How Cool Is That?

My niece Jessica and Rob's wedding has been featured in this month's Philadelphia Bride Magazine! Here is the link to their fabulous photographer Alison Conklin's blog with the layout...

...here's the original post on Alison's blog about the wedding...

The Collective Lives of Bees and Men

We live next to beekeepers. Somewhere around the third week in February, there is a morning where I go outside to stretch, hoping that that last bit of melted snow is truly the last bit of melted snow, and in the silence, I hear a low decibel sound, constant and monotone. I know that somewhere nearby, something is blooming; maybe an almond tree is starting to unfurl its flowers. And the sound, ever so recognizable, is that of my neighbor’s bees, greedily searching the first drops of nectar. Every year, the sound calms me, relieves me, reminds me once more that the season is turning and changing and shifting and morphing into something resembling celery green with pops of dandelion yellow and crocus purple.

As the months progress, spring turns to summer and I find myself sitting poolside, surrounded on all sides by lavender and by bees. I have never once been stung here by a bee. I wish the same could be said for wasps and the dreaded calabroni, the monstrous hornets that look like they could down a Big Mac and Fries and still be miserable enough to send you to the hospital with a case of anaphylactic shock. But the bees, well, the bees seem happy. Content. Mesmerized by the smell and taste of lavender all around. The movement is balanced out by hundreds of butterflies joining in the dance.

I have already served countless goat cheeses with my neighbors’ honey – acacia, millefiori, tiglio. The circle of completion that serving honey from my neighbors’ bees gives me is satisfying.

We are busy as bees – all of us - our lives full of frenetic activity, bustling from one place, taking, moving to another place, giving. Trying to produce something meaningful. I see this so very clearly now, as we move into the deepest throes of the Italian summer. The neighbors come and bring us vegetables from overproductive gardens. The guests delight in the bounty, biting into almost-but-not-quite-too-ripe tomatoes. I take from the neighbors; I give to the guests. Soon, too soon, everyone will be eyeing the grapes.Will it be a stellar Barbera season? It could be. The bunches will be cut from the vines and time and yeast and very little else will give us warm drops to enjoy with our veal and our wild boar.

My neighbor Marisa sits, every single week, at the Farmer’s Market in Acqui Terme at the tiniest of stands and sells her honey, her potatoes, and whatever else the season brings. She’s almost eighty. In the depths of the winter she is lucky to sell even two jars of her honey. I sometimes pick my things up from her there, sometimes I just drive up to her house, where she and her husband work the land without machinery and have over thirty individual hives that they tend daily. The work, the work. They’re as busy as bees themselves. I can’t see how it pays off financially for Marisa to be at the market every Tuesday, particularly in the winter. But then, looking at it that way is to completely miss the point. It’s what she does. It’s who she is. Asking her not to do it is like asking the bees not to touch the lavender. It’s useless.

Not everything can be judged by the amount of honey produced. Sometimes it’s just about the dance to get the nectar. Sometimes it’s about the overproductive gardens, but more often it’s about the tending of the plants. Anyone who comes here thinking what’s the bottom line and does any of this hard work really pay off needs to think about what the payment actually is. Sure, everyone has bills. But there’s payment in listening to that first hum in the spring time. There’s payment in tilling up the first spring potatoes, the ones you eat with the buccia. There’s payment in the first fig that falls in your hand, giving its life to be turned into breakfast. The reality is something that the bees, and the Italian neighbors, were born knowing. There’s payment in the process.

More payment than money could ever buy.

Cooking Classes

Wonderful cooking classes have as much, if not more, to do with the participants as the instruction. The last weeks, we've made stuffed eggplants, cabbage and gorgonzola torta, fresh pasta, sugo di nocci, zabaglione, pesto, ravioli con prosciutto e erbete, fiori fritti.... served with Pinot Nero Rose, Spumante, Dolcetto, Barbera, Moscato... with guests/friends from the USA, Switzerland, Germany, Sweden...

Even with the hot temperatures, the mood has been festive, and the appetites grand!

Interesting People Interview - Cherrye Moore

When I think of people doing interesting things, I am always first drawn to those whose destiny has led them far away from home, and how they have made the most of the situation at hand. One of those people is Cherrye Moore, trip planner, freelance writer, innkeeper, wife and resident of beautiful Catanzaro, Calabria. Cherrye has built her life here in Italy and we had the chance to chat about it via internet recently. She is one busy lady, wearing many hats as so many of us do when we build our new lives far away from “home”.

I read recently on My Melange that you first came to Europe by way of gainful employment at Euro Disney in Paris! How did that come about and how did you make it from there to innkeeper in Calabria?

Ahhh ... Disneyland Paris. *sigh* Yes, my first expat experience was in France as a cast member at Disneyland Paris. I had been working at Walt Disney World in Orlando and heard about an opportunity to transfer with the company as part of an international Work Exchange Program. I applied-along with hundreds of my fellow employees-and was awarded one of the 22 spots in the program. Fate it was, I say, because just a week or so into my new job, I started seeing this tall, dark stranger everywhere I went.

Eventually, I met this man and we initiated a friendship that lasted long after we'd both returned to our home countries. After a couple of years emailing and writing letters-yes, with pen and paper-he visited me in Texas and we decided to try our hand at a long-distance relationship. I moved to Calabria to join him in 2006, we got married in 2007 and around that time we opened our bed and breakfast together

OMG Love at Disneyland! So you and your husband decided to settle in Italy instead of in the United States... what made you come to that decision? How has the adjustment to life in Italy changed you personally, and has living in Italy changed your view of the world?

We decided to start out in Italy because we thought it would be easier. It is kinda funny looking back on that now, after years of waiting on my Permesso, but that was our thinking at the time. I also wanted to more agressively explore freelancing and living here in Italy gave me that chance. It is hard to say how much Italy has changed me, though. I have been here almost four years, but in that time, I also got married and well, am four years older, so I think it is the combination of things that has changed me.

My husband is very calm and easy going and luckily that has rubbed off on me. I also feel like I'm becoming the person I wanted to be-I'm taking more chances professionally, such as starting my travel consulting business, I've reached some of my travel writing goals and I feel confident and secure in who I am. I can also drink wine every day at lunch and then return to work, so I thank Italy for that. :-)

Did you write before coming to Italy, or has Italy given you the inspiration to pursue writing as part of your career?

One of the first things I remember doing as a child was writing. I used to write plays for my cousins and me-there are 28 of us!-and then I'd direct the play and yes, I'm ashamed to say, play a starring role. My dad owned a newspaper and he and my mom were both fabulous writers, so I grew up with a strong appreciation for the written word.

It wasn't until I lived in Paris that I began dreaming of travel writing and it wasn't until I moved to Italy that I was able to pursue it.

Tell us a little about your life in Catanzaro, about having an inn and about the service you're offering for prospective travelers.

Catanzaro is an interesting place to be an expat. We are the capital of Calabria, so you don't have that small village-type atmosphere, yet it is still small by many standards. We live closer to Catanzaro Lido than the historical center and I've found it to the prefect place to stay if you want to really explore Calabria.

The majority of our guests are Italians who are traveling to Catanzaro for work and about 80% of them are loyal guests who come every week or every other week for their jobs. Occasionally, we'll have a big group in for a wedding-like we did this weekend, and then sometimes we get English-speaking travelers who are either traveling through Catanzaro or are in Calabria researching their heritage. Those are fun.

Last year I began officially offering travel consulting services for visitors heading to southern Italy. While I would never encourage someone to stay in Catanzaro if it wasn't in the best interest of their trip, our B&B guests are eligible for 30% savings on a custom itinerary.

On a side note, it's happened over and over that my husband or I will tell prospective guests they'd be better off staying in another city that is closer to the village they want to research, for example, yet they book with us anyway. I think they appreciate the honesty and understand that we really want them to have the best possible experience in Calabria, even if that doesn't mean staying in our B&B.

Why don't you tell us what kind of services you offer exactly? I am sure they would be of interest to people searching for a deeper, less touristed view of Italy.

I currently have three different services I offer for people traveling to southern Italy. The most comprehensive option is a custom itinerary, where I work with the travelers to decide on the best locations for their trip, the ideal route to follow to maximize time and to select hotels, restaurants, day trips, guides and transfers. I then book all of their reservations for them, confirm them before they arrive and am available 24/7 throughout their trip. In the end, they are given a personalized travel itinerary for each day of their vacation.

The second option is a custom consult. It is similar to the custom itinerary in that I help them choose destinations and make recommendations on the route, hotels, restaurants, day trips and excursions, however, they book their reservations and are responsible for confirming the details. These travelers receive a PDF package with ideas, links and contact information so they can finalize their vacation.

The third option is really fun and affordable, making it a nice option for anyone heading to southern Italy. Essentially, these travelers design their own itinerary, plan their own route and research their own hotels, day trips and excursions. Before their trip, they send me a copy of the itinerary and I review it and offer insider tips that will make their trip easier and more enjoyable.

I've been getting requests lately for travelers who are interested in a quick consult or some light trip coaching, so I might add this service in the near future.

You can find Cherrye at her B&B website and her blog, My Bella Vita.

Well, It Looks Like Italy, But It's Not.

Right across the border, directly on Lago di Maggiore, you find yourself in the canton of Tecino, or Tessin (in German), Switzerland. On the laid back promenade in Ascona, German and Italian are spoken with a flourish and Italian relaxed style mixes seamlessly with Swiss efficiency. The best of both worlds, they say. All I can say is that on a broiling hot summer afternoon, there is simply no more beautiful place to be than on an Italian lake, regardless which country you happen to find yourself in.

The Painful Beauty of Inspiration

Let me make a confession. I hate trimming pots. Trimming pots is what you do to them after throwing them on the wheel. You let them dry up only a bit, clean them up, re-center them in the wheel, and use instruments to cut into the clay and make a foot on each pot. You end up with a bunch of this:

which is really annoying because all of this semi dry clay has to be rehydrated (turned into sludge in water), allowed to dry and then wedged (beaten to within an inch of its life) into a usable form. All of this, that is, if you do not own a clay pug, which reworks the clay for you, but costs an arm and a leg. I, needless to say, do not own a clay pug.

But trimming is a must, so that you end up with a pretty little foot like this:

Yesterday I threw about 20 pots, most of them latte cups, which is my new favorite form. It's a tall cylindrical cup, about 6 inches high and is also ideal for tea. No handle. Handles are my second least favorite thing next to trimming. Plus my cups with handles don't look like my cups. I can't even relate to them after I have made them.

In addition to the cups, I made a few bowls. All in all a very productive day.

Let me add something here. I rarely throw on center. I can, mind you, but I rarely do. It takes so much focus for me to throw completely centered pots that I lose all of the fun, end up straining my neck and back. So my pieces are all kind of, well, imperfect.

Which is fine. Until you try to trim up tall cylindrical pieces that were not thrown on center. You have to get the pot recentered upside down onto the pottery wheel. Doing this with a narrow, non-centered tall piece is like trying to balance the Leaning Tower of Pisa on a quarter. I have had pots fly across the room during trimming. I really hate trimming. It makes me cranky.

So this morning, as I was trying to get the first cup centered, something happened. A strange noise came out from under the fly wheel. Metal against metal. I went down, underneath to check it out. Only one problem - I forgot to shut of the motor. As I checked the mechanism of the wheel I know like the back of my hand, it caught my index finger in the mechanism. I yanked back and out came my finger tip, nail intact, but skin completely missing, from the top knuckle right up to the tip, on the front of the finger.

Ouch. I am clearly typing this with nine fingers. But I want to get this story out.

I ran into the house, packed it up, and waited for the pain to come. Micha drove me to the pharmacy and they packed me up with antibiotic, scab forming salve and finger tip covers. Six hundred milligrams of ibuprophen later, I wrapped a plastic glove around my hand and went back into the studio.

See, in this heat, I needed to get those cups done today or I could kiss yesterday's work goodbye. Even packing the cups in plastic wrap would not keep them from drying out too quickly in the hundred degree heat we will have for the next ten days.

But I was in way too much pain to trim those babies. Way too much pain. So I listened to my inner potter.

Don't trim, she said. Just smooth out. You did a good job throwing them yesterday, they are not bottom heavy and you just need to smooth them out.

So that's what I did. The bottoms look like this (lower right cup in the first picture):

...and the finished greenware look like this:

Natural, organic forms that feel so good in the hand. Much nicer than if I had spent hours (hours!) trying to center and trim them. See what a little injury can make you to? It can make you rethink things. It all depends what you do with the situation at hand.

Even the bowls -- I did a minimum trim, then altered them using a piece of wood. Soft, beautiful, organic forms. Irregular. Incredibly pleasant to the touch.

Now I will focus on the bisque firing and glazes that might work with these natural forms. After I take a nap with my hand in the air.

Under Pressure

It's been hot. Not just hot. It's desert scrub can't touch the pavement if you look at me sideways I'll take your head off hot. The nights cool down, a blessing. But the days have been relentless now, for a week.

It feels like time to start having water problems.

Now, I don't really know why water problems only happen when the temperature is so scorching that the idea of going without water makes me have dreams of skeletons baking by an empty pool. With the amount of rain and snow we have had two years in a row there could hardly be a drought. But there are water problems for a few days every summer. Having to do with broking pipes. With old infrastructure. With being the last house on the water line -- which means ours goes out first and is the last to get water back after the problem has been repaired.

Things were going well. We were battling the heat two days ago, but staying on top of the laundry and cleaning. My assistant was in the kitchen and I told her I could clean a bowl that I had used for the bread dough with the hose outside. As soon as I turned on the water, she yelled out, "Manca acqua!" Manca acqua indeed. I looked at the measly stream coming out of my hose, and got on the horn with AMAG, our local water authority.

The boys from AMAG came up quickly, jiggling the pipes around our water meter. Niente problemi, they declared, someone down the line must be filling a pool! They left in time to make sure that mama did not have to keep their pasta waiting.

The miserable trickle continued. Our guests reacted with calm and patience, but doing wash and filling the pool became impossible.

The next day I figured it was time to call again. This time, the lady at AMAG told me that there was a leak in the system that they were working vigorously to find and repair. I thanked her, a little surprise at the speed with which she informed me. Normally they have to check the area you are calling from. But she just spit out the words as if they were written down on a flash card.

This morning, when I once again awoke to hardly any water pressure, my patience snapped. I called again, this time telling myself not to accept any pool filling, undiscovered leaking excuses. This time, the lady patched me through to the guy in the truck for my area. He swore and said he'd be right up. Five minutes later, he was here, half his body in the cavernous hole where the meter is located. He bashed his head and blood spouted out as he continued to curse and sweat and as we looked on, scared that he had absolutely no clue what he was doing. Water sprouted out like a geyser. " You don't have a problem with pressure," he yelled up from the hole, "There's plenty of pressure! What were those idiots talking about when they were here day before yesterday?" The same question crossed my mind, but I thought it would be better to stay quiet. He seemed to be talking to himself at this point.

More swearing. More water. More sounds of clanging pipes. I thought the water would be out for a month. I was hearing the sound of reimbursed reservation deposits and feeling a little sick to my stomach in the hundred degree heat.

Finally, he reappeared, wiping the blood from his brow.

"Tutto a posto," he declared.

What do you mean, tutto a posto? my look clearly communicated.

"Vai controllare," go check, he said. Micha ran up the hill. Came back to the drive way with two thumbs up and a bottle of wine for the AMAG dude.

What happened? I asked. There was a stone caught in your pipe, reducing the pressure, he told me. But they told me there was a leak they were trying to find, I said, eyes wide open.

That, signora, is why Italy is going to hell in a handbasket, is the best way I can translate his next words. He laughed, thanked us for the bottle, and went to solve the next disastro del giorno.

So now, the high pressure situation of low water pressure is resolved, the pool is full, the wash is done, and we can relax and greet our next guests with confidence that showering won't be an issue.

Va bene. So add stone in the water pipe to the list of things that can happen on a hill in Italy. How did it get in there? I have no idea. I don't want to know. And it does not matter. It's out now.