Today at 11:00 a.m., both churches and our town hall in the town center rang their bells as a “message of hope” for our residents. Many were out on the balconies watching and listening. Here’s a little video for you!
Continue reading →Today I watched the press conference with Mayor Andrew Cuomo of New York. For the most part, I saw his understanding of the situation to be so much clearer and more concisely stated that the Federal Government’s. I do have one beef that I’ll state up-front. I know when US officials say “we don’t want to be like Italy”, they really mean that they see our plight, and would love to avoid some of the consequences of not acting as quickly as you can. However, in reality, outside of maybe China, which is an AUTHORITARIAN country, Italy has actually done a pretty stellar job! I know that what they mean is that they would like to avoid the outcomes we’ve had in Italy, but they way it is said is highly offensive to me, because I think Italy has really taken the lead in understanding how serious this situation is, and has taken extraordinary, exemplary action in this crisis. You DO want to be like Italy when it comes to your dedication to stopping this virus. You just want to act more quickly, take lessons from what we’ve learned, and try to avoid some of the dire consequences of not acting quickly enough!
Continue reading →Today was a really good “virtual” day. I spent the day with a bunch of English speakers on Zoom – we had 22 people at one time (maybe more total, but never more than 22 on the call simultaneously). It’s a group of English speakers living in Italy.
Continue reading →Our Coronavirus journey began on February 11 when we landed back at Linate Airport in Milano. The death toll in China had gone crazy, and the first death in Europe had happened in France. Italy was on alert. As we walked towards the exit after baggage claim, we were screened by hazmat clothed workers with a touchless thermometer to see if we had a fever. Wow, we thought – that was unusual. The country changed dramatically in the next few weeks as millions were put in “restricted travel” for weeks, and ultimately the entire country went into quarantine on March 11, a month after we returned home.
Continue reading →It seems like every day since Sunday, something has changed just a little in our little corner of the world. On Sunday, we went to our “Sunday bar” for our breakfast. Sunday we were told that our province of Parma had been added to the “red zone”. That meant that were were not allow to travel out of our comune, and the bars and restaurants would only be open from 6:00-18:00.
Continue reading →We just finished Christmas lunch (it’s 3:30 pm) at one of our favorite restaurants (which is closing at the end of the year 🙁 ).
I’m not sure I can even add any words to explain how good it was – so here are the photos, with brief explanations of the dishes!
Every year, Italy’s La Repubblica newspaper holds a vote for the “most important word of phrase of the year”. These listings are frequently political in nature, dealing with the “hot topics” of the year. If you read Italian, here’s their current list to vote from. I’ll just stay out of the politics this year, and vote for “allunaggio” 🙂
Continue reading →I’ve been creating my own little “village family tree” using all of the records I can get my hands on. For one of the towns, the records I most easily have access to are only a single census, and then death records for about two centuries. Because of that, I was building families first with only their dead children, and then after I had all of the death records placed in the tree, I went to the census and filled in some gaps (the birth records will someday fill in more gaps). It was tough.
Continue reading →Living in Emilia–Romagna, I sure love a good Ragù! I don’t love waiting all day for it though! And while not all modern conveniences work well with traditional recipes, thankfully the modern versions of the pressure cooker, and the Instant Pot specifically, are often a wonderful choice for a faster meal that still brings the flavor, texture and consistency of the original day-long process. Ragù alla Bolognese seemed like a perfect candidate for an Instant Pot time slash, so I took it on!
Continue reading →One of our favorite parts of the Fiera del Fungo (Mushroom Festival, or as my husband affectionately calls it the “Fungus Festival”) is the “Cooking Show Pavilion”. Here there are multiple cooking demonstrations and tastings throughout the days of the … Continue reading →
