Sogni di Sicilia

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...

This morning, more housecleaning and laundry chores. Afterward, I started toward Mariella's with her cleaned bowl and an empty bottle to fill from the family's olive oil vat in the garage. I brought the candied orange peels I bought at Scandura yesterday, remembering she and Vincenzo said they like them. I had to wait until after 10:00, because on Fridays, Mariella has her Pilates class. I heard her voice behind Elena's door. Mariella, buon giorno! I said softly, since her back was toward the door and I didn't want to startle her. I handed her the bowl and the sweets, which she immediately opened and started eating. " Giovanna è qua ," she said, ushering me into the living room where Giovanna was playing with Matteo, and she handed Giovanna an orange peel. Elena finished her work call and walked over, hugging me good morning, and asking why the hell her mother thinks she's an American, as I caught the tail end of a conversation where Mariella said she'...

Today, I wanted to go to Scandura. The service is "ottimo," the caffè and pasticcini  are excellent, the restaurant and pizzeria are top-notch, the setting is adorable, and they make their own chocolate. Is it perhaps heaven? For me, yes. I destroyed the fanciful heart design they made on my cappuccino before I took a picture of it. The pastry and tavola calda station, behind the high top with cute stools. On the way there, as always these days, I'm on the lookout for houses for sale. There are two ways to reach Scandura; we took the slightly longer way there, up via Cristoforo Colombo, far past the serial killer property we saw with the realtor. I noticed some changes since the spring, most notably the changed property that was once weeds and garbage. The weedy plot is now a track and field area for, I'm assuming, the school next door. The scent of these fills the air. I described this pretty, rocky edifice in an earlier post. Too bad the best views of it is from an ...

We popped up and out of bed, and out the door to the market. We didn't take a coffee at home, so we popped into A Maidda on the way there, right on viale di Europa, across from the market. We each got a cappuccino and for Joe, a cornetto con crema . Cappuccino at A Maidda I'll look up this house for sale that we saw along the way. It seems renovated, as does much of via Umberto; a good sign. **Edited to note: it's commercial use only.** Renovations in progress on via Umberto. Renovations complete, from what I saw in progress this past spring. This fixer-upper on via Umberto is for sale. My strong hunch is that Joe, as with most guys, does not love this market. I, however, love this market. Yes; there are vendors with cheap, low quality clothes, but there are also great deals on many nice things. Large bolts of upholstery fabric, thick cushions to create benches and window seats, fashionable sunglasses (my pair got two thumbs up from my friend Noel, who reps Tom Ford eyewea...