Seafood in Tuscany Noci d’Oro

Dear Art Lover,

     I have been a workaholic for most of my life.  The instability I gained after my divorce in 2011 had me feeling that I needed to work even harder just to survive out of my own again.  However, for a variety of reasons, it took me five years before I could find a place to call home and feel somewhat safe that I might not lose this one.  With multiple moves (including a temporary one to Croatia and my big one to Italy from the US), my work habits have taken a beating.

     I have been in my new home for just over a year now and judge harshly what I accomplished art-wise in 2016.  Logically, it was not so bad.  I did two large-ish sculptures [one stone, one bronze], finished a few paintings, started several others, and even sold some work from my online efforts.  I have always believed that when the actions do not match the words, the actions show the true desires.  I have not yet decided if I am just out of practice now or if I am truly seeking to change something in my life so that maybe I will be lucky in love and find a peace and balance that elude me more than bring me joy.

   So, I have tried to take an interest in learning to cook.  But the truth is that I do not want to – really.  Like car mechanics, I really wish that I already knew how to do those things, but I do not want to take the time to learn them!  [This is not unlike my desire for understanding and speaking Italian, sadly!]

     So when my landlord hosted a dinner party the other night at his rental house next to the one I rent from him, and hired my neighbor Riccardo, his other tenant and a cook at a nearby restaurant, to prepare all of the food, I asked Riccardo if I could tag along when he went shopping for this seafood dinner.  The one thing I hear most often and consistently from those who love to cook is that buying the right ingredients (in the right condition) is more than half the skill.

 

Frozen octopus

     Being in the hills of Tuscany and not close enough to the sea to buy fresh, fresh seafood, Riccardo drove us to a market that specializes in seafood and most of it is immediately frozen after caught.  I told him that I heard that if something smells fishy, it is already not fresh.  He said the better test often is to look at the eyes.  If they are clear, the fish is only recently dead.  Cloudy eyes are a sign of the longer-dead and to be avoided for purchasing. Just in case you were curious.  I am not sure how one would judge cut seafood.

     The store is very clean and contained a huge variety of dead and often shrink-wrapped sea life.  Riccardo bought octopus, a variety of shrimp, clams, squid, and several varieties of whole fish.  One I thought must have been a bottom-feeder by the flatness of his underside; his top a triangular form.  Riccardo confirmed this, but alas, I cannot remember the name of the fish in Italian to translate it to English.  [See how interested I am in learning? Oy yoy] 

     We brought it all home after shopping at a regular grocery store for the extras needed for the dinner of 15 people.  Riccardo ended up sitting the stuff outside with water raining down over it for fear the food would not thaw in time.  His seafood soup required about two hours of cooking, after he cut and cleaned all of the goodies.  While he was working, our landlord and his cousin came by in their Misericordia uniforms.  They had ambulance duty that day.  The young one, Silvio, is paid to work there each day, but most of the men here volunteer for service, usually one day every two weeks, but some do more.  Anyway, the guys dropped by in the afternoon to check on anything that needed to be done and after a 12-hour day for Silvio, they showed up for dinner, still in uniform (much to my delight!).  

This would have freaked me out completely when I was a child!

These guys are two of the reasons I have ridden in an ambulance here!

One way to thaw frozen seafood

      I took off in the afternoon to my yoga therapy class and was charmed to see some freshly washed stuffed animals on a line outside of a window in my little village.   

     And shortly after yoga class started, one of the ladies passed me as we walked around the room, loosening up.  As she did, she put four of these “noci d’oro” (golden nuts) in my hand.  She explained that this is a custom to share with friends what I believe are gold-wrapped almonds to celebrate her and her husband’s 50^th wedding anniversary!  Everyone in our yoga class got a small handful of these.  Fifty years of married life!  Imagine.  In the car after class all of these older married Italian ladies (I am the youngest in the class by about two decades maybe) agreed that it is not easy, even for their husbands. 

Noci d'oro to celebrate a 50th wedding anniversary in Italy

     Such bittersweet celebrations, though, especially because one of the ladies in the car just lost her beloved husband.  While we like to be happy for others, no doubt these events remind us of beautiful things we may never experience.  He was a man much loved in this community and I was honored when I was asked by his granddaughter if I had a photo of this man for the funeral service (and I did!).  Like many experiences in my adopted country, the funeral, my second to attend in Italy, was a surreal experience.  But, I digress, as I do.  Oh, I never opened my noci d’oro.  Instead, I handed them out to the married couples who attended the seafood dinner, as a sort of good luck charm.

Octopus being chopped up for seafood soup: Toscana, Italia

Candied lemons from garden; spinach, ham, and tomato pie

And the seafood soup gets started - 2 hours roughly

Mussells for spaghetti, on the left; other soup ingredients cut.

No small feat:  Cooking for 15 people!

I admitted to Riccardo that this looked like Klingon food to me.

     In the end, I returned too late to see much of the cooking while I got myself cleaned up and went over to help set the table and later wash dishes; we cleaned up the rest the next afternoon.  However, before dinner, a couple of the guests/our friends came over to see the progress of my mural, a fake window with scene that might exist if there was a real window there. I do not work on this often since I have other projects that may help me pay the rent, and the mural became much more involved than I envisioned in that it is a specific landscape. As you may see here, each local Italian who views it starts to point out various locations of meaning to him. This is fun, and seriously, I cannot wait to finish this mural and then have an Open House!  [see image below]

     Happy 50^th birthday to my little brother Steve!  Life is pretty amazing and I am glad that you are creating yours to be what you want it to be, including being a great father to a lovely and smart daughter.

     If you like, please have a look at some of my sculpture online here:

http://www.borsheimarts.com/sculpture.htm

Peace and thank you for following this journey with me,

Kelly

P.S.  Subscribe to the art newsletter here (it is FREE):  http://www.borsheimarts.com/contact.htm

The mural work-in-progress of the local landscape-Tuscany, Italy

Sister and Brother enjoying the CinqueTerre, Italy