{"id":1051,"date":"2017-01-13T09:53:57","date_gmt":"2017-01-13T13:53:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pisarro.org\/aboutnick\/?p=1051"},"modified":"2017-01-13T09:53:57","modified_gmt":"2017-01-13T13:53:57","slug":"sicily-day-8-november-24-2016","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pisarro.org\/aboutnick\/?p=1051","title":{"rendered":"Sicily, Day 8 – November 24, 2016"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today \u00a0was Thanksgiving Day back home.\u00a0After our breakfast buffet, our bus took us to\u00a0to\u00a0Sicily’s west coast, where we stopped to explore the ancient Greek site of Segesta, the location\u00a0of\u00a0a magnificent Doric temple and a hilltop theater. We enjoyed a light breeze as we hiked.\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

This was followed by a visit to the home \u00a0of Maria Grammatica, Sicily’s most famous pastry chef. \u00a0Because Maria’s mother could not care for her when her husband passed on in the early 1950’s, Maria\u00a0was sent to live at an orphanage that was run by nuns. The sisters supported themselves\u00a0by baking, and that is how Maria learned their baking secrets.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>At Maria’s home, the buffet table before us was unbelievable. It contained platters\u00a0filled with fresh ricotta, eggplant alla parmigiana, eggplant caponata, caprese salad, roasted potatoes, mushrooms, zucchini, a vegetable couscous, arancini stuffed with either prosciutto and cheese or \u00a0with meat and veggies, olives both green and cured, stuffed peppers, sun dried tomatoes, bruschetta, cauliflower fritters, a vegetable frittata, \u00a0and a \u00a0platter of cheeses and cold cuts. This was quite a Thanksgiving meal! My ancestors would never have left Sicily if such a bountiful feast\u00a0had been available to them!<\/p>\n

After the feast, I picked up a copy of Maria’s biography\/cookbook. I came to a recipe called\u00a0Biscotti al Fico, fig biscuits. It begins, “Fig-filed biscuits like these are made all over Sicily at Christmas-time, but they are known by different names, such as cudderedde, nucatoli, and bucellatini.” Nucatoli! \u00a0My name! My cookie! There it was! With great excitement, I showed the page to Nick. \u00a0I ran to Maria and explained (in Italian; she speaks no English) \u00a0that my name was Nucatola, like the nucatoli cookies. I ran to the others in our group to share my excitement. My wish had been fulfilled!<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Next came a baking lesson.\u00a0I was the first volunteer. Maria made her own almond paste in an enormous\u00a0machine. We made two kinds of cookies. The first was \u00a0made of \u00a0almond paste rolled in sugar, called “Nuns’ Tits.” The recipe is not in Maria’s\u00a0\u00a0book.\u00a0\u00a0The second, very similar, is called “Belli e Brutti”meaning Beautiful\u00a0and Ugly. I do have that recipe. After that, we made cannoli with fresh ricotta, \u00a0decorated with homemade candied orange peel. Although we had just consumed an enormous meal, we\u00a0had to taste both cookies and the cannoli. They were heavenly!<\/p>\n

Soon it\u00a0was time to leave Maria’s house for the \u00a0bus ride to the town of Erice. We noticed that the light breeze was now\u00a0a fairly strong wind. Upon departing the bus, the wind was even stronger, at least 40 mph with higher gusts. \u00a0Still, we knew that \u00a0on our tour, we would be out in all kinds of weather.\"\"\u00a0Several of us braved the wind and the uphill climb, deciding to hike \u00a0to the summit, where the Castello di Venere<\/em> stood.\u00a0The castle\u00a0was built by the Normans in the 12th century over a Temple of Venus built by the ancient Elymians. \u00a0We pulled each other the final few steps to the castle, feeling a sense of accomplishment because we had\u00a0achieved our goal, only to\u00a0\u00a0discover that the castle\u00a0was locked! We\u00a0made our way through the town and found Maria’s \u00a0bakery shop among the few stores\u00a0that were open because of the lack of tourists. We\u00a0reached our bus, and off we went to Trapani.\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I would describe Trapani as a “designer” \u00a0beach resort town. It was filled with a\u00a0juxtaposition of ancient churches and very contemporary shops and restaurants.\u00a0We learned that our hotel was once a convent. We decide to explore the town.\u00a0We ran into two other couples from our group, Barbara and Bob from California, and Carol and \u00a0Wendell \u00a0from Canada. All of us decided to search for gelato, but we discovered that \u00a0only one restaurant had seating for the six of us. \u00a0Although a few hours earlier we had eaten enough to feed a village, Nick and I\u00a0shared a smoked fish platter and Prosecco.<\/p>\n

Nick said there was a dramatic storm\u00a0\u00a0during the night with lots of lightning and thunder. I heard nothing. We took more than 13,000 steps and climbed the equivalent of 111 flights of stairs that day!<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today \u00a0was Thanksgiving Day back home.\u00a0After our breakfast buffet, our bus took us to\u00a0to\u00a0Sicily’s west coast, where we stopped to explore the ancient Greek site of Segesta, the location\u00a0of\u00a0a magnificent Doric temple and a hilltop theater. We enjoyed a light breeze as we hiked.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1051","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sicily-2016"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pisarro.org\/aboutnick\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1051","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pisarro.org\/aboutnick\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pisarro.org\/aboutnick\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pisarro.org\/aboutnick\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pisarro.org\/aboutnick\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1051"}],"version-history":[{"count":23,"href":"https:\/\/pisarro.org\/aboutnick\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1051\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1069,"href":"https:\/\/pisarro.org\/aboutnick\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1051\/revisions\/1069"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pisarro.org\/aboutnick\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1051"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pisarro.org\/aboutnick\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1051"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pisarro.org\/aboutnick\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1051"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}