Italian plums

Sweating under the hot Italian sun in ski socks, hiking boots and my husband’s giant Levi’s, it hit me how preposterous it was that I moved any of my stillettos to our new house.

The reason for my get-up was this: ortica aka stinging nettles.  The plum tree is surrounded by them, and I’m here to harvest the plums.  My thoughtful husband insisted I pull on his work jeans for full coverage against the thigh-high nettles that fully carpet this part of the garden.  He told me I wouldn’t need socks since his man-sized work jeans pooled over my hiking boots, but I wasn’t taking any chances.

The tree was full of greenish-tinted yellow fruit the shape of chicken eggs.  Standing on my tip toes to tug one from the branches, I realized they were more ripe than I first thought.  When I rubbed my thumb over the skin, the polished peel gleamed translucent gold, barely green at all.  Fabio said the barely-green ones would ripen off the tree.  I pulled down two more.

Staring through the craggy plum branches, our garden in July was a marvel to me.  Overgrown from every angle.  The rosemary bush had sprouted 50 outstretched arms from its trimmed winter shape and the steep carved terraces blended into one hillside with swaying grasses, weeds and wild flowers.

Although I’ve talked about it before, I don’t think I truly understood something until this last visit.  It hit me as I was picking the plums, trying to reconcile the beauty of the lake view with the prickery, knee-high ortica with sweat running down my shoulders.  Moving from the cement-covered, elbow-bashing island of Manhattan to outskirts of a small village in the foothills of the Alps was really going to be a massive change to something very different.  Holy crap.

I jumped to grab another branch for its dangly ripe plum.  Early next spring, Fabio says we’ll pick the baby ortica before they develop their stingers to make ravioli with ricotta and parmigiano reggiano.  It’s part fairy tale and part hard work.  I can’t wait for it to be 100% reality.

Empty backpack

Some Jersey Craigslist peeps hauled away my giant bedroom dresser in their mini van yesterday evening.  Despite the past month’s crazy Craigslist/eBay selling frenzy, this is the first time I really feel like I’m moving.

I splurged on the 10-drawer cherry wood  monster years ago, intending it to be a life-long heirloom.  It was the only piece of furniture I was considering bringing to Italy, until I educated myself on the eye-bulging international shipping costs.

As I watched the NJ folks carry my favorite piece of furniture out of the apartment, I felt a hole in my stomach.   Ugh, it was really going.  But after a slight pause, I was whooping.  Yeah – I’m really moving!

Over the past couple months, I’ve downsized my moving scope from a full bedroom-sized freighter container to checked luggage and a couple FedEx boxes.  How often do people get this opportunity to start over?  To voluntarily free themselves from material stuff.  I just feel lucky… 

Plus I’m going shopping for our new bedroom dresser in Milan next month with the proceeds from my old dresser.  Yeah, baby, yeah!

PS  George, I’m keeping my relationships in the backpack.  No fugly import or shipping fees for those.  Thank you facebook, gmail and skype.  xo

My Italian visa

I applied for my spousal Visa last Monday at the Italian Consulate.  Tiny cluster. 

The Italian Consultate NYC branch is stately building on Park Avenue.  When you walk inside, you truly feel as if you’ve been transported onto Italian soil.  The first time Fabio and I went there, I thought he might hunker down and press his lips.  

However, the Alice in Wonderland front doors are not where you enter as a foreigner applying for an Italian visa.  Instead, please go outside and around the corner to the basement.

– The eye candy: true building bowels decorated with barbed wire entrance, bullet-proof-glassed cubicles, and 1950s cafeteria chairs

– The populace: many students trying to get visas for summer school in Florence and Rome; other non-Italian randoms trying for work permits

– The soundtrack: loud yelling in thick Italian accents

I was a little scared.  Visa applicants with numbers called before mine didn’t have the right paperwork – as indicated by the yelling.  Luckily, the loud Italians were incredibly kind to me – probably because I married an Italian citizen and want to live in their country forever.  At first, they were unable to locate the marriage registration…which resulted in some terse tones but no raised voices.  Frightened into over-preparedness, I had brought an extra copy. 

My visa will be ready tomorrow… after which, I can live and work in Italy – but most importantly, I can stay with my honey. 

I just can’t wait.

Duck, duck… asparagus

I’m often not clear on what’s around the corner…  One day, I think my garden dreams will revolve around asparagus, the next, I’m researching egg laying ducks and their predators.

My adorable brand new husband is wearing me down on the asparagus bed…my dream of having my own freaking plot of asparagus is being tested.  It started with the fact that unless we want to make digging the plot a full-time job or somehow magically train our garden gnome to dig it for us (not likely, he is not very burly, photo below), we will need to hire an expensive machine digger. 

Then this spring, my babe planted some new pretty flowering plants… in my future asparagus bed.  I’m totally being pawned.  He’s not telling me I can’t have my asparagus bed, but making it nearly impossible for me to get it. 

Perhaps I need someone to force me out of attempting to dig a  50-foot long x 3-foot wide x 1.5-foot deep trench on a rocky mountain hillside.  I’m slowly accepting that I can’t have the bed… this year.

The asparagus fantasy has also been a bit usurped by another exciting daydream: ducks that lay eggs in our back yard!  Ever since I learned that I can eat duck eggs, make duck egg ravioli, and bake duck egg cakes – despite my chicken egg allergy – I’ve been obsessed with the idea of quacking ducks popping out eggs for us in our back garden.  My bright turquoise Guide to Raising Ducks book is staring at me from my bookshelf in anticipation.  I’ve already read it cover to cover…twice.  

Quack.

 

Yellow taxi blue sky wedding

I’m happy to share the news that we’ve eloped!!  The ceremony was brief & emotional (that’s me) at Manhattan’s City Hall, followed by a street vendor pretzel snack and walk across our favorite bridge to the cheers and congrats from other bridge walkers. 

Our wedding day was laid back, fairy tale perfect…an NYC fairy tale.  Sunny, blue sky, warm April tax day.  We started planning a week in advance and picked the date by the weather forecast and availability of the photographer.  My groom was sexy as hell in his suit.  How much do I love him for picking out a new tie to match my Armani dress without me having to ask?  Shush you – I’m not label dropping, the Armani was my shout out to Italy on our all-American day.

 

Possibly even bigger news…the day of our wedding, Fabio accepted a job in Italy.  We’re moving to Italy.  One more time for emphasis in all caps…WE’RE MOVING TO ITALY!

Have you ever wanted something so badly, for a long time, and then when you get it, you hardly know what to do with yourself?  That’s kind of how the past 3 weeks have been since the wedding.  A lot of ‘ohmygodohmygodohmygod’  in my head, breath holding and wheels turning.  There are a lot of fish to fry.

I thought I knew how much logistical contortion the international move would take, but my knowledge was really a teaspoon of salt water compared to the oceans of what need to get done.  Luckily, my sweet new husband was detained due to the Icelandic volcano for an extra week of ‘honeymoon’ AKA running-all-over-NYC-to-various-government-buildings with his new wife.  Step 1 complete: marriage is registered in Italy.  Super excited.

Steps 2 through 842: to be completed.  There is a lot to do.  Passports to be renewed, visa interviews with the Italian Consulate, contents of entire apartments to sell… Okay, there aren’t really 842 steps.  That’s our lucky number from the City Hall ceremony!  They give you a ticket like at the meat counter and when it’s called, the happy couple gets married.

I blissfully digress and I’m just going to keep digressing.  We closed the our wedding day with a quiet champagne toast and dinner under the Brooklyn Bridge, the city lights gradually popping on across the river.  The wait was so worth it.  

 

Spring: get in my belly

I wrote a blog update last week, stepped away from my computer for a couple hours, and it all disappeared.  I’ve been so bitter at my computer that it’s taken me a week to rewrite.  Mature, oui?

So here’s what happened!  Since that dramatic omg-we-might-move-to-California blog post, Fabio was denied the LA job.  Mixed feelings of yay!! and oh crap.  Admittedly, I was mostly relieved.

He then got a 6-week contract in Milan – and several interviews in Milan for real, full-time jobs.  He is there now – working!  (Again – yay!)  We are waiting to hear about the permanent jobs.  Spring is in the air and I am cautiously optomistic about absolutely everything.

Maybe we really will be in Italy to tend to our giardino this year.  Here’s a glimpse of what’ll be on our plates and in our bellies if we do…

blackberries

hazelnuts

kiwi plants

Attack of the mufloni

Last month there were 2 mufloni in the garden of Blevio’s mayor, eating the mayor’s lettuce.  Blevio is the village where our house is in Italy.  Mufloni seem to be some kind of Italian mountain goat.  There are many reasons we have a fence around our yard, but I didn’t know this was one of them…

http://www.laprovinciadicomo.it/stories/como%20cintura/115908_blevio_i_mufloni_a_casa_del_sindaco/

One of my favorite stories from 2009 involves the wild animals around Blevio.  After Christmas, Fabio and I decided to have the nephews, Luca (age 8 ) and Stefano (age 6), over for a sleepover. 

The grand finale of the sleepover adventure was to hike them up the old Roman cobblestone road that runs behind the house and up the mountain.  We had never explored the walk and always wanted to.

The nephews required more incentive.  Fabio explained that we would be “hunting cinghiale“… wild boar.

This sounded far-fetched to my mother, but there are definitely wild boar in the woods behind our house.  Last summer, one determined boar broke through our fence and rooted up some new plantings.  Just for fun, I imagine.  The gardener and chingiale had a stare down, then it trotted off into the woods.

So back to this cold day after Christmas…  The sun was taking its time coming over the mountain and we were getting bundled up to go outdoors.  As I was squashing Stefano’s hat over his blonde head, with wide blue eyes, he whispered “Potremmo morire?” 

I only understand about 50% of what this nephews say.  Thank goodness I understood this.  “No.”  I laughed.  We were not going to die hunting wild boar on our walk this morning.

Stefano clearly didn’t believe me.  Walking up the steep cobblestone path, he was amassing a collection of sticks and rocks to defend us.  I volunteered to carry some of the stick-spears, since he was barely moving forward under the weight of some of the stones.

We saw deer and bunny tracks, summer cabins, and snow, but never a whiff of a boar.  Stefano was foot stompingly upset about this on the walk back.  Fabio took it as the opportunity to teach a lesson.  “Hunting chingiale isn’t like going to the supermarket, Stefano.  You can’t just order one or pick it up of the shelf.”  Pazienza.

Practical bones

Since I left Italy just after the new year, my darling boyfriend has been networking his little heinie off.  In Italy, even more so than here in the States, finding a job is all about who you know.  That stellar boy has networked himself 2 sets of serious interviews for real jobs.

I don’t want to explain all the bloody details, but suffice it to say, one of the jobs is in Milan – and one is working for an Italian company in LA. 

Please dear controller of the universe, provide him with an offer for one of the jobs.  I am not going to bargain for this gift by offering you children or my soul or eternal goodness on my part, but I’m close.  

We just want to be able to make plans.  We don’t want our lives to be boring.  No, no.  But if we could know where we’d be living, perhaps we could decide on one of the governments to marry us so immigration wouldn’t question Fabio’s intent upon arrival at JFK airport.  Possibly we could live somewhere with kitchen cabinets that stay shut, instead of hitting us in the head when we wash dishes in the sink.  And maybe, just maybe, I could kick my stinky job to the curb and find one that doesn’t make me eat airplane snack boxes for dinner.

I’m a clown car of contradictions on this issue.  We’re almost 40, should we really compromise and take that LA job if it’s offered?  Life is short.  And earnest Top 40 pop songs like “Live Like We’re Dying” are starting to really affect me. 

After all this dreaming, my heart is mangled by the idea not living in our sweet Italian house with the garden, watching our ducks waddling in the backyard, picking plums and cherries in the summer, and lingering over patio dinners on warm nights watching the lights on the lake.

I hate every practical bone in my body that knows we will take that job in LA if it’s offered.

Snow fruit

This is my third week back in NYC without Fabio.  I’m feeling a little homesick for him and the house – thus, another dose of nostalgia from the holiday visit. 

I’m fairly obsessed with the idea of living in the house and tending to every season of fruit that comes with it.  Christmas 2009 brought another season in the garden: snow.  The weather gods were totally with me.  My flight left smack dab between a foot of snow in Manhattan on one side and a 2 foot dumping in Milan on the other.  I felt like I held my breath the whole flight to Malpensa… hoping that it would ward off the forecast storm in Italy until I got there.  And it did.

It rained soft persistent snow for 2 full days after I arrived.  With no wind, it fell straight down and piled in gentle layers on everything.  Each fence post grew a tall snow cap.  Every tree branch was coated with thick fluffy icing, turning the world into a Scandinavian snow forest.  The silence was mesmerizing. 

We spent the first 3 nights at his parents house on the other side of the lake.  We always stay in the same room with a simple iron double bed, decorated by a delicate silver rosary with glow beads wrapped and dangling over our heads.  The rest of the room is modern, with floor to ceiling sliding glass doors.  Every time I opened my eyes, I stared out the window, warm under the down duvet snuggled next to Fabio.  I imagined the trees would be as cozy under their snow blankets.   As it cleared, car lights below twinkled through the snow-crusted branches along the lake road.

When the deluge finally stopped, we drove over to our house to check on the garden.  Our footsteps broke the knee-high snow on the path leading up the hill from the gate.  It was all white snow, grey sky, and brown trees  – with the exception of the persimmons.  The persimmon tree was decked out in full Christmas with hundreds of orange round baubles hanging from every branch.  I’d seen the persimmons before in winter, but never like this.  They were densely packed with heavy branches dangling just a few feet from the ground.

We trudged up the snowy stone steps, around the chestnut tree to the cachi or persimmons.  Every fruit was covered in a dewy, shimmery frost; some with hats of snow.  It was the height of the persimmon season and they literally fell off into our hands. 

Clean from the blizzard, we split them in half with our fingers, turning them inside out to bite the gooey sweet centers.  We picked enough to fill two flat crates – maybe 80.  We could have stayed all day, but it was getting dark.  Fabio took my picture under the fairytale tree and pressed his lips warmly on the tip of my frozen nose.  Time to go.

Oh holy eggs

Christmas in Italy is all about food.  Three days of traditional breads, appetizers, pastas, meats, and sweets from familial regions.  Many of these traditional foods are made with eggs, and this wasn’t going to change just because I was joining Fabio’s family for Christmas.  Even if I had to vicariously watch other people eat them – I swear I didn’t want them to change!

I’ve always been allergic to eggs.  I remember stuffing my face with Toll House cookies at age 8, wanting to have after school milk and cookies, like a normal American kid.  I’m sure they were chocolate-chip-cookie-yum, but all I remember is the aftermath… little freakish allergy me, extra freaked out and moaning on the couch with a cold washcloth over my swollen-shut eyes.  Lesson learned.

So before Thanksgiving when Fabio asked, “Have you ever tried eating a non-chicken egg?”  I scoffed, “No… that’s crazy talk.”  Every doctor I’d ever seen had told me to beware of all eggs.  “Well, how can you be certain you’re allergic to all eggs if you’ve never tried them?”  he innocently pressed, “ What about duck eggs?  Or quail?  Or oyster?” 

He meant “ostrich.”  The word ostrich is really close to oyster in Italian.

“I never investigated.” 

This was shocking news to Fabio, who knew first-hand about my obsessive-internet-infomania-research disorder.  I research nearly everything that pops into my head on the web.

A new search revealed that there are in fact, people with chicken eggs allergies, who can eat other types of eggs.  This kind of rocked my world.  We set out immediately to test the hypothesis, starting with the smallest, least dangerous looking eggs we could find: quail.  Step 1:  I put a dab of quail egg white on my tongue and waited.  No reaction.  Step 2: Fabio fried one of the mini eggs and I took a bite, heart racing.  Again, nada.  Step 3: Fabio hard boiled a quail egg for me the next day.  My very own egg.  I salted, peppered, and downed the whole thing.  Salty, peppery, eggy deliciousness.  And no allergic reaction.  Amazing.

Quail eggs were exciting and a whole new world – but still, an impractical world.  Have you ever cooked with quail eggs?  Not only are they impractically mini, their shells are as impenetrable as a latex condom. 

So after Thanksgiving, we conducted the same experiment with duck eggs and fingers crossed.  Duck eggs are just slightly larger than chicken eggs with the same  flavor – a perfect substitute for chicken eggs. Operation Duck Egg was another success!  Soon I was gorging myself on my first tastes of frittata, spaghetti carbonara, and homeade Magnolia Bakery cupcakes.  I ate them all with a mix of gusto, wonderment, and a little fear.  But there was never any reaction.

Fabio relayed every episode of egg testing back to his mamma, with much interest on her side.  Before I knew it, Silvana and Emilio (Fabio’s parents) were conducting a full-scale search to locate duck eggs in their area.   They discovered a convent in the hills around Lake Como where the nuns sold duck eggs at a regular Saturday market.   The D’Orazios decided then and there to make all the traditional Christmas foods with duck eggs instead of chicken eggs. 

I can’t describe how incredibly touched I was by this gift and welcome to my first Christmas in Italy.  One of the highlights of my visit was making the once-a-year homemade ricotta ravioli with Emilio and Silvana.  Another highlight… eating it.

  

My first ravioli – made with holy duck eggs from the Italian nunnery.  Buon natale!