Post Holidays

Bad Jess, no new blogs for a month! Hopefully I haven't lost my entire audience.

The holidays were super busy. I was very focussed on getting the house ready for our post Christmas company! It was really great having Laura, Liz, Mom and Dad here and now that the house is back in order, I miss them. There are lots of new photos going up on my Picasa web album from that trip.  

As usual I guess I need to go back in time and talk about all the holiday madness, but first a more current update.  Fabri and I are of course still working on little projects around the house.  Today I'm going bird feeder hunting.  Then I'll have to find an Italian bird book so I can ID the birds we attract.  Fabri is supposed to be figuring out how to hang a shelf in our shower wall and we're both looking for rugs and a couple of small pieces of furniture for the master bathroom.  Exciting stuff huh?  Someday we're going to go up to IKEA and buy a shelving system for our cantina (cellar) which we've already picked out.  

So the holidays in Italy are really all about eating.  I guess most holidays around the world are like that, but the Italians bring it to another level.  Southern Italians begin with a Christmas Eve dinner of 7 fishes.  I think we made it up to 7 seafoods by eating: mussels, shrimp, clams, squid, octopus, salmon, and a fish that starts with a "b" and there were probably anchovies hidden in there as well.  I made Maryland style steamed shrimp with Old Bay as an appetizer and people loved it.  That was perfect because just about everyone got a can of Old Bay from Fabri and I in their Christmas goody bags.  While we were in MD for Thanksgiving Fabri and I bought a bunch of small gifts to go in reusable shopping bags to give to each family.  

Now after dinner Fabri usually tries to go to Midnight Mass, but dinner lasted too long and we didn't make it.  Christmas morning Fabri had to work (he worked pretty much everyday during the holidays), so we woke up at 7:30 or so and opened presents and stockings.  Then the poor thing had to go to work and I made chocolate chip cookies.  The weather was pretty bad.  It was snowing and foggy and we met at his parents' country house in Ruffia for Christmas lunch.  I brought the cookies and presents for everyone.  We had another huge lunch and afterwards had Gaetano, Detta, Giovanna, Paolo & Francesca back to our place to play games.  We played pictionary and Fabri & I taught everyone the card game 99 which was fun.  

In Italy the 26th is also a holiday, San Stefano.  That morning the snow was coming down very hard and Fabri and I assumed no one would make it to Ruffia for lunch and that he would only have to go to work if there was an emergency.  But the snow let up and Fabri was called into the hospice, so I headed to Ruffia or lunch.  The roads in Saluzzo were pretty bad, but once I got outside of the city, the roads were fine.  In the country, people just jump on their tractors and clear the snow themselves!  Fabri was stuck at the hospice for a while, so we had to start lunch without him.  By that time we were all sick of stuffing ourselves and happy that the food-fest was ending for a few days.  

The next day Laura and Liz arrived!  Fabri was still working and I went up to Turin to pick them up from the central bus station.  They had not had a relaxing trip and were very tired.  We did some sight seeing and a lot more eating and drinking as more of Fabri's extended family arrived for the January 3 wedding dinner.  I will write about that in the next post.  

My parents arrived on the 31st from Dublin.  They were only in our house for a couple of hours when we had to leave to go to the NYE party at the Ruffia house.  There were something like 40 people in attendance for this food-fest and it was delicious.  Usually it is mostly southern style Italian food, but Maria Pia's friends helped with this meal, so there were a lot of Piemontese dishes as well.  We were stuffed afterwards and tired.  Unfortunately the weather was bad and it was icy and foggy, so we were not able to meet up with Fabri's friends after dinner.  That might have been best though because I heard some mixed reviews about their party and they were probably all incoherently drunk by that point.

January first was another holiday lunch.  Can you even imagine eating all of these several course high carb meals day after day?  No wonder the idea of making and eating pasta now is so unappealing.  Just recapping all of these food-fests is making me feel fat & bloated.  

Fabri and I are "dieting" now.  I put it in quotes because we aren't counting calories and aren't giving up anything, we're just eating healthier and eating less.  I'm making lots of whole grains and vegetables.  We've been eating vegetarian and even vegan dinners!  Fabri loves it all which was a little surprising to me.  I made grilled vegetables (eggplant, zucchini, and peppers), couscous with eggplant and raddichio and stirfried broccoli and mushrooms over brown rice.  Tonight we're going out for a pizza with another couple though.  I am not excited about that because I was trying to go a whole week with out eating pizza.  But that's the official date of Italy and Fabri did not convince the others to come to our house and try my cooking.  Oh, and we're not drinking beer.  Just very occasionally.  We have not given up wine or Martini though...