“Buono come il pane” (“as good as bread”) is how the Italians describe a good-hearted, generous person. For the Greeks, bread was “the food of the gods”, for the Anglo-Saxons, “the staff of life”. “Il pane e’ una cosa sacra”, Peppa told me the other day as she sliced crosses across the tops of the two loaves she’d just formed, holding them almost tenderly in her hands…
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I finally have my matera – or the traditional Umbrian bread cupboard. Many years ago, our farm neighbors, Peppe and Mandina, had decided to chop up Mandina’s old and well-used matera for firewood. The doors were coming off the hinges and were cracked. They would not have been able to afford restoration, nor were they in any way attached to their matera. They were suprised when I told them I would love to have it and they were happy to give it to me. Mu husband Pino and I took it to a carpenter who also restored wood furniture. When we went back for it, he told us the matera had been beyond restoration and so he had chopped it up to fuel his woodstove…
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Perugia is not just proud of its chocolate, Etruscan artifacts and the Umbria Jazz festival: this provincial capital of Umbria also boasts not just one but three patron saints! Legend tells us that one of them, San Costanzo, first bishop, was buried outside of the city’s Roman walls after his decapitation in the 3rd century. Celebrations start the night before his feast day, January 29, with the luminaria, the candlelit procession to the Church of San Costanzo, built on the site of his martyrdom.
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Our beloved San Francesco di Assisi might be revered as the patron saint of animals in other countries but certainly not here in Italy: Sant’Antonio Abate, 4th-century hermit saint who lived in the Egyptian desert with just a piglet for a companion, is the protector of Italy’s animals. On his feast day, January 17th, animal-lovers gather at a designated church – cats in arms, dogs on leashes, turtles in boxes, canaries in cages, sheep harnessed, horses bridled – to have their animals blessed…
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Onions and salt to predict the weather in the New Year? Over our years on the land, I’ve learned how farm women can take off il malocchio, how St. Anthony’s image in a stall will keep the animals healthy, how a cross made of woven reeds can protect the crops in the field and that you never shake out a tablecloth nor throw out the crumbs swept off the floor after the Ave Maria (ie, after 6 pm) – and now I’ve learned how to predict the coming year’s weather with onions and salt.
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Our final tour together, the Rural Life Revisited tour, might have been the highlight of the Italy stay of this San Diego family. Chiarina won over little Van when she made us bruschetta with the olio novello. Kathleen and Jon enjoyed tasting the family’s wine. When farm friend Gentile asked Aeriel to stay and live with her, Aeriel asked her mother, Kathleen, if she could say “SI”…
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The Chapel dedicated to St. Martin and frescoed by Simone Martini in the 14th-century is certainly one of the masterpieces in our Basilica di San Francesco. St. Martin of Tours, 4th-century saint, is pictured as he gives his cloak to a freezing beggar outside the walls of Amien. According to legend, the beggar will reveal himself as Christ. The association is there: St. Martin, the bringer of warmth….
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Yesteday on my Rural LIfe Revisited tour, we tasted Peppa’s mosto (grape juice on its way to becoming wine). Sipping Peppa’s mosto brought back fond memories of our first (and last!) vendemmia (grape harvest) in 1975, the year we moved to the land here in Umbria.
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Yesterday when I visited Peppa, she was sitting on a bench outside of chicken coop, chopping walnuts open with a hammer. “Buonissime!”, she said happily as she munched the nutmeats. Her walnuts are tasty this year and will be perfect in the pasta dolce she’ll make for November 1st, All Saints’ Day and November 2nd, All Souls’ Day, two important feast days here in Italy. Here in Umbria, at the end of October the farmwomen start chopping the walnuts they have gathered in preparation for the traditional early November Umbrian sweet, la pasta dolce….
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It will soon be time to gather the wildflowers, weeds, grasses and leaves for the wondrous rural concoction, l’acqua di San Giovanni. After all, no morning wash is more glorious than that of Umbria’s rural people in the early morning of June 24th. On June 23rd at sunset, vigil of the Festa di San Giovanni Battista, the farmwomen head out into the fields with baskets or bags to gather the cento erbe (literally,”one hundred greens or plants”, though flowers as well as plants are picked). The flowers and plants will then be soaked all night in a basin – outdoors. The flower-filled basins of water must never enter the home.
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