I simplified things. For instance they used three (!) pots to make it…I reduced that to two. I didn’t put the onion in with the cooking lentils but added it in with the leeks. I totally took out the saffron. It was such a small amount in a huge and highly spiced stew. You never could’ve tasted it and besides, it is an expensive ingredient. Waste. I sautéed the spices in with the leeks and in the oil to bring out their flavor. Anyway it was a hit with us! I put the recipe in the recipes in the top menu bar. Tap the title twice if it doesn’t come up with only one tap.

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We’ve also gotten some much needed errands finished. Every January we have to renew our enrollment in the National Health. It involves obtaining a stamped and signed statement from the Social Security office in the American Embassy in Rome. I wrote in early December and received the statements. We had to call the health department for an appointment this year because of Covid, and that was on Monday at 9AM. Before we went though, I had to copy all of our cards and documents. That included our expired Tessere di Sanitaria, our Codice Fiscale, our Permessi di Soggiorno, our Carta d’Identita, our passports, make an extra copy of the social security statement, convert the amount to Euro and then compute the amount we owe for the year and print that out. Whew. At the appointment we met with Laura. Once our nemesis, she either has gotten used to us or she has mellowed. So she isn’t quite as scary as she used to be. She took all the papers and checked our calculations and sent us off to the Poste to pay for the coverage. There were about 8 people ahead of us in line where we all waited outside. Did I say it was frigid? Well, it was. Finally we got that done and returned to give Laura the receipt. She had everything done and we signed multiple times and – tada! We were finito. Of course they would only give it to us until April because we are STILL waiting for our new Permessi from the Questura. Seven months and counting. When we get it we visit Laura again and get the Tessere extended…to June. Which is when our NEW cards expire AGAIN and then in June I am sure we will have to go and get them extended to the end of the year…eyeroll. We pay for the whole year in January. They know we are getting our Permessi, so why not give us the card for the year? So much less work for us AND them!

Today, we took the VeeDub to the shop to get its oil changed and get its every other year inspection renewed. We will pick it up tomorrow. So the beginning of the year errands are sorting themselves out slowly.
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A friend asked me to include a sentence in Italian with pronunciation with my blogs. So I am starting that today. Here goes! “Abbiamo fatto le nostre commissioni!” It means “We have done our errands”. Pronounced abbey-yamo faht-toe lay noh-stray com-miss-see-oh-nee 🙂
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Stay safe everyone. Andrà tutto bene! 🌈

Carte Jaune

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A vaccine yellow card? Carte Jaune, is a medical passport issued by the World Health Organization. It’s an official record that some countries require for entrance, and it can document vaccination against diseases ranging from cholera and yellow fever to such childhood illnesses as rubella. So, will a “Carte Jaune” be required for Covid?

What will happen? No one knows. Airlines can require a coronavirus vaccine because they are private companies. Also, cruise lines. Countries may also make vaccination a requirement for crossing their borders. Within the United States, it’s highly unlikely that the vaccination would ever be required for travel, according to experts. So, I suppose this means you can remain in the US and travel, which I agree with. But there may be restrictions and requirements for vaccination to travel to other countries. It is early days yet…

We learned yesterday, our age group here in Italy, should be getting the vaccine from March to May. They are having “traveling gazebos” (whatever they are!) to administer the vaccine or we can go to our medico. Or we think we can. This is the latest plan and they seem to change often. Again, we will wait and see.
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It’s funny. I bought the New Year seafood 4 course meal for us from Calagrana. The menu was: antipasto – Salmon Carpaccio, primi – tagliatelle with mixed seafood sauce, secondo – two sea bass filets cooked with a buttery tomatoey sauce and contorni (sides), and dolce – bread and butter pudding. Luther and I decided there was no way we could eat it all at once and truly enjoy it, so we ate the carpaccio on New Years Eve. Then the sea bass with the Brussels sprouts and the potatoes on New Years, then the tagliatelle last night. And the pudding over the whole time. Parts of three meals for us that were supposed to be one. I feel we enjoyed them more this way. I shared this picture on Facebook. Thank you Calagrana! It was delizioso!

Bread and butter pudding

Stay safe everyone… Andrà tutto bene.🌈

Family 💕 friends 💕

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Our Christmas was special in so many ways. Although we were alone, physically, we had several wonderful FaceTime or Facebook calls with friends and family.

First call was from good friends in Florida. It was really nice to see their smiling faces and catch up.

Then my sister called. The ability to chat with her happily and without constraints is liberating. Like we are actually together. Not as good as being there, but pretty good.

Then a call from Luther’s family. Oh my! This made my day. This family is special to us. We don’t have children so seeing the nieces and nephew and Luther’s brother and his wife, Anne made us happy. We love those kids! So much happening with them. We miss out on all that. Rachel and her husband Alex. Rachel is a nurse at Johns Hopkins on the Covid wards. Dave and his wife, Shira who is “roundly pregnant”. I love that descriptor! She is due to give birth to our grand nephew, Daniel, in late January. And Sarah, the youngest and a free spirit. 🙂 It was happy-making for us to see them all and catch up. They were all coming last year to see us but Covid nixed that. Maybe this coming year they can come…but even if they all cannot, I hope Rachel can come for some much needed RnR from the sadnesses she must have seen. If anything can help her heal…Italy can 🥰. The good news is, she is changing jobs in the hospital and will no longer be working on the front lines. And she will have regular hours. She is also getting her Covid vaccination next week..yay!
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Christmas dinner. Peking duck. Spectacular fail! I cooked it using a recipe I’ve used before. But this time the meat was pretty desiccated. I was able to salvage enough from the underside of the duck for our dinner. The pancakes I made were pretty good. I made the hoisin sauce which was nice and spicy. Here is one of our pancakes. So, although the duck was mostly a loss, our Christmas dinner was good enough. Win some, lose some!

Stay safe everyone…andrà tutto bene….🌈