Long tome no hear...

Sorry it's been a while, lots has happened since the last post. I'm not trying to come up with excuses, but... Well first of all I was away for a few days at the end of June, beginning of July. Had to take the car to Germany for an MOT. Good news it has passed, bad news it wasn't cheap. I'd rather do wothout motorised transport, but can't quite do without it.

Well then as soon as I had returned we were struck by lightning, which melted my computer monitor and the old modem. I managed to get an old monitor off someone for nothing, but it wasn't worth replacing the modem as we were waiting for a new telephone line from Fastweb with a proper broadband connection at last! Yes we have turned our backs on Telecom, despite warnings from people that you'll never know what service you will be getting with these people. Well I reckoned it couldn't get any worse, and so far so good.

So today a premier for this blog: A moving picture with sound! Last night was the annual Musicalmangiando event in our village, a festa with, as the name suggests, there's food and music, but also art and general merryment. The music was supposed to be supplied by our neighbour Mauro and his band Tandarandan, but for some reason this was changed by the organisers. Instead we had fire jugglers and our friend Silvio with some mates playing Rennaissance music. That's what you can hear and see a sample of above if you have a fast enough internet connection.

The food was as usual the Cusina d'Sa' Steu', the cuisine of Santo Stefano, although Remo, the brains behind promoting the local specialities is getting on a bit and semi-retired, so I felt that the standards were slipping a wee bit. For a start quantities weren't as gut-splitting as usual. Mind you when I mentioned that after the desserts, someone found me another plate of roast rabbit. The other good thing was of course that the man pouring the grappa afterwards gave Susan and me an extra helping calling us the number one and two supporters of the Cusina d'Sa' Steu'. Besides he said, anyone as mad as us riding our bikes up and down our hill is probably in need of an extra helping of strong liquor...

Below you see the antipasti being served on the way up from the main piazza:

And then under the last rays of sunshine we settled down for the main courses on the little piazza in fron of our house. In the centre of the picture with her purple back to us and the bare arms is Susan and opposite her our lovely neighbours Susannah and Marco.

Other updates as to what happened on the land etc. coming up in the next few days.

Cusina d’ Sa’Steu

Last night was festa time again in Ponzano Superiore. Every year the local restaurants are organizing a number of events around Santo Stefano celebrating the distinct cuisine of the town and surrounding villages, in dialect ‘la cusina d’ Sa’Steu’. Last night’s event took place on the terrace outside our palazzo under the moon and the stars. Guests were welcomed at the entrance of the village by a brass duo. As you worked your way up the village you picked up your first antipasti on various tables. The first table had cheeses and a glass of white wine from local producer Zangani. Next we were entertained by a couple of belly dancers, a very exotic sight in our village! At the second table they handed out bruschetti and the speciality of the village, ‘scherpada’, a kind of vegetable pie. The third table offered passers-by vegetable balls and chickpea chips.


As we finally found our seats at the top we were given further antipasti, fried anchovies, vegetable parcels, some walnut bread and focaccia, and finally we settled to our primo (lasagna al forno) and secondo. The centre piece can be admired on the photo below, the famous 4-headed Ponzano inflammable pig! Finally there were various cakes, chocolate cake, fig cake and pineapple cake.


As after-dinner entertainment we moved into the inner court of our palazzo where there was a fire juggling show. Originally our neighbour Mauro with his band Tandarandan were supposed to play, but the event had to be postponed from last week, due to the sudden death of someone and Mauro unfortunately couldn’t make it for yesterday. The best thing after all that food and drink was that we only had a few yards to stagger home and fall into bed.

On the land in the meantime I have ploughed over another terrace in readiness for some sowing. Frank Motozappa the hoe gave me some trouble though. The sparkplug cover had split and wasn’t holding the metal connection in place properly. I was quite proud of myself though that I managed to locate the fault and replace the faulty part myself. I’m not normally known for my mechanical abilities. However this meant that there was a 2-day interruption to the work. This morning it looked almost as if it was going to rain, but it has cleared up nicely again. The courgettes and cucumbers on the land are starting to take on gigantic proportions!