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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.🌈

Regional dinner…Venezia

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Today we are having a dinner courtesy of Calagrana, delivered to our door. A speciality of the Venetian region, and specifically to Venice. Baccalà is salt cod. Reconstituted it is a speciality of many regions. This one, with potatoes, is yummy.

We opted out of the wine pairing on my personal sommeliers recommendation 🙂 The dinner was really good and I’m not a big fan of Baccalà.
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Phrase…”ora di cena. mangiamo” English…”time for dinner. Let’s eat”. Pronounced…ora dee chayna. Mahn-gee-ahm-oh.
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Stay safe…springtime is coming! Andrà tutto bene 🌈

Reading Italian recipes

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We bought the Corriere della Sera and the Corriere del Umbria at the Tabac this week. I will tell you we buy the newspaper because we need the newspaper for other uses, after it’s been read. Like cleaning out the stufa, or under the cat dishes, or for making a fire…Luther reads it online anyway. And I sometimes read the Umbria version.

So this week there was a whole section on cooking. I love cooking as everyone knows and so I read it avidly…if slowly. I am actually at a B2 level of Cooking Italian. I can normally read recipes and articles about cooking very easily.

I had already thawed a package of coniglio for dinner. That’s rabbit for those who want to know. And there was a recipe for it in this newspaper. I read through the ingredients and saw I had them all. I decided to make it for dinner tonight. One of the ingredients was a cup of coffee… I was intrigued, what an interesting thing to have in the dish. But when I read through the recipe instructions there was no mention of the “cup of coffee” being added. I needed a second opinion. Luther read it through and between he and I we figured out the “cup of coffee” was a “measurement amount” of an ingredient, not an actual ingredient.

This is really quite normal. They don’t use cups and teaspoons and tablespoons here. Most things are by weight so you need a scale. In addition to weights you will see a bicchiere of such and such, or a glass of it. And a cucchiaio of oregano – a spoonful. But I had never seen 1 tazza da caffe aghi di rosmarino. I thought they were two different things…a tazza di caffe, and the fronds of rosemary. But I never thought it was a coffee cup size amount of fronds of rosemary. Now in retrospect it is a funny misinterpretation on my part! You live and learn.

Here is the dish. It said to serve it with risotto con pesto. So I did. But this in itself is a major error on my part. An intentional error as I knew risotto is ALWAYS served as a primi. And alone as it should be. It is NEVER a side. The coniglio is served as a secondi. Never, ever together on the plate. We Americans are used to the meat, the veg, and the starch on one plate. But not in Italy! I’m sure the writer meant them to be 2 different piatti. We enjoyed both courses on our one plate. [recipe here]

Italian phrase. “Domani e venerdì” English “Tomorrow is Friday” pronounced, doe-mah-nee A ven-er-DEE.
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Stay safe everyone. Andrà tutto bene 🌈

Maybe this is our last cold snap?

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The days are a lot longer now. Our terrace gets no sun at all in the winter. But as the sun moves along the horizon suddenly the pantry window starts getting sun just before sunset. Today I noticed it’s shining halfway down that wall. It is my method to monitor the progress of the lengthening days and the approaching spring. 🍀 Grateful.
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Tonight for dinner we had Spaghetti Carbonara. The traditional Roman recipe. There was no record of this recipe before 1950. It was first mentioned after the end of WWII. The American GIs had eggs! And they had bacon! No one else did. They shared with the Italians who had little to eat. And they’d bring them to the restaurants and give them to the chefs to use to make some pasta for them. The chefs came up with Spaghetti Carbonara. Anyway, that’s the story! Such an easy dish. Only guanciale or pancetta, egg yolks, grated pecorino cheese, black pepper and spaghetti.

Sentence. “la primavera sta arrivando!” – “Spring is coming!” Pronounced…La preema-vara stah are-riv-ahndo.

Umbria vaccinated 1,331 eighty year olds yesterday. We have begun. Stay safe everyone., 🌈

No snow 🙁

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I should say a little dusting on the mountains and rooftops. A severe disappointment. It is very cold though. 23 F or minus 5 C. This is very cold for here. And there is a brisk wind making the wind chill much lower. It is supposed to remain cold for the next four days. I brought in the lemon tree…I don’t have a brass monkey 🙂

Nearby mountains with dusting of snow.

Italian sentence. “sono felice che voi studiate Italiano” in English, “I am happy that you are studying Italian”. Pronounced….so-no fell-eee-chee kay vo-ee stewed-ee-ah-tay eee-tal-ee-an-oh.
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Stay safe everyone 🌈

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 ! 🌈

Permessi

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So, you probably read that I found out our Permessi di Soggiorno were ready in a previous post? And I said we would have to wait, with the Zone Red. The story was not finished…

For some reason, this morning I asked Luther to check his phone for an SMS. The Questura is supposed to send us one when the PdS is ready. Sure enough, he had been sent one last Wednesday. Our appointment was February 10…February 10th!!? That was today. I looked outside at the wind driven rain and sighed. With the appointment on the phone we could leave our Comune. So we decided to “man up” and go.

We drove the 20 kilometers to Città di Castello. The rain, thankfully, let up on the way. I admired all the brilliant green fields and mountainsides. The winter wheat is so welcome about now when everything is gray. But the wheat! It is neon!

Arriving at the Questura we saw no one standing outside the door. This was odd. Usually there is a crowd. We parked and walked to the gate where there was a sign. It said it was closed until February 21 for the Permesso di Soggiorno. Oh well. No matter. The sun came out on the way home but black clouds loomed ahead. We visited the Wednesday market for some produce and retreated before the rain. Piano, piano as they say here. Slowly, slowly. In due time we will get the Permessi 🙂
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Now it is late afternoon and there is an ENORMOUS thunderstorm looming from the north. I took some pictures. It is pretty impressive. The sun is shining in the foreground and on the hills. The storm is a very black cloud behind. It sets off the sun very well. I love the contrast. And the thunder rumbles….

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A friend of mine and I were discussing food…it is an obsession in Italy…and after sharing the recipes we had been trying he said…”we have to keep our strength up for whatever”. And I laughed and laughed…yes we DO! Eating well is our best defense. And it gives us something to do.

Singapore Teochew Braised Duck is the next meal.  Luther is a huge duck fan. Always pestering me to cook a duck. I like duck. I just don’t like COOKING duck. I had duck parts. About half a duck chopped up. We bought it in the super mercato here in town. I decided roasting was not the way to go with parts. So I searched on braised duck and picked this one.

It was good. Had a nice broth from the braising. It included soy sauce, orange peel, cloves, cinnamon sticks, peppercorns, ginger root, garlic, onion. I made basmati rice. I put some of the broth over it. It was very tasty. I would make it again. I even have left over broth for another use.
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Italian sentence. “Domani è un altro giorno, proprio come oggi.“ in English, “Tomorrow is another day, just like today”. Doh-mah-nee A un al-tro gee-or-no, pro-pree-oh coh-may  ohg-gee. 🙂
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Stay safe! 🌈

Pasta for dinner!

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Luther subscribes to Doctor Wine, an Italian wine and food site. Often I will find, in my inbox, a recipe he has forwarded that he has decided I should make. Every now and then I decide to make one and yesterday I did. This one was called Busiate al pesto di pistacchio e salmone affumicato or Pasta with pistachio pesto and smoked salmon.

Busiate is a fat long shaped pasta. It is made by wrapping maccheroni around a stem of a plant called Busa which grows in Sicily. This makes it a long twist of pasta. The pasta is a special shape from Trapani province on the west coast. It is traditionally served with a pesto made of almonds, pecorino cheese, garlic and olive oil.

I didn’t have Busiate so I used a fat spaghetti noodle. I have since found I can get the Busiate from Eataly. I will probably order some. Here’s the finished product. It was very tasty.

If anyone wants to try it the recipe is in the pull down menu [Recipes] at the top of the page. Also at the bottom of this page.
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Italian sentence for today. “Ho mangiato bene!” In English, “I have eaten well!”. Pronounced — oh man-gee-ah-toe ben-ay! You can say this after you’ve eaten in a restaurant and it will make them happy.🙂
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Stay safe all my friends! 🌈

Busiate con pesto di pistacchi e salmone affumicato
Serves 2
250 grams Busiate or fat spaghetti (about 8 ounces)
200 grams pistachios shelled and peeled (7 ounces)
50 grams olive oil (1/4 cup)
Salt
100 grams smoked salmon (3.5 ounces)
50 grams pistachios chopped (1.75 ounces)
1 teaspoon grated lemon peel
Olive oil
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Blend the pistachios with extra virgin olive oil and a little tepid water to obtain a soft cream. Adjust the salt. (I used an immersion blender to make the pesto.) Set aside.

Chop the smoked salmon, leaving 2 whole slices aside for decoration. Set aside.

Cook pasta in abundant, well salted water. Cook until barely al dente. Save a cup of the pasta water and put the drained pasta in a big roomy pan. Add pesto and chopped salmon. Toss over heat, adding some pasta water (not too much at first) to make a nice sauce in which to finish cooking the pasta. Add more water as necessary. When the water is absorbed and the sauce looks creamy, serve with the decorative salmon strips, the chopped pistachios and the grated lemon peel on top. Garnish with good olive oil.

Here we go again…Zona Rossa

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As of today we are again Zona Rossa, or Red Zone. All of the province of Perugia went Red today from the previous Orange. This is nothing like the full lockdown we had last year. We have freedom to walk or run alone and we can both go shopping for food together. Last year we could not.

We will be Red for two weeks. Then they will re-assess. In reading the restrictions I don’t really see a whole lot different from the Orange restrictions. It doesn’t matter much for us since we routinely stay home except for essentials. The only thing is I just checked to see if our new Permessi di Soggiorno cards are ready – I check every week – and yep, now they are ready. The problem is we can’t travel to pick them up. I don’t think it would be deemed an emergency.
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If you’ve been following this blog awhile you may remember back in our first lockdown, last spring, I did a post about my little, sad lemon tree. (Read original post) It is a very crooked little tree with a twisted trunk. I outlined how I was going to restrict its growth to one side then keep the new branches and any fruit over the base of the crooked trunk to help balance it over the center of gravity and keep it from tipping over. 😁 I had my share of Doubting Thomas’ last year…I am happy to report my plan worked. Take a look at it now and at how the fruit is over the pot. I am enjoying the fresh lemons!

And just playing around with my other new lens…yes, I bought two new lenses.

Well time for my Italian sentence. “il mio albero di limone ha sette limoni” in English, “my lemon tree has seven lemons”. Pronounced…eel meo al-bear-oh dee lee-moan-ay ah set-tay lee-moan-ee.

Hang in everyone…we are hunkered down in Umbria. Andrà tutto bene 🌈