Halloween in Italia

Don't think that just because Halloween doesn't exist in Italy that it escaped my furiously childish attachment to traditions. Oh yes. Halloween came and went with all the accouterments of home, including Jack-o-Lanterns, a screening of "Nightmare Before Christmas", Apple Cider, and Pumpkin Pie. I would like to bask in my own glory for a moment as I recount JUST how hard it is to make pumpkin pie when there are no:

• Cans of prepared pumpkin
• Evaporated milk
• Ground cloves or allspice
• 9 in pie tins
• Shortening

How did I survive? Luckily, Angelo grows pumpkins on his plot of land where he keeps his horses, so I was able to procure a pumpkin at relatively low cost and hassle. 3 hours later, the pumpkin had been halved, baked, cooled, and passed through a tomato-grinder that I borrowed from his mom. Ta-Da, pumpkin puree. The evaporated milk was fairly easy to make, thanks to some research on allrecipes.com. Just an hour over the stove with some whole milk and sugar. Ta-Da again! Second problem solved. While Italy does not seem to recognize that cloves must be ground for most recipes, they CAN be found in whole-clove form, and some inventiveness with a pepper grinder did the trick. Of course, you can't expect Italians to measure their crockery in inches, but after visiting the local Coop supermarket, the Coop in the neighboring down, the Conad in Siena, and the Pam by the train station, a trip to the Conad on the industrial strip produced some aluminum pie tins of relatively the correct diameter and depth! Success! My search for shortening came up... well... short. I grumblingly used margarine for the hand-rolled crust, but it's just not the same. Allspice was right out. What I got in the end was a pie, made of pumpkin, and flavored with ALMOST the right spices, and it tasted just about right! The only downside? I still haven't figured out why, but it ended up green.

As you can see above, the jack-o-lanterns came out quite nice, even if they did look a little more squash-y than pumpkin-y. I was working on Halloween night until late, and Angelo tells me that some trick-or-treaters came by the house! Of course, here in Italy, everything Halloween is just being copied from what they see in American films, and some of the details get lost in translation. For example, said trick-or-treaters were not in costume. Had it been me at the door, I would have given them a good lecture on the spirit of Halloween and then handed out treats dug out of the cupboard. As it was, Angelo was so charmed, he invited them inside and fed them pasta.

Fear not! With a little ingenuity and a lot of hard work, some of the comforts of home can be reproduced just about anywhere! My next assignment... *gulp*... Thanksgiving.

Rising hopes...

Did you know that there are about six different types of leavening to be bought here in Italy? None of which, of course, are familiar to me. Apparently my dismal returns on bread-making in the last month have all been attributed to my having used the wrong types of leavening, although the "Beer-yeast" for "pizzas and breads" sounded like a sure thing. The correct yeast, I have now been informed, is located with the butters in the refrigerated section. Go figure.

Tomorrow they connect the internet in our apartment... I've been looking forward to this date with such fevered anticipation that I can now hardly contain myself. Skype! Allrecipes.com! E-mail! Google! Because honestly, a heated discussion at midnight about the exact location of Helsinki begs to be promptly resolved.

I'll try not to let the newfound access to all things web-ly impinge on my reading spree, however. Since being unemployed again, I've been switching between Jane Austin, the "Twilight" series, and narrative explainations of the American health care system for immigrants. All of this has resulted in feeling rather bookish and intelligent, and helped to assure me that my 17 years of schooling havn't completely annhialated my will to self-educate.

For all these feelings of superiority, at least I have my temper to humble me. A bout of embarassing impatience at our Tango lessons last night has given me the homework assignment to control my more restless side. This extends from Tango box-step annoyance to the rage I feel every time I see Silvio Berlusconi's face on the TV. I hereby vow that I will not hit things when he denies the indisputable sexual exploits.

Apropos, does anyone follow him over States-side? I feel like his glaring hypocricy, corruption, and licentiousness would make him delicious fodder for the American media, but I see very little about him in my regular news sources.

Here's hoping that a job crops up soon... if not, the convenient thing will be being able to come home unhindered for Christmas!

Better belated than never

When I left the States, I promised a lot of people that I would keep in touch. Promises ranged from sending pictures to keeping people updates with my search for a tango course and a job. Well, I suppose that you could either call me a hip girl, caught up with the times, or a genuine sell-out, because I've come to the conclusion that a blog must be the most convenient and reasonable way of keeping those promises. So here I am, two months and twenty-three days after my arrival in la bell'Italia, keeping you up to date on my maneuvers as a post-grad American girl against the forces of evil in the Italian bureaucracy.

Since I arrived my life here has been divided into three epochs: The month or so after my arrival was painted with a general ennui whilst job and apartment seeking. September brought a much-anticipated and welcome visit from my parents, a fabulous jaunt around Northern Italy for two weeks, and the satisfaction of finding a beautiful apartment in the country outside Siena. In the month since my parents' departure, I found a real live job working as a waitress/busser at one of the hottest tourist restaurants in town, on the Piazza del Campo in the middle of the city. The contract only lasted through October, however, and once again I'm on the search for a job, though happily settled in my pretty apartment with my un-aformentioned beau.

Perhaps the most important incident in my Italian life so far has been the passing of my Grandfather in August, shortly after my arrival here. Much to my consternation, I was persuaded by both my family at home and my new-found family here that a trip to California for the memorial was either excessively foolish or needlessly sentimental. As a consequence, I grieved from afar, but recent plans to visit my family and pay my respects at my grandfather's grave during the winter holidays have lifted my spirits on the subject.

As for the tango class, Angelo and I signed ourselves up with "Tango Siena", an association which offers classes, balls, performances, potlucks, and most of all, a social life. Twice every week now, we go to make only slight fools of ourselves, dancing from 9:30-midnight and munching on prosciutto and lasagna when we get frustrated. So it is with distinct pleasure that I announce our complete success on that front.

For the work, here's hoping. I have a couple of prospects on the horizon which will only be worth mentioning if they come through. My job at the Birreria (resteraunt on the Campo), though brief, was intense; lasting 8 hours/day, 6 days/week. The best part about the job was perhaps surprisingly NOT the incredibly, unbeatable view of the Palazzo Publico and environs, but the mixture of tourists and locals who filtered through every day. Germans tourists stroked my ego by insisting that I sounded like a Berlin native, American tourists reveled in my real-life paperback-novel love story, and I got to meet some of the most interesting Sienese locals who would come by every evening as the tourists left on their busses back to Florence. There was the old man who insisted to me that this was the "Spanish Plaza!" and that a bull lived in the Palazzo Publico, stomping out all the mice because they scare the Palio horses. There was Anna, the old half-crazy lady who came every night to play the scratch-and-win tickets and would cry out "Chee-Wa-Wa!" whenever she won. (When Anna found out I was American, she gleefully bellowed, "Obama! Chee-Wa-Wa!")

On the 11th of November, they're supposed to come connect my internet, so you'll all be hearing more of me. But in the meantime... ciao, e a dopo!