Feels like winter now!

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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

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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

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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!

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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.

Tree partly harvested.

You place the metal stakes at the downhill side to catch the rolling olives.

Bin full of olives. The leaves need to be mostly removed from the box.

After you knock them all off the nets are gathered and the olives are rolled into one spot, then dumped into the crates.

Olives ready to be harvested.

Ely and Luther hand picking while Catarina works the “basher” on the opposite side.

Fall in the market

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Hi everyone! Not terribly much going on but I took some nice pictures in the Kilometer zero market of seasonal produce you may enjoy.

A bright, sunny Autumn day at the market.

The green fruit that you see are actually clementines. in the US they are orange. Here they are not necessarily. They look and taste the same inside.

Chestnuts are everywhere! One of the local stands was roasting them.

Finally here are the porcini, fresh from the woods. In Germany they are called Steinpilzen. In France Cepes. By any name they are wonderful.

OK this one is really weird. I went into the office and noticed on the top of my big monitor was a…. snail! How could that happen? I took him outside. I hope he survives.

Trip to Abruzzo

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This is another trip report so if you are not interested just skip this post.

We decided just last week to take a trip for two nights to the province of Abruzzo. We had long wanted to go to Ascoli Pecena in the Marche region too and it is just north of the Abruzzo border. This province is just south of the Marche on the Adriatic coast.

We left in a rainstorm which only got worse as we drove along. We headed east when we reached Spoleto and headed into the magnificent gorge through the Appinine mountains. In fact there is no way to get to any of the coastal towns on the Adriatic without braving some very rugged countryside. In this case the Corno river cut a deep gorge to Norcia, which is famous for it’s lentils, cured meats, and truffles. After we left Norcia and headed up into the next range of mountains the skies REALLY let loose and we could hardly see the road. We also were behind a truck. This all made for a very slow trip.

We finally came down out of the mountains and passes into a pretty valley in which Ascoli Pecena is situated. We bypassed the town this day and headed south into the foothills to find a recommended lunch place. Little did we know that this was a hill town and presently, we were in a cloud! We groped our way up and up with fog lights blazing and very short visibility until finally the GPS said we had arrived. We actually couldn’t see them but the city walls loomed just ahead. Later we found out you can see the Adriatic from there. There are lots of benches for viewing. Also there is a large fortress. Who knew!?

We walked around in the lightly sprinkling rain. It was a very pretty little town and is supposed to have the narrowest street in Europe.

We found the restaurant in a hotel on one of the main squares. Zunica 1880 has been a family operation since 1880. The dining room was lovely and empty. We were well taken care of by a nice waiter who right away brought us the Nuovo Olio pressed just two days ago! It was bright green and grassy and very peppery in the throat. A treat.

We had a lovely Montipulciano d’Abruzzo to accompany the fine meal.

I was amused at the picture hanging on the wall. It was obviously a painting of the room we were sitting in. Notice the chandelier in both the room and the picture. And the walls, curtains and furniture were the same.

After lunch we visited Iluminati winery. Everyone was very busy with the crush. This winery was bottling and labeling wine to go to Russia. It is a big operation as you can see from the pictures. They took time to let us taste and we bought a few bottles.

We headed back to find our Agrigurismo, Emidio Pepe. It is an organic winery and normally serves dinner. For some reason they were not doing so on our visit. We were the only people there the first night and were joined by two other parties the second night. We had such a big lunch we had bought a picnic and had it in the common area where we watched TV and sat out on the porch. It was still raining and foggy so we would have to wait until the next day to see our surroundings. The next morning was rain-washed and partly sunny and I really loved the view. As you can see they haven’t brought in the red wine grapes yet. We snagged a bunch for our picnic and they were so Sweet!

After breakfast we headed out towards Pescara. Luther wanted to visit more wineries and I had hoped to see Pescara which is on the coast. There is a good, fast, toll road all the way down the coast. We got off and fought our way through sprawling, ugly suburbs and lots of traffic. Ugh! finally got into the hills and started looking for some wineries. We tried the GPS. It was not much help. It could find the towns but not the street addresses which were generally outside of town. It was beautiful countryside though and I snapped some very nice pictures of the olive trees.

After much looking we homed in on one place called Torre dei Beati. We asked and got directions. We couldn’t find it. We stopped again. We went – no go. Again we stopped. This time I asked and what a surprise. We were at the end of a tiny road that dead-ended into a farmyard. The woman I approached to ask if she knew where it was asked me what language I spoke and I said Englese. Turns out she was from NYC and had a very thick NY accent. How strange and what a small world! She clued us in that there was bad blood between the two wineries on her road. We again looked and found a very big operation but that was all. We gave up and went to find lunch.

We stopped at a fish restaurant called Carmine. Loved the name. The food was excellent and we had the wine from the winery we had still not found. Yum.

The seafood wasn’t bad either!

After lunch we were still determined to find. That. Winery. Persistence wins the day and we did find it. It had no sign at all. They were heavily into the crush too but the wine owner and maker was super nice and spoke good english. We enjoyed tasting his wines and looking around his place. Of course we bought some wine!

This is a picture of the big crusher at the winery up the hill.

Vines heavily laden with grapes.

At Torre dei Beati they hand picked and sorted their grapes.

The tasting room.

Luther with the winemaker

I am not sure if The Wine Guy will write about this place so the rest can wait.

Following another picnic dinner we left for home on Friday. I had wanted to go to Ascoli Piena so we first visited a winery (what else?) then the town. It was a lovely place, said to have the most beautiful piazza in italy.

Colonnades around the square.

We headed homeward planning to stop in Norcia for lunch. We went up through the passes and mountains, passing a place I really want to return to called Castelluccio. We had chosen Vespasia for a fine, last lunch.

We were the only people there. It is a hotel so has to stay open. Our captain named Andrea was super nice and had spent 15 years in Orlando, only returning to Italy last year. For love. He married and has a 2 month old son. Her family lives in the Montefalco area and has a winery with apartments that they run.

The lunch was spectacular with many “gifts”. I had the poached egg on potatoes and potato foam with black truffles. yum. Luther had the trout. We both had the special pasta. Here are some pictures. Sorry I took so many! Gift one, olive oil and crackers.

Gift two, Pork belly.

Rose and Montefalco roso.

Luther’s trout.

My potato, egg, truffle dish.

Our pasta.

Sorbet and truffles.

Grappa for Luther.

We had successfully completely filled every nook and cranny in the Porsche with wine and had just enough room for the luggage. A fun trip!

My visit to the Italian Dottoressa

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Well I couldn’t put off visiting my doctor any longer so I steeled myself to do it last week. The way the Italian health care works is like this. You go to the Sanitario office at the beginning of each year. I wrote about that experience earlier this year in this blog. At this time they assign a doctor. I was assigned to a woman doctor who was an OB/GYN as well but she would be my primary care doctor. I had gotten her name from friends who had been through a lot of health care issues and had finally found her. We all speak some Italian but when dealing with something like your health you want to get it right. You don’t want to misunderstand.

I had looked my Dottoressa up on the internet and had her hours. Off I went. After a little trouble I found her office but her hours were completely different than the site said. Dutifully I wrote down the hours that were posted on the door. Rats. So yesterday I went back arriving just before the opening time to find several people there ahead of me. I noted my place and after about 30 minutes I went in. I introduced myself in my best Italian and then politely asked if she spoke English. And she did, and it was good. I had checked my blood pressure myself and it was somewhat high so this was my primary reason to go. She agreed to put me on some medicine for it. She commented that she had not seen me in any of the bars and did I only associate with other English speakers. I got the feeling she didn’t like the expat community. She said she would speak to me in English but if she met me somewhere else she would speak to me in Italian. Fair enough!

As we talked I was surprised at how, how to say it…maybe unprofessional… she was at least when compared to a US doctor. She asked if my husband came to her and I said no he went to a different doctor. When I told her his name she snorted in derision. I asked her if she did not like him and she replied, “have you met him?” I don’t think a US doctor would do that to a colleague. We talked about her daughter who has several degrees. I commented that she should be proud. She talked about the person who headed the Umbria Sanitario office who had “only a high school degree!!” and SHE was trying to tell the doctors what to do, how to save money… I commented she must know people in high places. She replied she was F***ing everyone! OKAY then. So this was my first visit to the Dottoressa.

Weather is a-changing
Fall is here. The temperatures have been quite cool but nice. The morning fog is again enveloping the big city. It usually burns off by mid-morning. The farmers are bringing in the biggest cash crop around here right now – tobacco. Everywhere are tractors with trailers full of the bright yellow leaves. Sprinkled throughout the countryside are tobacco drying buildings with ovens to partially dry the leaves before shipping to the big tobacco companies. Umbria is famous for it’s tobacco, primarily for cigarettes.

The sunflower fields are now just stubble. The corn is mostly harvested. And so are the grapes. It was purportedly a good year for the wine. Happy happy for the vintners after such a poor year in 2014. Next we hold our breath to see if the olive crop is OK this year. Last year it was devastated by an insect because the winter had been too warm to kill them off. Last year would have been my first olive harvest season. So I am eagerly looking forward to this years harvest and the production of the Olio Nuovo or New Oil. Umbrian oil is particularly peppery and grassy and brilliant green. So good on toasted bruschetta. Can’t wait.

Yesterday we had a gentleman named Marco come and take a look at our big fireplace in the kitchen. We are going to have him make glass and steel doors that fold back for it. He “said” he could get it to us by November. It is Italy after all…Our friend Vera just said to him “before Natale?” (Christmas) He laughed and said November! We shall see… Maybe I will be able to try it out this winter.

This week we have had a lot of storms rolling through. A lot of times they stay west of us, behind the mountains. The Tiber river tells the tale of what is happening up-stream. It is brown with mud and very high. I must have taken 100 pictures to get this one picture of the light show we were having.

Back home.

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We have been taking it pretty easy since we returned. I did the laundry and we went to the store to stock up on food and wine. We are embarking on a diet so I wanted to get healthy things to eat. I want to cut down on our favorite thing to eat…pasta!

At our local Coop they had a sale of the bright yellow chickens that they have here. I had never bought nor cooked one since we’ve been here. There is one disadvantage to these birds and it will be obvious to you when you see his picture.

I don’t really understand why they feel they must leave everything on the bird. I am sure no one eats the head and feet! I chopped off those bits with a cleaver. I particularly hate doing that part. Once I had him looking good I followed a recipe I found on the internet. I chopped up a bunch of onions and used them as a bed for the chicken. I placed him breast-side down and sprinkled liberally with salt. Then I roasted him at 350 F for 20 minutes with the top on the pot. Then I raised the temperature to 400 F and took the top off and roasted him for 25 more minutes. Finally I flipped him over and continued roasting for another 30 minutes. He got nice and brown and the onions had absorbed the chicken juices. I just needed to caramelize them a bit more. He turned out tasty and tender. I discovered that this type of chicken had very little breast meat. Here is the finished product.

Fortified churches in Transylvania

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Romania trip report index

Part Five

I learned a bit about the history of Transylvania today. We traveled the small roads south of Sighişoara to see some castles and fortified churches. As in much of Europe what is now Romania was not always Romania. It was part of the Ottoman Empire in the 1600s and later became part of the Austro-Hungarian empire until just after World War One when there was a lot of redrawing of borders and land grabs. Many Germans (Saxons) came during the Austro-Hungarian rule. They brought along Protestant religions primarily Lutheran. The Romanians were Eastern Orthodox. This happened primarily in southern and western Transylvania. The northern part was primarily Hungarian.

The protestants built churches and fortified them with walls. They became a place for the congregation to retreat in times of trouble. I guess it was a threatening place. We toured many of these churches and fortifications. Along the way we observed the way of life. Many of the people still wear the traditional consumes. There are numerous horses being ridden as transportation or pulling carts. Sometime we saw mares harnessed to carts with their foals teathered to their moms. Everywhere we went they spoke German. This was handy since we speak that language. The architecture is also heavily influenced by the Germans. The many villages we traveled through were poor but they painted their houses bright colors. It made for some pretty sightseeing.

Alas, the Germans are gone now. But we saw many, many travelers with German license plates. During the communist reign of dictator Ceausescu many Germans emigrated from Transylvania to West Germany. Ceausescu charged between 5,000 and 8,000 Marks per person in hard currency to let them go. The Germans come back now to where their families lived.

Our first stop was Saschiz. It had a huge medieval tower fortification next to the church. Notice the crack. It went from top to bottom and each side had a similar one. There was a nice woman in the tourist information booth. She was helpful.

Inside the fortified walls was the church.

We backtracked and took a yellow road on our map which was studded with the symbols for castles and churches. Not all were open…or restored. This one was watched over by a man who spoke German and let us in. It was being restored. Pretty.

Tower fortification outside the above church.

Here is a woman wearing the colorful costume of the Romanian peasant.

Goats spilling down the hillside watched by two goatherds.

Example of a painted house in one of the villages.

We had lunch in a town called Mediaș. I had a Romanian dish of mushroom stew with Polenta which was excellent if not particularly photogenic. One of the best things I had on the trip.

After lunch we went to Biertan and toured the massive church fortress there. They are restoring it so lots of work was going on.

Church and fortifications from below.

View from the walls of the surrounding village.

Luther at the tower.

Pulpit in the church.

Amazing lock with 15 separate locks. The door with all the bits that insert into the wall is below it. They really didn’t want someone to get in!

We headed back for our final night in Sighișoara. We ate at T. Josef Restaurant and Wine Bar. It was quite good.

Next morning we were off back to Bucharest airport to stay overnight before our mid-day flight. The distances are very long. We broke up the trip stopping for lunch at a roadside motel with food. We had Chicken Gordon Bleau. Really! Here’s a picture of the menu.

The trip was a success. Here we are…Wizzing home.

Sighişoara, Transylvania

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Romania trip report index

Part Four

Sighişoara is a lovely town. Pronounced ziggyshwara. It is fairly large when you count all the outlying suburbs but the historic part is the Citadel. It started life as a Church on a Hill, which became a fortress. It floats above the modern, lower town. It was built after the Tartar invasion of 1241 which scared the bejesus out of everyone so they fortified. Now it has hotels, inns, restaurants and more souvenir shops than you’d ever need. One thing though, it is a living town, not just a tourist area, with school children laughing through the squares and small streets, church bells calling the faithful.

Streets and scenes of Sighişoara.

We did the walking tour this morning. There are several gates and towers. Nearest our hotel is the Bootmakers Tower now housing the radio station. The main gate is the Clock Tower which is just next to the Monastery Church, now Protestant. There are also the furriers tower, the tailors tower, and the butchers tower. We hiked up the covered staircase, built in 1666 and has 175 wooden stairs. It carried the German school children to the school above. The school is just next to the Church on the Hill (Biserica din Deal), considered the most valuable historical monument in the town. It was built in the 13th century but stands on the site of a much older chapel.

Monastery Church

Main gate.

Mechanical clock in main gate clock tower.

175 steps up a covered staircase brings you to the German School and the Church on the Hill.

Door in the Church on the Hill.

Murals dating from 1483 were destroyed by a fire in 1776. A recent restoration brought back fragments of the frescoes.

Tombstones in the cemetery behind the church.

View from town up to the Church on the Hill.

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that Sighişoara is the birthplace of Prince Vlad Dracul aka Vlad the Impaler. He lived his first 4 years in this house, now a restaurant.

All the souvenir shops had T-shirts.

We had lunch in T. Josef Restaurant and Winebar just down the hill in the lower city. It was a pretty, dark paneled room with a great old bar. It was situated in the Park Central Hotel. It had good food and we decided to have dinner tomorrow evening there.

My tomato soup.

Nancy Goes to Italy

A record of an American's dream to live in Umbria

Feels like winter now!

Tasting the oil

Finishing the picking and our visit to the oil mill

Helping with the harvest!

Fall in the market

Trip to Abruzzo

My visit to the Italian Dottoressa

Back home.

Fortified churches in Transylvania

Sighişoara, Transylvania

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