Archive for May, 2007
love thursday: chased by a cloud
The other day while out walking with Luna on a gorgeous clear morning, I noticed that the cacti are starting to bloom flowers, soon to be followed by the delicious fichi d’india, or prickly pears.
So of course I took a photo.
Only after I uploaded it did I notice that a heart-shaped cloud had snuck into the shot.
Clouds of love are chasing me. How lucky am I?
Happy Love Thursday* everyone!
*Note that the founders of “Love Thursday” have decided to stop updating the Love is All Around site. Thank you, Karen and Irene, for reminding us all to pay attention to simple expressions of love in our daily lives.
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[tags]love thursday, clouds, heart clouds, flowers, cacti, prickly pears, fichi d’india[/tags]
What’s Cooking Wednesday: Refreshing Summer Pasta Salad
As it turns out, not a whole lot is actually cooking in this week’s What’s Cooking Wednesday, but what I’m offering is still delicious.
Yesterday I was molto fortunata to have some special guests in my medieval village when a lovely American couple, Rich and Melissa, came to visit. And Cherrye and Peppe came from Catanzaro too! It was a bit of an invasion of Americans–the likes of which, we joked, haven’t been seen round these parts since World War II.
I had planned a small walking tour through the village, which if you aren’t aware, is extremely hilly. I live at the top, so going anywhere requires walking down–not bad at all. And then we must return, which can be a challenge. And the sun was beating down on us to boot.
Having experienced such a walk many times, I knew that we’d be looking for a refreshing, light lunch upon our return, so I decided on a pasta salad and a plate of meats, cheeses, pickled eggplant, home-jarred peperoncini in oil, fresh bread, and, of course, P’s father’s wine.
Refreshing Summer Pasta Salad
(serves 6)
1 box (500 g) pasta (farfalle and fusilli are my favorites for this)- 5 medium-sized tomatoes
- 3 cucumbers
- 2 green peppers
- olive oil, salt, oregano and/or fresh, torn basil leaves to taste
1. Boil pasta in salted water, drain, and set aside. Mix in some olive oil so the pasta doesn’t stick together, and be sure it’s cooled off before you start adding the vegetables.
2. Cut up all the vegetables that you’ll be adding in the sizes you wish. Feel free to add some olive oil, salt, and oregano/basil to let the flavors start to mingle.
3. Add the vegetables to the pasta, and then toss with more olive oil, oregano/basil, and salt to taste. Be generous with the oil because you don’t want it to be dry. Also, it’s better if you prepare this at least an hour or two before you’ll serve it to give the flavors time to mingle; be sure to taste test again for any missing condiments before you serve.
So as you can see, today’s recipe for pasta salad is extremely easy and versatile; you can put in whatever you like including different vegetables, meats and cheeses, basil or other seasonings. What I’ve offered here is my staple, and the way I almost always make it.
Another note: if you’re going to have it leftover, I don’t recommend putting meat and cheese in the whole thing (especially mozzarella!) because they can get kind of funny sitting in there for my taste, but perhaps that’s just me. I like to add such things at the table to individual proportions — also better if someone doesn’t like one thing or another in the salad. Grated cheese on the top works well, though, so you can add that the whole thing if you like.
And please, please, please resist the temptation to use Italian dressing, which is how I always had this in America. All you need is some good olive oil, oregano/basil, and salt, and you’re good to go. And I promise it’s even tastier.
Buon appetito!
may musings
It’s about time to think about the month of May and what it means to me; I’m going back to the haiku form that I first used for March:
As your name suggests
Possibilities abound
Nothing definite.
Better, worse, the same?
Your warm optimism taunts
One way to find out.
This is part of my Monthly Musings series. Also be sure to check out Cheeky’s May reflections.
If you’d like to join, scribble something about May and send me a link.
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[tags]may, poetry, haiku[/tags]
no parking (plus a poppy)
This is a sign in the corner of the small piazza near my house.
For those who don’t know, these two, taken together mean “No parking in the entire sqaure.”
There didn’t use to be the additional “per tutta la piazza” language below the main sign, but it was added because some crafty parkers argued that, well, they weren’t parked right below the sign, so they weren’t in violation of anything.
Glad we got that cleared up.
Bonus! Here’s a poppy just because.
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[tags]no parking, poppies, flowers[/tags]
sunday scribblings: masks
Prompt #60: Masks
Adjusting to life in a foreign country can be difficult on many levels from bureaucracy to figuring out where to do all of your daily shopping–bread at the panetteria (bakery), pork chops at the macelleria (butcher shop), perfume at the profumeria (perfume shop), Blistex at the farmacia (pharmacy), shampoo at the tabaccheria (tobacco shop)–of course!
But nothing can compare to the entirely unexpected feeling that I had lost a big part of my sparkling wit personality somewhere over the Atlantic, a phenomenon I’ve also mentioned here and here.
Now please don’t think I’m saying that you should never move to a foreign country without knowing the language. I did it, and obviously I’ve survived. Of course it’s more of a challenge, and I can only talk of my own experience, but not speaking Italian fluently at first isn’t too much of a problem because you can still get along fine in most instances. And keep in mind that I’m in the south where there are very few English speakers.
That said, I did feel a negative effect in social and personal situations–I found myself concentrating so hard on the basics of what was being said that I never got the joke; let’s not debate the Italian sense of humor right now, but I’ll note that our differences there were/are also a factor.
What I’m talking about are the nuances of a language. For my entire life on the other side of the pond, I took for granted that I could effortlessly make others smile or laugh with a few well-crafted, well-timed words. That I always had a response. That I was never left tongue-tied and wondering what would’ve been a good comeback.
Yes, I’ve had moments of “what I wish I had said” like everyone does, but here, they became the norm; when it takes hours to fully comprehend the two most important lines of a conversation, a witty retort on the spot isn’t very likely.
And so for a long time, I felt like I was wearing a mask–and worst of all, it was one that I didn’t choose for myself. People saw me as shy, quiet, perhaps uncomfortable in social situations, and to an extent, I can certainly be all of those things, but not to the degree that they would have thought.
I was just trying so hard to follow the action that my real personality was below layers and layers of verb conjugations, idioms, and obscure (to me) cultural references.
Did I hide behind the straniera mask sometimes too? Absolutely. I’ll admit that many times it was just easier to say “non capisco” (I don’t understand) than really participate. I’m human, and I get tired of paying attention.
To. Every. Single. Word. For. Hours. On. End.
And when social situations become work, well, not surprisingly, they just aren’t fun anymore. So occasionally I put up my mask, and we inevitably ended the evening with a pity party, just the two of us. But for me, this was an essential part of my growth process here, as I needed to hit rock bottom, so to speak, in order to throw off the mask.
Getting a better grasp of Italian has definitely helped me feel more like myself again, but confidence and courage have played even bigger roles. After many frustrating evenings out with Italians, I reached back to when I began college, when I started out fresh, knowing no one, and when it seemed like some of my peers were speaking a different language (turned out they were, and it was something along the lines of Spoiledbratese).
At some point, I realized that I was going to have to do here what I did there; I was going to have to be a Nike commercial, and just do it.
And to paraphrase Robert Frost: I have, and that has made all the difference.
No matter where you are, you have to be willing to get out there, make mistakes (and learn from them), be yourself, and not care if you don’t fit with preconceived notions of whatever it is “they” think you should be. And most of all, you have to be willing to rip off that mask (whether you put it there or not) because it’s hiding the real, wonderful you that the world deserves to know.
Besides, being hidden gets kind of boring.
And boy do I love when I make P laugh.
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[tags]sunday scribblings, masks, culture shock, learning a language[/tags]
Michelle Fabio is an American attorney-turned-freelance writer living in her family's ancestral village in Calabria, Italy and savoring simplicity one sip at a time.
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