spring rites

NOW Jamsession, photo credit Illaria Costanzo

Spring is in: Orange ranunculus blooms. Asparagus bundles at the market. Morning sunshine and afternoon rain showers. Dance rehearsal with Sharon Estacio. Bike rides along the Arno. Mutant catfish jump from the river to catch spring sunlight. Almond milk gelato with Camille includes a short French lesson. 

Spring cleaning. Spring fever. Springy, spongey lemony chess pie with strawberry sauce. The hibernating pirate cat has come out of his den, prowling Via Marconi for a spring cuddle date. Catholic school children don their spring jackets and dodge nuns in the playground; I spy on them from our balcony when watering the mint and chives. 

Spring in your step. 

Printemps. Primavera, the first green. Never has there been a more suitable word for spring. 

I dance for the warmth, the first green. 

Spring rites have begun.

if you were a recipe?

Caterina de' Medici - François Clouet, 1555

If you were a recipe, what would you be?


I came across this question while reading a blog by Emiko Davies - a Japanese-Australian food photographer, cook, writer, artist and all around amazing woman who is married to a Tuscan sommelier. She is the perfect example of a neo-Florentine woman, the kind of expat who lives in this city.  


If you were a recipe, what would you be? So this simple question really struck me, especially since in the past year, I've become a bit obsessive about cooking; it's like therapy. I've been delving into cookbooks and cooking blogs, rediscovering old family recipes (like great-grandma Fales's rice pudding) and inventing my own, poaching eggs (thank you Julia Child), rolling out pasta, pickling, preserving... The one thing I do especially well is dessert. American desserts. Huguenot torte. Lemon meringue pie. Apple pie with a lattice top. I make something almost once a week, and usually give 3/4 of it away at dinners or to co-workers (because if not, Alberto and I wouldn't fit into our trousers). I think my therapeutic cooking helps me stay connected to the U.S.


And so I present my answer to this oh-so existential question: If I were a recipe, I'd be PUMPKIN PIE!


My favorite vegetable, that can go either sweet or salty, is highly adaptable. It's both classically American - almost always associated with Thanksgiving dinners - and was a favorite of Caterina de' Medici (1519-1589) (Florentine native and queen of France - an expat you could say). The smell of baking pumpkin pie brings me back to 132 Kiehners Road, two night before Thanksgiving, when my mother and I would put ourselves to the task of baking at least three pies for the upcoming feast. Strangely, when I eat pumpkin pie as a midnight snack (hey, it happens to the best of us), it always gives me intense, psychedelic night mares. Blame it on the nutmeg I guess. 
So here is the recipe from Pellegrino Artusi's 1891 cookbook - the bible of Italian cookery. 
Buon appetito!


Torta di Zucca Gialla (Butternut Pumpkin Pie)
- 1 kg. pumpkin or squash
- 100 g. peeled almonds, finely ground
- 100 g. raw sugar (brown sugar is good too)
- 30 g. butter
- 500 ml milk
- 3 small eggs, beaten 
- 2 tsp cinnamon
- pinch of salt

Remove the seeds and skin of the pumpkin and grate the pumpkin flesh into a large bowl. Drain the pumpkin to remove its liquid until it is reduced to just 300 grams. You can do this by wrapping it in a dish towel, as Artusi instructs, or over a colander, squeezing every now and then to help it along.

Cook the pumpkin in the milk for about 25-30 minutes or until it is soft. Drain off excess milk.

Pulverize the almonds (if they are not already ground finely) and sugar together in a food processor or – Artusi’s way – in a mortar and pestle. In a separate bowl, add this to the pumpkin, along with the butter, salt and cinnamon and combine. When the mixture has cooled enough, add the beaten eggs.

Pour the mixture into a greased and floured) cake tin so that the cake is no higher than an inch or two thick.

Bake in a preheated oven at 180°C for 45 minutes or until golden on top and set. For Renaissance flare, sprinkle with 1 tablespoon of rosewater. 

Eat with great satisfaction (and save some for midnight snack).

ten commandments

My grandmother painting at SAGA (Senior Adults for Great Achievement), Ambler, PA in the 1990s

When my grandmother, Mary Ione MacLaughlin, passed away in 2001 my family and I inherited an unending amount of artwork. Her artwork. Oil paintings, water colors, pencil drawings, pen and ink drawings, designs for ballet costumes and ballet sets from the 1930s, pastel drawings, sketches, sketchbooks and boxes full of scraps of paper, from magazines to pictures to quotations, all things that she found inspiring. Her home studio was always a bit of organized chaos, so it was a daunting task to sort through everything. As my father, mother, aunt and I tried to make some order out of a lifetime of artwork, we stumbled onto quite a few treasures. Maybe no one else would find them treasures, but since my grandmother was the first person who introduced me to the world of art, the first person to put a paintbrush in my hand, the first person to hand me a book of Monet paintings...I thought that everything she ever created was a treasure. I still do think that. I'm her biggest fan. So here is one of her "treasures"that I found shoved into one of her sketch books. Today, I carry a copy of this list in my own sketch book.

The Artist's Ten Commandments

I. You shall draw everything and everyday

II. You shall not wait for inspiration, for it comes not while you wait but while you work

III. You shall forget all you think you know and even more, all you have been taught

IV. You shall not adore your good drawings and promptly forget your bad ones

V. You shall not draw with exhibitions in mind nor to please any critic but yourself

VI. You shall trust none but your own eye and make your hand follow it

VII. You shall consider the mouse you draw as more important than the contents of all the museums in the world, for

VIII. you shall love the 10,000 things with all your heart and every blade of grass as yourself

IX. Let each drawing be your first, a celebration of the eye awakened

X. You shall not worry about "being of your time", for you are your time, and it is brief

Andrew Wyeth

Andrew (oil on canvas), L. MacLaughlin

"Painting is all about breaking the rules. Art is chance. It's like making love. Hell, you don't have a written book for sex; it's always spontaneous." 
- A. W.

Home is where...

I recently heard that a girl I grew up with back in Pennsylvania is making a film about our hometown. Actually, our home-county - Schuylkill County. I'm talking about "Skook" - a nickname that can be positive or negative, depending on how you wield it. This term can be used as a proper noun, i.e. a place name ("Born and raised in Skook") or a common noun ("Our lad's a real Skook, ain't he"); and don't forget the adjective form ("Guers Iced Tea is a real Skook drink"). From what I understand, Ashley plans to praise the place rather than criticize, which is definitely a good thing. The tourism industry needs any help it can get.

So the news comes to me at an interesting time, since I've recently been thinking a lot about my origins. Most successful young people who leave the Skook never look back. They shake the dust of "small town America" off their boots and move onward to bigger and better things. That was my plan when I left for college, and then eventually, for Italy. In high school, I looked down my nose at Skooks (the inhabitants, that is). It was their fault that there was no bookstore, art gallery, coffee shop or museum to even speak of. I hated that everything I deemed important - art, culture, creativity - seemed to play second fiddle to football and alcohol consumption. By now, I'm far removed from the dreary mountains, grey mining towns and flowing rivers of Yuengling beer; it took about 6 years of living on the outside, but I can finally see Schuylkill County in a new light. I can see sweet little mountain towns trying to stimulate outdoor tourism. I worked for the "mad" potter (an amazing woman) who offers summer art classes for kids. I listen to "Gleason's Drift", an area band that tours the east coast and is proud to sing about living in the Skook. I totally dig how last autumn, local brewers got together for a beer festival to celebrate and judge their handmade drafts.

I could never see the positive aspects of where I came from, I only ever saw the negative. Skook was the place I needed to escape from! It was the person that I didn't want to become. But I guess that no one truly appreciates where they come from until they're far removed from it, both physically and emotionally. Now as I survey the rolling hills outside of Florence, with silver olive trees and rows of Sangiovese grapes ordering the landscape, I know that I'm at home here. A Skook in Italy. It's who I am and rather than deny it, I'm learning to embrace it.  "Cripes, I could drink a Lord Chesty."

Check out Ashley Pishock's future film, "Skook: The Movie": 
http://republicanherald.com/news/schuylkill-haven-native-shoots-her-1st-feature-film-in-county-1.1269695

The Coal Region Dictionary - for those who dare venture into the Skook without a tour guide:
http://www.coalregion.com/Speak/speakA.htm

morning protest

Winter mornings lend to that really hazy, fuzzy feeling. The alarm sounds and you just snuggle in tighter, disappearing under the downy mountains of comforter. You rub your feet together and wait for the courage to emerge from hibernation. Winter. In a high-ceilinged, drafty house. Saturday morning are the worst at this time of year.

Now the first (and only) snow squalls of the year have blown through Florence, leaving a white film on roof tops and potted herbs - a film which disappears by noon in this city. During these winter months, Italians are in danger of getting a colpo d'aria (a hit of air). Strange illnesses such as this, whose translation makes no real sense to us Anglo-Saxons/Americans, seem to effect only those of Italian origin. I think I'm immune for now. Or at least until my citizenship comes through.

In the mean time, I'll spend the morning rolling around on the floor, risking torcicollo, in protest of winter and having to work at 9am on Saturday.
Link to video: (click me!)
BLUE ROOM IMPROV 1

Winnie the Pooh chakra

I'm sitting on the magical thinking (sleeping) couch. It's white. It floats like a cloud in the Blue Room. When you lay down/sit down to read, or think, or watch Fellini movies in lingua originale...try not to fall asleep. I dare you.

The magical thinking (sleeping) couch becomes ochre in candle light and blazing gold when the sun splits in around 7am. Yellow implies energy, I mean, it's the solar plexus chakra, so you think the warm color flow would do some good, right? It doesn't matter. The floating white cloud always wins out. I do my thinking here, as the name implies...until the cushions start to suck me in, drawing out every last bit of energy (good bye coffee break, good bye jumpstart morning yoga) and I drift away on the cloud...

"Did you ever stop to think, and forget to start again?" - Winnie the Pooh

I bet Winnie the Pooh just has one big chakra, and it's as yellow as his honey (oops, hunny). Wait...now, where was I??