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Dinner at Eight

17 Sunday Jan 2010

Posted by in American habits and customs, Customs, Italian habits and customs, Italy, Uncategorized

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There are some differences in living habits between the US and Italy that are just plain hard to get used to. For us, coming back to the States for a while, it is very hard to get used to the fact that most people eat dinner at 6 o’clock, or earlier. There’s a restaurant down the street from us here, and when I drove by at 4:45 yesterday evening the parking lot was jammed with cars. Everyone was there for a 5 o’clock dinner (All You Can Eat Fish Fry on Wednesdays and Fridays – another concept that would be foreign and bizarre to an Italian restaurateur).

For us, 5 o’clock is the Hour of Tea, 6 o’clock is the Hour of Drink-n-Snack, 7 o’clock is the Hour of Dinner Preparation and 8 o’clock is the Dinner Hour. We’ve just gotten used to it that way, because that’s the dinner hour in Italy. In fact, away from the main tourist cities you would be hard pressed to find a restaurant that opens its doors before 8 p.m., or perhaps 7:30.

This eating schedule has a ripple effect. Last weekend my friend Margaret and I went to a play at the ASU Gammage Hall – the ‘darkly comic’ ‘August: Osage County‘ by Tracy Letts (it was great – we laughed and groaned). What time did it start? 7 p.m.! The week before the Captain and I went to a delightful John O’Conor piano recital down the street (glorious); it started at 7:30. That would never happen in Italy! When would one eat??!  Typically in Italy the cultural events are before dinner, starting at 4, 5, or even 6 p.m., or after dinner, starting at 9 or 9:30 p.m.

Why the difference?  I think (and this is pure conjecture on my part) that the early eating habits in Arizona are due to the fact that there are so many mid-western transplants here.  On a big mid-western farm you might get up with the sun and have a cup of coffee and a snack.  Then you might work for a few hours and stop mid-morning for an enormous breakfast.  Then you would work again until the sun got low (5 o’clock?) when it would be time for a hearty dinner.  Even though fewer and fewer people work on farms, I think the early eating habit has persisted.

In Italy the large meal was typically eaten mid-day with an hour or two of rest following.  Then work continued until the evening, when a much smaller meal (minestrone?) was eaten.  That is changing somewhat, especially in the large cities, as Italy becomes more an Office Culture.  But most stores and businesses are still closed mid-day and then are open again from 3:30 or 4 until 7:30 or 8, at which point it is time for dinner.

I don’t much care for the late night events any more, but it is delightful to go to a wonderful concert at 5 p.m., come out at 6:30 or 7, take a stroll through the town, find a good restaurant and sit down for a fine meal at 8 or so, a pleasure we miss when we’re in the U.S.

So, why the Dinner at Eight video above?  Well, the title is appropriate, and as a librarian I just couldn’t resist sharing Jean Harlow’s book review.  I bet everyone would like to be a member of her book club!

Bird Watching

10 Sunday Jan 2010

Posted by in Animals in Italy, Animals in the U.S., Birds in Italy, Uncategorized

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One of the great pleasures of being here in Arizona is putting up a bird feeder and watching the wild birds who come to visit.  This is not something we have seen done in Italy, and it seems a pity, because it is both interesting and amusing. Not that Italians aren’t bird fanciers (leaving out for the time being all the recipes for songbirds) – we have seen homing pigeons flying near our house, and many houses have a cages with parakeets, canaries, and others of that exotic ilk. In fact there is a pet store right in the center of the Rapallo; every fine day they put out cages of little birds which twitter and sing like mad, poor things. But the coaxing to the home of wild birds does not seem to have yet appealed to the Italian householder, at least not in Rapallo.

Of course this being America, bird-watching has become big business.  There are whole stores dedicated to the feeding and watching of birds (Wild Birds Unlimited, Bird Watcher Supply Company, Duncraft, and a zillion local stores).  In a similar, but less commercial vein, the National Audubon Society is dedicated to the preservation of wild birds and, by extension, their habitat. We buy bird seed in 50-pound sacks, usually black oil sunflower seed, because it appeals to so many different kinds of birds.

We have hung one small feeder from an ironwood tree off our deck, and have a small ‘bath’ from which the birds can drink.  The house finches, our most frequent guests, arrive in the greatest numbers, and they are terribly piggy.  We limit the birds to one feeder-full of seed a day, and it has usually been consumed within an hour of our putting it out, most all of it by the finches.

Second in number are the raucous gila woodpeckers.  They announce their arrival with a piercing call that is something between a caw and a woody-woodpecker laugh, accompanied by a great deal of head-bobbing.  After all that effort they extract one seed from the feeder and fly off to peck it open.  They are also extremely partial to the one other feeder we have installed: a hummingbird feeder, which is filled with sugar water (1 to 4 dilution).

Other birds we see frequently at the feeder include the curved bill thrasher, a lovely, shyer bird; and the cactus wren, which is Arizona’s state bird.

Eighteen species of hummingbirds call Arizona home, and happily some of them visit our nectar feeder every day.  They are a lot feistier than their diminutive size would suggest. They offer amazing exhibitions of aggressive battle flights as they try to lay claim to the big red ‘flower’ that never quits.

Because they are so greedy, the finches tend to be careless in their eating habits – they spray seed all over the place, most of which ends up on the ground under the feeder.  This is good news for the doves and Gambel’s quail who scrabble around in the dirt and eat all the spillage.

It’s hard to understand how there can be a Gambel’s quail left in the world – though it doesn’t show in the photo above, the male has a bullseye on his chest.  They all have a very funny little plume that jerks up and down as they run (they never walk).

Every now and then inviting birds to share your space can lead to unintended consequences.  The first year we came here we put up a Christmas tree, and, because it was very warm, we left the door open.  The result was festive, though not exactly what we had in mind.

Then there are the less cheerful consequences.  Italians aren’t the only ones who enjoy dining on songbirds.  Now and then an unwanted guest comes to our feeder.

Hawks come by regularly and scare off all the little birds.  They scatter in a great clatter of wings and every now and then one will fly into a window and hurt himself.  If a bird is just stunned, you can pick it up and hold it close in your hands, keeping it warm until it comes out of shock, as the Captain illustrates below.

This little fellow made a quick recovery, and with joy we took him outside and set him free.  He flew about twenty feet and then the hawk swooped down and plucked him out of the air and flew off with him.

It’s enough to make you believe in fate.

‘Mbriulata

06 Wednesday Jan 2010

Posted by in Food, Italian recipes, Uncategorized

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The holiday decorations have been put away for another year, the leftovers have been eaten (including ALL the cookies); now is the season of remorse.  But before embarking on the inevitable diet, let’s revisit one of the greatest holiday treats of all – ‘mbriulate (pronounced um-bree-you-lah’-tay), a cross between pastry and bread, laced with bits of pork, sea salt and heavily peppered.  It is one of those things of which you say to yourself, ‘Oh, I’ll just try one little bite,’ and half an hour later realize that you’ve eaten a whole turban.  It’s impossible to stop!

The Captain’s family is Sicilian, and he learned to make this dish from his mother many years ago.  It is a dish which is found in the Sicilian province of Agrigento and has, most probably, Roman origins. The only other people we know personally who make it are his cousins, who have an interesting variation I’ll tell you about later.  What does ‘mbriulata mean?  We don’t really know, although the cousins surmise it may come from the word ‘miscuglio’ – a mix, a confusion of things, or perhaps from the Italian word ‘imbrogliata,’ a muddle.

Be warned: you will not find this in the AMA guide to heart-healthy eating. But for a special occasion you can not do better than start the meal with ‘mbriulate, either with your drinks beforehand or after you’ve moved to table – and you always want it in the plural. One ‘mbriulata might satisfy a lonely solo reveler, but no more than that.

The Captain’s recipe is simplicity itself, calling only for a filling of pork, Crisco, salt and pepper.  The cousin’s recipe eschews the Crisco (which doesn’t exist in Italy) and adds onions, pitted black olives and bits of cheese.

You can find the recipe for both variations here.

Merry Christmas from Arizona

24 Thursday Dec 2009

Posted by in American habits and customs, Arizona, Christmas lights; Gold Canyon Christmas lights, Holidays, Photographs, Uncategorized

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I love driving around and looking at people’s Christmas decorations.  Being far too lazy to do much myself, I am in awe of the amount of work and the imagination that some people confer on their houses at this season. After having seen djmick’s photos of 112 over-the-top houses, Apache Junction seems pretty tame, but here is my tribute to local lights (which are difficult to photograph).  My very favorite decoration is the last one in the series below, executed by our neighbors from New Hampshire, but it is not effective at night.

If you live in the Phoenix area and you love lights, too, you might enjoy a trip to the Zoo for the annual Zoo Lights show… or take a virtual tour by clicking the link.

Expatriate wishes you all a Jolly Holiday Season and a Happy New Year..

Trees on the median strip in a development

Angels at the gate

Christmas tree with presents and deer

Creche scene in an entryway

Porpoises swim at the far left!

Star/cross with angels or shepards or kings

Ocotillo and Santa

This really is someone's enormous house!

I bet they did this veeerrrrry carefully...

Security Level: Orange!

22 Tuesday Dec 2009

Posted by in American habits and customs, Uncategorized

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The Scream by Edvard Munch

Last week I visited a large department store in nearby Mesa, Arizona.  I strolled through the gentleman’s department, hoping to find a Christmas present for my brother-in-law, but I had no luck.  There were plenty of gifts for men, but they all seemed to be packaged in leather boxes and to cost a trillion dollars – just not appropriate for giver or givee.

One of the gift items was what I imagine was called an Executive Tool Kit.  It was a large leather case containing a wide assortment of shiny new tools: wrenches, screw drivers, sockets, and so forth.  A young couple was examining it in passing, and the young man picked up the largest wrench from the case and said, “I can’t believe they just leave this stuff out like this.”  I thought to myself, ‘neither can I; someone might steal it.’  But that wasn’t his point.  He continued, “A terrorist might come along and take this, and then what might happen?.”

Huh?  A terrorist in Dillards in downtown Mesa?  And then what?  Take a salesclerk hostage?  Well, I suppose it could happen, and I certainly can’t make light of potential terrorist threats to the U.S.  But isn’t it sad that an able-bodied young man would look at a set of tools that he should covet, and instead worry about terrorists?  I sense a general low-level fear here in the States – fear of the future, fear for the economy, fear of terrorists, fear of strangers.  It is disquieting and disheartening and more than a little disturbing…

Take My Car – Please! or… Let’s Buy a Car, Part 2

19 Saturday Dec 2009

Posted by in Driving in Italy, Driving in the U.S., Uncategorized

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M needed a new car, and she needed one soon.  An unfortunate woman suffering from a diabetic induced moment of attention deficit had run into the side of M’s car, totaling it.  The woman had driven on, oblivious to the accident and the damage she had caused.  It sounds impossible, but that’s what happened.  Lucikily neither M nor the woman was hurt, and within an hour the police had found the ill woman and gotten her off the highway, but it was too late for M, or, more specifically, it was too late for M’s 15-year old Toyota.  The old girl was dead.

M depends upon an auto for her work; fortunately her insurance company paid for a rental car.  But they were growing restive; it had been a week or two… when was M going to buy a new car?  In a sort of twisted, modern Catch-22 M was too busy working to go car-shopping, but had to go car shopping if she wished to continue working.  What to do?

As it happened she was visiting another friend in Vermont for a rare mid-week holiday, and so was I.  The Vermont friend, H, and her husband had just bought a new Honda, the 4th or 5th they’d purchased from the same dealer, whom they hold in extremely high regard.  Nothing would do but that M should look for a new car at that dealer.

So she did.  The Honda dealer was a nice young chap, and he had a car that would suit M, and he was willing to deal.  He’d met his match in M, I think.

They wheeled and dealed (oh ha ha); M had the high ground because she has always driven Toyotas and was perfectly willing to go back where she lives and buy a Toyota there.  Poor Dealer!  He could see his sale slipping away, in spite of the fact that M had enjoyed her test drive (yes, she got to have a test drive, in the actual car and on real roads.  Lucky M).

“Take the car home for the rest of the day and tonight,” he said.  I couldn’t believe my ears.  What??  Take the car home??!  But that is what he really said.  This was on a Thursday. “Well, alright,” replied M, “but you understand, if I buy this car I have to be able to drive it out of here tomorrow all registered, insured and with a loan in place, a favorable loan.”  “No problem, no problem,” Dealer answered.

So she did.  She took the car and she and I drove the 15 or 20 miles back to H’s house.  M had said she’d return it the next morning, but we slept late and got busy doing other things.  Did the police come looking for us?  They did not.  Instead we were warmly welcomed when we returned to Dealer in the early afternoon (there was, perhaps, just a touch of relief in his eyes when he saw us stroll in).

The end of the story is that M drove away a few hours later in what was now her car, Dealer having also arranged for the return of her rental car at a nearby branch of the rental agency.  Well, okay, it turned out there were a few snags in the weeks that followed, having to do with buying a car in one state and living in another, but Dealer did what he had to do to fix them.

Maybe it has something to do with the economy, but it’s more than that: American car dealers seem much more eager to sell cars than their Italian counterparts, and will do, it would seem, just about anything to succeed.  Including letting someone test-borrow the car for 24 hours.  I just can’t imagine that happening in Liguria, where, if you are very good the dealer will do you an enormous favor and sell you a car.

CSA

08 Tuesday Dec 2009

Posted by in Food, gardening, Uncategorized

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Community Supported Agriculture.  Community Sustainable Agriculture.  Take your pick or make up something else.  Whatever you call it, it is big in the U.S.  My sister in Tennessee and my dear friend in Vermont have both joined their local CSA’s. Even in Arizona, where one thinks more of desert or agri-business than vegetable farms, there are a number of CSA’s.

Here’s how it works.  At the beginning of the growing season community members pay a fee to a local farmer.  The farmer can use the money that’s been paid up front to buy seeds, fertilizer, whatever he needs, without having to take out a bank loan.

Whatever the farmer harvests, or some portion of it, is then divided by the number of members who joined, and they, the members, can come once (or sometimes twice) a week and pick up their share of produce.  In the case of my friend in Vermont the fee to join was $200 which entitled her to 10 weeks of harvest pick-ups..

Obviously these are fall crops.  My friend’s CSA was organized for autumn vegetables; the people who own the farm also offered a summer CSA for use at their farm stand. Members could buy summer vegetables and everything else the stand sells (meats, cheeses, plants, honey, eggs) during the four summer months at a 10% discount.

There are probably as many organizational charts and methods of distribution as there are CSA’s.  Mrs. H, here in Arizona, belonged to a CSA for one year; when she went for pick-ups the produce had already been divied up and put in boxes.  She was given a box, over whose contents she had no real say.  My sister in Tennessee went to her pick-up and could tell the farmer what she wanted of the available offerings.  The farmer picked out individual pieces – better, but still not perfect.  The Vermont system seemed best to me; the farmer put a sign above each box of produce announcing the weight of each share.  For instance, each share-holder was entitled to 3 pounds of carrots in the photo above.  She could also take less, or decide not to have carrots at all that week.

There was a large amount of autumn produce on hand the week that I went with my friend; she staggered out with two full bags of locally grown organic vegetables, including onions, carrots, potatoes, sweet potatoes, kale, brussels sprouts and more.

I was able to speak to the owners/farmers of my Vermont friend’s CSA, Jon and Courtney of Woods Farm in Brandon.

Jon moved to Vermont from Massachusetts in 2000 to farm the fertile river valley; Courtney came for a job on the farm and ta-da, partners in the fields and partners for life.  They have 25 of their own acres of light, productive soil.  In addition they lease 35 acres, 15 of which they put in alfalfa and 5 of which they put into sunflowers (a less than successful operation this year because of excessive rain). This was the first year they offered the summer CSA program at their farm stand – it was more successful than the sunflower crop; they had more subscribers than their goal.

CSA’s appeal to people who are interested in knowing where their food comes from.  There’s been a huge growth of the ‘localvore’ culture in the US, and CSA’s both feed and profit from this movement.  I haven’t seen anything like this in Italy, although there is such a strong tradition of local markets be begin with, there may be no need for such a thing.  But for Americans, who are accustomed to buying veggies that have been trucked in from hundreds, or even thousands, of miles away, the CSA’s offer a winning formula for everyone.

Cutting the Cheese

02 Wednesday Dec 2009

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This photo belongs to Parma Shop.It

Before leaving on our trip we stopped at Rapallo’s very popular Ekom market to pick up some Parmigiano Reggiano cheese to bring as gifts to the U.S.  (Yes!  It’s legal to carry it in – just be sure to declare it on your entry form and go through the quick Dept. of Agriculture scan at customs).  When I grew up this comestible was known as Parmesan Cheese, or, more simply, grated cheese, and was consumed only on those infrequent occassions when we ate spaghetti for dinner (never called ‘pasta’ then).

Ekom was out of Parmigiano, but were expecting it early the next morning, so I left an order for 6 pieces, vacuum-sealed, for mid-day.  I showed up at the appointed hour, but alas! Roberto had not had time yet to cut the cheese.  Which worked out well, because I had never seen how a Parmigiano is opened before, and it is quite amazing and labor intensive.

The purloined photo above shows the main tools used to crack the beast.  It is never cut, either with knife or wire, but rather is split, much as cord wood is split for fuel.

An aside: the Wikipedia link above to Parmigiano Reggiano has some great photos of the cheese being made, and gives the history and details of this delicacy, so I won’t repeat them here, other than to mention the average wheel of Parmigiano weighs about 80 pounds.  Just so you know.  It’s very heavy.

The first step is to score the thick, tough rind of the cheese.  This is done using a short knife with a short little hook at the end where you would expect to find a point.  Roberto went across the middle of the top of the cheese, down the two sides, and across the bottom.  He wiped all the cuts, and then recut, a little deeper.

Excuse mis-focus, please. But you have to admit, good shot of the yellow sign.

He then used one of the triangular shaped knives that you can see best in the very top photo, and, using his mean tenderizer as a hammer, pounded it into the marks he had made with his hook. He did this all around this cut. Then he used a longer knife and pounded that it, and finally he was able to separate the cheese into two halves.

All of the cutting is accompanied by a great deal of wiping with a cloth.  The exterior of the cheese is extremely oily, which makes it slippery and all the more difficult to work with.

This scoring, wedging and splitting process is repeated a number of times until usable pieces of cheese begin to emerge from the block.  It’s a bit like sculpture, I guess; the cheese wedges are in there, you just have to cut away until you find them.  Roberto did resort to an ordinary knife to cut off one edge of rind as I requested.  It’s much easier to use Parmigiano in the home kitchen if it has only a side rind and is all cheese at top and bottom.  By the way, cooking the rind in a minestrone or other soup can add great flavor, and if your teeth are good it’s even fun to chew the rubbery thing, assuming it has cooked long enough.

The final step was putting each wedge in the vacuum machine and sealing it up so none of its goodness would escape on its long trip to the US.  It took over 30 minutes to pull my 6 pieces of cheese from the giant wheel, and it looked like Roberto had at least another hour or so of work ahead to finish the job.

All the cheeses we carried over arrived undamaged, and people seem to like them.  We did keep one for ourselves.  Of course.  We’ll eat it on spaghetti.

A Really Good Thing We Ate This Week – Hilary’s Spicy Rain Forest Chop

07 Saturday Nov 2009

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spicy rain forest chop

Some years ago our dear friend Hilary decided that we needed to eat in a more ‘heart-healthy’ way, and she sent us a recipe that she really liked to get us started on the road to salvation.  There’s something about the words ‘heart-healthy’ that simply sounds unappetizing, at least to me.  I know we want our hearts to be happy and healthy, but can’t we simply describe the appropriate food as ‘hearty?’  That sounds much better, conjuring up, as it does, great vats of steaming stew, mountains of fresh bread still warm from the oven with lots of butter gently melting into the slices.  Maybe I’m missing the point, I hear you mutter. Well yes, maybe so.

We decided to give Hilary’s recipe a chance, though, or rather the Captain did, as he is the Chef of All Meals in this house.  He perused the ingredients (chicken breast, vegetables and spices) and commented, “She’s left out the most important ingredient.”  “What’s that?” I asked.  “The sausage,” he answered “This is a recipe that wants sausage.”

He was right.  He made it his way (you’ll find the recipe here and over on the right under ‘recipes’) and it was delicious. We revisit this dish every autumn when the winter squashes are in.  This year we used half of our pumpkin crop (1 pumpkin) instead of the squash, which proved to be a happy (and healthy and hearty) substitution.

Where did the name come from?  I have no idea.  When Hilary sent us the recipe it was called something like “Heart Healthy Stew.”  The Captain gave it a new name, and Rain Forest Chop it now is.  And oh yes, Hilary likes it better our way, too!