Finding Relatives in Sicily

Looking out from Lipari

Toni and I bid Sallie arrivederci when she boarded her plane back to Sweden, then we rented a car and were off by ourselves for another week of touring.

We headed east and discovered we could drive from Trapani on the west coast to Milazzo, almost on the east coast, in five hours. We took a hydrofoil to Lipari, the largest of the Aeolian Islands, and were amazed at how mountainous the UNESCO World Heritage Site is. The east coast is covered with lemon groves, which we didn’t see anywhere else in Sicily. There are vineyards and olive groves everywhere, and we learned there are 30 different kinds of olives and many different types of grapes grown in Sicily’s rich soil.

RoseMarie's Regaleali B&B

The best road in Sicily, the autostrada, runs between the large cities which are all located on the coasts with the exception of Enna in central Sicily. We visited Mt. Etna near Catania (that's me in a lava tunnel) then drove to Enna and got on a secondary road to get to Vallelunga Pratameno, the village from which Toni’s grandfather came. We stayed at the Regaleali B&B two nights. Our host, RoseMarie Tasca d’Almerita, is the largest landholder (about 1200 acres) and employer in the area. Her family has owned the land since 1830 and has a state-of-the-art wine bottling plant, which we toured. We also enjoyed two different types of wine with the two dinners we ate there.

RoseMarie listened carefully to Toni’s story about her grandfather and translated the copies of Italian documents Toni had. The next morning RoseMarie took us to the Municipal Building in Vallelunga and she and Toni watched as court clerks searched a hand-written family history book written more than 140 years ago. They didn’t find any new information in the book, but one clerk knew of an old woman in town whose maiden name was Gaetta, Toni’s maiden name.

Lucia and Toni

Guiseppa, Toni's Great Aunt

We followed the directions to the old woman’s house and knocked on the door.  A woman named Lucia greeted us. We were invited in and she introduced us to Guiseppa, her 97 year old mother. After showing Lucia the only photo Toni had of her grandfather and great-grandfather, we were able to determine that Guiseppa is Toni’s grandfather’s sister, and Lucia is her second cousin! What a great family reunion!

RoseMarie had two copies of Toni’s photo made for Lucia and the next day we returned to give them to her. Lucia got out a box of photos and told us that the last time any of the family that went to America came back to visit her was August, 1986, 26 years ago. Lucia showed the photo to Toni and Toni’s mouth opened. There, in the photo with Lucia and Guiseppa, were Toni’s parents! Lucia had two copies of that photo and gave one to Toni. What a great exchange! Lucia thanked us for coming and invited us to come back. Toni is planning to take her sister there next summer.

Sicily is a beautiful country. I'm so glad I went! I enjoyed being there and being with Toni when she found part of her family.

I Came, I Saw, I Cooked (and Ate!)

Helen, Toni and Sallie

My friends Toni and Sallie from the American Women’s Club signed up to take a week-long cooking and Italian language course in Sicily and persuaded me to join them. Needless to say, they didn't have to twist my arm too hard for me to agree to go with them! The three of us flew to Palermo, Sicily’s largest city, and spent two days touring the city on foot before taking the bus to Tripani, where we met the 11 other students who were attending through Medborgarskolan (Adult Education) in Stockholm. 

View from our bedroom window

We arrived at the beautiful Baglio Oneto Resort in Marsala Monday night. On Tuesday morning we began our Italian lessons. Sallie and I were in the beginner group and Toni was in the advanced group. My Italian instructor Louisa was excellent. Most of the words we learned were types of food, like aceto & olio (vinegar & oil) and cooking terms, like tritare (chop finely) and mescolare (stir), which helped us with the cooking classes in the afternoons. 

We had three mornings of Italian instruction and two afternoons of chopping, peeling, pouring olive oil and sautéing, then adding flavor by squeezing lemons and adding seasonings from open containers with our fingers with an Italian-only speaking chef. Hand gestures count for a lot! 

The chef and our cooking class

We all got to choose which of our supper dishes we wanted to help prepare. The first session I helped prepare peperoni ripieni (stuffed peppers) with bread crumbs, olive oil, onions, pine nuts, raisins and capers. They were delicious! The other dish I helped prepare was insalata di polpo (octopus salad), made from chopped cooked octopus, grated carrot, grated celery heart, olive oil, salt and pepper. Did I mention we used olive oil? The chef brought out a live octopus, but fortunately, we didn’t have to cook it and started with 3-4 cold, cooked octopi. Our appetizer was actually good! It wasn’t as rubbery as I thought it was going to be.

We also did some sightseeing around Marsala and Erice. One day we drove to some Roman ruins then hiked about 45 minutes to the top of a mountain and back. An hour later we were sitting in a seafood restaurant at 2:45 for lunch. There were seven courses! The first 2-3 were octopi (see recipe above), fish, fried cuttlefish and a couple of other cooked fish morsels. Then came two kinds of pasta with delicious sauce, then some cous cous with olive oil and bits of fish mixed in. The next course was fresh fruit and then finally dessert: chocolate chip cheesecake! We also had red and white wine. I paced myself and didn't eat any bread and olive oil before the "real" food came out and took only small portions, but I was really full at the end. I decided to skip dinner that evening. 

Toni made mini cassate siciliane
(sweet  mix of ricotta and fruit in a
 marsipan casing)

I can’t understand how Sicilians stay slender when their diets are so full of bread, sweets and olive oil. It must be all the walking and climbing up and down they have to do. Maybe olive oil eaten in Sicily doesn’t have any calories.

Swedish Sunshine

Tulips in Bloom

Spring is really coming into full bloom here in Stockholm.  Spring not only brings bursting blooms but also almost continuous sunshine.  The sun is now up and about by 4:30 am and lingers for more the 16 ½ hours. By late June, we will reach our sunshine peak when the sun will clock in at 18 hours, 37 minutes and 12 seconds of continuous daylight.

After months of cold and drearily darkness, you would think everyone would welcome this gift of sunshine with open arms.

Well it turned out that a bronze toned, hot looking model anchoring a swimwear ad campaign for H&M, a Swedish major retailer, has some drawn unexpected criticism.   

Its not that hot looking models are anything out of the ordinary in Stockholm fashion ads.  Some may hold to a common misconception that Swedes are an oversexed, barely clad people who disdain even a fig leaf sense of modesty.  Such has not been our experience. 

Renaissance Italians we have seen, however, have raced though periods embracing full frontal nudity to clever concealment and then back again.  Helen who is in her second and final week of travel on the Italian island of Sicily can surely acquit herself well in this hotbed of exposed private parts.  What could possibly go wrong?

So it was not for a lack of modesty that criticism was directed at H&M for its ad campaign.  Rather it was the Swedish Cancer Society that took H&M to task for plastering the image of the overly tanned beauty before the impressible eyes of young Swedish women.  The cancer society noted, "Every year, more people die in Sweden of skin cancer than in traffic accidents, and the main cause is too much sunning."

It is not known if the olive-skinned Isabeli Fontana obtained her deeply bronzed hue through makeup, digital enhancement or hours in the sun worship. It didn’t matter. H&M issued an apology. “We are sorry if we have upset anyone with our latest swimwear campaign."

This not the first time H&M had come under fire for its selection of models for its ad campaigns.  They have previously been criticized for the use of, very, very thin models.   Opps!

Well the swimwear ad campaign continues.  Swedes continue to seek the warming rays of increasing sunshine.  We are not far behind clutching our SPF 45 sunscreen.

Below is our video of this blog entry.  Enjoy.

Light My Fire

We suspect as Jim Morrison and the Doors wailed and rode their hit “Light my Fire” to the top of the pop charts in the mid-sixties, they had little appreciation of the ancient Nordic tradition of Walpurgis.

On 30 April Swedes gather in community about massive bonfires to celebrate the memory of a 8^th century German abbess named St. Walpurga. Or so goes the story. In actuality, the Christian roots of this nationwide celebration are equally unmoored from the more distant European pagan rituals Valborgsmässoafton, or Walpurgis Night.  After endless months of winter darkness and weeks of slowly unfolding springtime weather, Walpurgis Night is the surefire calendar-scheduled beginning of spring. Morrison and band would, however, have clearly recognized the reckless abandonment some youthful Swedes apply to the celebration. “Police busy on alcohol-soaked Walpurgis Night” and “Drunken Swedes kicked out of Denmark” were just two headlines that filled our online English edition of the local news here. Thanks to the generous offer of one of Helen’s Dining for Women friends, Lucy Robertshaw, we were able to witness Walpurgis Night first hand in the Swedish countryside.

We took a commuter train to Södertälje where Lucy retrieved us so we could continue the final part of the journey by car to her and Michael’s home. The home is only 35 miles southwest of Stockholm, but gave us another view of Sweden outside our urban environs. The single story, yellow clad home is located in a world of farmer’s fields ploughed and ready for planting and active horse farms. Sharing our visit were Michael’s young children, Ella and Ture.

Our evening of revelry was a family affair. Michael and Lucy had previously prepared a pile of loose branches, tree trimmings and combustible recyclables for the bonfire. We responded with shocking surprise upon seeing the assembled flammables that reached a height of over six feet. Michael, with typical Swedish modesty and a lifetime of Walpurgis Nights, noted that some bonfires reach heights exceeding our pyre by two to three times.  Yikes!

Children and adults watch the flaming bonfire

Michael put a match to the mass of material before us and we settled into our first Walpurgis Night. At other flaming bonfires, men may break out in song singing the traditional ditty "Vintern Rasat Ut." It is also said that Walpurgis Night is one day - and they are few and far between in the Swedish calendar - when you can grab a stranger’s hand and skip and sing without recoil. Oh my...

 

Our evening was rather tame. The adults stood about in pleasant conversation adjusting and stirring the fire as needed. Ella and Ture fed the fire with anything flammable they could pick up and toss into the flames.  We considered neither St. Walpurga nor the evil spirits vanquished as in paean days of this ritual. Spring had arrived and that was cause enough for celebration.