Archive for the ‘me me me’ Category
Celebrating the Fourth of July in Italy
Quite a few people have asked me over the years whether Italians celebrate the Fourth of July. The simple answer is no, as Italians don’t particularly care when the United States became an independent nation.
But chances are if you find an American on July 4th, you’ll at least find some kind of cookout around. Most of the Americans in Italy I know still find a way to celebrate — and many of us also wear our American flag t-shirts as well (myself included). P.S. Those stylin’ nails in the photo are *not* mine, but those of Dreamgirl Pumpkincat210 on Flickr.
Yesterday was actually a festa in the village (Madonna della Provvidenza) so we ended up even having fireworks, which we watched from our house; every year this celebration is held the first weekend of July, so I’m always guaranteed fireworks around the 4th. Funny how things work out.
Before the fireworks, though, yesterday morning, P and I went up into the campagna (the land we just bought in the country — yes it’s final now!), and had our own little feast with grilled chicken, salad, baked beans, suppressata, and pecorino. Quite appropriately a mix of American and Italian, I suppose. Ah, and fresh figs from one of trees for dessert:
Truth be told, though, while P prepared, I spent a lot of time either reading David Farley’s An Irreverent Curiosity: In Search of the Church’s Strangest Relic in Italy’s Oddest Town on my iPod Touch (Farley will be our guest on the Eye on Italy podcast this week!) or just staring off into space while sitting here:
Last week was quite stressful for me with all the Amanda Knox-related posts, and if you haven’t noticed, I’ve now turned comments off on them. I wanted to start this week stress-free and get back to focusing on my life and the people, animals, and few objects I’ve chosen to surround myself with.
I do appreciate that there are horrible events in the world every day, but many years ago I stopped watching the news because it’s too easy for me to get emotionally involved in all the bad — there is *so* much bad — and that just isn’t good for me. I still like to think I stay well-informed by picking and choosing what to read, and I lend my support to causes I truly believe in, but I just can’t let in all that negative and still live a happy life.
Perhaps that’s selfish, but it’s the best — and only — method of self-preservation I know.
Thanks to everyone who read and commented last week; hopefully some of the newcomers will stick around, but if it’s just the “regulars” here, that’s cool too. You’re the best regulars around.
And now, gratuitous kitty photo entitled “iz reddee 4 mah closeup” just because:
Have a great week!
Do Italians Eat Pasta Every Day?
One question I get from many people is whether Italians eat pasta every day. Of course answering such a question would require an enormous generalization, so I’m going to give you the experience in my house, which consists of a Calabrian and an American with Italian, Lithuanian, and German blood.
Do we eat pasta every day?
Pretty much, yes. Usually either lunch or dinner — but hardly ever both — contains some kind of pasta for us.
I’m sure for some of you the thought of eating pasta every day sounds boring, and you’re positive you’d get sick of it within a week or so. This actually did cross my mind as I considered moving here — would I just get sick of eating pasta? And if so, then what would I do?
Well, seven years in, and I’m still having some pasta on most days. Don’t get me wrong; there are days when I just don’t want pasta. So I don’t eat it, easy peasy.
“Pasta” Does Not Equal Spaghetti and Meatballs
One important thing to remember is that Italians don’t eat pasta with “red sauce” and meatballs every day; in fact, the rumors you’ve heard about Italians not eating “spaghetti and meatballs” are true; if there are meatballs, they are often huge and served after the pasta course, so you’ll have one, *maybe* two at the most.
That “red sauce” is often a ragù, made with meat (often pork and for us, rabbit or chicken); in our house, that’s probably a once every two weeks kind of dish, often on a weekend.
Also? Italians don’t just eat spaghetti. As I’m sure you know, pasta comes in all shapes and sizes, and part of the fun is matching what kind of sauce or accompaniment best suits a certain kind of pasta, so there’s a lot more than spaghetti going on around here.
So what else are we eating with pasta? Well I have a list of recipes to give you some ideas, and you’ll see everything from tuna (with or without tomatoes) to broccoli (no tomatoes) to ricotta fresca to fresh tomatoes and basil to prawns. We eat pasta cold in a salad in the summer and hot in minestrone in the winter — and with legumes like peas, ceci, and lentils year round.
Pasta is very versatile, and as always, I do encourage you to experiment.
But Pasta Makes You Fat!
Another misconception regarding pasta is that some people believe that if they ate pasta every day, they’d be the size of a house. The answer to that is, well, it depends on how much pasta you eat and what you’re eating with it.
Pasta and carbohydrates have gotten a bad rap in health circles, but you *do* need them in your diet — in moderation, just like everything else that helps your body function the way it should.
Italians seem to know instinctively that 100-200 grams of pasta a day falls well within the recommended daily allowances of carbs. You just have to not load up on carbs the rest of the day in order to keep a good balance.
Other health issues like diabetes may cause concern with carbs, but if you’re an otherwise healthy person, eating a bit of pasta a day is one of the common features of the Mediterranean Diet, which we know can offer great health benefits — but know that is not a “diet” as the word has come to be understood. It is a way of life.
Yeah, I’m Still Not Buying that I Could Eat Pasta Every Day and Not Get Sick of It
If you still can’t imagine eating pasta every day, think of it this way: do you eat bread every day? Many people do, in one form or another. Well you can think of pasta as our bread. It accompanies other ingredients and isn’t really the “point” of the meal — although it’s still an important part to be sure (see the discussion of matching pasta with sauce above).
Note also that Italians will generally *not* eat bread and pasta together, so don’t be surprised if you’re in an Italian restaurant and they swipe any bread off the table just as the pasta is served.
But hey, we’re not all created the same, so it very well may be that you would get bored with an Italian diet and with eating pasta every day. So why not come over here and find out?
How often do you eat pasta?
The Lay of the Land in Calabria
The physical layout of life in a medieval hilltop village in southern Italy is often hard to grasp — especially for people who haven’t been here — so I’m going to try to explain it.
As I’ve written before, many medieval villages up on the hills have counterpart towns on the sea; we’re up on the hill, where houses are very close to one another, often touching. This is about a quarter of Badolato (our quarter, as it were) with the Ionian Sea in the background:
Around the outskirts of town, there are small green patches where people have their gardens, even animals. Most of them are places where houses used to be but have fallen or otherwise been compromised, but any time you can get just a little “orto” near your house, you’ve scored.
Last year, P and I secured a small chunk of land very close to our house (it’s about a 30 second walk), but it’s not like a “yard” that some might imagine.
There are actually two levels to it; one you can see below and the other is just off to the side of this, a few steps down to the right, and is where we plant veggies. You can see the chicken coop and goat pen on the left. The house with the big hole in it? Not ours. You can actually see our bedroom window, though…that brown squarish thing just to the left of the whitish house? I have it in a note on Flickr if you click through:
To give you an idea of the distance, here is a photo taken about half way between our house and the entrance to orto, looking toward the house (the last house on the right — it’s on a corner, and yes I know it needs paint, badly):
This photo overlooks the beginning of the garden (you can see the tops of our trees just past the iron railing), although the entrance is another twenty or so paces away:
And here is a photo from the outside looking in; I’ve labeled it on Flickr with notes (click on the photo to go there) so you can see where we live compared to where the goats live in our orto:
We also keep some chickens and hens there:
Our orto has a lemon tree, a couple mandarin trees, a nespole tree, a fig tree, a small grapevine, and we also plant various crops there, including lettuce, tomatoes, onions, cucumbers, peas, peperoncini, basil, and this year…strawberries!
And here is the view from our orto (from inside the goat pen):
This was taken a couple months ago, so those branches you see on the right are now full of fig leaves and the beginnings of some fruit.
So as you can see, it’s a nice little space that produces plenty for the two of us — actually way more than we need so we end up giving to friends and neighbors, and often get things in return that we haven’t grown yet, like zucchini and eggplants and also all kinds of pork products since we don’t have a pig. Yet.
Are you wondering about olives and olive oil? Well, there’s also some unofficial news on that, but it’s going to have to wait for another post.
Phew. Any questions?
Spending Mother’s Day in Campagna
It’s not official yet, so I don’t want to *officially* announce that P and I have acquired a campagna (land in the countryside), but we did spend this afternoon up there, and I can’t possibly hold in my joy.
For La Festa della Mamma, P swept me away from all my four-legged babies and did this for me:
While I did this:
And then we both enjoyed this:
Una giornata perfetta.
(A perfect day.)
Happiest of Mother’s Days to all the moms out there, especially mine!
P.S. Yes, there are olive trees! Yay!
In the Life of an Expat…
In the life of an expat, there are inevitably moments when you’ll miss the place you came from.
Certain holidays and big events top the list, but there are also plenty of small, daily life type things that that make you remember your old life, the people who used to be in it every day, or just “home” itself.
From my experience, those memories are often sparked by smell, which is reportedly your strongest, most reliable sense when it comes to memory. Smell something from when you were five years old and bam! You’re there.
The other day I got a package from my mom full of clothes that hadn’t fit back in my suitcase when I visited a few months ago…and they smelled of her laundry detergent, of course.
*Nostalgia alert!*
The ironic part, though, is that I distinctly remember having a similar experience in America a few weeks into my trip as I sniffed my clothes from here, with *my* laundry detergent smell — enter the pang of missing my life in Italy.
Ah, all in the life of an expat.
A constant push and pull and battle of emotions, contentedness peppered with longing, and happiness churned with sadness, the realization that no matter how consistent and pleasant and wonderful you make your new life (even, for example, if I used the same laundry detergent no matter where I go), there will always be something to remind of you of the other place, the other people, the other life.
It’s quite fitting that while this is one of the hardest parts about being an expat, it’s also one of its greatest blessings.
I know I am ridiculously lucky to have (at least) two places to be nostalgic about.
Buon weekend at tutti!
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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