It's All About the Figs!

Che Figo! That's what I think about having figs (fichi) growing in our back yard!  That expression means something like "cool", and comes from the Italian word for fig (fico). Since we moved in last summer, right at the tail end of the fig season, we've been looking forward to this year's harvest which is just beginning. For some reason we had an early batch of figs, most are just beginning to ripen now, and I took advantage of this by making my first ever batch of fig jam.

We actually have three fig trees growing out in our back yard...more figs than we could ever eat on our own. But we'll try!  The trees are completely loaded with green figs right now. When they're ready to eat, they turn yellow and then purple and get a lot softer. It takes about a kilo of fresh figs to make a batch of jam that will fill two large mason jars. That's about a half a kilo in that plastic tub.

Making the jam is pretty easy once you get up in the tree to pick the figs. You just clean them and cut them up into small chunks, skin and all, and put them in a sauce pan and start cooking. Here's the super unhealthy part...sorry to all my health nut friends.  You add the same amount of sugar as figs! That's 1 kilo of figs to 1 kilo of sugar!  I know there's probably a better recipe, but this is really good. The only other ingredients are lemon juice (for some pectin) and fresh ginger (for a little kick). After about an hour you get a brown mushy gooey delicious mess and it's ready...

...to sit in the shade under the fig tree and have a snack! Che Figo!

Umbria Take 2

It's been a while since I posted anything on our blog, so Kristen kind of called me out in her recent blog post about our trip to Umbria by saying I had more photos.  OK...she's right!  Here's a quick blog post from me with some more photos from our trip.

The first shot on the left is another view of the Pian Grande up in the Appenine Mountains in Umbria. The peaks of the Sibillini Range completely surround this high elevation, flat, glacial plain.  Right now, the plain is covered with white, yellow and purple wildflowers. A really special place!


To the right is another shot of the Pian Grande, this time looking towards Castelluccio which is the highest town in the Appenines.  This mystical looking alpine town sits on top of a small peak at the end of the plain, with a backdrop made up of some of the highest peaks in the Sibillini Range.

We stopped for lunch here in Castelluccio at this food shack on the side of the only road leading into town.  The name of the place was "il Sentiero del Lupo", or "the trail of the wolf".  There really are wolves in these mountains...our cook showed us a recent picture that he took on his cell phone of a wolf right there on his property!  I personally found it very funny that this old time shepard living in a remote Italian mountain village whipped out a smart phone to show us a picture of a wolf.

The food here was really unbelievable by the way!  Homemade sausage grilled out in the rain...lots of fun.  That's Kristen, Filippo, Annemarie and Isabel having fun!

Our base for our Umbria adventure was a Dutch campground in Castelvecchio (a different mystical castle town).  The Sibillini mountains are known for witches and hermits...these photos show you why people have long thought that this was the place to come to put a spell on someone, or to get one removed.  Left to right:  our luxury cabin, the foggy gorge we drove through to get there, and the nearby town of Preci peaking out of the fog.

We really enjoyed hiking in the mountains and fields of wildflowers, and visiting the many medieval hillside towns in Umbria.  Here a few final photos of our trip:  a mountain field of wildflowers, Kristen's muddy foot from the trail in that field (that she mentioned in her blog post), and my favorite shot from our visit to Norcia (the sausage and truffle capital of Italy).

Success!

Well, I think it was success.

Today, as Tom and I headed out for some groceries for dinner, our neighbor stopped us and asked us a question.  In Italian.  This was the first time that we talked to her, beyond "Buongiorno,"since we arrived.

Here is how I think the conversation went (remember, all of this was in Italian!):

Her:  Are you on vacation?
Me:  Yes, we are!
Her:  Are you staying here, or going away?
Me:  Staying here.
Her:  In Duino?
Me:  Yes.
Tom:  For two weeks.
Her:  And then?
Me:  Then we go to. . . . umm. . . (in English, I say: Tom, how do you say the US?)
Tom:  The US (he is speaking Italian again at this point)
Her:  Ah, I see.  And your neighbors, with the baby, are they here?
Me:  No, on vacation.
Her:  In the Netherlands?
Me:  No, just on vacation for one week.
Her:  Then back to Duino?
Me:  Yes.
Her:  Then they move?
Me:  Yes.
Her:  I see.  See you later!
Me:  See you later!

To be fair, Tom was more involved in the conversation than that.  But I had a hard enough time keeping track of what I was saying.  And I'm pretty sure that my translation isn't exactly right, but I do hope that I have the main ideas correct.  On Monday I start a one week intensive Italian course, so I'm sure by next Friday I will be able to say more than yes or no, perhaps I'll even ask her a question!

We high-fived each other as we walked away, happy to have had our first real conversation in Italian.  We even celebrated in the most appropriate way possible:  with gelato!

Road Trip!

Tom points to our campground in the distance

Last Saturday, we packed up the car and drove south into Umbria, to the mountains in the center of Italy.
We drove past Venice and Bologna to the East Coast of Italy.  After a quick picnic near the Adriatic, where locked fences kept us off the empty beach, we turned west and headed into the middle of the Apennines.  We past rolling hills and fields full of wildflowers dotted with poppies and grazing sheep, and arrived here to meet our Dutch/Italian neighbors for a few days.

The weather didn't exactly cooperate, so we crowded into their little chalet where Tom and I had twin beds on opposite ends of the loft.  We had a little trouble with a collapsing bed but the view from the porch was wonderful.  And it rained plenty, so we were happy we didn't have to camp!

We spent Sunday on a long hike up and down muddy hills.  I managed to sink into the mud once just to the top of my boot (stay tuned for pictures) but the rain held off and the views were spectacular.  We cut across some wildflower fields at the end of the hike to get to the little bar at the bottom of the hill where gelato was waiting for us.  Tom then jumped in the freezing cold pool, even though he didn't have the required swim cap, and we got a little more sun while enjoying books at the campground.

Flat land with no steps and
soft places to fall--heaven for
our neighbor's daughter!

The Pian Grande, a HUGE plain
surrounded by hills

More stairs--the towns were literally on
the tops of  hills!

On Monday, it was cold and rainy, but we found plenty to keep us busy.  We made our way to the Pian Grande.  Between rain showers we walked in the fields and enjoyed lunch at a roadside stand that deserves it's own blog post (more on that later).  We also visited some medieval towns built on the tops of hills, which meant more walking, and found some perfectly creepy places!


Tuesday we were supposed to head home, but the sun came out just before we left so we stopped for another hike.  This one took us to an old Abbey.  Tom was worried that it would be busy.  It was, relatively speaking, but we saw a total of 6 other people, all of them when we arrived at the Abbey.  After a picnic lunch and a hike back down the hill to the car, we drove past Perugia to Florence.

An old Abbey, built around 500 AD

The sheepdogs kept us far away from the herd!

The idea was to stay in Florence and spend an hour Wednesday morning walking around the city before leaving, but after over an hour in traffic and finding no hotels (except the Villa that was 450 Euros per night), we ended up only seeing the city from the surrounding hills.  It was beautiful from up there, though.

We ended up in a chain hotel near a shopping mall, but the bed was super comfortable, the room was quiet, and the shower was the best I've had in Italy.  Florence will get it's own trip later this summer.  We had an uneventful drive back to Duino, but arrived just in time for one last thunderstorm.

Stay tuned for Tom's better pictures of the weekend!

Dinner near, not in, Florence--at an
American restaurant.  Chicken tenders, fries,
a cheese steak and fountain coke!  We should be
embarrassed, but it was so good!