Frosty time of the year...
Lo’ and behold, the day & night temperatures suddenly dropped the day after Christmas. Hark! The 25th was a Yuletide scorcher of 70F degrees at 1:30PM. I know for a fact because, I was out on our loft’s balcony in Genoa with my sister-in-law-who-smokes and the pharmacy’s electric sign-board sent speeding across it in Bright Green the afternoon’s current temp. Hark, again! Everyone else was inside gorging themselves on my 4-day-in-the-making Christmas Day dinner of focaccia, an exquisite salmon torta, an artichoke soup which, I must say turned out quite well after the crisis in discovering the recipe I was following was WRONG!!! If you boil or, steam the artichokes, you do not have to sauté them too. Plus, no call for an onion and some sort of meaty fat which, I feel are always necessary for a hearty soup. This despite the au courant of avoiding meaty fats these days. Perhaps, Julia Child would back me up on this, I would hope… followed by a delicately spicy shrimp & sausages pasta, a roast turkey from the best butcher in all of Genoa, Mario’s, Brussels sprouts braised with butter & prosciutto…. Euw, ick, Brussels sprouts but, they were the only vegetable available in sufficient quantities at my green-grocer’s… an abundant potato puree popped under the broiler for a stunning cap of a golden brown cheese crust, and for dessert, an exaggerated array of pane-this-and-that… panettone, pandolce, panedoro, paneforte… and chocolates, chocolates, chocolates, and nuts, nuts, nuts and clementines, and clementines, clementines, clementines, the Christmas fruit of Italy. The Italians do-up wreaths with them and bay leaf branches. Very festive. This abundant gastronomic buffet preceded the annual photo sessions of the family with la nonna and, the sensational display of modern Christmas consumerism for our five nieces to open sacks full of geeefts from their uncle You. I had to have a sit-down in my post-Modern wing-back chair sipping from a tall glass of white wine to observe the commotion and enthusiasm… Oh, zio! Che bella!! Grazie!!!
But now, back to the today’s temps…
The drop in temperature added to l’aria asciutta was a definite change of pace to the warm temperatures and the constant rains & humidity of October, November & half of December. The Dogs now insist upon waking me up in the middle of the night… Shhh! Not a word to You, who is absolutely opposed to this canine custom… they sleep with me under the covers ‘cause it’s c-c-cold… to vie with one another on who gets to be closest to me. I am the in-bed furnace, apparently. What a joy! I then take advantage of being awaken to untangle myself from them and the layers of bed clothes… heavy Sardinian wool bedspread, down comforter, blue wool blanket and my fake fur stole and hobble into the bathroom to pee. While aiming, I unlatch the interior shutters of the bathroom’s single window and gaze out upon the roofs of Codiponte, all frosty white below an indigo starry night sky. Beautifully eerie and quiet.
The morning has the same scene though lighted by a timid sunshine yet to creep up and over the Borgo Castello of Codiponte above us at il Poggiolo. Our garden has many guises through the year but, I do find its Winter one the more charming. I took a quick tour of the garden this AM… in running shorts with a T and track-shoes… outside the Azzurro Apartment where I am camping out with said Dogs, who, by the way, ABSOLUTELY REFUSED TO LEAVE THE COMFORT OF THEIR CLUB CHAIRS before the warmth of the fire. I had to go it alone in the chill, the quiet and the frost.
