Halloween...

I'm a little depressed because we lost almost all of our Halloween pictures.  The cute ones, ya know, the ones where they sat on the front steps all dressed up and smiled.  OH well.. What are ya gonna do!  Here are the remnants...the ones I didn't care to keep but were left on my camera...:(   But they are better than nothing.  

 Pumpkin Patch at the base Halloween Party.  Juliet followed Isaac around like a little puppy!

On actual Halloween night we were surprised to get two trick or treaters.  We'll be sure and join them next year.  We had a small dinner party with our first Italian friends.  

Thomaso, who is in Georgie's class at school, was very excited to be all dressed up as a skeleton.  His mom was very excited to paint his face!!  DIdn't she do a beautiful job!

 

These are our new friends Megan and Greg, the only adults who dressed up for the party!  They wanted to show off for the Italians!  And they are both real gems.  Megan and I hang out weekly but she starts her job next week which I be really sad about;(  Farewell my weekday friend!

 Thomaso has a little sister named Emma who is the same age as Juliet.  

She has Downs Syndrome and is about the cutest little thing you have ever seen.  

  I was glad to see that they played together really well!

We hope to try and get them together somewhat regularly which would be excellent.

 And this is her Mom, Daniella! (and Megan, of course)  I was about to say that she would die if she new I was posting this picture of her but she's not that type.  She would laugh!  I truly love this woman.  She is kinder than kind, so much fun, incredibly generous and just about as warm as a human can possibly be.  I can't wait for you to meet her.  She's a real keeper!

 And I had to add this because it shows what a good time we had.  

It was an excellent Halloween Dinner Party!

 Heres a shot of the kids and I embarking on our annual "Great Pumpkin" secret cookie give away.  My Mom and Aunt Kathy (right, MOm?) started this tradition when we were kids and it is the best family tradition that we have, by far.  We laugh until our sides hurt and I fall in love with my kids all over again, every time.  Isaac especially loves this.  This year he's demanding that we extend it into St. Patricks day and April Fools because he had so much fun.  He cracked us up the entire time acting, so goofy.  He has such an excellent sense of humor and I LOVE that.

Last shot..at the end of our top secret mission.  

Happy Thanksgiving to you all!

We miss you!

xoxo

Ash

The Food Tour

This past weekend we took a bitter sweet trip to Emilia-Romano, the food capital of Italy.  We had planned the trip around the occasion of our first visitors, the Garff family foodies, Walt, Paula and Corey.  It turns out they were unable to make it because they of that darn hurricane Sandy who reeked her havoc in a million and one ways.  

But the reservations had to be kept so we packed up our brood and headed for the central Italian hills.  

First stop:

 Modena

The Balsamic capital of the world.  I scheduled a free tour of a Traditional Balsamic Vinegar Production at Villa San Donnono.  The villa above is the legendary home of the owner, one that looks like it jumped straight out of the Godfather and just so happens to have been the set of two movies. 

 Sculptures, tall trees and shaped boxwoods were everywhere, all of which I knew I couldn't do justice with my camera so I didn't take many pictures of it.  

 Here they are in a tiny chamber where wooden barrels of Balsamic Vinegar, aged for 12-25 years, is matured.  The smell in here knocked you down...in a good way.  

 The napkins cover a square opening where water evaporates out of them over the aging process, making the flavor more and more concentrated.  The balsamic vinegar we buy in stores isn't aged like this and is made mostly of vinegar with some grape juice and corn syrup added in.  This stuff is "Traditional Balsamic Vinegar", made entirely of organic grape juice and aged for 12-25 years.

  

 In the states, a 12 oz bottle costs over $100.  But, after being here you understand why.  It is very expensive, in time and labor, to make.  After the tour of the vinegar production we were given samples.  Oh man is there a difference between this stuff and the store bought stuff.  I still don't think it's worth it to buy this regularly because even though its good it's just not necessary but we bought a small bottle of it anyway because...well you have to.  It's just part of the experience.  We plan to bust it out when all of you come into town.  

Let me just add as an aside that Joey and I were totally enthralled and on some sort of travelers high during both these tours.  The kids were really good...especially on the vinegar tour but they simly don't appreciate it.  They keep asking, "When is this going to be over?"  or "Can we get some gelato? or, Mom, can I play with your cell phone?"  eh??  

 While we totally get where they are coming from (they are children after all) we can't help but look at each other and wonder..."Why on earth am I paying for you to be here?" and "Please can you find someone to stay with the next time we go on a trip...!?"  These are real questions we're asking ourselves.   If you have the answer for us or are willing to babysit please fly on over.  With all the money we're sinking into travel that is totally lost on them we'll pay for your flight.  We love them but surely you can see our predicament;)  

Parmesan Cheese tour in Parma

So many things about this process blew me over.  But for me the number one thing that I took with me was that these workers and 95% of all Parmesan Cheese producers in the area don't get a single day off the entire year.  Because of the process and because most of these places are small family owned companies days off aren't part of the job description.  Oh man, my heart breaks for them.  

 These are two brothers and the girl behind them is a wife to one of them.  In this picture is a vat full of "whey".  The milk of a cow is poured into this vat along with a barrel full of whey from the day before.  It is kept at a certain temperature, and stirred for a few hours.  The ball of cheese comes together at the bottom of the vat at which point they lift it out with cheesecloth, cut it in half to make two rounds and place it in the molds.

 The molds sit for a number of days to become solid and then are soaked in a salt water bath for a month.  That's where Parmesan cheese gets its salty flavor from...sitting in the salt water bath.  

 The rounds then are set to dry on oak boards for as many as 24 months to fully "ripen".  The guide showed us how the cheese gets its color as well as some flavor from sitting on the oak (specifically) boards...the caramel color of the wood seeps into the cheese, the round is flipped and then the color seeps into the other side.  The rounds are flipped every month for the entire aging process.  

The DOP of Parmesan cheese comes by each factory when the cheese is "ready" and taps them with a hammer to determine if they pass the DOP test or not.  If they do then they can be sold as Traditional Parmesan Cheese.  

Our tour came with a lunch but when we told our guide that we weren't hungry yet he drove us over to a beautiful castle nearby.  This area has nearly 100 castles and this one was is one of the best preserved.

 The views were breathtaking.

The tour guides children were out of school for the holiday so they came along with us.  

Georgie made a friend in Anna, the 10 year old so we have a few pictures of her in here.

 Again, I don't do it justice but I'm in love with patchwork green farm land...

This castle was excellent because we had it nearly to ourselves.   There was no furniture so nothing was roped off.  The kids could just run around, imagine, pretend and play. 

And the frescoes were quite breathtaking

THat about concludes our days in Parma and Modena.  I'm not sure that I ever would have discovered the necessity of this adventure if it hadn't been for Walt and Paula.  Thanks to them for giving us the idea.  We'll be happy to take you back (and plan it better next time) when ever you can make it!  Till then!

xoxo

Ash

Halloweeeeeeeeen!

Halloweeeeeeen!!

Deemed our second favorite holiday, we missed all the American commercialism in Italy this year.  But in other ways it was nice.  We did it all at our own pace!  Here's a bit about what we've been up to:

Pumpkin carving with Daddy, even with his broken thumb in a cast.  What a guy;)

 While they were outside carving the neighbor brought this over for Juliet...a cute little Italian modern rocking horse.  Juliet loves it!

The kids put together some little treat bags for their school.  We sent those and some Halloween books to the English teacher and she really appreciated having a Halloween themed English lesson for her classes.  The kids got to read in front of their class.  

 The teacher REALLY loved The Little Old Lady Who Wasn't Afraid of Anything that the kids received from their grandparents a few years ago (thanks grandparents)  We ordered her a copy from Amazon and will give it to her when it arrives.  Isaac said all the Italian kids acted out all the motions with the book.  All though Halloween isn't all out celebrated here, Italians are fascinated by it.  

I made homemade donuts and we ate them outside by the fire with some hot cider.  It was fun just for all the ambiance but homemade donuts aren't all they're cracked up to be.  I mean, you can't mess up fried dough glazed with sugar so we ate them but I don't think I'll buy into this craze next year.

On the way into JOey's work party.

The purple dragon...this costume is special

because all the kids have dressed up in it!

Merida!!  Georgie always seems to pick a costume with a wig...I think it has something to do with covering up her white blonde hair that she gets so much attention for and gets so uncomfortable when she does.

Isaac didn't want  me to put a pic of him up because this isn't his "real" costume.  His didn't arrive in the mail in time for this party.  But here is he...cutest ninja ever;)  The real costume came in the mail in time for actual Halloween which was a HUGE relief!

Last night we went to the real trick or treating party on the base.  I'll post pics of that later as well as a few other traditions we'll round out the season with.

Non Halloween stuff we've been up to:

taming this beauty...our 3/4 of an acre back yard that has to be cleared of all rocks so that it can be mowed with our new riding lawn mower!  That has been Joey and Isaacs project.  We're real Italian countrysiders;)  We'll have a huge garden out here in the spring AND some chickens...yay!!

This shed will be our future make shift chicken coop or as Juliet calls it, our chicken poop.  I think we're not going to correct her and have her go on calling it that.  It's too darn cute;)  This shot is taken after Georgie and I cleared it of all the vines and there's definitely more work to be done before we dare lock anything living up in there!

Previous owners used this part of the yard as a trash dump.  Georgie and I worked all weekend pulling out piles and piles of old batteries, broken pots, an old single trampoline, window shutters, buckets, and the list goes on, all grown over with vines.  Not to brag but I killed a snake all by myself without squealing!  I'm so proud!  I happened to be holding a broken pot when I saw it and just started whaling on it with the sharp edge...DEAD!!  I'm pretty much awesome

A very small sampling of what came out of the trash heap.

This girl was made for yard work and or farm life;)  She loved it out there and worked so hard by my side! 

Here's Juliet chasing a duck in our yard in underwear.  We've been potty training for about a month now and I think we're FINALLY done.  Yay, Juliet!!

 This duck decided to camp out in our yard for three days in a row!  We were hoping to call him ours:( but one morning he was gone.  We hope he's okay!

We frequently find these two in bed together:

 Sweet sweet!

 This is a shot of the fresh ricotta and goat cheese farm that is literally right behind our house.  The kids like to walk back here and buy goat cheese.

We've spent a few of our last warm afternoons playing at this...??nature preserve...? water mill?  We're not sure what it is except that its cool.  (so many pictures of Georgie!  Ha!  She's my little poser I guess!)

Fall baking has been fun with this little helper!

After long days of yard work Joey has put a fire in the outdoor fire place and the kids roast smore's.  We really like having a place to do an outdoor fire. 

That about covers it for now.  We have our first visitors coming next week!! Yay!!  And some more Halloween things going on as well.  'Till then!

xoxo