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.