Now just wait for my former employer to sue me to pieces over this bit of bad publicity!
Saturday, November 28, 2009
In which I deal a very palpable hit to my own reputation
Now just wait for my former employer to sue me to pieces over this bit of bad publicity!
Cioccolata Calda
I have drinking chocolate on my mind today, because Ursula mentioned that she has packets of hot chocolate for us. It's good stuff, but it doesn't really compare to the few precious cups of cioccolata calda that I've had at various points on this trip. Sometimes it's hard to know whether the stuff is supposed to be drunk or eaten. It is thick, creamy, dark and only a little sweet. In Arezzo, when we ran into the chocolate festival, all of the little booths had machines dispensing the stuff. Walking along the street, I came across a man standing over a giant pot of hot chocolate. This just screamed fresh, homemade chocolate to me and that's where I purchased my cup. I'm sure that the other booths were just as good and fresh, but this one had all the heart.
Anyway, enough with my blathering. The weather is starting to cool down here, but I'm sure that many of you in the States are already experiencing snow and other yucky things. Hot Chocolate is what you need to cheer you up! Here's a link with a couple of tasty looking recipes. Enjoy!
Cioccolata Calda
Anyway, enough with my blathering. The weather is starting to cool down here, but I'm sure that many of you in the States are already experiencing snow and other yucky things. Hot Chocolate is what you need to cheer you up! Here's a link with a couple of tasty looking recipes. Enjoy!
Cioccolata Calda
Friday, November 27, 2009
Food (again)
Surprisingly, the turkey came out of the oven a little after 8pm last night. It was pretty tasty and only a little dry. The potato and parsnip pierogies were the unexpected stars of the evening--delicious packets of dough surrounding creamy starch goodness and glazed with melted sage butter. We all over-indulged. I think the most unusual dish was the chestnut risotto. I don’t believe that it came out perfectly last night, so I am posting it here for my future reference. I suspect with a little more effort and the right ingredients that this will be an awesome dish.
It’s in metric because I’m feeling too lazy to convert, but 100 g is approximately ¼ of a pound and a liter is about a quart.
Chestnut Risotto
320 g arborio rice
200 g chicken liver, chopped (I think ground beef would be more palatable)
200 g chestnuts, boiled, peeled and chopped (roasting might be tastier)
200g cooked squash, cubed (roast this too)
1 clove of garlic
1 liter of broth, keep this warm on the stove for the rice
½ cup of white table wine
1 onion, chopped
3 Tbl olive oil
Small knob of butter
Grated parmesian
Add two tablespoons of olive oil and the whole garlic clove into a large pot over medium heat. Add in the liver or ground beef and brown for a couple of minutes. Remove to a bowl and set it aside.
Put in the remaining oil, the butter and the onion and saute until the onion turns translucent. Add the rice and stir to coat in the oil. Pour in the wine and let it boil down for a minute. Add the broth in a ladle-full at a time. Stir the rice and don’t add the next ladle of broth until most of the liquid from the previous has been absorbed. Repeat until the broth is gone and the rice is creamy. This can take 25-30 minutes or longer, so don’t rush it. If the rice isn’t soft enough, continue with hot water or extra broth until it is.
Stir in the chestnuts, squash and the liver/beef into the rice. Serve with the grated parmesian.
Lordy me. I have a lot of pictures that I want to post, but I don’t trust the internet connection here. You’ll have to wait until we reach the land of the Scots and the Pillars of Hercules (I can’t wait to meet the person who named the farm this) before you can see any of the marvelous pictures from the last 5 weeks of our adventures.
Ch-ch-ch-ciao ciao ch-ciao…ciao. (<-- Best ending to a phone call, Eh-var!)
It’s in metric because I’m feeling too lazy to convert, but 100 g is approximately ¼ of a pound and a liter is about a quart.
Chestnut Risotto
320 g arborio rice
200 g chicken liver, chopped (I think ground beef would be more palatable)
200 g chestnuts, boiled, peeled and chopped (roasting might be tastier)
200g cooked squash, cubed (roast this too)
1 clove of garlic
1 liter of broth, keep this warm on the stove for the rice
½ cup of white table wine
1 onion, chopped
3 Tbl olive oil
Small knob of butter
Grated parmesian
Add two tablespoons of olive oil and the whole garlic clove into a large pot over medium heat. Add in the liver or ground beef and brown for a couple of minutes. Remove to a bowl and set it aside.
Put in the remaining oil, the butter and the onion and saute until the onion turns translucent. Add the rice and stir to coat in the oil. Pour in the wine and let it boil down for a minute. Add the broth in a ladle-full at a time. Stir the rice and don’t add the next ladle of broth until most of the liquid from the previous has been absorbed. Repeat until the broth is gone and the rice is creamy. This can take 25-30 minutes or longer, so don’t rush it. If the rice isn’t soft enough, continue with hot water or extra broth until it is.
Stir in the chestnuts, squash and the liver/beef into the rice. Serve with the grated parmesian.
Lordy me. I have a lot of pictures that I want to post, but I don’t trust the internet connection here. You’ll have to wait until we reach the land of the Scots and the Pillars of Hercules (I can’t wait to meet the person who named the farm this) before you can see any of the marvelous pictures from the last 5 weeks of our adventures.
Ch-ch-ch-ciao ciao ch-ciao…ciao. (<-- Best ending to a phone call, Eh-var!)
Some thoughts on work
While I talk a big socialist game, I am actually quite lazy and therefore unsuited to socialism, communism or any other sort of communal labor-oriented society. I hate working. Shouldn't we have robots to do this kind of crap, so we can go on thinking marvellous thoughts about whatever we like and so on? While this is clearly childish wishful thinking, I also have a hard time with the idea that there's something inherently ennobling about work. No matter how many times my father told me it was good for me, in some way, to be out working in the garden, I always preferred to be inside reading a book or something. Culture kept telling me it was a free country, that I could grow up to be anything I wanted. Nobody mentioned the eight-hour day, job applications, 'at will' employment, lower back pain or miserly 30-minute lunch breaks, let alone this idealistic crap about operating an engine lathe for the good of the people (or, as Lexy's father is fond of saying, "hoeing beets for the Cultural Revolution"). So I have always felt - wrongly, I realize - that work was an unpleasnt obligation foisted off INCORRECTLY upon me, who, as an artist, clearly had better uses for his time.
Now, after a crapulous series of mostly crapulous jobs, I find myself forced to reevaluate this stance as I mature (a concept I find all too offensively similar to "ferment" or perhaps "brine"). While technically my first job was at the Barter Theater in Abingdon, acting, I was a) a sophomore in high school at the time and b) paid some pitiful token sum like $25 a week. My real first job was at a packing-and-shipping store down the hill from my high school, which I'd inherited when my girlfriend quit. I won't dignify it with details, but it was, as a business, entirely questionable. After that I worked at the Papa John's in Jonesborough, where I had a member of the management team ask me earnestly, "Have you ever had your fingers in a vagina?" when I asked him about anchovies and another one, nicknamed "Dookie," take me out in his car to smoke a bowl during his break. You can see where this list is going. While I have, of course, worked for less dubious persons - Jeff and Charles at Appalachian Sustainable Woods, the earnest public servants at Land-Of-Sky Regional Council - I have yet to find a job that I do not, in some way, doubt. Even if, as was the case at Trader Joe's, I find the pay, benefits and management structure fitting, satisfying, there is still some reason or another I can always find to eventually begin hating it.
TJ's taught me that, no matter how good the job itself, a job in retail is not for me. I hate the tunnel vision, the sense of entitlement, the cell-phone dependancy and the vapid conversation of the buying public. I have sworn to myself that I will never work beind a cash register again and I hope the arrogant avarice of financial speculators and craven obesiance of public officials (you humans may know this as "the economic crisis") won't force me to go back on that vow. Whether or not I have the right to hate retail - to think that I am BETTER than retail - I cannot change my own nature to such an extent as to clock in for some distant corporate distributor of even more distant goods cheerfully. That has, in fact, always been the most galling fact, to me, about the service industry: one is not merely expected to DO a disappointing job for frustratingly low wages while putting up with all manner of guff from manager, customer and co-worker alike - one is expected to LIKE it.
WWOOFing is helping me form a new perspective on all this. It is teaching me that perhaps there ARE other ways of being in the world of economics than resentful office slave, abused retail drone or rapacious entrepreneurial predator. There are solid reasons why, despite debt, the vagaries of the market and the constant struggle to constrain nature's boundless variability, people still choose agriculture. Not that I see myself farming for a living... I wouldn't give my dad the satisfaction (Zing!). But I can see how beneficial it would be if all of us took the time to grow some portion of the food we eat ourselves; to think about the impact our actions have on the health of the land and its creatures (humans included); and if we all took the time to suck it up for a few hours here and there to do something that, while probably not fun, is at least in many ways valuable.
It's also making me dread applying for jobs when I get back home. I was thinking about this process today and saw no reason not to flat-out lie when faced with questions like, "What was a specific instance in which you provided excellent customer service?" The kind of person who closely scrutinizes my answer to such a bald prompt for brown-nosing is not the kind of person I care to spend my days obeying.
Hopefully, I won't have to.
Now, after a crapulous series of mostly crapulous jobs, I find myself forced to reevaluate this stance as I mature (a concept I find all too offensively similar to "ferment" or perhaps "brine"). While technically my first job was at the Barter Theater in Abingdon, acting, I was a) a sophomore in high school at the time and b) paid some pitiful token sum like $25 a week. My real first job was at a packing-and-shipping store down the hill from my high school, which I'd inherited when my girlfriend quit. I won't dignify it with details, but it was, as a business, entirely questionable. After that I worked at the Papa John's in Jonesborough, where I had a member of the management team ask me earnestly, "Have you ever had your fingers in a vagina?" when I asked him about anchovies and another one, nicknamed "Dookie," take me out in his car to smoke a bowl during his break. You can see where this list is going. While I have, of course, worked for less dubious persons - Jeff and Charles at Appalachian Sustainable Woods, the earnest public servants at Land-Of-Sky Regional Council - I have yet to find a job that I do not, in some way, doubt. Even if, as was the case at Trader Joe's, I find the pay, benefits and management structure fitting, satisfying, there is still some reason or another I can always find to eventually begin hating it.
TJ's taught me that, no matter how good the job itself, a job in retail is not for me. I hate the tunnel vision, the sense of entitlement, the cell-phone dependancy and the vapid conversation of the buying public. I have sworn to myself that I will never work beind a cash register again and I hope the arrogant avarice of financial speculators and craven obesiance of public officials (you humans may know this as "the economic crisis") won't force me to go back on that vow. Whether or not I have the right to hate retail - to think that I am BETTER than retail - I cannot change my own nature to such an extent as to clock in for some distant corporate distributor of even more distant goods cheerfully. That has, in fact, always been the most galling fact, to me, about the service industry: one is not merely expected to DO a disappointing job for frustratingly low wages while putting up with all manner of guff from manager, customer and co-worker alike - one is expected to LIKE it.
WWOOFing is helping me form a new perspective on all this. It is teaching me that perhaps there ARE other ways of being in the world of economics than resentful office slave, abused retail drone or rapacious entrepreneurial predator. There are solid reasons why, despite debt, the vagaries of the market and the constant struggle to constrain nature's boundless variability, people still choose agriculture. Not that I see myself farming for a living... I wouldn't give my dad the satisfaction (Zing!). But I can see how beneficial it would be if all of us took the time to grow some portion of the food we eat ourselves; to think about the impact our actions have on the health of the land and its creatures (humans included); and if we all took the time to suck it up for a few hours here and there to do something that, while probably not fun, is at least in many ways valuable.
It's also making me dread applying for jobs when I get back home. I was thinking about this process today and saw no reason not to flat-out lie when faced with questions like, "What was a specific instance in which you provided excellent customer service?" The kind of person who closely scrutinizes my answer to such a bald prompt for brown-nosing is not the kind of person I care to spend my days obeying.
Hopefully, I won't have to.
Thursday, November 26, 2009
Thanksgiving
The weather has been extraordinayry lately--clear skies and temperatures in the mid 60s F. Our host has purchased a turkey so that we can celebrate Thanksgiving in style. She claims to have ordered a 6 kilo bird, but the one we picked up today weighs in at over 7 and a half kilos. That is 16.5 lbs for you non-metric folks. It is a big bird, and I think Ursula's estimation of a three hour cooking time is waaaaay under. Add to this the fact that her ancient gas oven only has two settings--hot and off--and we may not be eating until 9 or 10 tonight. At least it will be tasty. I have smeared herb butter underneath the skin and Ursula has stuffed it full of bread, bacon and apples. Mmm.
Side dishes include pierogies (the other two wwoofers are both Polish-Americans), chestnut risotto, green beans with almonds and apple sauce (Italians don't even have a word for cranberries). Dessert will be a "pumpkin" pie, which is made from an orange-fleshed squash that I spent over an hour today running through a small foodmill in order to puree it. So, as you can see, we will be celebrating our day of thanks in full American-Polish-German-Italian style. Awesome.
(The cranberries part reminds me of something I bought a few weeks ago. I went into a pharmacy looking for cranberry suppliments and came out with a bottle of "bear grapes." No lie, that is what uva ursino translates too. The pharmacist, who spoke some English, assured me that this would serve the same purpose.)
Our time here in Italy is coming to a close. On Tuesday afternoon, Josh and I will board a British Airways flight to Edinburgh to begin our three month stay in the UK. Italy has been great fun, but I think we both agree that it is time for some new surroundings. That and we are both craving breakfasts and tall glasses of dark beer. Anyhoo, more on this subject when I'm not supposed to be helping with dinner--
Side dishes include pierogies (the other two wwoofers are both Polish-Americans), chestnut risotto, green beans with almonds and apple sauce (Italians don't even have a word for cranberries). Dessert will be a "pumpkin" pie, which is made from an orange-fleshed squash that I spent over an hour today running through a small foodmill in order to puree it. So, as you can see, we will be celebrating our day of thanks in full American-Polish-German-Italian style. Awesome.
(The cranberries part reminds me of something I bought a few weeks ago. I went into a pharmacy looking for cranberry suppliments and came out with a bottle of "bear grapes." No lie, that is what uva ursino translates too. The pharmacist, who spoke some English, assured me that this would serve the same purpose.)
Our time here in Italy is coming to a close. On Tuesday afternoon, Josh and I will board a British Airways flight to Edinburgh to begin our three month stay in the UK. Italy has been great fun, but I think we both agree that it is time for some new surroundings. That and we are both craving breakfasts and tall glasses of dark beer. Anyhoo, more on this subject when I'm not supposed to be helping with dinner--
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
German Food
We are almost done with the olive harvest! I think there are less than 10 trees out of 500 to go. Of course, this is an off year for the trees, so not all of those 500 had olives on them. On bumper years, Ursula says they can go for over two months. This year we have brought in a little over two metric tons of olives, but last year they had close to 10 metric tons. That's a lot of olives!
Anyway, what I really want to talk about is food. Our hosts are German, and as such we are served mostly German meals. Dinner is a little boring (especially after some of the farms we've been on) and usually consists of bread, cheese, cured meats, and of course several bottles of homemade wine. Sometimes we make bruschetta and very occaisionally Ursula decides to make a soup. Lunches are where she shines, however.
Today we had a kind of cabbage soup. It was not complicated, but I'm going to post about it here so I can remember how to make it in the future. The soup consists of equal parts cabbage, carrots and potatoes, and I'm going to make up the rest.
1lb cabbage, chopped
1lb carrots, diced
1lb potatoes, cubed
1 onion, diced
1 stalk of celery, diced
2 cloves of garlic, minced
1lb of ground meat (beef, pork, lamb)
1 16oz can of diced tomatoes
Your favorite soup spices plus salt and pepper
Saute the onion and celery until soft. Add in the ground beef and garlic and saute until the meat is browned. Add in the tomatoes, cabbage, carrots, potatoes, and whatever spices. Cover everthing with water or stock and cook until the potatoes are soft. Season to taste with the S&P.
That's how I would recreate this soup. It's kind of a rustic farmhouse thing, so precision on the recipe probably isn't important.
Next, there is Ursula's favorite dish, potatoes with mustard sauce and hardboiled eggs, which she has served us twice so far.
The potatoes should be washed and peeled, but kept whole. Cover them with cold water and cook until they are soft all the way through. While that is happening, make a basice bechamel sauce. (Melt butter and saute flour until it turns a pale golden color, then slowly whisk in milk --or find a more exact recipe on the internet). Whisk in a couple tablespoons of nice German mustard. Divy out the potatoes and hardboiled eggs and cover them with the sauce. It's a pretty swell dish.
Anyway, what I really want to talk about is food. Our hosts are German, and as such we are served mostly German meals. Dinner is a little boring (especially after some of the farms we've been on) and usually consists of bread, cheese, cured meats, and of course several bottles of homemade wine. Sometimes we make bruschetta and very occaisionally Ursula decides to make a soup. Lunches are where she shines, however.
Today we had a kind of cabbage soup. It was not complicated, but I'm going to post about it here so I can remember how to make it in the future. The soup consists of equal parts cabbage, carrots and potatoes, and I'm going to make up the rest.
1lb cabbage, chopped
1lb carrots, diced
1lb potatoes, cubed
1 onion, diced
1 stalk of celery, diced
2 cloves of garlic, minced
1lb of ground meat (beef, pork, lamb)
1 16oz can of diced tomatoes
Your favorite soup spices plus salt and pepper
Saute the onion and celery until soft. Add in the ground beef and garlic and saute until the meat is browned. Add in the tomatoes, cabbage, carrots, potatoes, and whatever spices. Cover everthing with water or stock and cook until the potatoes are soft. Season to taste with the S&P.
That's how I would recreate this soup. It's kind of a rustic farmhouse thing, so precision on the recipe probably isn't important.
Next, there is Ursula's favorite dish, potatoes with mustard sauce and hardboiled eggs, which she has served us twice so far.
The potatoes should be washed and peeled, but kept whole. Cover them with cold water and cook until they are soft all the way through. While that is happening, make a basice bechamel sauce. (Melt butter and saute flour until it turns a pale golden color, then slowly whisk in milk --or find a more exact recipe on the internet). Whisk in a couple tablespoons of nice German mustard. Divy out the potatoes and hardboiled eggs and cover them with the sauce. It's a pretty swell dish.
Sunday, November 15, 2009
Our day off
We took a trip to Arezzo to see the sights and found a chocolate festival in full swing. I have consumed too much chocolate and now feel ill. That pretty much is all I think I need to say about my day off.
Thursday, November 12, 2009
Thoughts on things + Nitrate poisoning
Olive harvesting is a fairly mindless task, which leaves me a lot of time to think about things. Today I was thinking about what I would like to learn and incorporate into my daily life. Here's a few of them:
1. I want to learn how to build a brick oven. I have a diagram for a small one that can bake two loaves of bread at a time, which would fit perfectly in a back yard. However, it seems like every farmhouse in Italy has a large brick oven attached to the house. Some of the ones I have seen would rival the oven at Scratch in size, and these were all once considered integral to daily household life. I want one, and I want the satisfaction of having built it myself.
2. I want to learn how to care for animals, and following that, I want to learn how to make cheese and cured meat. Artisanal cheese and salamis have reached the levels of sublime artforms in this country. In America, these things are luxuries. In Italy they are simply taken for granted. I want to eat well crafted salami and know that I raised and cared for that animal. I want cheese made from the unpasturized milk of cows or goats that I pastured on fresh grass. I want to know where my food comes from and to feel good about that knowledge.
3. This last one is inspired by Micheal Pollan, whose book, The Botany of Desire, I Have just read. I want an orchard of wild apples raised from seeds. I want an apple press to squeeze them and large wooden barrels in which to ferment them. I want to drink hard cider in the winter with my friends.
What would you like to do with your food? Don't be shy, post a comment!
***
On another note, I think we've been poisoning ourselves these past two weeks. Ursula warned us when we arrived to not drink the tap water, but didn't elaborate why. Given that I have spent about 6 months in Africa, I interpreted this as, "Don't drink the tap water because it contains microbes that will make you sick." In this situation, boiling the water, say for things like making coffee, is usually ok. Also, I figured that in Italy, microbes really ought to not be a problem and that maybe she was being a little paranoid.
Last night over dinner, Sigismund somewhat off-handedly told us about the results of a water analysis he had carried out last year. Apparently he noticed that when he traveled he felt remarkably more healthy than when he was at home. He finally narrowed it down to the water supply and had it analyzed by a friend of his from Germany. The results showed a significant level of nitrate contamination. A quick search on wikipedia told me that nitrates prevent red blood cells from carrying oxygen. Since we usually have a couple of cups of coffee or tea with breakfast, we have probably been ingesting poisonous levels of nitrates for the last two weeks. I have been feeling light headed in the mornings lately, which could be explained by this. Starting today we will only be drinking bottled water and I can only hope that things will change.
Thanks industrial agriculture for poisoning our water supply! What a terrible and boring world we would have without you!
1. I want to learn how to build a brick oven. I have a diagram for a small one that can bake two loaves of bread at a time, which would fit perfectly in a back yard. However, it seems like every farmhouse in Italy has a large brick oven attached to the house. Some of the ones I have seen would rival the oven at Scratch in size, and these were all once considered integral to daily household life. I want one, and I want the satisfaction of having built it myself.
2. I want to learn how to care for animals, and following that, I want to learn how to make cheese and cured meat. Artisanal cheese and salamis have reached the levels of sublime artforms in this country. In America, these things are luxuries. In Italy they are simply taken for granted. I want to eat well crafted salami and know that I raised and cared for that animal. I want cheese made from the unpasturized milk of cows or goats that I pastured on fresh grass. I want to know where my food comes from and to feel good about that knowledge.
3. This last one is inspired by Micheal Pollan, whose book, The Botany of Desire, I Have just read. I want an orchard of wild apples raised from seeds. I want an apple press to squeeze them and large wooden barrels in which to ferment them. I want to drink hard cider in the winter with my friends.
What would you like to do with your food? Don't be shy, post a comment!
***
On another note, I think we've been poisoning ourselves these past two weeks. Ursula warned us when we arrived to not drink the tap water, but didn't elaborate why. Given that I have spent about 6 months in Africa, I interpreted this as, "Don't drink the tap water because it contains microbes that will make you sick." In this situation, boiling the water, say for things like making coffee, is usually ok. Also, I figured that in Italy, microbes really ought to not be a problem and that maybe she was being a little paranoid.
Last night over dinner, Sigismund somewhat off-handedly told us about the results of a water analysis he had carried out last year. Apparently he noticed that when he traveled he felt remarkably more healthy than when he was at home. He finally narrowed it down to the water supply and had it analyzed by a friend of his from Germany. The results showed a significant level of nitrate contamination. A quick search on wikipedia told me that nitrates prevent red blood cells from carrying oxygen. Since we usually have a couple of cups of coffee or tea with breakfast, we have probably been ingesting poisonous levels of nitrates for the last two weeks. I have been feeling light headed in the mornings lately, which could be explained by this. Starting today we will only be drinking bottled water and I can only hope that things will change.
Thanks industrial agriculture for poisoning our water supply! What a terrible and boring world we would have without you!
Sunday, November 8, 2009
The rain in Italy falls mainly on the wwoofers
It's been a crappy week weather-wise, and we only got in two solid days of harvesting plus two half days. Italian homes are not designed to be warm and the only sources of heat are often the stove or the fireplace. In our case, these are both in the kitchen. We've spent a good portion of the last week wrapped in our host's wool sweaters sitting around the fire. Luckily, they've also got quite a collection of books in English. So far I have finished Richard Dawkin's The God Delusion, Vonnegut's Cat's Craddle, and am working through The Hobbit.
Today is Sunday, and our day off from harvesting. Our host originally planned to take us to San Gimignano to see the city's famous towers. It is, of course, raining. Maybe if it lets up we will venture out in the evening. Ursela says the city is best viewed at night, when it lights up like something out of a fairytale and all the other tourists have gone home. Otherwise, we shall have to content ourselves with sitting by the fire.
We went with Ursela on her morning grocery shopping to pick up toiletries on which we are running low. While there, Josh and I also bought a log of wild boar salami. Each morning for the last two weeks we have been woken by shotgun fire that sounds uncomfortably close. Sometimes the glass in the windows even rattles from it. It is wild boar season and I thought we should at least see what all the fuss is about. I will report back soon. Hopefully you all are well. Ciao.
Today is Sunday, and our day off from harvesting. Our host originally planned to take us to San Gimignano to see the city's famous towers. It is, of course, raining. Maybe if it lets up we will venture out in the evening. Ursela says the city is best viewed at night, when it lights up like something out of a fairytale and all the other tourists have gone home. Otherwise, we shall have to content ourselves with sitting by the fire.
We went with Ursela on her morning grocery shopping to pick up toiletries on which we are running low. While there, Josh and I also bought a log of wild boar salami. Each morning for the last two weeks we have been woken by shotgun fire that sounds uncomfortably close. Sometimes the glass in the windows even rattles from it. It is wild boar season and I thought we should at least see what all the fuss is about. I will report back soon. Hopefully you all are well. Ciao.
Monday, November 2, 2009
Cinque Terre, vaffanculo
Before we begin, first allow me to apologize to our more sensitive readers (hi, Dad) who don´t particularly care for obscenity. The following post will feature numerous swear words in at least two languages.
That being said, this is also about my birthday. I turn 27 today and I am pleased to report that everybody has been quite sweet about it, especially Lexy, who bought me beer and took me (well, us) to Cinqe Terre for some lovely hiking, sightseeing and dinner.
That was the plan, at least.
And then the gods - or at least the weather - shit on us.
We first encountered the Italian equivalent of the f-bomb at Il Cuccio. Our hostess told us about a comedian named Beppe Grillo whose pointed political satire only became more so after he was denied a journalist´s license and banned from all forms of Italian mass media by the government he derided. Grillo has apparently organized a number of "V-day" events targeting political corruption, cronyism and capitulation. The "v," we learned, is for "vaffanculo," which Grillo himself, in a BBC news video, explained as the equivalent of "fuck."
Now, I´m not stupid, okay? In fact I tend to be rather sharp, at least where language is concerned. I noticed the "va" at the beginning of "vaffanculo" and I made the connection with the imperative form of the verb "andare," meaning "to go." So when, at our next farm, I asked our friend Davide what the literal meaning was, my suspicions were confirmed. While one can use "vaffanculo" to mean, "fuck you," "fuck off," or the simple "fuck!" of pure frustration, the literal meaning is closer to "go cram it up your ass" or "go take it up the ass." It is for this reason that yesterday, when we sat down in a cafe in Corniglia to enjoy an espresso and a twelve year old boy walked in off the street to talk to the owner, I nearly lost my drink when he answered a shout from the street with a casual, "VAffanCULO" over his shoulder and continued talking. Imagine a younger sibling casually shouting, "How about a nice game of hide-and-go-fuck-yourself" at somebody in front of two adults you didnt know and you can probably imagine how amused I was.
In any case, as I´ve tried to explain to Lexy, the beauty of vaffanculo isn´t simply in the vulgar meaning - it´s the poetry of the way Italians say it. One doesn´t simply drop it on the ground like a "Shit!" after stubbing a toe, or fling it at passersby like a New York, "Fuck you." It has a topography, an arc of peaks and valleys that transform it from just another cuss word to an eloquent expression of deep dissatisfaction with the inadequacies of life. Properly stressed and savored, it expands beyond the immediate target - a rude stranger, an out-of-order machine, a tool that breaks in your hand while you work - and affects the whole world. "I come before you expecting splendor," you tell it, "and this is what you give me? Then, to the ass with you. Up it, in fact."
We decided together, this morning, on the title of this post, but it was not an easy decision, for Italian has many great cuss words and phrases. I am sure we only know a few of them... in fact, our previous hostess, Marina, claimed that in the south, particularly Napoli, inventing new vulgarities is something of an art form. But we have learned a few, and I present them to you now in a scale, from least to greatest level of offense given.
Porca miseria - literally "piggy misery." Said often in a sarcastic fashion, similar to a dismissive, "Poor BABY!" in English. Also used in the aggrieved fashion of a "Jesus CHRIST," as in, "I know I have to go back out there and shovel more horse manure up the mountain, porca miseria, but let me enjoy an espresso first!" This is about as bad as "damn," which is to say not bad at all really unless one is old-fashioned or prudish. This is how Lexy and I looked this morning, as we struggled down the 365 steps from Corniglia proper to the train station, soaked, admitting defeat. Miserable little piggies.
Stronso - insulting noun that at first we thought was quite mild, much like "jerk." We have now learned that it´s more like, "Asshole." Luckily we haven´t had occasion to embarass ourselves with this difference in severity, but in other cases it has almost led to trouble, such as the expression, "Che figo!" which we were told is an "informal" way of saying, "That´s great!" or, "How cool!" Actually "figo" is the masculine form of "figa," which apparently means "vagina," so I suppose "figo" means "cool" in the same way that "the shit" does, which is to say, in a way that you wouldn´t use in front of your grandmother. In any case, I was searching for somebody to call "stronso" this morning, but in the end kept it - and the following epithets - to myself.
Porca putana - I like to think an accurate translation would be "pig whore." While hilariously evocative of certain unwelcome mental images, however, "porca putana" is not as bad as Madonna putana, which is a blasphemy against the holy mother that can get you into trouble, at least if you´re someone like Marina who moved to her farm in the country afer living in Rome and dropped this linguistic bomb in front of her new, much less libertine neighbors in a Cumiana supermarket once and was almost ostracized for it. I also almost let this one fly this morning, but the steps were steep and slick and I didn´t dare profane the mother of Christ when she had a little shrine right at the top of them, from which she might have gazed down in pity and sympathy as I fell and cracked my skull after calling her a whore. Anyway, it wasn´t her fault.
So. Instead of a nice walk, a good meal and a fine birthday trip, we got soaked. And we didn´t even cuss anybody for it (not really). We sat huddled and shivering on trains, read books and smiled at each other, because when your spirits are down or about to fall, it´s better than sitting around stewing in your own poison. A day is just a day, distant birth or not, and a kindness is a kindness regardless of any calendar. We saw the sea and the beautiful, terraced mountainsides where generations of hard work and peasant ingenuity have brought forth wine and food from what could have been bare stone, and in the end we were only wet and cold for a while. Nothing ruined; little lost. We are not cursed, so we did no cursing (not much, anyway).
So Lexy: mille grazi, amore, for a birthday I will never forget.
And Cinque Terre: go shove it up your ass.
That being said, this is also about my birthday. I turn 27 today and I am pleased to report that everybody has been quite sweet about it, especially Lexy, who bought me beer and took me (well, us) to Cinqe Terre for some lovely hiking, sightseeing and dinner.
That was the plan, at least.
And then the gods - or at least the weather - shit on us.
We first encountered the Italian equivalent of the f-bomb at Il Cuccio. Our hostess told us about a comedian named Beppe Grillo whose pointed political satire only became more so after he was denied a journalist´s license and banned from all forms of Italian mass media by the government he derided. Grillo has apparently organized a number of "V-day" events targeting political corruption, cronyism and capitulation. The "v," we learned, is for "vaffanculo," which Grillo himself, in a BBC news video, explained as the equivalent of "fuck."
Now, I´m not stupid, okay? In fact I tend to be rather sharp, at least where language is concerned. I noticed the "va" at the beginning of "vaffanculo" and I made the connection with the imperative form of the verb "andare," meaning "to go." So when, at our next farm, I asked our friend Davide what the literal meaning was, my suspicions were confirmed. While one can use "vaffanculo" to mean, "fuck you," "fuck off," or the simple "fuck!" of pure frustration, the literal meaning is closer to "go cram it up your ass" or "go take it up the ass." It is for this reason that yesterday, when we sat down in a cafe in Corniglia to enjoy an espresso and a twelve year old boy walked in off the street to talk to the owner, I nearly lost my drink when he answered a shout from the street with a casual, "VAffanCULO" over his shoulder and continued talking. Imagine a younger sibling casually shouting, "How about a nice game of hide-and-go-fuck-yourself" at somebody in front of two adults you didnt know and you can probably imagine how amused I was.
In any case, as I´ve tried to explain to Lexy, the beauty of vaffanculo isn´t simply in the vulgar meaning - it´s the poetry of the way Italians say it. One doesn´t simply drop it on the ground like a "Shit!" after stubbing a toe, or fling it at passersby like a New York, "Fuck you." It has a topography, an arc of peaks and valleys that transform it from just another cuss word to an eloquent expression of deep dissatisfaction with the inadequacies of life. Properly stressed and savored, it expands beyond the immediate target - a rude stranger, an out-of-order machine, a tool that breaks in your hand while you work - and affects the whole world. "I come before you expecting splendor," you tell it, "and this is what you give me? Then, to the ass with you. Up it, in fact."
We decided together, this morning, on the title of this post, but it was not an easy decision, for Italian has many great cuss words and phrases. I am sure we only know a few of them... in fact, our previous hostess, Marina, claimed that in the south, particularly Napoli, inventing new vulgarities is something of an art form. But we have learned a few, and I present them to you now in a scale, from least to greatest level of offense given.
Porca miseria - literally "piggy misery." Said often in a sarcastic fashion, similar to a dismissive, "Poor BABY!" in English. Also used in the aggrieved fashion of a "Jesus CHRIST," as in, "I know I have to go back out there and shovel more horse manure up the mountain, porca miseria, but let me enjoy an espresso first!" This is about as bad as "damn," which is to say not bad at all really unless one is old-fashioned or prudish. This is how Lexy and I looked this morning, as we struggled down the 365 steps from Corniglia proper to the train station, soaked, admitting defeat. Miserable little piggies.
Stronso - insulting noun that at first we thought was quite mild, much like "jerk." We have now learned that it´s more like, "Asshole." Luckily we haven´t had occasion to embarass ourselves with this difference in severity, but in other cases it has almost led to trouble, such as the expression, "Che figo!" which we were told is an "informal" way of saying, "That´s great!" or, "How cool!" Actually "figo" is the masculine form of "figa," which apparently means "vagina," so I suppose "figo" means "cool" in the same way that "the shit" does, which is to say, in a way that you wouldn´t use in front of your grandmother. In any case, I was searching for somebody to call "stronso" this morning, but in the end kept it - and the following epithets - to myself.
Porca putana - I like to think an accurate translation would be "pig whore." While hilariously evocative of certain unwelcome mental images, however, "porca putana" is not as bad as Madonna putana, which is a blasphemy against the holy mother that can get you into trouble, at least if you´re someone like Marina who moved to her farm in the country afer living in Rome and dropped this linguistic bomb in front of her new, much less libertine neighbors in a Cumiana supermarket once and was almost ostracized for it. I also almost let this one fly this morning, but the steps were steep and slick and I didn´t dare profane the mother of Christ when she had a little shrine right at the top of them, from which she might have gazed down in pity and sympathy as I fell and cracked my skull after calling her a whore. Anyway, it wasn´t her fault.
So. Instead of a nice walk, a good meal and a fine birthday trip, we got soaked. And we didn´t even cuss anybody for it (not really). We sat huddled and shivering on trains, read books and smiled at each other, because when your spirits are down or about to fall, it´s better than sitting around stewing in your own poison. A day is just a day, distant birth or not, and a kindness is a kindness regardless of any calendar. We saw the sea and the beautiful, terraced mountainsides where generations of hard work and peasant ingenuity have brought forth wine and food from what could have been bare stone, and in the end we were only wet and cold for a while. Nothing ruined; little lost. We are not cursed, so we did no cursing (not much, anyway).
So Lexy: mille grazi, amore, for a birthday I will never forget.
And Cinque Terre: go shove it up your ass.
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