Halloween Prep
Ah. Sore throat abated upon wake up! Joe and I had our coffee and breakfast at home, then had a plan to get pumpkins. We will take the car since, a) pumpkins are big and heavy; b) we will look stupid, walking in a small town, carrying pumpkins. It seemed Option B was in order. The Cleo was gone, Mariella's car was gone, and Vincenzo wasn't home; his car was gone. Oh well. Off to an ortofrutta or Lidl, whichever pumpkin showed up first. Yesterday, you could not swing a testa di mora vase without smashing a pumpkin. Today-- no sidewalk vendors, no pumpkins spilling onto the sidewalk from the ortofrutta, no 3-wheeled Ape Trucks hawking pumpkins. At Lidl, in fact, still no pumpkins -- except the ones labeled " Zucca Americana ". The usual Sicilian pumpkins are a beautiful beige-y orange; large, squat, and fat. The "American" pumpkins are, I guess, pumpkin orange, as we all know it. Here, they are about 1.5x the size of Minnesota pie pumpkins. We put two Zucca A