Tag Archives: Italy

The Festivals of Emilia Romagna, Italy

June 13, 2011 jd 1 Comment

By Judy J. Pinegar

Emilia-Romagna is the heartland of central Italy, with a reputation as a great gastronomic center, sometimes called the “bread basket” or the “fruit bowl” of Italy. Pigs still outnumber humans in many areas. So there is no surprise that all of the festivals in the area have food as one of the main draws, and some of the festivals are all about a particular food

March – Fiera di San Guiseppe e Sagra della Seppia (Fires of Spring and Festival of the Sepia) is held in the town of Pinarella and beaches of Cervia. Every year this traditional celebration called a Focarina, the burning of the winter months and greeting the coming of spring. Large fires are built, and the festival ensues, accompanied by singing, music shows, animation and traditional markets. At night fireworks are sent up over the sea. The food focus is on seafood including sepia, a genus of cuttlefish which also produces the dark pigment used in making the brown color sepia.

June – Fiera di San Giovanni (Feast of St John) La Fiera di San Giovanni è l’evento più importante per Spilamberto; si svolge ogni anno a cavallo del 24 giugno, festa di San Giovanni Battista, patrono della città., held in the town of Spilamberto, honors St. John the Baptist, the patron saint of the city, but also presents the local agricultural products, crafts and foods of the area. The festival includes performances, sports competition, exhibitions, and children’s workshops. The historic street market, Obici contains many original and quirky items for sale. Si tratta di un’occasione per celebrare il patrono ma anche per presentare i prodotti tipici del territorio e l’attività delle numerose associazioni locali, che ogni anno si impegnano attivamente insieme all’Amministrazione Comunale per valorizzare la manifestazione.The Fiera di San Giovanni is also a trade show for poultry, rabbits, and pigeons is one of the largest and most important shows in all Italy.

August – Ferrara Buskers Festival, held in the city of the same name draws 800,000 onlookers, is the largest show in the world dedicated to “the art of the road”. The name Buskers refers to street-performers: music, theater, dance, juggling, etc. They come from around the world. All are well-known and well-respected in their trade in their home countries, and have incredible and unique talents to share. Throughout the festival it seems anything is possible at any time. They are only paid by the generosity of the onlookers, so bring your change!

September – Sagra della Polenta e dei Frutti del Sottobosco (Festival of Polenta and Berries), held in the city of Novafeltria, the air is perfumed with the smell of polenta topped with wild boar sauce, sausage or mushrooms. The polenta is made from stone ground corn, at least 13 different species! Frutti del Sottobosco means all those delicious goodies hiding in the undergrowth… like local porcini mushrooms and truffles. Other specialties include piadina, a thin Italian flatbread cooked on terra cotta,and homemade jams all washed down with the local Sangiovese wine.

September – Festival del Proscuitto di Parma (Festival of the Ham), held in the city of Parma brings a typical 100,000 visitors, who consume 1,000 hams, and 60,000 meals. For the occasion the Piazza Garaboldi is turned into a open air Proscuitteria, where the King of Hams is served together with the best wines of the area. There is also street theatre, stalls of local products, and painting exhibitions. In a tradition called Finestre Aperte (Open Windows), the ham factories give tours to let thepublic watch the production process and take part in free tastings. They explain the production secrets of the pig legs that, due to a magical combination of climate, tradition and passion, become Parma Ham.

October – Fiera del Tartufo Bianco di Sant’Agatha Feltria (White Truffle Fair of Sant’Agatha Feltria), held in the medieval town of that name, and also called the Truffle City, the festival welcomes over 100,000 people annually with intoxicating smells and exciting treats for gourmets. There are cultural exhibitions, performances, and entertainment. Other foods from the area are also featured, mushrooms, chestnuts, honey herbs and products of sheep farming.

November – Zucca in Festa (Pumpkin Festival) held in the municipality of Delta, has organized events and markets of local crafts and products, food stands, and everywhere specialties made from pumpkin, soups, stuffing, in pasta or bread, baked, fried and cooked into sweets. The pumpkin is called a “violin” and has firm, sweet orange flesh. They even make a distilled pumpkin grappa.

Written by Judy J. Pinegar
Writer and is available to write for your blog or magazine
You may contact her at Email Judy

For all your real estate needs call or email:
John J. O’Dell
Real Estate Broker
O’Dell Realty
(530) 263-1091
Email jodell@nevadacounty.com

Bits & Pieces

The Making of Parmigiano Cheese in the Emilia-Romagna region of Italy

April 12, 2011 jd

Photo courtesy of Gastronomical Products of Parma

By Judy J. Pinegar

No cheese is as famous and essential to Italian cuisine as Parmigiano, therefore, no visit to the Emilia-Romagna region of Northern Italy is complete without exploring the making of Parmigiano-Reggiano Cheese . Parmigiano is the Italian adjective for Parma, while Reggiano is the adjective for Reggio Emelia, both cities and providences of the same name in the Emilia-Romagna administrative region.

Parmigiano-Reggiano is made from raw cow’s milk, 16 liters (4.2 gallons) of milk per kilo (2.2 pounds) of cheese, and the cows must be fed only on grass or hay. Adding a partly skimmed milk to whole milk, and using copper lined vats for heating and cooling, with additions of natural whey culture (starter), and calf rennet (enzymes from the stomach), the milk coagulates. It then separates into solids (curds) and liquid (whey). The compacted curd is collected in muslin for cheese making, and the remaining whey is fed to the pigs from which Parma Ham will be produced! In many farms in Emilia-Romagna, the barns for the pigs are just yards from the cheese producing rooms.

The cheese is put into a stainless steel round form, pulled tight by a buckle so the cheese retains a wheel shape, and then imprinted several times with the words Parmigiano-Reggiano, the plant number, month and year of production. After brining in salt water the approximate salinity of the Mediterranean Sea, for 25 days, the wheels are then aged for at least 12 months. At this point each and every cheese is inspected and graded by the Consorzio (Consortium) Parmigiano-Reggiano. The cheese is tested by a master grader whose only tools are a hammer and his ear. By tapping the wheel at various points, he can identify undesirable voids and cracks within the wheel. Those that pass the test get the Consorzio’s logo branded on their rinds while cheeses that do not make the grade are stripped of all markings.

More aging follows and some people think Parmigiano-Reggiano is best at 24 to 30 months when it is still soft and crumby, with tiny crunchy areas from the salt, yet rich and complex. The cheese has a sharp, complex fruity/nutty taste and a slightly gritty texture. Inferior cheeses can impart a bitter taste. The name is trademarked, and in Italy there is legal exclusive control exercised over the production and sale of Parmigiano-Reggiano, under a governmental decree.

The average Parmigiano-Reggiano wheel is about 18–24 centimeters (7.1–9.4 in) high, 40–45 centimeters (16–18 in) in diameter, and weighs 38 kilograms (84 lb).

Uses for Parmigiano-Reggiano include being grated over pasta, stirred into soup and risotto, and eaten in chunks with balsamic vinegar. It is also a key ingredient in Alfredo sauce and pesto. In Emilia-Romagna it is often paired with pears and walnuts and enjoyed as a dessert at the end of a meal.

Outside Europe, most notably in the United States, commercially produced imitator cheeses may be legally sold under the generic name “Parmesan.” Parmesan is the French-language name and also is the informal term for the cheese in the English language. The name Parmesan is also used for cheeses which imitate Parmigiano-Reggiano, with statements such as “Italian hard cheese” to skirt legal constraints. In North America parmesan cheese is only aged for 20 months, and the milk used is pasteurized, Parmigiano-Reggiano on average contains two-thirds less salt than the average Parmesan so be sure you get the real thing if you are a true Italiano!

Written by Judy J. Pinegar
World Traveler & Writer
Need articles written? You may contact Judy through me

John J. O’Dell
Real Estate Broker
O’Dell Realty
(530) 263-1091
Email John jodell@nevadacounty.com

DRE #00669941

Travel

Socialized Medicine in Italy

June 8, 2010 jd 3 Comments

While in Rome, for some reason I got an asthma attack. I haven’t had an asthma attack since I was a teen ager which was a couple of years ago, more or less.

In talking to the receptionist at the place we were staying at, he suggested that I go to the emergency room, since that would be free and if I wanted a doctor to come to our place it would cost a $100 euro’s. I also had the option to go to a private hospital, but that would be expensive.

I arrived at the emergency room, not knowing what to expect, since in the U.S. you can wait a couple of hours or more. However, within 30 minutes or less, a doctor interviewed me (not some clerk wanting to know my life history and a promise to go to mediation if the doctor screwed up)

I told him I was having an asthma attack. He took the information down and told me to go to the waiting room. Sure enough, I had to wait about 30 to 40 minutes. I was then taken to another room, a doctor listened to my chest, put me on a nebulizer, with vapor coming out of it, an IV (a shot of cortisone I think), took blood samples, did a EKG and sent me back to the waiting room. While in the waiting room, someone came and took me up for two x-rays. Finally after two doctors examined me, one a specialist in bronchial problems, I was told that indeed I had had an asthma attack.

The doctor gave me a prescription for three drugs, a full printout in Italian of the blood test results, the EKG, his diagnoses and told me when I got near another hospital in the next week or two, to go and talk to another doctor and give him this report to see how I was doing.

Total cost – zero. If I had been a senior citizen of Italy, the drugs would have been free. By the way, the total costs of the drugs were $83 euro’s, and that was only the ones I had to take afterwards, not those at the hospital.

I can well imagine the costs of going to an emergency room in the U.S. and getting that kind of treatment. The hospitals in the U.S. would charge at least $10 to $15 thousand for two doctors and all of the tests. It was really nice to have the doctors in charge of my treatment, instead of a hospital administrator or an insurance company dictating what a doctor can do or not do.

If you don’t like socialized medicine, well, you don’t know what you’re missing, other than what the insurance and drug companies are telling you. (By the way, they’re in the market to make money off of well people and keep you from having to take any medical tests or procedures that they think are unnecessary, not the doctors ideas of how many tests or procedures you should have.

The argument I hear from people say that the American government can’t run anything (other than the military, the police, the road systems and on and on) In general I hear we have the best health care in the world. Sorry, according to the National Health Organization, the top health care country, that is the country that has the best health care for their citizens is France, followed by Italy. Where do we rank? Thirty seven out out of a hundred and ninety countries. Yep, we’re two steps above Cuba.

You know by now, that because medicine is so high in this country, people in this country are buying airplane tickets to India and other places because they can’t afford our great medical system.

Of course, the biggest joke I’ve seen in years was senior citizens protesting Obama’s attempt to have insurance for everyone. They said they don’t want socialism but it was OK for them to collect their social security and have Medicare insurance.

Travel

Hill Towns of Tuscany: Sienna, Montepulciano, Assisi, and a side trip to Saturnia, Italy

May 27, 2010 jd

Renting a car in Pisa, we easily got to an exit out of town with no mistakes. Our plans were to go through Sienna, for a quick stop, then go on to Montepulciano, where we were spending the night in a castle!

In Sienna we walked past Il Campo and the Duomo, and the Cathedral. Sienna had as really good museum of Etruscan history and Renaissance Art, which we also toured. After a lunch we continued on to Montepulciano, where we took a walk to find the hotel, while David rested his knee in the car. Finding our hotel, we then had the attendant called by the wine tasting lady across the street. The castle, now called Camere Bellavista was neat, and we got a room for three, for an extra 30 euros.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q9SUTw2t6NI

Then we explored the town, being very near the Piazza Grande, the Duomo, and quite a few wine tasting rooms. In fact I have never SEEN so many wine tasting rooms anywhere in such a small area. The wine is Vino Nobile, a hearty red, improved and softened with age and oak. But truly, every street you turned on had a wine tasting room. The restaurant we went to (forgot the name was very good)!

By the way, driving a car in an old city that was built in the early Anno Domini (AD) period is an experience. The streets are very narrow and making a 90 degree turn unto another street with inches to spare on each side of the corner is something you do with care!

The next morning, we left for Assisi, parked below the escalator, and began the Rick Steves tour, first the Roman Amphitheater from the first century AD, the buildings filling it today were built in the 13^th and 14^th centuries. Passing right by our hotel without noticing it and continuing, we came to the Cathedral of San Rufino… looking at one of the lions at the base of the Cathedral, you find the lion eating a Christian martyr, reminding worshipers of the courage of early Christians. Then on to the Basilica of Saint Clare (who ran away from a wealthy family to join the church after hearing Saint Francis of Assisi, talking about the life of non-materialism). She became a saint almost immediately after her death.

Because I spent four hours in a café with internet access, we were too late to see the Basilica of St Francis, but have some pictures of the outside. After walking back across town to the parking lot, it took several U turns and requesting information to make our way back to the hotel for the night, within the walls of the city.

Leaving at 7:30 am we quickly navigated ourselves onto the road to Saturnia, a natural hot springs (David had been waiting for weeks!!) Along the way, we passed through an ancient city called Pitigliano. That was fantastic when viewed from the side of the road and below. The whole town is built on a big hill composed of a light colored volcanic rock called tuff or “tufo” in Italian. Apparently the seven hills of Rome are also made of tuff, and quarried tuff is in the Colosseum and Pantheon and is the material that most of the catacombs were built from. It is apparently easy to work with (soft and easy to carve) as a building material then it hardens and becomes stronger when it is exposed to air. There are shops that have been cut into the mountain side (like a cave) and you can see them as we drove along the highway through the town. You can see the town and also a door shop which is tunneled alongside the road and into the mountain on the video.

The springs at Saturnia have a very high sulfur smell and we could tell when got close to the springs. We found it, and bathed, but it was sort of lukewarm, not hot and a mild disappointment.

Next up: DRIVING IN ROME!!!…

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Travel

Punta Alta, Italy

May 11, 2010 jd 2 Comments

We left Florence on May 8 and continued by train to Follonica. The train ride took three hours. It was fast and very clean. From Follonica, there is a bus or taxi that goes to Punta Ala, our final destination for this leg of the trip. Our choice to go to Punta Alta was a taxi for 35 euro’s or 2.5 euro’s for a bus. Although we had to wait two hours for the bus, it was very comfortable and a short ride of 30 minutes. Punta Alta is in the Tuscany region but located on the Mediterranean coast (actually called the Ligurian Sea). After much difficulty and wandering aimlessly, due to an almost complete lack of signage, we came to our destination, Residencia I Borboli.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p2-vTEUDyeU

Turns out this is a very exclusive residential area, with a huge marina filled with millions or more likely billions of dollars worth of yachts, sailboats and a few smaller vessels. It is off season now, a little early (probably why Judy was able to get the timeshare on a trade), their season starts in June. So not too many people and some restaurants still closed. A little market (things cost 4X what they do in Follonica) which is really about the size of a 7-11 store.4:30 or you are there for the night! On our way to catch the bus, we walked the block in a different direction. Looking at one of the closed stores, we saw what we thought was a bum. Hadn’t seen any bums since we had arrived in Italy, only a few beggers. But lo! It turned out to be David, Judy’s son! The night before he had a bad bicyle accident and was laying down in pain. He had just arrived in Follonica, and was waiting for a bus.

So after our reunion, we all waited for the bus to Punta Ala. It was a good thing because given the hard time we had at finding our place to stay, at least we could save David the search, and given that he was crippled and in pain from a bicycle accident in Heidelberg before he left yesterday, that was a good thing.

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Travel

Florence, Italy

May 10, 2010 jd

Early in the morning, May 4, 2010 the alarm rings and our day starts, a drive to Sacramento where it takes a map and a phone call to find the address of the person storing the car and driving us to the airport. Not a good start for a 6 week trip to Europe.

But everything is fine from there on, United Airlines is on time and arrives early at Dulles International Airport. The flight from Sacramento to Dulles Airport normally takes four hours and eleven minutes. We had a tail wind so we arrived a little early. A decent lunch and we await the next leg, Lufthansa to Frankfurt, Germany. So far it has been painless, as I read the paper and do Sudako, Judy has finished one book on the new Kindle. The next trip will be the grueling one, but an overnight trip, so we shall see.

The wait for our next flight is four hours. But somehow we end up at the wrong gate and miss the connection. Another one leaves an hour later and we arrive in Frankfort just an hour after our planned flight…however, the problem is our flight to Florence has left, and all flights are full until the next day.

So it is a night at a German Hotel by the airport, and a trip to downtown Frankfurt on the subway for the day of May 5, 2010. We find this fantastic shopping center called “My Zie” which has a glass tube going through it from the front to the top of the building. Very modern (and expensive inside) At the Food Mall there was every kind of food (Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Thai, and Italian) except German. So we went on the street for some German food. And the good news was we were able to change both out reservations in Florence and the Walking Tour of Florence and famous art galleries to the following days without added costs.

Arriving in Florence, it is raining. Luckily I had brought an umbrella, and Judy had a hood on her coat, and our room at Katti House were only a few blocks away. After lunch, we explored the town, (all within a 20 minute walk from our rooms. I recognized all the 14^th century buildings and main historical sightseeing spots from my three months of playing “Assassin’s Creed II, a Play Station 3 video game!! Assassin’s Creed II is set in the 13^th century with a very realistic recreation of the cities of Florence, Rome, Tuscany and some other minor towns. The historical buildings are in the game with a history of the time they were built and by whom.

We visited both the Galileo Science History Museum, and the Da Vinci Museum, to find tons of fascinating inventions and scientific findings, that were then somewhat lost through the dark ages to be rediscovered later.

On Friday we had three (3!) different Walking/Art Tours of Florence. The first walked us through the history of the city from Roman times, with a small walled city and tiny streets, through the Renaissance, with a second set of walls, further out, and then a third set making the town very large, to now where of course the city expands past all those walls, most of which were ripped down and re-used to build other buildings, churches, etc. We went inside the Beautiful Duomo, once the largest Church in Christendom, made entirely of white, green, and pink marble from Tuscany. Fantastic! You could see one side, recently cleaned and the other being restored with much soot and dirt on its outer walls. Luckily the current mayor of Florence has 4 weeks ago ordered all traffic diverted from the area, so hopefully the dirt build up won’t happen so fast. Much better for us pedestrians too!

Via Pietro Metastasio, Over looking the City of Florence

See Google Map below for location

The Uffizi courtyard was filled with famous originals (and some copies) from famous Renaissance sculptors. The Orsanmichele Church, in the 9^th century was a market place, later turned into a church (with grain stored in the top two floors) because miracle started happening in front of a picture of the Madonna in the market! And Point Vecchio, the famous bridge in Florence, filled with gold sellers, and the crossing place for the “Prince’s passageway” the Vasari Corridor, allowing the ruling Medici family to go from the Pitti Palace ( their home) to the Uffizi (the center of government) without having to go out in public (including the smells), or be subjected to the dangers of open courtyards (the ever ready thief or assassin). We then toured the Uffizi itself ,packed full or famous artist’s works, and then to the Accademia, to view Michelangelo’s David, a truly amazing sculpture carved out of marble, with no models, working from the top – down to the feet.

By the way, I have a new Samsung camera which has GPS built in. That way, I get a map and location of where the pictures were taken. Kind of neat, since I’ve taken many pictures and wondered later where they were taken.

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