Decoration, a Wave, Food, & Taxes

‘Booked’ sausage and ‘Airplane’ chicken

Pretty garden with roses

A playful triad of windows

This kid looks at me as I walk up via Trapani
to via Cristofero Columbo

"And daughters can make you crazy,
but they own your heart," it says on top

Still trying to find the Disco

Biancavilla’s patron saint…

…who protected the city from a devastating earthquake 

In front of the supermarket, a dirty jeep sporting a trinacria and the Sicilian dialect team name, “Mungibeddu,” or, ‘Eats Beautifully’

John! €0.69!!!! 

Unfinished buildings 

Sunset Etna #1

The little unidentifiable patch is growing

Sunset Etna #2

Completed exterior on left; incomplete on right

Sunset Etna #3

Sunset Etna #4, to give you a full scope
of my walk home

Green onion dirt 

Final rinse

Baking items

Precious commodity may become gifts

Cheese and salami truck, open every night

This morning’s romp with Ettore was an energetic one—on his part, anyway! The last hour we're together is right before lunch and naptime, so occasionally the terrible twos start to show during that time. There are lots of diversions. Last week, we talked about Usefulness versus Decoration. We walked around the apartment, as I pointed to things, asking if they were a decoration. Today, during the witching hour, he enjoyed the diversion of me holding him up on certain parts of the walls, asking if that were a good place for an Ettore decoration. At one point, as we looked at things on the fireplace mantel, he went on to say decoration, decoration (very clearly, and pointing at each thing); he stopped at a decorative plate and said "that not a decoration," which I had to agree -- a plate can be Useful. He got a huge smile, turned and looked at Joe, who was on his smartphone, and said, "Giuseppe a decoration!" Oh my God; this kid. Not only is he speaking two languages pretty fluently at age two, but he's joking in his second language. I feel so dumb.

Joe asked me why Ettore is so concerned he (Joe) gets a share of everything that is eaten or drunk in this place while Ettore is here. I said that Mariella (who is trying to fatten up Joe) probably put him up to it. But it's pretty cute. And this kid knows a song as soon as you sing it. Little Drummer Boy and humming the Bonanza theme song have been instantly learned!

Off he went, and I made a lunch of pasta e lenticchie (pasta and lentils), with a bit of a peppery bite, lots of garlic, and some fresh herbs cooked into it. Super filling. I needed a walk after cleaning up the dishes. Joe was dozing a bit, so I said I'm off to Deco. It is such a beautiful day today, sunny and warm. I got there, wanting to find Effervescente (if you know Brioschi) and a few baking ingredients to round out some of the things I want to try here. Vanilla is about 5 euro -- and that's for about 1.5 oz! I looked all over for the effervescente; not in the health section, the beauty section, the quasi-pharmacy section. Ugh. Perhaps they didn't have it? But then I thought to look near the carbonated drinks, and there it was, next to the tonic water. Makes sense!

I love the walk home from Deco at dusk. The waning sun throws her pink shadows onto farm fields and Etna's white caps, and everything in the distance looks like a watercolor. I know I photograph Etna a lot, and I'm no Ansel Adams, but she does show a new look every time I see her. It's pretty fun having a volcano on your daily horizon.

In an earlier post, I mentioned blocks that are used the way we, in Minnesota anyway, would use timberframe construction for houses. Then the particleboard and Tyvek and siding go onto the MN homes after this framing. But here, it's a long stretch between when the clay structure blocks go up and when the finished exterior is finished. Why is that? The little bit of digging I did tells me it has to do with taxes. Evidently, the taxes on your home do not begin until the structure is finished. You can live in these places with the formation blocks and all, but houses will look undone from the outside. I wonder how long someone can go on like that without the authorities saying "Basta!"? I kind of appreciate that people don't give a fig what the rest of the world thinks from the outside, if their homes are comfy and cozy on the inside, and they're saving a ton of tax money in the meantime. If I bought here, I may have a raw exterior home myself.

As I walked back, I hit the familiar stretch of shops on the viale dei Fiori, where our favorite bakery sits. Since it's a nice night, many shops had their front doors wide open, including Forno delle Delizie. I didn't need any bread, but as I walked by the storefront, the clerk stepped out from behind the "cassa" (counter), and waved a big hello to me. I've gotta say, I loved that.

I got home and collected Joe; we headed right back out again, for pork chops from the butcher and veggies from the ortofrutta. First stop, the 'macelleria'. We had to wait a bit, because a woman ahead of us was ordering sausages, which are made to order. Joe then asked for four pork chops. Here, they do not have, as Joe's grandson Coen calls it, "chewy meat," which I thought was a funny term, and had only heard it from him. The kid definitely has Sicilian blood. We asked Elena and Giuseppe why all the meat is so thinly cut. They explained that the "matura" (aged) meat is thick, and there are certain places to get it, but it is not the usual fare at the butcher shops. Why? Well, the thicker cuts are.... <quote> "chewy meat". They take too much work to eat! Ok; we can wait on the Bistecca alla Fiorentina; these thin-cut pork chops are pretty darn good. As we were waiting to place our order, we saw the sausages hanging in the background. These are "booked;" someone has ordered their special concoction and will be picking it up later. And in the butcher shop case were the airplane chickens. When Butcher Block was around, our friend Filippo had "airline" chicken on the menu (breast with a wing attached), but these cuts had both wings, and the center slice of the breast, and dang it if they didn't look like a fleshy version of those pins the pilots used to hand out to kids who were first time airplane passengers. By sheer virtue of all the bones involved there, those seem like a meat that takes a lot of work to eat! 

Next, we got to the ortofrutta, our usual spot to buy veggies. They were out of the long thin-skinned red peppers I became addicted to, so we asked for two regular red bell peppers, two zucchini, and two "groups" (I didn't know the word for "bunches") of scallions. We got all that, and an extra bunch of scallions, but not before the vendor dropped our two groups of scallions onto the floor, apologized profusely, and went back to get non-floor-touched scallions, including the extra bunch. I offered to get the first bunch because, well, if you saw these dirty little bouquets, you'd understand that a second's worth of floor contact was only the beginning of all the cleaning I needed to do. These puppies were just pulled from the ground this morning! See my photos to understand what I'm talking about.

I started roasting the veggies in the oven, since the thin-cut chops would take about two minutes to cook on the grill. The apartment smells delicious. I cleaned and sliced the zucchini and peppers into thin planks and trimmed the de-mudded scallions into little green paintbrushes, olive-oil coated them all, and roasted them in the oven--there was not enough room on our little grill for the veggies and the chops. As much as I groused about the red bell peppers (I kind of hate bell peppers), these tasted like caramel. Joe took a bite, sat back, and said, Those are some sweet red peppers! I'm a temporary convert. We had a lovely, lovely Barbazzale to go with it all. I shipped some of this home. It hits all the right spots.

I popped one of the chocolates the kids brought to us into my mouth for dessert, and I'm jotting these last lines after 10 pm. Last night, for some reason, I couldn't turn off my brain, so sleep was a bit sketchy. It will be an earlier than usual night.

Tomorrow, Elena and I talk about the next stretch, since we are careening toward our three months here, and Schengen says GTFO for a little bit. We plan to hop back to see Joe's kids (his daughter and daughter-in-law have generously offered to host us; pray for them) and grandkids, my daughter and some friends (and our St. Paul neighbors, who also have a house there) in Colorado, my sister from another mister, Sisy, and her brilliant and beautiful children in Albuquerque, a quick trip to Vegas, and then timing a visit to Palm Springs to see my friends Lynn and Daniel, and hopefully friends Sue and Jim, in March. Joe will be golfing with his brother, who is a PS snowbird! And then, potentially on to England in April, to visit my friends Andrea and Steve (thanks, Brexit; you're a non-Schengen territory), and maaaaaayyyyybeeee a trip to Jordan, which we started talking about several years ago, until The Covid vomited all over us. Seems pretty unlikely still. Then, finally, the EU will welcome us back with open arms, and my son Nikos will visit in May. There is some percolating rumor that perhaps Joe's daughter and grandson will also come here before or after Nikos' visit, to put that whole chewy meat thing to the Sicilian test.

We are looking forward to it all, but I think it's going to be hard to leave this little munchkin who I simply adore. Even when he wears me out.



 

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