by Maureen | Sep 15, 2010 | Incredible Locations, Introspection, Journal, Seattle
Who’d have thought that moving BACK to Seattle would be as much a part of the experience as moving TO Milano?! It’s taken me by surprise how daunting and unsettling it has been to move back into my own home.
I’m slowly plodding toward resettlement. Here’s a journal entry from a week ago.
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7 Settembre 2010
Sitting in the silence of the morning hoping to gather and calm my tornado of thoughts… I’m feeling pulled and strewn by personal, emotional, physical and professional imperatives. There truly are many things I “should” do, I must do! I try to keep myself level and focussed, spare in my “priorities”, but still the overwhelming swell builds.
It took me a year to dismantle the structure of my life here, and then a year to begin some semblance of solidity in Milan. It should come as no surprise to me that it could take a year to resettle here!
My body has indeed left Milan and arrived here in Seattle, but my mind/spirit are still hovering midair, somewhere between here and there. I haven’t quite really come back yet!
After a little more than a month back here in Seattle, my house remains spare. Only absolute essentials have been unpacked, brought up out of the basement as I’ve needed something. The walls are bare. And the remaining boxes feel oppressive with their weight and presence. Too much stuff!
My daily routine is not yet routine. It hasn’t yet developed a sustaining, supportive rhythm of waking, sleeping, eating and exercising. Lacking a pattern in my days points out the value of such a pattern.
Seeing family has been a high priority since I returned, and I’ve seen one or another several times. But seeing friends will have to wait. I hope they can be understanding about that delay. There is a list on my desk of a hundred names of people I’ve “got” to see. Tell me: how long will it take to have a rich conversation with 100 people while still settling my house, tending to family AND trying to get some work done?! If they are offended that a month has passed and I haven’t seen them, then apparently they haven’t envisioned the logistics (and I apologize).
The few encounters I have enjoyed have either been long-ago-planned, convenient by proximity (neighbors), spontaneous, satisfying of a need or selfish preference.
And, of course, in the midst of all this, I need to keep my clients satisfied and run my business! I’ve only recently recreated my work space so I can work, but have yet to get my systems back up and functioning. I haven’t even finished reinstalling my desktop computer system and so continue with the simplicity, and limitations, of my laptop.
At any moment, I ask myself “What’s the best thing I could do right now to make headway, putting a dent in my list?” Sometimes the answer is to pick just one box to unpack. At other times, sorting and filing paperwork gets it off my desk finally. And sometimes, just going for a walk is what I most need to do.
In view of “Maslow’s Heirarchy of Needs”, I realize that all of this is a lofty, privileged collection of concerns. The economy is in record crisis. Friends are struggling to find work. Many are faced with genuine issues of survival. “Gee Maureen. You’ve just spent a year in Italy and have now moved back to your home and your life. How tough can that be?” It’s hard to find an empathetic ear. How many understand this state?
In the meantime, I put on my apron, which puts me in the right frame of mind, and just keep moving.
by Maureen | Sep 7, 2010 | Incredible Locations, Introspection, Journal, Quips, Seattle
My neighbors are so wonderful. They show up at my back door with slices of fresh, cold watermelon. They loan me pasta machines. They invite me over to sing camp songs along the shoreline. They tote my garbage and recycling bins up the steep driveway. They chat at the roadside with me, in front of the mailboxes.
God couldn’t have assembled a finer, or more diverse, group of people.
A thousand blessings upon them all!
by Maureen | Sep 6, 2010 | Cheese, Featured Articles, Food!, Incredible Locations, Introspection, Journal, Meals, People, Photos, Seattle, Shopping & Markets
Seattle’s chilly summertime is winding down with scattered sunshine following cloudy mornings. Warm evenings are rare, but, once again, the waterside neighbors initiated a dinnertime potluck along the shoreline last Friday, the start of a holiday weekend. I vowed to bring “something Italianesque”, and told them I likely wouldn’t know what it would be until mere hours before I headed out my back door to cross the street.
I wanted to try my hand at making homemade pasta. Regrettably, over the course of more than a year in Italy, I never took a cooking class! No one ever took me aside to show me how to whisk an egg into a well of flour, bring it up into a dough, knead it sufficiently, roll it out and slice it into handcut noodles.
Feeling intrepid, I located “Uncle Bill’s” web site offering an ingredient list and method for “Homemades” (noodles), and found a YouTube video showing a quicker process, “How to Make Pasta from Scratch in 5 Minutes“ (using a food processor instead of the time-honored flour well). I then called my friend, Sally, and asked to “steal” her hand-crank Marcato Atlas 150 Pasta Maker.
It really did only take 5 minutes to mix up my first ever pasta dough and handcut a bundle of tagliatelle.
Thinking about our neighborhood dinner, I conjured a “Farmers Market Lasagna“? The day before, umbrellaed market stalls had filled the street at Burien’s Town Square and I browsed for a tasty collection of veggies to nestle between wide sheets of fresh pasta. I scouted the best of each vegetable, added them to my shopping bag, then went home to cut, grill, simmer and prepare the following:
- Grilled eggplant
- Roasted, thick-walled, red peppers
- Roma & beefsteak tomatoes, peeled, seeded and cooked down to a chunky sauce
- Caramelized Walla Walla sweet onions
- Freshly-made pesto Genovese of basil, pine nuts, garlic, extra virgin olive oil, salt and some grana padano cheese that I brought back from Milano
- Fresh mozzarella and ricotta
Fresh pesto is vivid green and always scents the kitchen (and the cook’s hands) with the smell of a summer garden. Making a batch, you might as well make enough for friends and the freezer! (Clean the interior surface of the jar after you’ve dished it out, then cover the pesto with a skiff of olive oil. This keeps the pesto from oxidizing and turning black, and from getting moldy. Store it for a week or so in the fridge; for longer storage, keep it in the freezer.)
Not quite jam, pesto is still good when smeared lightly on a slice of Tuscan-style bread!
Look at the silky smooth, beautiful ribbon of pasta, just waiting to be laid down into the lasagne dish! Just a couple more turns through the finer settings on the Atlas and it was ready to go. The Milanese “Amaretti di Saronno” tin has been my flour can for close to 30 years. Prescient.
My maiden noodles were set out to dry a bit while I finished rolling and cutting. I don’t have noodle drying racks, so occasional flipping on the cookie sheets was going to have to suffice. (I love the big mess of a fully-involved kitchen!)
I cooked my pasta sheets in salted, boiling water for only about 2 minutes, drained them, oiled them a bit to prevent their sticking, then started the layering of vegetables and cheeses. (The smaller lasagna went into my freezer for another day. Mmm.)
Since everything was already cooked before it went into the pan, the Farmers Market Lasagna only needed enough heat to melt the cheeses and blend the flavors. When it came out of the oven, I wrapped the dish in my apron, and carried it over to the neighbors. Eight of us enjoyed appetizers in the upper yard before winding down the wooded trail to the bulkhead beach and the rest of our dinner.
Over the course of the evening, we enjoyed an outstanding selection of Italian wines, including a Chianti Classico Riserva, Brunello di Montalcino and a Barolo! The sunset couldn’t have been much prettier.
There’s nothing like a bunch of “grown-ups” sitting around a fire singing camp songs and old hymns. Barbara tried to get us headed in the right direction when singing “Row, Row, Row Your Boat” as a round.
I’ve talked to many people around Seattle that don’t even know their neighbors (let alone eat and sing camp songs with them)! Returning to my neighborhood, and the friends around me here, has been one of the big joys of my homecoming.
by Maureen | Sep 1, 2010 | Featured Articles, Incredible Locations, Introspection, Journal, People, Photo of the Day, Quips, Seattle
I’m grateful for the little reminders of Italia that I encounter here in Seattle, going about my day. Names for cookies and chips. Old ladies wearing tavern jackets in the “pot pie” frozen food section. “Proud to be Italian” License plate frames. Even shrink-wrapped prosciutto piques my nostalgia, though it’s a far cry from having my favorite butchers slice it off the leg for me.
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