by Maureen | May 20, 2010 | Discoveries, Introspection, Journal, Quips, Seattle
It’s a lovely day here in Seattle. The sun was shining first thing this morning while I scurried around to get the irrigation system up and running. Now it’s pouring rain and my dry yard is thankful. I stepped outside, heard the birds singing and enjoyed the cool, fresh, clean air and smell of salt water.
These last 2 weeks here have been sunny and warm. Wow! No, I did not bring the sunshine from Milano. They had forecast a week of rain the day I left. There was no sunshine to bring!
Flowers are blooming, my yard is at its most beautiful and the days have been comfortable.
I leave this afternoon to return to Italy and my last 2 and a half months there. They predict temperatures in the mid-80s for the end of this week, so I’m dressed in layers, able to peel them one-by-one as I approach Europe.
The sense of things for me is SO different as I prepare for this flight than when I was preparing to fly to Italy last June. The unknown doesn’t loom so large. The timidity has been eased. I’m returning to Milano with familiarity and surety now and that changes the whole picture.
In this last dab of time, I will have visitors, I will travel, I will gobble up as much as I can before I pack my last bag and come home again to this fresh air.
by Maureen | May 7, 2010 | Discoveries, Featured Articles, Incredible Locations, Introspection, Journal, Photo of the Day, Photos, Quips, Seattle
My house in Seattle is a mansion. My living room here is as big as my whole apartment in Milan. All of this space for one person?
Really, it’s just a two-bedroom, 1950s rambler with a basement and a great yard. But after almost a year in Milan, my house seems enormous. I can’t imagine how I’d feel if I had an American mega-mansion.
I arrived in Seattle two days ago for a couple of weeks seeing family, friends and clients. The days have been sunny, but cool, starting at 40 degrees in the mornings; it feels brisk after 77 degrees and humid.
It’s incredibly quiet, the only noise coming from the chorus of robins singing throughout the neighborhood. A sunny, still afternoon spent sitting on the front porch looking out to the water is a balm to my soul. What a treasure.
It’s good to be home, and I look forward to my final return at the end of July. But it won’t be without some wistfulness about the people and flavors I’ll be leaving behind.
by Maureen | Apr 10, 2010 | Introspection, Journal
Journal Entry – 10 Aprile 2010
Really, I’ve kept my world very small. There are some that would rush to assure me otherwise, but when I honestly scan the content and structure of my life, my relationships are one-on-one and my focus is on small details. I’m not a “Grand, Big Picture” thinker.
I think I have good design thinking. And yet here I am in Milano, a world capital of design, and I have not set foot into it. I have not immersed myself by meeting who’s who and participating in local projects. I haven’t consumed the buzz of either design refinement or innovation, though opportunities overflow the city.
What have thrilled me most while here have been the fleeting encounters with people along the way: Mary at the Cemetery with her traditional handwriting; Angelo giving me a history lesson as we rode bikes through the farmland; elderly Signor Conforti in his bookshop in Florence and his handshake goodbye; the old woman in fleece pants on New Year’s Day that chatted with me about handkerchiefs and big buttons. These little meetings have been many and they’ve always left me beaming for the day.
Very informally I have been an observer and recorder of the visual lushness around me, whether it’s architecture and sculpture, garbage cans and curb cuts, or simply odd juxtapositions that tease my eye.
All of this is very telling about my priorities, desires, strengths, values and direction. Though I believe very deeply in the power of design to change the world, and though design absolutely permeates my day and my thinking, my greater joy is in personally touching one life at a time, in the smallest ways. Reality is, design fills and textures my life, but is not the focus of my life’s efforts.
I’m a “good” designer, not a “great” designer. I am unknown in the design world, amongst other designers. (Which is fine with me.) Have I “wasted” my talent? Design gives me a good living and I have assisted many clients with their goals. Is that sufficient?
– – – – –
(All of these musings help to form a plan for my direction during the remainder of my time here and once I return to the U.S. I’ve certainly had a lot of time to think!)
by Maureen | Apr 10, 2010 | Discoveries, Food!, Introspection, Journal, Shopping & Markets
THIS is the time to be in Milano. The temperature is warm enough (75 degrees) to be comfortable in light linen and cotton, and enjoyable having the windows open to fresh air, but not so warm that there’s any thought yet of air conditioning.
I had a wandering, leisurely ride through the farmland exploring roads I hadn’t tried before. Then I showered, changed and took off walking up along Corso San Gottardo. When I need a variety of miscellanea, this is the local area I frequent.
Last September, my local Bartell’s hadn’t given me enough of a thyroid medication. It’s a pretty simple and standard thing, but necessary. I needed to buy a month’s supply and expected the process to be complicated. (International prescription refill?!) I took the bottles into a local Farmacia, they looked up the chemical component of my prescription online and walked over to a drawer for a braille-embossed box of 50 pills for 2.90 euro, about $3.90. (Hmm. At that price, maybe I should stock up before I return to Seattle? Isn’t it about $33 for a month’s supply back at home?)
There’s also this notion in my head about buying some “cool” eyeglasses to take home as my “souvenir”…Glasses that you’d never find in the U.S.…Glasses that say “somewhere else”. On San Gottardo, I stepped into a centro ottico – optic center – that I had been in before. After looking around for a while, the man that owns the shop said that he remembered me. He wasn’t just flirting. He recalled the glasses I brought in two years ago when the little screw had fallen out of the hinge. In the summer of 2008 he had replaced that little screw at no charge, and simply gave me the glasses back with a smile. (To be here in a foreign country, a big city, and be remembered from two years previous…Remarkable and touching!)
There’s something about the Italians and lingerie and hosiery. They do them well. With the warmer weather, I wanted some lightweight, little socks, just enough to provide a lining, but also interesting enough with lace and fishnet and other fun patterns. I’ve scoured shops in the Seattle area and just don’t find the selection there. (Yeah. In Seattle we’re usually bundling up, not going lightweight.) I bought several pairs of socks and hose (and will have to consider stocking up on those, too, before returning to Seattle!)
The whole street was filled with people walking their kids, their dogs and their lovers. People were seated and sipping caffé, vino or Campari. It was the time of the passeggiata, the evening stroll, and the weather had offered up a time so conducive to the ritual.
As I walked back home, I stopped at the little corner bakery that has my favorite trancio pizza – pizza that is cut to the size you want and charged by weight – and bought a piece with prosciutto, mushrooms and artichokes.
Across the street, at the corner flower vendor, I selected one fragrant lily stem and carried it toward home.
(What can’t I find along San Gottardo?!)
Veering off of Gottardo, and just blocks away from home, I saw my favorite, local bartender, Robbie, in the window of the Mayflower Pub and stopped to say “hello” and give him that European two-cheek kiss. We chatted for a moment. (“Favorite Bartender”? It sounds like I’m at the bar all the time. Actually, very rarely. But both NABA and Scuola Leonardo Language School have their student social nights there so I’ve seen Robbie enough to stop and say hello. He’s a sweet guy.)
I floated the rest of the way home. At almost ten months, I actually know people here, and am recognized by people here. I can wave at people as I walk past their shop windows or they stop me on the sidewalk to talk.
This is an indescribable and stunning time… I marvel at it all.
by Maureen | Apr 9, 2010 | Featured Articles, Introspection, Journal
One month ago I wrote this entry in my journal, and am now ready to post it, announcing that I’ve decided to move back to Seattle at the end of July. I now have less than 4 months remaining here, and that perspective is very much affecting my time and my outlook. Sometimes I catch myself already “projecting forward” to Seattle and have to remind myself not to “leave” yet. I want to remain present for as long as I’m here.
– – – – – – –
Journal Entry:
March 9. Near midnight…
I’m going home.
I’ve decided firmly to move back to Seattle and just tonight bought my plane ticket for July 31. (I have another 2 week visit there in May). It feels right, and I’m ready to think of Seattle as “home” again.
I miss my people and my communities. I miss my pastimes of sewing, cooking, gardening. I miss the activities that supported my health and fitness: regular gym time (!!), walking the Indian Trail, sleeping well and without such interruptions. I miss the sense of feeling rooted. I miss sleeping with the window open and walking on the street without holding my breath. I miss the ready fresh air. I miss green and water and private space.
My life was well-wrought, solid, hand-crafted, enviable. I shook it up, and now will return to a fresh slate, keeping, from before, what I most treasure, tweaking what I’m ready to loosen my grip on, and returning to my wonderful home with clear eyes and freshness. I will not simply pick up where I left off!
I will return to Seattle and be very deliberate, very conscious about what goes back into my house and into my days. I won’t be “starting over”, but rather honing, refining, sharpening the character of my life. And I have gathered a great wealth of sensorial texture to carry with me and flavor my direction. It all feels so delicious and full of possibility!
I want to return to Seattle and see my birthplace with the eyes of a newcomer. One friend has offered a walking tour of “100 Things I’ve Never Seen Before in Seattle.” I welcome the visit to “The Wall of Bubblegum,” among the other bizarre and heart-warming treasures on the list.
How will I integrate? I don’t know. I don’t need to know right now. I will have opportunities to express, and ponder, and share, and a greater purpose and sense of things will take shape as I settle back in.
In the meantime, I still have four and a half months here! That’s vastly more than most people will ever have in their lifetime! And I am going to milk this for everything possible. I intend to explore, gather, see, visit, travel, eat, meet, query, savor, learn and relish this great gift of time and place. I am going to fill…my…self…UP!
On Saturday I will attend a textile printing class in which we will use historic wooden printing blocks (1700s and 1800s) from the Zucchi Collection to print/create fabric for future projects! (I love the Zucchi designs from the late 1900s!) I am thrusting myself into design experiences as fodder for my future.
I am photographing with a fervor and dedication known only to the mad, the crazed, the off-the-wall. I want to bring as much of this home with me as possible in digital or tangible or ethereal form. This time will inspire more than I can imagine for the rest of my days, however long they may be.
I feel full and blessed and wondrous. To have “THIS”, when many never do, is beyond my understanding. The greatness is not lost on me; it burrows deep.
In coming here, I stated that: I wanted to live in a foreign country as an adult, with an adult’s perspective; I wanted to have relationships with people; and I wanted to learn another language. I have done all of that, and more than I can possibly describe.
by Maureen | Mar 21, 2010 | Cheese, Discoveries, Featured Articles, Food!, Introspection, Journal, Meals, People, Photo of the Day, Photos
Would you let 30 random strangers eat off your plate? Would you, in turn, eat off the plates of those 30 strangers?
The Uovo Performing Arts Festival included one “performance” yesterday of 30 individuals, by reservation only. “Mangia che ti fa bene”, “Eat that you will feel well.” For 10 euro, or about $13.50, I walked into the room to a very long table with 30 place settings, and a variety of ingredients:
- bread
- water
- eggs
- grana cheese
- cabbage
- parsley
- apples
- beets
- sesame seeds
- pumpkin seeds
- fennel
- olive oil
- garlic
- spices
- cooked peas
- oats
- radicchio
- spinach
- fresh ginger
- lemon
- leeks
- carrots
- walnuts
- fresh herbs
We were given limited, very loose guidelines.
We each grabbed a plastic apron from the group taped to the window.
Our project was to gather whatever combination of ingredients we desired, blend them and put the mix into a paper-lined, 3″ x 5″ foil pan. The 30 of us were elbow-to-elbow at the table and we were being filmed. We had graters, sieves, knives, bowls, half-moons and cutting boards at our disposal. Notes were provided about the health-inducing properties of each food item.
We asked for ingredients to be passed. We reached across the table. We laughed and chatted and mixed with our hands until our concoctions looked just right to us. Some pressed the ingredients through sieves for a uniform consistency. Others left chunks for spikes of flavor. Some formed loaf-like logs, while others patted their mix into flat casseroles. We bound up our creations in oven paper, scrawled our names on the wrap and sent the little tins off to be baked for 30-45 minutes.
While our dinners were baking, we were served lemon-slice salad, celery sticks with honey, and braised celeriac root. For our 10 euro, we also got a glass of red wine and some herb tea.
Trays of foil tins emerged from the oven, and the hostess called out names. One-by-one, the “performers”, the dinner guests, opened and tasted their creations. There were 30 recipes at the table. Like a groundswell, the sampling started. People reached over with their forks and sampled their neighbors’ meals, and everyone started passing their dish around for others to taste. It was remarkable the range of culinary directions we had each taken. I realized later that I could have gone in the sweet direction and combined bread, egg, apple, ginger, lemon and arrived at a dessert to contrast with all the savory gratins at the table.
I looked around, tickled, chuckling and amazed. Would this happen in the U.S.? Could it? How could I bring this experience to Seattle? To Burien? I easily tallied that the 30 people at 10 euros each only brought in 300 euros. And I looked at all the food, and the utensils, and the wine and thought that surely this was not a money-making proposition. In the U.S., liability insurance alone for a one-day event of this nature would probably be prohibitive.
And would people in the U.S. be willing to pass their dish for their unknown neighbor to sample from, and then fork a bite from their neighbor’s plate and relish the combination of ingredients different from their own?
This does give me ideas for an uncommon Thanksgiving dinner… but many in my family would likely balk at the idea. (But they wouldn’t be random strangers.)
– – – –
Here’s the official, “as advertised” description of the event:
The aftermath was a mess of a table!
by Maureen | Mar 9, 2010 | Introspection, Quips
It’s March. It’s 3:00 in the afternoon and it’s snowing. Crap. I’m so ready for the Springtime that Seattle is having right now! Enough of this COLD!
My Seattle neighbors called the other day to tell me how much they’re enjoying looking out to the flowers blooming in my yard. Flowers? What flowers? It’s still winter here (except that the farmers and gardeners along the canal have been out preparing the soil for planting the last few, sunny days when I’ve been out for a ride.)
Basta!
I think I’ll got out for a walk…
by Maureen | Mar 5, 2010 | Introspection, Journal, Quips
Snow predicted for Sunday? They’ve got to be kidding. Please tell me they’re kidding. With a predicted low of 32 degrees and a high of 37, snow is certainly possible.
In the meantime, my neighbors in Seattle called to tell me how warm the Spring is and how beautiful the flowers are in my yard.
by Maureen | Jan 17, 2010 | Introspection, Journal
It’s an odd position to be in this limbo of not knowing how long I’ll stay in Italy. My original plan was to be here for a year, but as my Seattle departure date approached last June, I thought, and all my friends concurred, that one year might not be long enough.
I arrived in Milano. I got my apartment “comfortable enough for a year”, and I’ve settled in “just enough”. As it turns out, I’m more than a tourist, but not quite a real resident. I’ve got “short timer’s complex”. Uncomfortably, I am neither here nor there. Most friendships I make will likely be short term. Any household goods I buy will likely be the most minimal and least expensive “because I’m leaving sometime”. The emotional investment is greater than that of a tourist, but is still restricted. This is an odd phenomenon to have put myself in the middle of.
I arrived here June 18; it is now January 17, 7 months later. I know that I have a trip planned to Seattle in late Spring, and then again at the beginning of August. Will the flight in August be simply for a visit, or a return home “for good”?
There are more than 6 months in front of me during which I intend to be living here. Six months is many times more than most people can ever dream of being here in Italy, yet I’m feeling “the crunch” of departure. The other day an almost-panic set in and I started to think of all the things I haven’t seen or done yet in the last 7 months! Huh. So I started making my list of “Must-See, Must-Do”. Weird. I plan to be here AT LEAST for another 6-months-plus, yet my sights are already on departure in August. Ooo. Not good. Granted, that panic might fuel a frenzied string of weekend train trips to all-parts-Italy, plus a few flights to places more distant, but the MINDSET is what I’m concerned about. Focussing on departure means I’m not here, I’m already leaving. That doesn’t create a rootedness… But how does one root when she knows her time is limited?
Starting out with an imagined end-date has contributed to this limbo. But how does one have the boldness to say “I’m moving to Italy”, instead of “I’m moving to Italy for one year.” Whoa!!! Those two are ENTIRELY different in feel! Those two statements are worlds apart. I made the second choice, adding “…for one year”, and that colors my whole experience.
I constantly monitor personal and professional considerations when discerning the best time to return to Seattle – when my few belongings will be packed and shipped, my Milanese apartment will be vacated, and goodbyes will be said. The other day I recognized the push/pull of it. There are things here in Italy that pull me in to stay; there are things here that push me back. And Seattle – and the U.S. – have their own push/pull. All of it swirls and mixes and tumbles and stirs me deeply.
So, not having any solid answers, I’m making plans for Bergamo, Firenze, Savona, San Remo, Torino, Roma, Venezia, Sicilia and as much of Italy as I can lay my eyes on. And I intend to set foot in Germany, Spain, Greece, England, the Netherlands… and places I haven’t even conjured for myself yet. Hmm. Sounds like either a LOT of travel, or more than 6 months… or both.
by Maureen | Jan 9, 2010 | Cheese, Christmas & New Year's Eve, Discoveries, Featured Articles, Food!, Journal, Meals, Photos, Shopping & Markets
Have you ever wondered about the first ones to eat something new that they hadn’t encountered before? IS it edible? What PART is edible? Should it be eaten RAW or COOKED? What part do you DISCARD? What part is most DELICIOUS? How is it best PREPARED? What should it be eaten WITH?
Traveling to and cooking in a foreign country is much like being a “primitive man” asking all those questions about newly encountered food items. But at least when you walk into a grocery store or step up to a market stall, someone has done the preselection for you and you’re not out in the woods trying to discern edibility. If it’s in the store, SOME part of it must be edible.
For the last couple of months I’ve been seeing these very small, young, almost-flower-like artichoke heads in the street markets and grocery stores. Very beautiful, but what do they DO with them?! I had no idea, and passed them up, regretfully. I had eaten marinated artichokes scooped out of little jars. Had steamed softball-sized heads and eaten them, leaf-by-leaf dipping the ends in butter. And I’ve eaten that sinfully fat-laden, hot dip with artichoke hearts, cheese, mayo and who knows what else. But I’d never done much else with them or seen them offered other ways. Yes, I’m sure the recipes and methods are out there, but the ones I just mentioned seem to be the across-the-board standards for eating artichokes.
On the evening of New Year’s Day, I was out walking around the Duomo and decided to have dinner out. I picked one of the few restaurants that were open, perused the menu and decided I HAD to have “Insalata di Carciofi Crudi” – Salad of Raw Artichokes! I ordered a “Pizza di Quatro Formaggi” – a four cheese pizza – to go with the salad, but that was secondary in my mind.
What arrived at my table was a bowl with paper thin shavings of very young, tender artichokes, including about an inch of the stem. They had been drizzled with a “fruttato” – “fruity” – extra virgin olive oil and lemon juice, sprinkled with salt and freshly ground pepper and tossed together with some thinly sliced grana cheese. Wow! Delicious! Simple, fresh in the middle of winter and quite a surprise. NOW I knew what could be done with those flowery artichokes.
Tonight, at the grocery store, I didn’t pass them up. They sold some untrimmed with thorny tips and 8 inches of stem, and they sold trimmed, packaged groups of 4. I considered the prices and how much would be thrown away from either and bought those that had been trimmed.
Usually, I would “just wing it” and approximate what I had tasted on New Year’s Day, but I decided to look online to see if there were any guidelines to follow. In doing so I found a handy Italian cooking website: Buonissimo.org. (Sorry. It’s all in Italian.) The recipe I found was what I had surmised and described above.
I removed the outer, half dozen tougher leaves and trimmed both ends to freshen them up. Then I cut the flower heads in half.
Since I don’t have a mandolin slicer here, I used my best Shun Tomato Knife, sharp and serrated, and sliced the artichokes as thinly as I could. (I left the furry inner parts, figuring they hadn’t gotten prickly.) I put it all in a bowl with the grana padano cheese (a nutty, almost sweet, hard cheese similar to parmesan), abundant lemon juice and extra virgin olive oil. Shook a little sea salt and grated some fresh pepper then gave it a gentle tossing.
With my heaped serving of “Insalata di Carciofi Crudi”, I ate Norwegian, farm-raised salmon seasoned with Seattle’s Tom Douglas’ sweet/peppery Salmon Rub. The salad will become one of my new favorites. (If nothing else, it’s certainly good for the roughage!) But are the artichokian flowers available in the States?!
