23 Gennaio

We have begun the Carnevale season here, which culminates in many parades and festivals on Fat Tuesday, known here as Shrove Tuesday, marking the beginning of Lent. Last week, I went for a drive to the small town of Mamoiada, a couple hours south of here in the province of Nuoro, with a friend and her little girl, to see the Festa di Sant’Antonio. Sant’Antonio apparently stole fire from hell and brought it to earth, which means that there are a large number of bonfires lit around the town during the Festa. More interesting, though, are the characters that tour from bonfire to bonfire in a strange pre-springtime ritual. Each year, men dress up as Mamuthones, wearing costumes of shaggy black sheepskins, black wooden masks and, most impressively, about 30 kg (70 lbs) of campanacci, or cowbells. They are supposed to embody all of the things that primitive humans feared and are rounded up, lassoed and chased out of town by the Issokadores, men dressed up as gendarmes wearing red brass-buttoned jackets, tricorner hats and white wooden masks. All around the town, there are bonfires set by digging up the entire stump of a tree and setting it ablaze. They were impressive. The Mamuthones and Issokadores parade from one bonfire to the next, stopping at each one to do a rhythmic dance where the Mamuthones stamp their feet, rattling their many pounds of bells, the sounds of which can be heard throughout the town. The Issakodores, rather than lasso the Mamuthones, opted to instead lasso the women in the crowd. I was lucky enough to get lassoed by a very young Issakador, who was quite proud of his accomplishment. I took his photo while in the lasso. At the site of each fire there is a small canvas tent set up for people to gather in and women from the town come out of these tents with baskets of homemade cookies of all types – almond, lemon, and dried fruits – and pass them around the crowd. The men come with jugs of wine, which they freely pour for the onlookers. Once all the stamping and lassoing is done, the whole crowd follows the performers on to the next bonfire. Though the town is not big, because the bells are so heavy and there are many bonfires, there are two troupes of performers needed to cover all of the sites. It was a festive and uniquely Sardegnan event.

The drive to Mamoiada took us through beautiful mountains, requiring many tunnels along the road, into the Barbagia, an area known for trekking. Intrigued by the scenery, I convinced Chad to return there over the weekend in an attempt to follow a hike outlined in our Lonely Planet guide, which would apparently take us through the lush green Valle di Lanaittu along the Sa Oche River to the Grotta Sa Oche (Cave of the Voice) named for the gurgling water flowing under it, on to a site of nearly 150 nuraghe, and then to the town of Tiscali, a 2nd century BC mountainside hideout for Sardegnans following the arrival of the Romans. This all sounded intriguing and we carefully followed the directions, looking for the described forks in the road and signs pointing us in the right direction. We did find a fork at one point and a sign for the nuraghe, but it was unfortunately on the ground among a pile of rocks and we weren’t sure which way the arrow was meant to point. We pushed on, as the scenery was beautiful – steep granite cliffs towering above us on either side of the valley. The serenity was broken, however, by the frequent shotgun fire of hunters seeking the cinghiale (wild pigs) that live around here. Needless to say, we kept Manny on a tight leash. We wound up climbing a steep track up the mountainside until the path ended at an abandoned-looking house and stable. Peeking inside the gate, I saw a lone older man sitting silently in the shade and asked him the way to the nuraghe, only to find that we’d chosen the wrong fork in the road. At this point, we were pretty tired, took a break for lunch, and headed back to the car, the mysterious sites having eluded us, but the scenery making it certainly worth while.

All of this exploring has been particularly enjoyable because of the very warm winter we are having, or so we are told. Over the weekend, to take advantuage of the warm winter, we joined in a Polar Bear Plunge organized by the Navy base. We hardly felt like we’d earned the hot chocolate we consumed afterwards. Although, after a sunny, calm start to the day, the clouds rolled in and the wind picked up just before we were scheduled to plunge, so it felt a bit more legitimate. After several weeks of having time to catch up with friends and family, go adventuring around here, and enjoy many café dates with new Italian friends in order to practice my language skills, I am now getting ready to start the next term of Biology.

4 Gennaio 2007

I am finally getting around to putting this together after a long hiatus in travel-logging. I believe the last episode was in October just before I started teaching Biology on the base for the University of Maryland, which would explain the lack of reporting since.

October was a beautiful, warm month here during which we went for many kayak trips near our house, finding tucked away coves that surprisingly were empty and perfect for a rest and a swim, and hiking trips both close by and within a day’s drive or so on Sardegna. One of our hiking trips was a sort of pilgrimage to several Nuraghic sites around the village of Arzachena. These are bronze-age tombs and watch towers that are built of large rocks in odd formations. Some of them are well marked and include information on when they were built (over 4000 years ago!) and the significance of the structure and some you see unmarked along the side of the road. On adventures further from home, we took a day trip to Bonafaccio, Corsica with a few friends from here, enjoying a beautiful ferry ride on the way over and clear views of the layered limestone rocky cliffs that plunge down into the sea from the walled city above. We can see these on a clear day from our porch, but seeing them up close was quite dramatic. Excited by the prospect of some French food, the focus of the day was lunch, which lasted a bit longer than we’d anticipated. It was nearly 4 hours from start to finish not because we were delighting over the much-sought-after food, but because the service was geologically slow. But, the view from the restaurant made it mostly worthwhile.

Later in the month, I started teaching a quite large and varied class of Navy personnel and dependents – 23 students ranging in age from 20-45 or so. It was quite an experience and seemed a bit like a whirlwind now that I look back at it. The students all worked very hard and everyone passed, though there were a few close calls. The lab was the most fun, as we took field trips nearly every session – one to the water treatment plant on Santo Stefano, one to Caprera for a walk with a guide from the Parco Nazionale dell' Archipelago di La Maddalena, and one to the Centro Ricerca Delfines to see the dolphin research they do here. It was a great way to connect with local organizations and for me to meet fellow nature nerds.

In November, the evenings started to cool down a bit, though the days were still warm enough for many afternoon plunges. On these cool nights, we discovered that our condo is definitely not designed for the winter – no central heating and chilly tile floors throughout. This required a prompt field trip to a woodlot to supply our fire place and the procuring of a bombola, a propane heater, from friends of ours who had a spare. On the chilly nights, we sit in front of the fireplace or bombola and drink lots of tea with our Manny-heater curled up with us (though he is a bit of a bombola hog). I forgot to mention that firewood is a precious commodity here, as there aren’t too many trees, so we were lucky enough to get a tip from a friend on where to go without going completely broke.

As my biology class required several Saturday labs, some of our weekend trips were curtailed, though the field trip portions of the labs were adventures in themselves. The big trip of November was to Spain and Portugal for Thanksgiving week. We started out by visiting friends of ours from the Navy in San Diego who are now stationed in Rota, Spain. They pointed us in the direction of good day trips including one to Gibraltar, where we took the cable car to the top of the rock (where a Barbary ape hopped on Chad’s back and pulled my sweater out of his backpack) and ate Moroccan food for lunch while watching cars drive by on the left side of the road past English-style pubs. If we had had more time there, we would have considered taking the ferry to Africa, just across the straits. We spent another day in one of the Pueblo Blancos (white villages) called Arcos de la Frontera – a picturesque town with winding streets of white stucco buildings adorned with flower pots of bright geraniums above cobblestone pavement. And, we had to go sherry tasting in Jerez (the namesake of "sherry"), touring the Tio Pepe winery and doing a sadly limited tasting afterwards. The next day, we left for Portugal, spending two days in Lisbon walking the streets and looking at the beautiful tiled facades of the old buildings, eating wonderful seafood including fried sardines and fish stew, visiting an 11th century castle atop the city, and listening to fado, the local music of passionate, melodic singing with guitar accompaniment. From there, we drove out of the city to Estremos, a small town with yet another castle – this one was our hotel. We arrived on a blustery day of howling winds and rain and took refuge inside the castle while we watched the storm. We climbed the castle tower and poked our heads outside only to be rewarded with vertical hair, causing us to retreat to the large living room to play games and drink the local Port while sitting in overstuffed, plush chairs. The meals there were fantastic – more seafood, much to my delight, and a delicious breakfast spread, both of which were in the grand dining room. In the morning, we went to the market in Estremos where we felt like brightly colored giants next to the little old women dressed in traditional black, hooded dresses. We bought some wonderful cheese for the roadtrip back and pottery for Christmas presents, though we were tempted by the hanging pigeons and rabbits that people were purchasing for supper. We thought our adventures were done, but we had quite an experience on our way back to Spain when we stopped at what looked like a dark little bar to get a bite to eat. We still aren’t quite sure how it happened, but soon we were drinking wine that one of the locals had bought us and sampling little roasted pigs (with the heads still on). A plate of cheese and bread followed as well as more roasted meats, followed by some sort of candied fruit, more wine, and then something that tasted a bit like grappa. As we were walking out the door, we were chased down by our new friends and spoon fed a sort of roasted nut mixture, one by one, despite our protests of being too full. And, once we were all in the car and ready to leave, a young boy from the bar ran out with earthenware pitchers for us that bore the name of the town. Needless to say, we got a bit behind schedule and were happy to arrive in Jerez just barely in time to catch our flight home.

On to December – the month of parties. Living in Sardegna where there isn’t too much going on in the winter, the thing to do is to have parties. It started off with the Navy’s Christmas party, which was followed by a annual 12 Bars of Christmas pub crawl through La Maddalena (limited by the fact that there are only 12 bars to crawl to). Having survived that, we decided to host our own Christmas party here, mostly as an excuse to make fish chowder and wassail and have a Yankee swap. It was an appropriately chilly night for a fire in the fireplace and lots of toasty food and grog. Then, Christmas Eve brought another party, an all day festival of eating with friends on La Maddalena, lasting from 1pm until at least 9pm that night. We started with antipasti of all sorts and mulled wine, followed by a main course of beef roast and Yorkshire pudding, and finally chocolate mouse, pecan pie, and Mirto as our digestivo. This was good preparation for the Christmas day feast that we were invited to attend at our landlord’s house.

It is hard to describe the warmth of the scene at Andrea and Piera's house. We arrived to find nearly twenty of their extended family members all gathered in the taverna of their house, a special room with its own fireplace and kitchen and a very long table for big gatherings. We were introduced to and kissed by everyone there and then thoughtfully seated next to those that spoke a bit of English (though we had brought our dictionary just in case). The table was filled with an array of antipasti delights from insalate di mare, smoked salmon, prosciutto, homemade bread shaped like flowers (this was amazing), tuna and fagioli (white bean) salad, bottarga (fish eggs), grilled zucchini and eggplant, and many more dishes that I can’t remember. This was just the beginning. We weren’t sure how much more was coming and people kept serving us more. Then came Zuppa Gallurese, a wonderful warm baked dish of layered bread, Pecorino cheese, and meat broth. This was meal number two, which was followed by a palate cleanser of fresh fennel. Then came the roast animals – first porcheddu (suckling pig roasted with myrtle branches), capretto (goat), and agnello (lamb). We had to sample all of these as well. This was all accompanied by wine made by Andrea’s son and father. Then, the deserts began – first lemon sorbetto, then warm slices of fresh pineapple with cherries, cannoli made by Piera’s mother and tiramisu made by Andrea’s son’s fiancé. The desserts were accompanied by spumante - also homemade by Andrea’s father, and followed by grappa made by Andrea. We didn't move from our seats for over four hours! We were itching to get back home to open our presents, still sitting under the tree in our window. Although rounds of café started to come out as we were leaving, we said "basta" and made our way home. We came home to delightful gifts from near and far and some representations of gifts from afar that didn’t make it in the mail in time, which we opened in front of the fire, before beginning the series of many phone calls to friends and family to wish them a Merry Christmas.

And now, it is January, and the beginning of a new year. Sadly, this will be our only full year spent in Sardegna. We celebrated Capo d'Anno by serving steaks and lobsters at the base to American sailors and their families. It was a festive event and much merriment was made by all the volunteers. I was particularly excited for the lobster and made sure to sample plenty of it, though it was the spiny kind, not my favorite Maine lobster. We left the festivities there to ostensibly catch the 11pm ferry home to celebrate midnight at home, but the ferry employees were apparently having their own festivities and had decided to take the evening off. Huddled against the wind on the side of the Biglieteria for the ferry with a bottle of champagne and plastic cups, we watched the fireworks around La Maddalena (some right in front of us in the parking lot) and toasted in 2007 before catching the ferry at the stroke of midnight. Thus far, 2007 has brought howling winds, but beautiful clouds and sunsets as well – we even caught a moonset the other morning during the full moon. We look forward to many adventures this year and hope for many visitors as well.

Making Thai Curry in Sardegna

We had lived in Sardegna two months or so when we developed a fierce craving for one of our favorite meals – Thai curry. My husband and I moved here for his job with the Navy on the island of La Maddalena, which is between Sardegna and Corsica. When we first arrived, we happily ate loads of pizza and pasta, the only fare in town, until we finally got the urge for a bit more variety. A few years ago, I came across a recipe for Thai curry paste which used ingredients that could all be found at any decent grocery store, rather than exotic things like galanga and kaffir lime leaves which many recipes called for. A few tablespoons of paste added to some coconut milk served with chicken and vegetables over rice made an easy weeknight meal. The paste could be stored in the refrigerator for several weeks and the remaining ingredients were easy to keep around – canned mushrooms, bamboo shoots and coconut milk, bottled fish sauce, frozen chicken breasts, and rice.

When we found out that we were moving to Italy, we stocked up on the basics needed to make our favorite foreign dishes, including Thai curry, as we weren’t sure what we would be able to find upon arrival. So, we already had coconut milk, fish sauce, canned mushrooms and bamboo shoots, and an assortment of dry spices. In order to make our curry, we started off by heading to the local Macelleria, or butcher shop, to buy some chicken breasts. Upon entering, we were greeted by pigs, chickens and lambs, all hanging from above and all whole. The chickens even had their feathers still on. In the cases below, we spotted pairs of giant pairs of chicken breasts. These were not the wimpy American chicken breasts that we were used to. Two of those were usually perfect for two people, but two of these breasts would be too much. Of course, it would have been far too easy if we had simply needed one piece. I knew how to say, "un pezzo," but we needed to order by weight, which required converting from pounds to kilograms. A kilogram is roughly twice a pound, so it wasn’t too tricky. Following our request for un mezzo (half) kilo, the butcher took one of the pieces and then produced a giant meat cleaver with which he began slicing the breasts into very thin medallions, or scallopini. After many desperate hand gestures, we managed to get the point across that we wanted to breasts entero (whole), and he wrapped up the rest for us with a smile.

The next ingredient that we needed was rice. For this, we went to the Supermercato. Don’t be fooled by the name into thinking this means it is big store; it just means that they have a bit of everything. Inside, we found ourselves staring at many rows of different colored boxes and all of them contained rice: riso integrale, classico, originale, and arborio. I recognized arborio rice as the type used to make risotto, but had no idea which of the others would be basic, plain white rice. Integrale, we thought, might be brown rice, but we couldn’t guess what might be the difference between classico and originale. There were also no cooking directions to be found on any of the boxes, which added to the challenge. We decided to try the riso originale in the red box and hoped for the best.

While there, we also needed a few fresh ingredients for the curry paste aside from the dry spices that we already had. Garlic, or aglio, was readily available, but ginger and cilantro were nowhere to be found. We also managed to find a red pepper, pepperoni rosso, which is not the type you order on a pizza, but the vegetable. Fortunately, from previous travels in Europe, we had already been through that confusion. We had also been through the embarrassment of being scolded by the produce vendor for not using a plastic glove when selecting our fruit. It seems a little odd that the butcher uses his bare hands to handle raw meat, but that you must use gloved hands to touch produce that you are presumably going to take home and wash before consuming. Once you have selected the fruit, God help you if you show up at the register with a pepperoni in an unlabeled bag. Your bag must be labeled with a sticker from the automatic scale in the produce section. If you’re lucky, there is a store clerk assigned to the task of weighing the patrons’ produce. If not, you have to figure out the machine yourself, which requires locating the numbered code for whatever you have put into your bag, typing it into the machine, and then finding the sticker it has just printed out. We got all of that figured out and put our properly-stickered bag in our basket.

On to the next challenge: soy sauce. While we had brought a bottle of soy sauce, we didn’t have quite enough for our recipe. I remembered seeing soy sauce at the local Herboristeria, a sort of health food shop, among other things like wheat noodles, tahini paste, and lemongrass tea, but it was already closed for the day. Expecting to be out of luck, we were pleasantly surprised to find a small section of ethnic foods including a very small bottle of Suzy Wan soy sauce nestled in between a box of Uncle Ben’s wild rice, canned salsa, and a box of Paella, which touted that all the ingredients were included (how they got the seafood in there still puzzles me). The bottle was a bit dusty and, upon turning it over, the sauce appeared to be of a strangely thick consistency; apparently there is not a high turn over of soy sauce at this store. It also costs about 4 euro for 4 ounces, but we proceeded to buy it anyway, happy to have found it at all.

I have forgotten thus far to mention the other major complication to grocery shopping here – riposo. Riposo is a wonderful thing if you are in a position to repose with everyone else, including all of the shopkeepers. Between 1 pm and 4 or 5 pm (or sometimes even 6), things get very quiet. Doors are locked, lights turned off, and metal gates are rolled down over the storefronts. Everyone goes home to have a big home-made lunch with their families and then to take an afternoon nap. Some time in the evening, people start to emerge again for their passegiata, or walk through town. Good luck if you need something during riposo hours, with the exception of a drink. The bars are always open but, although they purport to have food as well drinks, this is not the case at all hours. Riposo also extends to Sundays – some stores close altogether and some have limited morning hours. So, if you want dinner for Sunday night, you’d better decide what you want on Saturday. We think that the Italian restaurateurs are in collusion to get you to eat out on Sundays. Lucky for us, we were shopping for Thai curry on a Saturday morning, so everything was open.
The last stop of the day was to the Navy Exchange store (known as "the NEX"), which we often try to avoid since we live in Palau, a town at the tip of Sardegna, and the NEX is on the island of La Maddalena, and requires a ferry to get to. It is really pretty simple to take the ferry and inexpensive on foot, but to get to the NEX we needed to take the car, which added 5 euro or so to our grocery bill. But, because the NEX is an American store, it is open during riposo, so we could shop there in the afternoon. Once there, we were finally able to find ginger, but still no cilantro. We also happily noticed a supply of fish sauce, coconut milk, bamboo shoots and mushrooms as well, among the assortment of ethnic foods. This was good to know for future re-supplying.

We returned home with all of the supplies and unloaded our precious loot. In the US, making the paste for the curry required putting all the ingredients into our small food processor and hitting the start button. However, our food processor runs on 110V electricity, and Europe runs on 220V. So, all of our appliances have to be run through a transformer. Because we only have one transformer which is usually hooked up to the array of media devices in the living room – TV, DVD player and stereo – using the little food processor requires unplugging everything from the clunky transformer box and lugging it into the kitchen. This was accomplished without too much trouble, thankfully, and the food processor revved to life, producing a fresh batch of curry paste.
Now, we were ready to cook; we just had to brave the stove. Luckily, we weren’t baking anything, so we didn’t have to convert from Fahrenheit to Celsius. We just needed the stovetop, which is gas and is run off a refillable tank kept outside our house. These tanks, called bombolas, run a lot of things around here – dryers (if you’re lucky enough to have one), heaters, stoves, etc, and their gas supply is powerful! When you light the stovetop, you had better stand back because the flames shoot straight up from the burner upon ignition. Then, it is a Zen art to properly adjust the flame level to low heat without turning off the burner completely and having to go through the hair-raising ignition process all over again. You must hold very still and move very slowly with no distractions as you ease the gas down bit by bit. Of course, Thai curry needs to be simmered at very low heat, so we went through this process several times before getting the flame just right.

In the end, the giant Italian chicken breasts, the mystery white rice, and even the Suzy Wan soy sauce all came together to make a delicious curry. It is amazing to think that this meal was one of our staples, an easy last-minute meal, back in The States. We usually had everything on hand or could pick up the ingredients at the closest grocery store on the way home from work. While it was convenient to be able to buy everything at one store without having to learn about different kinds of rice, how to order chicken breasts in kilograms, or how to select and weigh a pepper, we have come to appreciate the challenges of shopping here and the things we have learned in the process. By now, the man at the Macelleria says hello to me, the woman at the fruit stand rounds down to the nearest euro when charging me for my produce, and the Supermercato staff smiles at the lost-looking American who comes in nearly every day to shop. Sometimes convenience comes at the cost of these human connections and I have learned to value the relationships I’ve developed with local vendors here.

Living overseas is a strange balance between learning a new culture and retaining your own. When we first arrived, I looked askance at the people here who always cooked American foods and bragged about recreating "a little America" at home. But, now I have come to respect that way of life and to share in some of its comforts. I began to think about the neighborhoods of Italians, Mexicans, or Chinese in cities all over America and how neat it is to see people holding on to their native culture rather than completely assimilating. It will be interesting to see which things from home we hold on to most closely and which things we let go of more easily as we spend more time here.

All of that said, after all of our adventures, we finally sat down at our familiar dining room table, eating off our familiar plates, listening to American Jazz on our iPod (hooked up again through the transformer), and ate Thai curry while looking out the window at the La Maddalena islands jutting up out of the Mediterranean. We licked our plates clean and remarked that the curry might have tasted just a little bit better for the trouble it took to make, but that we would do it again for a taste of home in Sardegna.