Monthly Archives: July 2009

Fire!

31 Friday Jul 2009

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4 a.m.  Not the hour at which you want to wake up smelling smoke.

Two nights ago that’s exactly what happened though.  At first I thought, Oh, those wild and crazy neighbors have decided to burn in the middle of the night.  A cursory check, though, suggested that this was not true.  There’s not a lot of light at 4 a.m., but there was enough to see that there was a large cloud of smoke trapped by the still air hanging over our whole valley and that it wasn’t coming either from our neighbors’ houses or from ours.

The next morning all of Rapallo was under a blanket of smoke and we had scratchy throats:

Rapallo in smoke

The beautiful yellow Canadair fire fighting plane arrived first thing, and spent the entire morning flying from the fire to the sea and back again to dump a load of water.  It’s hard to see the plane in this photo, but you can see the reddish spray of the water it has just released.  The water isn’t red – that’s a trick the morning light played on my camera:

Canadair

(Here’s a video of a Canadair dumping water on a fire at the Istanbul Airport.)

To fight this particular fire, which was on the next hill over from our valley, the planes approached from the north,

Canadair-4

made a steep bank, and disappeared behind the hill.  Very fancy flying.  This looks like it couldn’t possibly end well:

Canadair-8

but in fact there were no big crashes.  It is mesmerizing to watch the planes coming and going, a round trip they were making in about six minutes for this fire.  And it’s hard to imagine what skill it must require to fly like this.

I went down to the Port later in the morning to see what it all looked like from there.  There was smoke everywhere:

Canadair in smoky Rapallo

And yes!  There’s the brave little plane flying back to the fire.  They wasted no time getting to the water, dropping down right over the port and then scooping it up.

Canadair flying low over port-3

Anita, of GPL fame, lives in Zoagli and took this terrific photograph of the plane picking up the water (thanks for letting me use this, Anita!):

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Someone should write a children’s book about these adorable planes – The Little Plane that Could (move over, Little Engine)!  I know there’s nothing cute about what they’re doing, or why they have to do it, but the size, shape and color of the planes is just plain appealing.

Il Secolo XIX reported the next day that there were ten fires set on Montepegli behind Rapallo; boys on motor scooters were seen in the area at the time, and the police are investigating with great seriousness.  We were all lucky.  There was no wind, so though the fires burned 8 hectares (24 acres), the nearby homes on Montepegli were not threatened and residents didn’t have to evacuate.

And you know what’s really crazy?  At least two people in Rapallo woke up that morning and said to themselves, ‘Hey! Great day for a fire!’

Smokey Rapallo 2 firesA

Go figure.

J-E-L-L-Oooooooo

26 Sunday Jul 2009

Posted by in American recipes, Food, Uncategorized

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Usually here in Italy we’ve been able to find any foodstuff that we want.  We might not recognize the name, or the packaging, but by asking friends we’ve been able to find almost everything culinary that we’ve wanted.  And usually when we find it, it looks about the way we’d expect it to. I can imagine being in some really exotic country and buying something that you think is soup, say, only to open it up and find goats’ eyes.  That doesn’t happen here.

virtual-jelloOne thing I’ve never seen here, though, is Jello, the kind of wobbly, luridly colored Jello that we have in the States.  There are ‘budino’ (pudding) mixes – chocolate, lemon and so forth.  But not jello, per se, which is too bad, because it is a really silly, fun food.  (If you want to read a fairly cantankerous and thoroughly amusing history of non-commercial and commercial gelatin, which may or may not have been written by S.R. Brubaker, click here.)  Is there anything more cheerful, than a bowl of cubed up jewel-toned Jello, quaking and shaking?  No, I don’t think so either.  But you won’t be eating it in Rapallo.

Of course one can make one’s own jello with fruit, sugar and unflavored gelatin.  But it’s a little hard to come by red dye #14 or any other of the poisonous dyes that give Jello its unique colors (colors never found in nature!), so the likelihood of achieving true jello-hood at home is remote… it just isn’t jello if it doesn’t look like a false gemstone that’s got the vapors.

For some reason I got a bee in my bonnet about making tomato aspic the other day.  To my shock, many of the recipes I found call for lemon Jello.  Yuck.  Fortunately I found plenty of suggestions for ingredients in other recipes that did not include anything quite so yellow and all of which, of course, call for unflavored gelatin.

We still had some in the cupboard that moved over from the States with us in ’02 (that’s how often I make aspic), but there wasn’t really enough.  So I went a-hunting for same in the supermarket.  It is plentiful, but the package didn’t look anything like what I’m used to:

tart, beans, gelatina 020

That’s it on the left – Gelatina in Fogli.  Huh?  What are Fogli?  Well, it turns out that in Italy gelatin is one of the foods that looks completely different than it does in the U.S.  Whereas we are accustomed to a grainy powder, here the gelatin comes in thin sheets (‘fogli’ means ‘leaves’ or ‘sheets’):

tart, beans, gelatina 024

In fact, it’s really pretty.  That’s our Knox powder in the saucer, and resting behind it is one of the six fogli that come in an Italian package of gelatin.  Looks like a kind of magical quilt for an elf, doesn’t it?  It’s flexible and doesn’t feel sticky.  Fortunately the directions for using it are very simple.  You put all six sheets in a bowl of cold water and let them soften for 10 minutes.  They get slippery and feel a little slimy, but they hold their shape; it’s kind of fun to play with them a little before using them. Then you add them to a hot mixture and they simply melt away. After that, things go along just as they do with the powdered form of gelatin.  After a while in the fridge you’ve got a nice, firm, gelled whatever-you’ve-made.  One of the fun things about molded food is choosing the shape you want to make it.  Fish is a fish mold?  Certainly!  But how about a little sensory displacement: dessert in a fish mold?  Why not?  Fooling around with shapes is half the fun of the whole endeavor.

So how did the aspic turn out?  Really well!  In fact, to my utter surprise, our Italian friends loved it.  They called it tomato salad, which was generous, and they enjoyed it very much.  We served it with a sauce made of cheese, horseradish, mayonnaise and a little milk.  That thing on the left that looks like a happy face is a slice of cucumber; another is barely visible between the first one and the sauce.  The cucumber as decoration plan did not work out quite as I’d hoped.

aspic 001a

Gelatin makes food that’s playful, and that’s good.  I don’t agree with S.R. Brubaker who says, gelatin is ‘fake food,’ (just one of his salvos against this church social favorite).  It’s no more fake than bread is ‘fake wheat’ after the addition of yeast and heat.  It’s just a process.  The great thing about gelatin is you can put whatever you want in it and it will probably work out pretty well.  It is the amber of the food world, trapping and holding ingredients (let’s hope it’s not, like amber, holding flies).  If you want a rather vague tomato aspic recipe, click here.  In any event, have some jello and have some fun.

The Lavender Mob

20 Monday Jul 2009

Posted by in Animals in Italy, Flowers, gardening, Uncategorized

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It’s got all the ingredients of a summer blockbuster: violence, pathos, beauty, love, and finally the triumph of good hard work.  And where can you see this great show?  At our house, in the lavender plant on the entry terrace. There’s more action in an hour there than there is at your Cineplex on any given evening.

First the beauty:  the butterflies.  They come in a series as summer progresses.  Last week the pale greeny yellow ones that look like leaves were everywhere:

bees 019

butterfly on lavender

This week it is the swallowtails and the smaller white ones with dark wing smudges which travel in small herds:

tart, beans, gelatina 019

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swallowtail butterflya

swallowtail butterfly (5)a

Our friend Tay calls swallowtails the upside-down butterfly, because they really do look like they’re upside down when they’re perched on a flower.  There are a host of other butterflies that come and go, from teeny little brownish ones to the lovely orange ones accented with circles.

butterfly on lavender-2

butterflies on lavender-4

Two weeks ago I saw one butterfly of a type I’ve never seen before, or since: small and cobalt blue.  Then there are the not-quite-butterflies not-quite bugs, with their dramatic red, white or yellow spots, as well as the good old bugs.

bees on lavender 001

garden tour 031

Pestle Revised + Insects 015

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Pestle Revised + Insects 012

The pathos and violence go hand in hand.  There are nasty little beetles that hide deep inside some of the lavender flowers.  When a careless bee sticks his head in to drink from that flower, the beetle kills him with a swift swipe of his serrated razor-like arm.  We tried, but couldn’t get a picture of these little bastards. The poor dead bees just hang on the flower, giving every appearance of being drunk.  But no, not drunk. Dead.

bees 002

The triumph of good hard work?  The bees, of course.  There are more bees than you can shake a stick at.  My favorites are the small fuzzy yellow bombers that never even bother to retract their proboscis as they move from flower to flower.  They’re quick, and hard to catch with the camera.

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Next in size is the medium-sized fuzzy orange drudge who methodically moves from flower to flower, taking his time but being thorough.

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bees 001 (2)

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There are three very large bees, two with bright yellow stripes on their backs, and one who dresses entirely in black and refuses to be photographed.

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Towards the end of the lavender’s bloom a bee that looks like a Mini Cooper with racing stripes arrives in great number.

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Italian honey bees are reputed to have a gentle temperament and be excellent honey producers. I can’t vouch for the honey production because I haven’t found any, but the bees certainly are gentle.  We brush by their lavender bush a dozen times a day, and while they buzz around and complain, neither of us has ever been stung.

There’s a downside to being so hospitable to the bees.  Some of them nest in the ground, and we have a resident badger.  In his efforts to find bee grubs to eat he has dug numerous holes under our trees, especially the olive trees.

badger hold under olive

The odd thing is there is never enough dirt left outside the hole to fill it in completely again.  Where does he take the excess dirt, and what does he do with it?

You’re wondering about the love part of the equation?  It’s just that I love to watch the action around the lavender bush.  If you’ve got one, sit down sometime and watch it for an hour; it’s worth way more than the price of admission.

Pigeons on the grass, alas…

16 Thursday Jul 2009

Posted by in Animals in Italy, Birds in Italy, Rapallo

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I don’t know for sure, but I suspect ‘they’ give the pigeons something to eat here that makes them infertile and stupid.  There are not nearly as many pigeons around as you would expect in a town that has one outdoor cafe after another, and the ones that are here are sluggish.  Often they can’t get out of the road in time and end up being squashed.  Look at this poor guy – he didn’t have the oom-pah-pah to fly away when I approached to take his picture.  If he can’t escape from a prying camera it’s a good bet he’s not going to be helping to make any baby pigeons…

pigeon

ETs?

11 Saturday Jul 2009

Posted by in gardening, Rapallo, Uncategorized

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mowing the river
No, extra-terrestrials have not landed in Rapallo.  Instead it is time to mow the river.    The Torrente San Francesco is fed by all the little streams and rivulets that start in the folds of our high mountain and head towards the sea.  By the time they arrive on the plain of Rapallo they have become the Torrente.  For most of the year that is a misnomer, as you can see in the photo below.  Not only is it not a torrent, you can see hardly any water at all in some places.  What you can see is a lot of greenery, including the dreaded bamboo on the right in the picture above.  To give you an idea of how much water there can be after heavy rains, in 2002 I saw the top of the river almost breach the high retaining walls that you see below.  The mowers tackle not only the river bed itself, but also the walls which sprout quantities of viney, clingy weeds in all seasons.

Why the haz-mat suits?  I’m not sure.  Just to be safe, I guess.  I can tell you what they wear under them.  Not much.  Sometimes a wife-beater tee-shirt, sometimes no shirt at all, and, I suppose, trousers, although I didn’t  verify that.   The river is home to many, many ducks and geese as well as the occasional cat.

mowing the river4

I asked mower Luis how often they have to mow the river. They last did it two months ago, he said. How long does it take to finish the river? A week or more, it’s hard work after two months of heavy growth. When I asked him what was the most interesting or amusing thing they found in the river his face clouded for a minute. “We find a lot of dead animals,” he said. But then he smiled sweetly and continued, “but we also find the birds’ nests, and we always mow around them.”

Everybody’s happy when the river has been mowed.  Something minty grows down there, and the perfume fills Via Bette from the Autostrada Bridge all the way down to Giorgio’s bakery, where the mouth-watering smell of freshly baked bread prevails.  Also you can see what’s going on so much better after the mowing.  Something delicious must be hiding in that hole; this cat was so intent that even loud shouts of ‘hey, kitty!’ didn’t get his attention.

bees 022
mowing the river resting

Uh oh!  Looks like Luis found some hazardous material after all… but no.  He’s just having a little ‘pisolino’ (nap) after his picnic lunch.

Q8 Rip-Off

07 Tuesday Jul 2009

Posted by in Crime, Driving in Italy, Italian bureaucracy, Italian habits and customs, Italian men, Rapallo, Uncategorized

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Q-8 receipt

You get what you pay for, right?  Well, sometimes when you buy your gas at Q8 you don’t get anything at all!

Here’s the story.  Way back in May I filled my scooter, which has a small tank, and paid with a E 10 note.  There was a credit remaining of E 4.11.   I wasn’t sure how to use the credit slip, though, even though a thorough explanation is given at the bottom.  My Italian just doesn’t always measure up to the fine print.  I know!  It’s my fault, I should be better at my second language.  But I’m not.  Yet.

Wanting help with this credit receipt, I kept waiting for there to be an attendant at the Q8 station, which is, it seems, a rare event.  Finally about a month ago there was a man there who explained to me that because my credit was less than E 5 I wouldn’t be able to use it without putting in more money.  Huh??  When is a credit not a credit??  When it’s for less than E 5 at Q8, that’s when.

It seemed mighty peculiar to me, but I said ok – and as it happened I already had plenty of gas that day, so I didn’t take advantage of the attendant’s presence and actual willingness to help.  I figured I’d catch him another day.

Fast forward to last week (can you believe how much effort is going into a credit for E 4.11??!).  The door to the attendant’s box was open, so I whizzed in to buy some gas.  There was a young woman there, and I asked her, is it true that I can’t use this credit without adding more money?  “I don’t know,” she said, “Can you come back on Monday when the regular guy will be here?”

“Well, okay,” I replied, but can you give me change for this E 50 so I can pump some gas?  I don’t want to put E 50 in the machine.”

“No,” she answered.  Sooo, I went to the grocery store just behind the Q8, bought a few necessities and returned to the gas station with a crisp E 5 note.  The attendant had fled.

I began the automated process to get gas, and one of the choices indeed was for a receipt number, so I punched in the number on my credit.  Immediately what came up was the original screen suggesting, ‘Go ahead, put some money in here and see if you get lucky.’  At least that’s what I think it said. I really just wanted the credit’s worth, so I tried again.  No luck.  Then I stared around in agony and asked the Gas Goddess to come to my assistance.  Then I punched in the credit code again and got a message that it was invalid.  So I just put in E 5 and got my gas, puzzled as could be.

Today my tank was low again and guess what!  There’s a GAS STRIKE in Italy over the next two days so it will be difficult to buy gas (amusingly, one of the strike issues is ‘long working hours’).  It seemed prudent to fill up, and, to my amazement, the door to the attendant’s box at the Q8 was open again, and sure enough there was a man seated at a desk within.  I went right to him and said I wanted to use my credit to buy gas.  He looked at it and said, “There’s not enough credit on here, you need at least E 5, so you will have to put more money in.” (Can you tell me what difference it makes to an automated system if your credit is for E 4.99 or E 5.01?  It shouldn’t matter one whit.)

I explained that I had tried to do that but that it hadn’t worked.  “Can you help me with this?” I asked – and I was still being extremely polite.  Can you guess what he said?  He said, “No.”  Then he said, “The instructions are written down here.”

“I know,” I said, “but when I put my credit number in it doesn’t work.  Can’t you help?”  Rolling his eyes to the heavens and heaving a mighty sigh he… you think I’m going to say he got up, aren’t you?  No, he didn’t budge his skinny ass.  He punched a few buttons on the computer in front of him and said, “This number is invalid.  Didn’t you take a new receipt when you tried before?”

“No,” I explained (and I was getting a little irritated by now), “I didn’t because there wasn’t one to take.”

“There was,” he assured me, “and you should have taken it.”

“So what you’re telling me is that Q8 has my E 4.11 and I’m not going to get any gas for it?”

“This receipt is invalid.”

“But I didn’t get anything for it.  I’m just giving Q8 my money and not getting any gas in return.”

He gave the final, infuriating, ‘tough shit’ shrug and turned away.  That’s when I crumpled up the receipt (but didn’t throw it at him – I’m so glad because now I can show it to you!) and informed him tartly that I wouldn’t be buying any gas from Q8 ever, ever again.  You know, I don’t think he cared.

As a side note, during the long wait for this story to unwind I received another credit slip from the Shell station in the middle of town, this one for E .94.  The attendant (who is there morning and afternoon, daily) took my slip and applied it to my next gas purchase.  So easy!

May I tell you what would have happened if this had occurred in the U.S.?  1) the attendant would have been there more than ten minutes a week.  2) he would have made at least a cursory effort to help  and 3) he would have believed me and would have made good on the credit.

Now you might say I’m the victim of my own ignorance, and I guess that’s true, but  I think people who are selling things should try to be helpful to customers.  You might call my wish to have the gas credit honored the typical unreasonable American sense of entitlement.  I call it honesty.

Rapallo’s Feste Patronali

05 Sunday Jul 2009

Posted by in Italian holidays, Italy, Photographs, Rapallo, Uncategorized

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fireworks battle-1We might have celebrations and fireworks in the U.S.on the 4th of July, but good old Rapallo celebrates for three full days, and at almost the same time.  July 1, 2 and 3 are the days of the Feste in Rapallo which commemorate the appearance of the Virgin Mary at Montallegro, 452 years ago. (You can read about that event here).  Because the holidays are mid-week this year, they have run over a bit into the following weekend as well.  The schedule of events is daunting – it would be impossible to do everything that is taking place.

It all starts the Sunday before the 1st of July, which is the first night the Pilgrims walk (yes, walk) from Rapallo up the mountain to Montallegro.  Singing.  At about 2 a.m.  In torchlight.  It’s a spooky thing to hear because the sound is not singing exactly, nor is it exactly chanting.  It’s something in between, which has monotonal parts accented by occasional semi-octave exclamations.  The sound carries, and the nearby hills send it back in echo, and the whole effect is mystical and a little scary, an effect that is, I imagine, accentuated by the flickering lights of the torches.

Throughout the feste days there are many masses celebrated, both at Montallegro and at the main cathedral of Rapallo, the Basilica of the Saints Gervasio and Protasio (an entertainingly translated link).

Things really get underway on the 1st, with the “Saluto alle Madonna” and the “Spettacoli pirotecnici ‘a giorno’ ”   The Saluto, which is repeated daily, is simply big cannon Booms which shake the ground under your feet.  The fireworks instead is a one and a half hour extravaganza that starts at 8 a.m. (8 a.m.??) and is sponsored by the Sestieri Borzoli and Costaguta.  It seems like an odd hour for fireworks to me, but that’s how it’s done.  There’s no worry if you don’t make it to this early show, though, there are plenty more fireworks to come, each one sponsored by pairs of the Sestieri of Rapallo.

Wikipedia tells us:  “a sestiere is a subdivision of certain Italian towns and cities. The word is from sesto, or sixth; and is thus used only for towns divided into six districts. The best-known example are the sestieri of Venice, but Ascoli Piceno, Genoa and Rapallo, for example, are also divided into sestieri. Sestierei are no longer administrative divisions of these towns, but historical and traditional communities, most often seen in their sharpest relief in the town’s annual palio.”  ( A ‘palio’ is usually an atheletic competition of some sort; Siena’s famous Palio is a horse race; Rapallo’s competition is in fireworks displays.)  Borzoli and Costaguta also sponsor fireworks on the night of July 1st.  On the night of the 2nd the Sestieri San Michele and Cappelletta take over, and on the night of the 3rd it is the turn of Seglio and Crisola, this one with music.  The highlight of  this display, which features a battle between sea and Fort, is the famous Lighting of the Castello, in which the whole edifice seems to be ablaze.

castello engulfed

On the night of the 3rd, before the fireworks, there is a Solemn Procession of the Silver Arc of the Madonna, a parade through the center of the town in which all the parade crucifixes from the Rapallo churches are brought out and displayed.  The Silver Arc usually resides at Montallegro, but is brought down annually to much fanfare.  Bishops put on their best lace and the politicians are all in Armani.

procession silver

The crucifixes are large and look quite heavy, though all the tinsely decorations at the top give to each an airy, celestial feel.  Some of the Crucifieds are black and some are white.  Each is carried by one man who has a leather pouch at his waist that cradles the base of the cross.  The tricky part is that he must carry his burden without using his hands, which are firmly clasped behind his back.

procession crucifix

There is a support team for each cross, and when one bearer gets tired there is frenzied activity while the cross is passed to the next.  The whole effect is heightened by the costumes they wear, something between Middle Ages and Bakery.

procession changing carrier-1

It’s a terrific event.  I can’t begin to imagine the planning and all the hours and hours of work it takes to carry it all off.  If you ever have a chance to be in Rapallo on the 1, 2 or 3 of July, jump on it – it’s an experience you’ll never forget.  There are some more photos here.  They’re not as good as I’d like, but they’ll give you the flavor of the event. If nothing else, you’ll enjoy the portrait of the Very Strong Man.

Pickle Relish

01 Wednesday Jul 2009

Posted by in American recipes, Customs, Food, Uncategorized

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relishOh! The things we take for granted in the United States, things like peanut butter and pickle relish.  Neither of these items is readily available in Rapallo, and usually we don’t miss them very much.  But watch out – the 4th of July is just around the corner.  You can’t get through the 4th of July without a hot dog or a brat, and according to me, you can’t eat either without pickle relish on top.

The solution to the scarcity problem is obvious: we must make our own.  We made this recipe a couple of years ago and served it at a 4th party, which included many Italian friends.  To our surprise they loved it, to the point of requesting the recipe.  “It will be good with chicken and pork,” one of them said.  I suppose so, though we generally opt for the Captain’s chutney with that kind of meat.  But for a good old ‘Merican hot dog or German brat, nothing beats relish on top, and this recipe makes a relish unlike the vivid green items you can buy in American supermarkets.  We adapted it from a recipe we found on cooks.com.

Dancing hot dog C

(Picture found on web - thank you anonymous artist!)

Happy Independence Day, everyone!  Eat a hot dog!!