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| Lettuce and escarole from the garden next door. |
So, after getting all my courage to go to the hair salon, I noticed the next day the gray was still there on one side of my head. Now what would I do? After my experience at the Post Office I wasn’t at all sure how Italians would react to Americans pointing out their mistakes. As a matter of fact I was terrified and considering just letting it go until I got back home. Then I figured I was just being a coward and should get my moneys’ worth and have them fix it. So I shuffled reluctantly back to the salon and of course they were closed because it was, I don’t know, the third Wednesday of the fourth month of the 2,011th year of our Lord??? I cannot figure out when or why what stores are open what days. I just trudge back and forth and hope. I am convinced they have a system known only to those people born in each town. A secret passed on from one generation to the next. Luckily on my next try they were open, I explained my problem, and they were very nice. Whew! No going all postal on me! The Mama did my hair and it covered the entire gray this time. We actually had a sort of conversation in Italian about how many children we had and where they were, etc. Afterwards I crossed the street and visited the man/women store and bought a few items. I was feeling very successful and Italian now.
I had been doing quite a bit of cooking and wanted to do more baking, but was having a problem with the baking as there were no measuring utensils in my kitchen. I saw Adriana from my balcony one day and I started asking her if I could borrow some utensils. I soon realized what I was asking for was beyond her English skills and then realized how Italian I had become because I had to put down the book I was holding so I could talk to her with both hands. She eventually understood what I needed and showed up later that day with a scale and a small cup measuring milliliters. I realized then I was not in Kansas anymore. I had to do quite a bit of searching to get conversions for all my ingredients – both dry and wet. Web sites do not agree on what exactly constitutes a cup of flour weighed in kilos, or sugar or brown sugar. Butter wasn’t easy either, but water and milk were fine. They don’t really sell vanilla except in specialty stores and I couldn’t find baking soda or powder. The salt is in large granules so has to really dissolve to become part of a recipe or you get salty bits and pieces. I finally discovered the sodium bicarbonate pills I take are the same as baking soda, but no website could convert my grams to teaspoons used in baking. So I just mashed up a few and threw them in the cookie dough. I now was baking drug cookies.
One of the reasons I wanted to bake Amercian chocolate chip cookies is because Adraina has been so generous with her homegrown food. She has brought me fresh eggs from her chickens in the little pen from the gardens above me, fresh red lettuce and fresh bib lettuce. She also brought me escarole and lettuce from her favorite aunt who I had met at mass and also gardens in the same plot. At Carnivale, which is like our Mardi Gras, she also brought me this traditional fried dough they sprinkle sugar on and share before Lent begins. The dough was not very good, I’m not sure why it’s considered a treat, but then Italians really don’t bake that well. The lettuce was all crawling with bugs and wiggly stuff and a snail or two, because they don’t put any “medicine” on it according to Adraina. I told her we call that organic and it costs much more and is very special. I still wouldn’t put the stuff in my kitchen. It stayed in the cold hall until I had the nerve to clean pieces before I ate them. I do not think I really like escarole even though I did a really nice job and cooked it with all sorts of yummy stuff, it’s just not my thing.
But back to the drug cookies. I wanted to give something to Adriana, but I also wanted to bring something to Rosetta at the market down at the bottom of my stairs. Earlier in the week I had been in with some packages and was shopping for a few items. I turned to get a better look at the shelves and felt my bag brush something and then I heard glass break. I looked down and on the floor was a huge broken bottle of syrupy Crème de Menthe. I was in the back and no one had seen so I needed to alert them. I walked forward and realized I was tracking sticky green footprints through the store. I stopped and just called out Rosetta’s name. I was mortified: the stupid Americano breaking the merchandise. Rosetta had to come from behind her deli counter and sweep it up, wash the floor and help me wash my shoe. To top it all off, Silvio wouldn’t let me pay for the Cream de Menthe. So I wanted to bring them cookies too. Unfortunately, I didn’t put enough drugs in the cookies because they didn’t rise much and when I said that to Silvio and Rosetta, Silvio stepped behind the deli counter and pulled out some baking soda! How was I to know they kept it hidden?
Since then I have baked bread pudding, lemon cookies, lemon pasta pudding (sweet and good), and German pancakes. I’ve used lemons in lemonade, lemon syrup, cooked lemon sauce, tomato sauces, soda, water and for cleaning. If I could can the lemons and bring them home, I would. I have always had to be so careful of how much lemon I use because of the cost. Now I have more lemons then I could ever use in a year. My house smells wonderful – it’s lemon heaven. Other gardens also have orange trees. I do not, but I am not complaining. I favor lemons. The Amalfi coast lemons are very special; less sour, more aromatic, and flavorful, larger and lumpier looking, they are famous throughout Italy. I see them every day in my garden and think how blessed I am to have this abundance of fruit right here beside me. Almost makes the steps worth climbing.
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| Praiano below and Positano across the bay in the distance |
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