Christmastime begins!
I didn't have time to blog, so here's a quick recap.
After a lazy morning, a lunch of leftover tavola calda from Ettore's party, a quick clean up, and a trip to Lidl and Decò, I got home in time for Ettore, Agnese, and Simone to arrive upstairs before my coat came off.
Elena and Mariella "reminded me" of the cenone, big dinner, tonight at Pina and Francesco's house. This is the first I heard of it. We're leaving for Catania, where they live, at 7:45 tonight. Evidently, someone from the friend group hosts a holiday kick-off dinner each year.
We are making gingerbread cookies! I bought kits from Lidl and, spoiler, they taste nothing like gingerbread. I think molasses doesn't exist here, but it's too late to rely on Amazon for it for cookie baking day
While I was out shopping, and well into the cookie baking time, Joe went to play tennis with Vincenzo.
The kids appeared to be on a sugar high already, based on activity level, although I was impressed how 8-year-old Simone handled Ettore's multiple tearful outbursts. The kid is tired after a late party night, and it shows.
The cookie making mostly consisted of me doing all the mixing, rolling, cutting, and baking, while the kids polished off the icing and nonpareils...
Joe returned from tennis, which actually was not tennis, since they got rained out. Instead, the guys hung out at the vigne, talking politics and about the woes of the world. All of this is very hard to follow when you're a gringo and the group not only speaks fast, but lapses into Sicilian. I feel bad for Joe. He looks forward to getting in some tennis play.
I started to clean up after the kids, but needed a few minutes to sit down. I will go get ready at 7:00, leaving me 45 minutes to primp and dress up.
Five minutes after I got to the bedroom, Joe came in, saying Vincenzo wants to leave in ten minutes. Ok. This is going to be a raw version of how I wanted to look tonight, but I'll try!
It turns out, we're dropping off Simone in Catania, explaining the early departure. After a long ride with the unbuckled seat belt signal beeping the whole way, and the radio blasting Christmas songs, we parked in front of Geox on Corso Italia to meet Rajy and hand off the kid.
Now to Pina and Francesco's. Stepping into the lobby, it's a restrained modern interior, with vertically thin-cut raw stone-tiled walls interspersed with an occasional red vertical line of glossy artisan tiles, and a stainless steel elevator as opposed to the usual wood or green metal. I was curious how modern the apartment would be.
It was not! Classical, and a bit stuffy (in the sense of dark wood, coffered ceilings, ochre parete walls, Persian rugs, and clear-glass Murano chandeliers), but grande in size, with wide hallways and large rooms; everything tidy, and each wall filled with the most incredible framed original art from all their travels across the world. It looks like a Central Park uber-rich New York condo. I could see myself being comfortable there. I checked out one of the bathrooms; huge, lush, well appointed. Francesco was the head commercialista for all of Italy, overseeing all the CPAs in the country. Pina worked for hotels, as a supplier for their room and restaurant linens.
Friends trickled in, a few at a time, and soon we were around twenty, including Pina's granddaughter, who is also Elisa's granddaughter, Arianna. I met Arianna in the spring at Marisa's house by the sea, and this little girl is not shy to dance for us.
The dinner was really a bunch of appertivi, including a minestrone made with ancient grains and lentils. We oddly ate standing up, not easy to do when you're trying to cut food with a lightweight plastic fork on a thin plastic plate. But the food was good:
Schiacciata (Marisa), grilled zucchine and eggplant condite (Maria), some sort of dish with ground meat that I passed on, carpaccio (two helpings), smoked salmon, bird's-eye sesame dough pieces wrapped around yummy fillings, and some other things I passed in order to eat more of the ones I like. Water and soft drinks were the beverages, although I think one bottle of beer was open for all the guys to share, and passito was served after dessert, which happened after a brief pause from the appertivi. Dessert included ficodindia (Mariella), a torta caprese -- one of the incredibly rare treasures I enjoy, and was made by Graziella. When she opened the box, I almost screamed when I asked, "Quell'è una torta caprese??!!!", to which she smiled broadly, answering, "Sì!" Filippo, her husband, must've been watching what appeared to be my absolute enjoyment of eating it, as he barely suppressed a smile, asking "Ti piace?"-- you like it? I had two pieces. Gluttony.
And then there were the cassatelle ("cassateddi" in Sicilian). I've read about them. They're a dessert hailing from Agira, an interior town in the Enna province. I now have another favorite!
After dessert, the guys played Sicilian cards, and again, poor Joe was left on the fringe of activity and conversation. He would've had a good time at the gal's table. It's very 1950s or earlier here, where the group gets segregated by gender.
The women played Spagnola, a game that's a combination of Bingo, Poker, and Chess. Pretty easy once you get the hang of it, and on the last hand, I won the biggest pot (€3). We had a rousing few rounds filled with laughter and conversation, in sharp contrast to the guys in the next room.
Far longer than the Minnesota goodbye, we all did our kiss-kisses, alla prossime, hugs, thanks, and finally pressed through the door en masse to what might be our first winter night here. Brisk, but by winter, I mean 45⁰F at midnight. A very tired group headed to the Rapisarda vehicle, until halted by Marisa, hollering, "Kahren!!! Che c'è?!" What's this?! Arms splayed for a hug, she indicated I've shorted her on one, and need to step into the middle of the street to meet her and rectify that. We genuinely like each other.
Mariella dozed off as we again listened to Christmas songs on the ride home, but I was glad for the volume, as I didn't want Vincenzo to fall asleep at the wheel. He's been fighting a respiratory crud similar to mine. This has been a whopper virus that, I'm sure, started at Ettore's school and is recirculating through this household. We're all powering through it, and ignoring it as best we can!
Home. Bed. 1:00 a.m.
Comments
Post a Comment