Gifts of the Heart

I don't know about you but I've been enjoying the monthly posts by the great gals of the Italy Blogging Roundtable.  It's interesting to see how each writer explores the monthly theme.  I know some of them and admire all of them.  So when they opened up the topic for anyone to participate this time around I couldn't resist.  The theme is gifts (or presents).

I like presents.  I mean, really...who doesn't?  It means someone is thinking of you, right?  And as much as I like to rip open the wrapping paper, it's just as much a pleasure (if not more so) to make or choose a gift, tie it up with a bow and present it to someone I care about. 

I was thinking about gifts I've received through the years.  Sure there were some great surprises - the hand-woven wool coat from Chimayo, New Mexico that Bryan gave me one year, a gorgeous and warm wrap that was made in the centuries-old Spanish tradition.  Beautiful, because he had seen me admire it and went back to get it for me without ever letting the secret slip.  I was speechless when I opened it (and if you know me, you know I'm rarely without words!)  The downpayment on our first house from Bryan's parents; the airline tickets for our first trip to Italy from mine - generous and indelibly memorable presents.

But the ones I think are most imprinted are the simple ones.  Every year my grandmother gave us fresh grapefruit from Florida, for instance.  Not a major expense, but when you live in frigid northern Ohio, the taste of fresh citrus imported from the sunny south is fabulous.  I remember one year she wrapped three grapefruit in white tissue paper and formed a snowman, complete with cut-out paper hat, little pieces of charcoal glued on for eyes and a pipe-cleaner smile. 

Simple pleasures, simple gestures...to me they mean a lot.  And the past year in this village we've received many amazing gifts.  There have been warm invitations for coffee or a meal.  There was the asparagus hunting lesson (with cooking tips thrown in for good measure).  We've been gifted with countless bottles of homemade wine, so many fresh vegetables and orchard fruit that I didn't have to go to the fruttivendolo for weeks, farm fresh eggs, local honey, hand-made pasta, and home-cured salami and pancetta, and enough caffe' to keep us caffeinated for months.  Our neighbors made a lovely fireplace broom - which sits proudly next to our caminetto but is much to pretty to dirty.  And of course there was the wonderful furry surprise that has become part of the family.  (Lucano is on my lap with his head resting on my arm as I type this.  He doesn't seem to mind the rhymic tapping.) 

People have opened their larders wide and shared the bounty of their lands and their skills, which has deeply touched us.  But as much as we enjoy being invited to partake, we have also been invited to participate, giving us the gift of community and feeling like we've become a part of it. 

I wasn't here long when the local community center asked if I'd organize English classes; some of those students have become true friends.  We've lent a helping hand in local festas, and have given free translation when asked as a way of giving back.  We like being involved.  I love the local word for that - "inserire".  Several people commented that we've "inserito" into the village.  Literally it means "inserted" but they're really saying we've joined in and become a part of it.  Without their knowing it, those little words were a gift, too, making us realize we're accepted. 

People here have given from their gardens, but many given from the heart in the form of friendship and a sense of belonging.  And who could ask for more than that? 

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Be sure to check out the wonderful writings of the cool chicks who make up Italy Blogging Roundtable :

Jessica of Italylogue

Alexandra of ArtTrav

Gloria of At Home in Tuscany

Rebecca of Brigolante

Melanie of Italofile

Comfort Food

It's something that was already on my mind, but it seems everywhere I look this week it's all about comfort food.  The grand dames of the blogging roundtable have been posting about it.  The Food Network site has a page devoted to it.  And someone reminded me of a post I'd penned some time back talking about my grandmother's kitchen.  It's been one of those seasons, that I crave comfort. 

Italy is all about the food.  You know that.  Here you find fabulously fresh foods, prepared simply but with great end results.  When not cooking or consuming food, they talk about food.  Seriously.  Very few conversations don't take a culinary turn at some point.  And many of the foods in this region are familiar, family recipes.  I just didn't know it growing up.  I assumed the dishes I ate as a child were generic "Italian" as passed down from my paternal grandmother.  I didn't know that they were specifically "Lucani" as passed down to her from her mother, who came from a village less than 25 kilometers from where I live.  That knowledge itself is comforting, it makes me feel even more connected here.

As for specific foods that I crave when feeling moody or needing a soul surge, I return to recipes of the various periods and places of my life.  Sometimes it's the aromas of my grandma's house.  Sense of smell quickly takes me there.  In fact, today I made applesauce, just like Grams used to make it.  The apple-cinnamon scent filled the air and lifted my spirits.  Sometimes it's my nana's kitchen, in the form of meatballs and sausage simmering in sauce.  When I'm not feeling so hot, I turn to pastina with butter and parmigiano, the classic comfort food in our house when we had the flu or a trembly tummy.  And sometimes it's a breakfast burrito smothered in green chile sauce, one of my preferred plates in New Mexico.  Yesterday I made good ol' mac and cheese, which is sort of a melding of my American and Italian palates (pasta, cheesey, saucey...good!)  Tomorrow I'm thinking chicken pot pie.

I tend to have more comfort cravings in the late fall, when winter is on its way, when the days are shortening, when there's a chill in the air and a lowness of heart at the encroaching coldness and darkness of winter.  Even though inverno really isn't severe here, it's just the loss of summer and the diminishing sunshine that lays me a little low.  But a whiff of applesauce, the scent of sauce, and a bite of burrito help.  A lot.
 

My Bella Basilicata

Well, did you see it?  How was it?  The big episode of House Hunters International featuring our home search in Trivigno aired last night, but it's not transmitted over here to the bel paese.  I hope it showed our beautiful region in a positive light.  To see more about Basilicata, check out our website!

My Bella Basilicata

A friend sent a screen shot from the TV

Did you see House Hunters International and think you might want to find a house in Trivigno, too?  We have listed homes for sale on our web site to help you start your search! 

News and Tidbits

So lest you think I'd given up blogging, I'm back with a hint of red on my cheeks - a bit of embarrassment that I've been too busy to blog, along with a flush of rosso from rushing back across the ocean, then careening down the length of the boot to get back home.  I'm a tad tired.

We were back in the New World to revisit la famiglia and celebrate our wedding anniversary.  We went back to the beginning, so to speak, to my hometown in Ohio where we were wed 25 years ago.  Yes, boys and girls, we feel officially old now that we're talking silver anniversary, but we take consolation in the fact that we were mere babes when we got married. 

We enjoyed a romantic little getaway to Amish country, and had a fabulous organic farm-fresh meal at Malabar Farm, the lovely spot where Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Becall were married.  We also spent several days eating nothing but ethnic cuisine.  (In our house, Italian doesn't count as ethnic.)  Turkish, Indian, Chinese...it all went down well.  There are few ethnic eaties around Italia, even fewer down here in the south.

It was a quick trip filled with lots of running around to see family.  Unfortunately, we didn't have the beautiful autumnal weather we enjoyed 25 years ago.  It rained 9 days out of 10, not a good weather ratio, but so goes the luck of the draw in northern Ohio.

In other news...

*Remember the film crew that came to follow us around in May?  We received news on our anniversary that we have an air date!  Tune in to HGTV on November 4 (10:00 pm eastern time) to see Basilicata (and yours truly) in living color.  For the record, we're not too thrilled with the episode title.  A life of leisure?  Magari!  (We wish.)  You'll have to let me know how it turns out.  We can't watch it over here; we have to wait until they send us a DVD.  Here's hoping we don't embarrass ourselves in front of 50 million people!
House Hunters International in Trivigno, Italy

*Have you heard about the Pizza Pilgrims?  They're a pair of young Brits who are crossing Italy from toe to top in a Piaggio Ape', a 3-wheeled utility truck, in search of the perfect pizza.  They're a hoot!  You can follow their journey and their culinary adventures as they chug along at about 35 miles per hour.
Pizza Pilgrims

*Speaking of pizza, I won a cute little pizza charm, thanks to Cibando, a fabulous foodie site (in italiano) that includes my bubbly blogging buddy, Eleanora Baldwin.  I rarely win anything, so it was kind of thrilling to get the honor of a trinket in the shape of Italy's favorite food.  It was here waiting for me when I got home.  Well, it was at the bar, because the postina leaves my mail there for me to collect when I get my morning cappuccino.  Not a bad system, really.

So that's the news from here.  How has your Fall been?

Just in Time

I knew it would end sooner or later, but the summery autumn we'd been enjoying could have held lasted a little longer.  A few days ago I was in a denim skirt and sleeveless top.  Today I'm sporting a mock turtleneck with a cardigan swaddled around me.  The wind blew in a cold downpour last night, right on schedule according to predictions, which had everyone scrambling in their campagna to finish the grape harvests while they could.  The grapes were already dismal, they wailed; can't lose what little we have to the cold and rain.

Thankfully our new heat source was installed just in time.  Last year we were still in camping mode, surviving with the likes of the caminetto and a space heater.  A few months of day-in and day-out fire-building grew a little wearisome, especially for the girl of the house who had to tend the homefires each evening while her Eagle Scout hubby was teaching in Potenza.  Not that she wasn't grateful for a fireplace that worked well, mind you.  But interrupting my writing thought stream or students to poke the coals and throw on logs every half-hour left a lot to be desired.  An alternative needed to be found.

Mom warming up near the fire

There was much discussion about this - between us and our engineer who advises us on all manner of work and maintenance for a 300-year old stone building, as well as among everyone of our acquaintance who felt the need to weigh in.  Because a side note of village life is that nothing goes unnoticed and so everyone is pretty much up everyone's business (but this also means that there is no crime and they know approximately when you'll need to obtain more firewood based on your last delivery date and the ensuing number of cold days and will then huddle you into the truck to go load up said firewood and help you carry it through the pedestrian lanes to your house.) 

So round about the time that neighbors started asking how much wood we'd need this year- because dry wood must be ordered well in advance- we started looking at options.  A gas-powered heater was gifted to us, its owner saying we could hook it up to the natural gas line or to a bombola tank.  It puts out good heat, he said, and would be a simple solution until we decided on future renovations.  Seemed sensible.  Until the guy who would need to install it started talking about busting a hole into the fireplace flue for the exhaust pipe (an idea I wasn't too keen on), but then the fireplace buco would need to be filled in, but then since there's no draw with the buco closed a fan might be needed to ensure gas exhaust doesn't get trapped between the pipe and the former openening, and then...

Eyes glazed over as our ears strained to catch all of this in heavily-accented Italian that tended toward the dialect variety, which we don't understand.  A few other exhaust pipe options were discussed, which would be even more complicated given the thickness of the walls and proximity of other habitations.  I escaped the overload with a trip to Potenza, where, still enjoying a tank top and cotton capris with brilliant sunshine, I savored a gelato to regain equilibrium, then hauled myself off to Eldo, an electronics store, to explore my options.  I found a heat pump, a quality one, which happened to be on sale for half price.  I ran home and consulted the engineer.  He was so impressed with my find that he called to have it held for me, along with two for himself for his studio tecnico.

The electrician came to install it two days ago.  It was more of an ordeal than I'd imagined - not so easy as just tapping into drywall and mounting the sucker - because trenching in the stone had to be done for the electrical lines as well as the drain tubes from the compressor unit.  They arrived at 8:30 and left at 3:30, but when the dust cleared I beheld my shiny new heater with awe.  And just in time.  It looks like it's going to be put to good use very soon.

A Day at the Sea

Do you remember the three months we spent in the Cilento?  Before we returned to the US?  The sunsets, the seafood, the stunning villa?  We enjoyed exploring that part of Campania, but it was in the winter, when the sea was spunky and Cilentani were sleepy.

I returned yesterday for a day.  I went for work-related research.  Sometimes great sacrifices must be made in the name of duty and so I suffered the hardship and went to the sea.  It was still summery with a hazy diffused light from the humidity and a glittery gloss to the water from the sun and heat.

Santa Maria is a different town than the one we saw two years ago, partly owing to the warm weather, with tourists still laying on the beach and filling the waterfront restaurants.  But it is also more discovered than before, thanks to the movie Benvenuti al Sud that was filmed there and shed Santa Maria, along her uphill sister, Castellabate, in a very positive light.  We loved watching the DVD and recognizing all the film locations. 

Even though the high season of August is gone there was still an atmsophere of festa in the air and lots of northern European (read, very white) tourists sunning themselves and wandering the Corso.  I asked the beachside barista about the increase in tourism and she said they've seen a lot more stranieri this summer. When I asked where they came from she responded that the "foreigners" had come from mainly Milan and Torino. 

I did my research then had a nice seafood lunch, a real treat because up here in the mountains we don't get a lot of fish, apart from the dreaded baccala.  After, I whipped into my swimsuit and spent about an hour on the golden sand beach that fronts the castello, dipping regularly into the placid water to cool off.  The sea here gets deep quickly, which I like, unlike the Ionian, where you have to walk about a kilometer to reach water above your kneecaps.  I bronzed up nicely in short-order under the Cilento sun.

I drove the road towards Battipaglia that used to terrorize me because of the crazy drivers who make a two-lane road into a three-lane highway as they brazenly streak down the middle while cars on either side have to careen over to avoid them - and it seemed *almost* normal, so familiar was it.

My looks, I vainly admit, were pretty bad, being sticky from the salt water and my hair having gone all frizz-and-boing from the humidity, but I stopped off at Vannulo for *the* best gelato.  I know, it's a bold statement to make, but if you haven't tried gelato di bufala you don't know what you're missing. It was bold-flavored and so-amazingly-creamy, just like I remembered, a nice way to top off the day.  Because work deserves its rewards afterwards, right?

Five Regional Words

Remember a while back when I posted my five favorite Italian words?  And then I discussed my five least favorite Italian words?  Bryan and I were recently pondering some of the regional peculiarities of the language.  There are some expressions we hear down in these parts that we hadn't encountered in Ascoli Piceno or Roma, so today I'm giving you a lesson in southern speak - Five Southern Words:

Mo'.  This one sounds just like it looks, with a nice round O pronunciation.  Mo' means "now," as in: 
"When is the meeting?"
"Mo', mo'!"
To ask E' mo'? is a nice way of questioning, now what the hell do we do?  Then there's my favorite: fino a mo' - up til now.  I was too busy to call fino a mo'.  My friend Maria has an old Abruzzese saying, 'A mo' stavi buon'" (fino a mo' stavi bene), meaning you were doing fine up until now.

Fare acqua.  Literally "to make water," this expression is used by many of the older folks to talk about rain.  Mamma mia, quant'acqua ha fatto!  Good grief, it rained so hard!  Or for the forecast they say, sto pomeriggio fa acqua.  It's going to rain this afternoon.  Fare acqua always make me smile a little, it just sounds so old-style and quaint to my ears.

Voi.  I'd learned in language school that voi - the plural form of 'you' - is used for extreme courtesy when meeting someone important, but they never clued me in that it's used down here as a normal address when talking to someone you don't know, replacing the "Lei" form (formal 'you').  The first time I heard voi when I wasn't with Bryan (and it was clear they weren't addressing both of us) it took me a few seconds to figure out they were talking to me.  Here in the village we all pass quickly to the "tu" - informal 'you' - but out and about the voi usage pops up often.  It always makes me feel a little awkward, but I've gotten used to it.

Servizi.  While in other places servizio means service, be it customer or military, here it means "errands".  Faccio dei servizi, I'm running some errands.  It can also means "appointment" (ho un servizio alle 10:00).  When I ask my friend Antonietta what she did yesterday she'll say, "ho fatto i servizi," meaning she cleaned her house.

Passeggiata.  OK, I know, this is a common Italian word.  People everywhere take a passeggiata in the evening, strolling around the piazzas to meet up with friends and have a little exercise.  But around here to go for a walk is a camminata, while friends in the countryside will ask if we want to fare una passeggiata, meaning take a little excursion to go out and visit them.  It was a bit confusing at first because I really didn't want to walk the six kilometers to their farm.  If we say we went to Matera for the day, friends will ask, "Ah, did you have a bella passeggiata?"  Did you have a nice outing?

Then there's the local dialect, but that's a whole other language and another discussion for another time. 

So there you have 'em, a few words of Lucano-style Italian.  What are your region?  Do you have regional pecularities?


Watch a southern language lesson from the film, Benvenuti al Sud.

Other Five Lists:

My Five Favorite Towns in Italy

My Five List for Foodies