In which Aurora’s godfather departs the desert sands for the mountain snows

8.2 Rosie and I drove up to Linate to collect David. His plane was supposed to arrive at 2.05, but I toldhim we’d never make it: it’s just under a 90 minute drive, and she doesn’t get out of school till 1. Even leaving directly from school he’d have a bit of a wait, and she has to have lunch. Fortunately, his plane was delayed just enough, and I was on task just enough, that when we arrived at 2.55 he had just moments before arrived from customs. Yay for timing!

The freeway coming home was pretty empty, so we made it back considerably faster than I thought we would, and were most of the way home by 4:30. (I had told Elise we would definitely be home by 6:30 and possibly 5:30, but to start dinner at 6 if we weren’t in evidence yet.) So we stopped at Vigoleno, our local castle (we wave to it as we pass every time we go to Salso), and had a short look around. After all, this is the Duchy of Parma and Piacenza, with 26 castles within a 40 km radius! Gotta see at least a few! So we had a nice march around and stretch and look at the scenery (everyone who comes to visit says, “WHAT a beautiful place you live in!” And they are right), then motored on home. We actually arrived home just before 5:30 (Vigoleno is only 15 minutes from here).

Aurora was very excited to have David come visit. The last time she saw him she was about 55 days old, so he didn’t make a big impression.  He always sends her money at Christmas, however, so she knows he is Bearer of Gifts. And gifts indeed: when we got home, he distributed all KINDS of largesse! Silver earrings for Elise, rainbow butterfly hair clips and jewelry for Rose, and a Samsung smartphone, stuffed dates, and a tin of fois gras for me, plus Chinese wish lanterns! Christmas in February was a very happy occasion. We’ll launch the lanterns from Vitale’s patio Tuesday night.

He lives in a camp in the desert working on the UAE electrical grid, so “home-cooked” is not a word that enters his vocabulary often. So I decided to do a full-on Italian country dinner.  Some local salume and fresh bread to start. Agnelotti in brodo for primo. Pork cutlets (very rare in the UAE as you might imagine!) and bietole (silver beet greens) for secondo, and chiacchere (Mardi Gras cookies) for dessert. (Thank you my beloved Cavallo Panificio for all the baked goods and pasta. They’re all easy to make, but so time consuming!) None of it complicated or elaborate, in its way an ordinary dinner, but very typical of this part of the country. We had a lovely evening chatting and he was so impressed with the dinner. The food where he works he describes as "strictly middle school cafeteria fare", so a home-cooked meal was already a treat, let alone all these traditional Emilia-Romagnese goodies. He declared it a very satisfactory first day in Italy.

9.2 The Form of the Salami

Today’s excursion was to see the castle at Fontanellato, which I had heard was very lovely and worthwhile, then a tour of the curing facility where Massimo Spigarolo makes what is said to be the finest culatello in the world, capped off by dinner at Il Cavallino Bianco, his restaurant (naturally, in order to TASTE the finest culatello in the world). His culatello is supposed to be a form of prosciutto in the same way that fois gras is a form of chopped chicken liver.

Fontanellato was preparing for its Carnevale parade, so we got a bit of silly string and shaving cream on us as the parade loaded up, then we headed off to the castle. (Aurora ended up getting a prime seat to the parade from one of the castle windows.) The tour was in Italian so I was having to do the simultaneous translation thing, which I hate and I’m bad at, but I managed to convey the most interesting bits to our audience. My two favorite bits were the hall of portraits of the Pallavicino counts who had held the castle since the 1200s, and the Stufetta di Diana e Atteone (probably where the Countess had her bathtub, as stufetta means “little heated room”). The portraits were hilarious, because, though they were DATED starting 1200, they had all been PAINTED in the late 1600s, and the artist, at a loss for how to paint people he’d never seen, just found some examples of earlier-period dress and painted the same guy in 25 different outfits with different amounts of beard. “My, the family resemblance is striking!” Yeah, it would be.

The Stufetta di Diana e Atteone gets its name from the frescoes telling the story of Diana and Acteon. For those of you just joining us, Ovid’s version is that Acteon is hunting in the woods, accidentally stumbles upon Diana bathing in a protected woodland pond, and instead of instantly falling to the ground, covering his eyes and moaning “I am not worthy,” he just stares. Well, she is a goddess, after all. But she’s not having any of it, and turns him into a stag, which is promptly brought down and killed by his own dogs. The castle’s version, however, has kind of a cool twist to it. Countess Paola had just lost her firstborn baby boy when the room was being decorated (it’s not clear if the decoration happened because the baby died, or the baby died and the already-planned decoration was reworked) and was apparently absolutely devastated. So instead of Acteon turning into the stag, a nympth that he is apparently chasing in the first 2 panels is turned into the stag and devoured, symbolizing how Paola was destroyed by her grief for the baby, having gotten a glimpse of his beauty and perfection for only a very little while. A baby wearing a coral necklace appears in the space between two of the later panels; the necklace is iconographic info that the wearer is dead. A mirror in the ceiling with the legend “respice finem” (look to the end) would remind the bathing countess that faith in the reward of heaven is the only way to deal with the tragedy. The fresco is in the style of Correggio, and was painted by Parmagiannino, who was Correggio’s student. The Latin around the bottom is a quote from Ovid, basically saying life is majorly unfair.

After the castle, we drove up to Polesine Parmense to have dinner at Il Cavallino Bianco. I had first heard about this place on a latenight BBC travel show about the Emilia-Romagna, and upon seeing on the map that it wasn’t that far from here, determined to find an occasion to have dinner there. David’s visit seemed to fit the bill. When I made the reservation, I asked if we could see the farm where the culatello is made, so we also got a reservation for a tour.

Polesine Parmense is in the middle of NOWHERE. Had to drive through farmers’ fields on what was certainly PAVED but I’m not convinced was actually PUBLIC road (thank you Anna the GPS, AGAIN). We arrived just at sunset, quite magnificent behind a small palazzo in the middle of a field, barely 100 feet from the Po River. Apparently the Po flooded about 10 years ago and the whole place was under 15 feet of water.  A true tragedy, as I’ll explain.

We arrived for our tour and were promptly escorted to the very cavern I had seen on the BBC show. The man explained a little about the process of curing the hams, how they are rotated through the cavern depending on age, and how the newest ones stay close to the window which the master culatello maker uses to control the temp and humidity in the cavern. There is no climate control down there, no instruments, just this one window and Massimo’s feel for what is the right amount of humidity. The weather outside determines how quickly a ham moves from AT the window to NEAR the window to AWAY FROM the window. The hams gradually mold over, and stay in the cellar for one to five years. The floor was also covered with grape leavings from their wine presses – the ferment gases make a difference too. Then he showed us the REALLY special, REALLY expensive culatelli, complete with their name tags – Armani, Principe Alberto di Monaco, Principe Carlo di Inghilterra, just to name a few. These culatelli are so intense that our princes won’t be able to pick theirs up for another year, as they are the black pig five-year kind. The black pigs are an ancient breed that was almost extinct; too fatty, take too long to mature, picky about what they eat. They make AMAZING culatelli. Massimo found the last few of the breed in Italy and started his own breeding program to be able to use them again. The expensive culatelli that they sold in the shop, which were NOT the black pig 5-year kind, were 90E per kilo. So you can imagine what the GOOD ones cost. They also had cheeses ageing in the cellar. Our guide said they didn’t make their own cheeses, but they needed different ones for different uses so they bought them fresh and aged them here. People who know can taste the difference between mountain cows, meadow cows that live in the really foggy areas, and meadow cows that don’t. So it’s necessary to have samples of all of these handy. (Aurora wanted to see the pigs, but our guide said the pigs are VERY stinky and live about 3 miles away. There were a few sheep out back, and they were stinky enough.) The year the Po flooded, the entire contents of the cave were ruined. We would find out at dinner just how sad this was.

We had nearly 40 minutes before our dinner reservation when the tour ended, so our guide suggested an aperitif while we waited. Presently there appeared a tray of parmesan, foccacia, and salami, and two glasses of fizzy red wine. I forgot to ask what the wine was. Need to do that.  I had a bite of the cheese (though I do not know from which geographical type of cow it came), yum, of the foccacia, yum, and then actually looked at the salami. I had planned to ignore it. I don’t like salami. I’ll eat it if it’s on offer, but it’s never my first choice.

Until now.

This stuff was arresting just to LOOK at – deep ruby red, beautifully marbled, and I could see that it wasn’t the dry, slightly leathery texture I associate with salami. I had a bite. Everyone else reached for a bite. And our collective eyes rolled up in our heads.

It was more the consistency of a perfectly rare steak than salami, and the flavor was rich and buttery and meaty and out of this world. We nearly came to blows over the last piece. The salami totally upstaged the also amazing bread and parmesan cheese. I retreated and had a sip of my red wine (which I also don’t generally care for all that much), and it was perfect with the salami. Must find out what it was.

When we headed over to the restaurant finally, we saw that we HAD to order the culatello platter. It didn’t include the black pig stuff, but several slices of one-year-old, two-year-old, and three-year-old culatello, the three-year-old with its pat of butter. Because buttering a piece of ham is the first thing we think of. And is amazing. We also ordered the cheese sampler, with one- and two-year-old mountain and meadow parmesans (they did taste slightly different, but they all looked exactly the same, so I lost track of which was which. Clearly, have to go back and get it right this time!), a goat cheese, and two wildly different gorgonzolas. By this time we really didn’t want entrees, so we girls got appetizers or soup and David got the Giuseppi Verde capon, which was indeed divine, but I couldn’t have eaten it all. We ordered crème brulee and chocolate mousse for dessert. Both yummy, but the crème brulee definitely won. And we got a lovely parting gift! They have handpainted plates with pictures to match what you had for dinner, so we got the Verdi capon plate.

There’s a salumeria attached to the restaurant (I know, a shocker), so we stopped on our way out and got 2 salamis to take home. One is for Elise to take back with her next Saturday; the other is so we can continue to indulge in what we have now dubbed crack salami for a little longer!

10.2  Carnevale in Pellegrino

We had thought about going to Busseto to see their Carnevale parade, but after seeing Fontanellato’s I think we’ve seen what we’re going to see. So we decided to stay local and go to the Pellegrino celebration of Carnevale. Aurora got to be one of the magician's assistants (sadly, I didn't realize this since I was out dancing with a friend and so got no pictures, sorry), and we ate lots of torta fritta and chiacchere (mardi gras cookies).

11.2 Snow and a hike

It was snowing just lightly when we got up this morning, roads still clear, so the girls got ready and we went to school. (The Ajroldi kids were still out of town so it was just us.) David and I then went on to Salso to do the shopping. We were hoping to go to Castell’Arquato in the afternoon, but the snow got worse and worse in Salso as we shopped, so that looked to be off. We headed home after less than an hour in Salso, but by 10 am it was already too late: the snow was so deep on the Strada Besozzola that I couldn’t get up the hill. We decided to go get chocolate at the Bar Sport and see if the snow would stop and the plow come out.

Thus it was that David was introduced to what the Italians think of when they say hot chocolate. The TV was on in the bar. I was watching it sorta while we talked, and there was Benedict XVI over and over on the screen. What’s he up to now, I thought. Then I read the crawl at the bottom. Blinked. Squinted. “Il Papa lascera’ il pontificato 28 feb”. Now, my Italian is pretty good, but this seemingly simple sentence did not make any sense to me. Finally I got up to go ask Fabio, the barkeep. “Um, I’m not sure, but does that TV really say ‘The Pope will abandon the Pontificate on 28 February’?” Why yes, yes it does. The story had broken about 10 minutes before I noticed it. David and I are fundamentally not in favor of this Pope, so we were compelled to get a glass of wine to toast his very happy retirement. First time in 600 years that a Pope has retired rather than die in harness.

By now it was noon. Girls get out of school at 1, but the snow was increasingly bad. I decided to go pick them up early and pray the plow had come. We popped them out of school (school was already announced to be closed for Tuesday) and headed for the hills, so to speak. No luck. Couldn’t get as far up the sharp grade at the bottom as I had 2 hours earlier. Fortunately it’s only a little over half a mile up. We would walk. As we were trying to decide where to leave the car, the plow came by, but he had to do the main roads first and couldn’t do the Strada yet. He was doing the main roads, not little side roads like our Strada. That’s low priority, which I understand. He did, however, plow me my own private parking space so I would be out of the road and away from the wake of the next plow to come through. And so we parked and headed out into the storm.

It was swirling snow with a constant breeze (not WIND so much as just nonstop air movement), so it was hard to see and it gets in your collar. None of us were truly dressed for it – coats were fine, but I had no hat or scarf, Aurora no gloves or scarf, Elise no gloves – and it got miserable in a hurry.Plus we’re carrying the groceries. The girls were miserable to say the least (and Elise doesn’t have boots). After a couple minutes I took all the groceries and David carried Aurora. We were little more than halfway up when Claudio came by (he has chains) and was able to take the girls and the groceries the rest of the way up. Praise the Lord. It was heavy enough going when it was just me. David had already carried Aurora a chunk of the way, but he was grateful to let her ride.

We ate crack salami and huddled around the fire the rest of the afternoon. Amazing how just 20 minutes of hard hiking in snow can chill you through, even though we were all sweating when we first came in.  David also taught us how to make “darned near instant blondies” with either amaretto flavoring or chocolate chips, using the cuisinart (about which I am bitter. I tried and tried to make it work and nothing.  He puts it together and whoosh! It hates me). And there was much rejoicing.

12.2 no school. retrieved the car. castell’arquato

Today started gray and horrible looking, but the clouds parted by about 10 and the sun came out full force. It wasn’t even THAT cold (about 4C). I went out with garbage at about noon and found the road not only clear but mostly dry, and so toddled to the bottom to collect my car, snoozing happily in its custom parking spot with no issues. I brought it back up, but couldn’t get all the way to the house, so had to camp in Francesco’s spot for the day.

Dave and I had hoped to go to Roncole Verdi today, since it’s a long school day for the girls, so we’d have till about 3pm to look around Verdi’s birthplace. We’re interested in opera and Verdi and the girls aren’t, so it seemed like a plan until school was cancelled. Rather than hear them complain about boring old Verdi, and since the roads were clear and the day pretty, we decided to take in one last castle, naturally, our favorite, Arquato. We didn’t take the mountain route over there – no telling what the road would be like, and we wouldn’t be able to see the vertical vineyards anyway in the snow, which is the main reason for going that way. So we went the flat way, and while there was considerable snow on the ground, the road was completely dry from end to end. It was warm enough in Arquato that the trees were all dripping, and periodically huge lumps of snow would just give up and come crashing to the ground.

We walked around the castle grounds, took some pictures of the hills, and then gathered up all the 50c pieces we could accumulate and went into the little church. We were able to keep the lights on in the 15^th C chapel long enough to see the frescoes for real this time, and get some good pictures. I hadn’t realized that one whole wall was nothing but very lovely saints being tortured to death in very lovely settings. Yeesh. A few more pictures and back down the hill to get some pastry at the pasticceria (it’s not worth driving all the way over there for pastry, but it sure is worth stopping if we’re already there!), and home. Elise made us curried chicken, roast potates, and braised spinach/arugula for dinner. I will miss her making dinner periodically. She’s a pretty good cook, and enjoys doing it. I hope she’ll keep it up in Del Mar.

13.2 

How convenient: there was a strike today until 10:30, and Dave’s train left at 9, so the girls would be able to come to the station with us to say goodbye. We headed down the hill into the classic Parma winter fog – there were times when I wasn’t sure we’d be able to go the 25km to Fidenza in under an hour, but we made it in plenty of time and saw him off. After groceries and gas we turned back toward Pellegrino. (Dave gave me 50E for a tank of gas. I filled up, and it came to 50.10E. Way to estimate the gas consumption!) In the valley the fog stayed intense, but as we came higher into the hills it disappeared into bright sun and we made it to school with five minutes to spare.

We've really enjoyed having David here, and he's invited us to come to the UAE sometime. It's an expensive flight, but cheap to stay, so maybe in two years we'll have saved up enough to go. Sounds like a lot of fun (though a VERY long flight, ugh).

We spent much of this afternoon straightening the house and doing laundry to make sure Elise has everything before she goes. Tomorrow is her last day of school. We leave for Milan Friday morning, and her plane is at 10 on Saturday. Trying not to be sad.