Just to let you know

that because it became impossible to upload photographs properly on this blog, in the end I had to create another which carries on from where I've left off here.  If you would like to see the new blog you can find it here.

Let's do lunch!

I'm sorry I've been away for so long, but I've been having terrible difficulty getting the blog to work properly.  Finally I've decided to place all the photos at the end of the piece as if I try to upload them in the text the whole thing goes awry.  Sorry about this, I have requested help from Blogger but no-one appears to be interested :(

One of the best things about living in Italy is lunch, a meal nearly everyone here takes seriously.  It took a bit of getting used to when I first arrived, and even now, I’ve been known to miss it when running around to keep work appointments, but that alters nothing.  As far as I’m concerned, the Italian lunch, especially at festival time, is one of the nicest ways to spend a few hours that I can think of. Easter Sunday saw us, en famille, driving to a local Agriturismo for lunch. What’s an Agriturismo? Well essentially it’s a working farm, which runs a restaurant, and some also welcome guests to stay.  I suppose in the UK we’d call it a “Holiday Farm”. Traditionally are renowned for serving good plentiful homely food at more than reasonable prices, and this accounts for their popularity amongst Italians as well as tourists. There are now thousands of them all over Italy, some extremely upmarket.  Others Vito sometimes complains are really restaurants with a cow in the garden to give the appearance of being a farm! However many are truly working farms where the restaurant is run as a sideline. It was to one of these that we went last Sunday.  Fifteen of us arrived from different places at 1 o’clock along with everyone else that was eating there that day.  Vito and I reckoned there were about 60 people in total.  We were led to a small, almost square room with pretty basic furnishings, and settled ourselves around a long rectangular table.  There were jugs of Crodino and plates of crisps laid out ready on the table and the children immediately dived into the crisps.  While waiting for the food to make its entrance, one of our party told Vito and me the history of the place.  The restaurant had only opened a couple of years ago and was run by the farmer and his family.  “At first they had no idea how to run a restaurant,” she told us, “for instance when ten of us came for dinner one day they couldn’t understand why we insisted on sitting on one table and not two of five.  But now they are much better”.  After what felt like an age as we were all starving, antipasto arrived.  Plates laden with cold meats and cheeses and vegetables preserved under oil (all home produced) followed one after the other, a bit like a Greek meze and were passed down the table.  Things I’d never had before too, like fried pizza dough which was delicious.  Every time I thought the starter course was over more turned up until in the end I said to Vito “I’m stuffed”.  “We haven’t even started the pasta course yet,” he told me.  Have you ever had baked spaghetti in the oven?  I hadn’t and it was delicious and after that came lasagna, which was good - but not as good as Vito’s (which is the best ever).  By now filled up to the lugholes, it was hard not to give a sigh when plates of meat and potatoes arrived, nor to wonder how we would manage to eat it – but we did anyway.  The meal was finished off with cake, coffee and liqueurs.  We had been sitting for quite a while now and the youngsters in our party were eager to take us to see the animals.  Following them out into the bright sunshine, we were introduced to geese and hens, guinea pigs, a splendid cockerel strutting his stuff, surrounded by his harem, (and I am SO glad I don’t live there at 5.00 a.m.) two magnificent Vietnamese pigs and best of all the goats and the baby goats, which were just so sweet.  A large wheelbarrow full of olive tree twigs had been left for visitors to give to the goats as treats, and soon all of us were busy breaking off bits to give them, and berating a big black goat for pushing all the others out of the way and guzzling them down before any of his fellows had a chance to get close!   So how long did that superb lunch take?  We left at 5 p.m. four hours after we had arrived.  How much did it cost?  Just 25 Euro per head, not nearly enough to give anyone indigestion. Yep! The Italians certainly know how to do lunch J

An agriturismo

Real working farms

Baked spaghetti

Fried pizza dough

A cockeral strutting his stuff

Baby goats

Pigs

The "Boss"

A story full of holes .....

Finally the torrential downpours we experienced a few weeks ago have left for other shores, although even now we are still getting the sudden unexpected deluge.  However these tend to be short and sharp rather than day-long concerted efforts at making our lives miserable.  As a result repair crews have attacked several of the local major roads with gusto.  Resurfacing has been carried out on the very worst and most lethal offenders, and although sometimes still a bumpy ride, driving is now nothing like as bad as it was a few weeks ago on the main roads at least.  However in the back streets it's a different story.  The crews seem to have been concentrating, quite rightly, on the main routes in and out of the city, which were truly dire and of course caused problems for far more people.  Meanwhile B roads and back streets appeared to have been forgotten, or so I thought.  

Road outside my house before repair

 Imagine my surprise then one morning early this week when stepping out onto the road outside our house I no longer found this, but this.

Road outside my house after repair

 This is what I call “teaspoon treatment”.  A spoonful of tarmac is dropped into a hole, smoothed over, and that’s it.  

Cutting edge technology is not required for this, and probably not much expense either.

Cutting edge technology is not required

Presumably this patching up of holes in the road is to prevent more claims from disgrntled drivers. Provided you call in the metropolitan police to witness it, damage done to tyres by badly damaged roads here can being charged back to the local authority.  I should imagine recently they’ve been inundated with claims, and so this is a stopgap solution to prevent more broken tyres.  At least I hope it’s a stopgap solution and not a permanent one! 

Here's another large crack repaired this week

Here’s another large crack “repaired” this week.  It’s been raining quite heavily here this weekend. 

Anyone want to lay bets on how long this will last?

  Anyone want to lay bets on how long the repair lasts?

Goodbye Bignè :(

Here is picture of the last two for this year.  Now with St. Joseph's Day over and done with (it was celebrated yesterday), there will be no more bignè until the end of January next year :( :( :(

  Just as well - I'm getting the size of a barge!!

Sigh .......

I give up!!!!!!!

The Scent of a Woman - Tanti Auguri!!!

International Women’s Day is held on March 8^th every year.  International it may be, but to be honest I’d never heard of it before arriving in Italy and spending my first March 8^th here.  I remember going to the little supermarket round the corner from where we lived in Rome (same place as I’d mistakenly asked for 50 rolls at Xmas), and being greeted enthusiastically by the cheerful shop manager.   He gabbled on merrily about something to do with women (I’d no idea what) and picked a little box off a pile beside him and pressed it into the palm of my hand. I thought at first he was trying to sell me something but he began curling my fingers round the box indicating it was for me to keep while nodding encouragingly. 

I noticed other women being given these boxes too, and as no one called the police as I left the shop, I assumed it was safe to take it back home. On opening it I found a small china blue and white duck.  Having no idea at all of the significance of the gift, I called Vito, who was equally surprised.  Not that I had received a gift, which according to Vito was totally in order.  It was the fact it was a blue and white duck that surprised him.  He told me Mimosa

 is what women are traditionally given, and they also wear a sprig on their lapel on that day.

It is also customary in Italy for women to go out together in the evening to celebrate their day.  Well I’d certainly be happy to receive Mimosa whenever anyone wanted to give me any, never mind on March 8th.  Mimosa has always been one of my favourite flowers, even when in the UK.

Every year I used to buy myself some in springtime even though the delicate flowers fell almost as soon as I got them home.  Not only that but the bunch, if you could call it that as it usually only consisted of three small twigs, cost an exorbitant amount of money too.  However the scent made it worth the extravagance as far as I was concerned.  I love the scent of Mimosa.  One major pleasant surprise on coming to Rome was the realization that Mimosa grew on huge trees of all shapes and sizes

Mimosa trees come in all shapes

and sizes

 that are covered in tiny canary yellow furry baubles grouped on proper branches, and not as I’d always believed on flimsy twigs.  Not only that the flowers last for the best part of a week or two before dropping to the ground.
There were plenty of the trees growing round about, and if you didn’t happen to have a tree growing anywhere near you from which you could cut some flowers, you didn’t need to take out a second mortgage to buy some.  I remember treating myself at a local flower stall for 20,000 lira (that’s around 10 Euro today) to huge bunches that filled my two biggest vases (which are by no means small), as well as a couple of buckets commandeered in for the same service.   The smell in the house for over a week was simply divine.  Just as bignè mark the first period after Christmas here for me, so too do the mimosa trees bursting into flower.   The strange thing about the mimosa is that during the rest of the year, the trees are so terribly nondescript.  Downright boring in their ordinariness, you never notice them until February when the flowers start to open on warm sunny days, and suddenly you find yourself needing sunglasses in some areas, so bright are the blooms.  Places are suddenly transformed,

Building sites are transformed

building sites unexpectedly start to smell like perfumeries and not oil depots, and places you’ve never noticed before suddenly become highlighted.    Hidden castles appear out of the blue, rising

Hidden castles suddenly emerge

out of 100-year sleeping forests, and forests some of them truly are.

Forests of mimosa

To feel the warm sun on your face and breathe in the wonderful fragrance wafting on the air, to see thousands of delicate downy,

Delicate downy flowers

fuzzy, sunny flowers in front of you is for me, one of life’s greatest pleasures.  So as a present for all the lovely women in my life, especially if they are not familiar with the magnificent Mimosa tree, as well as any other ladies who happen to be reading this, I thought I'd take some photos for you all for International Women's Day so you can enjoy it too. For each and every one of you who has spent time with me, taken time to smile at me, encourage me, laugh with me, commiserate with me, celebrate with me, dance on life’s huge dance floor with me, whether for seconds or over the course of years, and not least of all those who have loved me and still do, these pictures which I've taken over the past few weeks are to say thank you to all of you.  Here’s to you ladies, on our special day.

 May you enjoy mimosa in all its forms, floral or liquid  J and "tango on” J 

 “To us”, ladies!  Tanti Auguri!!!!!!!

It's that time of year again!

Once the fuss of Christmas is over and done with, every Friday in January finds me at the counter of our local bar demanding of the owner “are they in yet?”  He knows what I mean.   Every time Vito mentions he is going to the bar at the weekend, I ask him to ask the same thing and warn him not to dare return home without any if they are there.  Vito always laughs at me, and sometimes pretends he forgot or didn’t buy any just to tease.  What are “they”?  They are these, “Bignè di San Giuseppe” as they are known in Rome.

Are they in yet?

In other parts of Italy they are called differently.  These cakes are made in two ways.  They are either baked in the oven, or there is a much greasier, richer, fatter and in no-way-low-on-calories fried version, which of course make the latter without a doubt the tastier option!  Believe me, to die for, and in my humble opinion, worth dying for!  Traditionally made to celebrate the feast of St. Joseph (he of carpenter fame), which falls on March 19^th, these cakes are not made at any other time of the year.  Thankfully celebrations seem to start earlier each year and certainly local bars and patisseries begin to stock their bignè by the end of January.  Our local bar sells them at the weekends, and this is what keeps me going during the flat stint after Christmas until spring arrives.  They are our weekend treat. 

They are our weekend treat

The bar owner orders the cakes from a baker in Albano, which has a well-deserved reputation for his wares.  Some places serve them with fillings that are too dense, or too rich or sweet, or the cakes themselves too greasy or even too dry.  However to quote Goldilocks, these “are just right”, (and believe me I’ve tried plenty).  The fact they cannot be bought after the festival ends does a lot to assuage the guilt of overdoing the calories.  I mean you can’t get them after 19^th March, so might as well have one (or maybe two) now.  Can’t have them later can you?  Not as if you are eating them all year round is it? (In which case I’d probably be all round too). 

Can't have them all year round

Oh and one other use I found for them the other day apart from eating them which ended up with us laughing hysterically in the street outside the patisserie in Rome where we bought them while waiting for my dentist appointment.  Vito had been teasing me mercilessly while he happened to be eating a bignè.  I don’t know what made me do it, but my hand moved upwards.  Folks they also make wonderful custard pies!  Smash one in someone’s face and they find they are covered in thick yellow custard. 

They make wonderful custard pies too!!

 Vito will, I’m sure, back me up on this as he was the one who got covered (yessssssss!!!!!!!)  Except of course now he’s threatening revenge L