GRACE’S HALLOWEEN MENU Grace (who was born in Australia and has lived here for 30 years) and Cinzia had returned only the day before from a trip to Dublin, therefore, the Irish twist to this delicious menu. Proseco and wines Antipasto: Gaetana’s Dip – this was a layered dip with cream cheese, tomatoes, olives and other wonderful things. Some guests had brought three fresh sausages to spread on bread or crackers. One was plain, one was liver and one was very spicy. I tried the first two and they were wonderful. Primi: Pumpkin Soup with Fresh Herbed Scones (and Irish butter) Secondi: Guinness Stew with Boiled Potatoes (and Irish butter) Dolce: Irish Tea Brack – which is more of a bread than a cake and is made with tea, currents and raisins. This was also incredible the next morning toasted with butter or marscapone cheese. Chocolate Tart made by one of the guests and various candies. Caffe and British Tea ARLENE’S DINNER FOR SIX Lasagna is one of Larry’s favorite meals. When in Bologna the week before we had the most delicious Verde Lasagna Bolognese. They make their lasagna different from any I’ve ever had. First, there is just a small amount of tomato, bechamel sauce (besciamella in Italian), lots of ground meat, Parmesan cheese, and as many layers as you can get in the dish of very thin fresh pasta sheets. Never is there any garlic, ricotta or mozarella cheese found in this dish. Of course, there are as many recipes for the bolognese sauce as there are cooks but I used Marcella Hazan’s recipe that cooks a total of six hours. Okay I got impatient at five hours and figured the sauce was not going to benefit from another hour of cooking. I may have been wrong (but I don’t think so) because I made a test dish for our dinner that night and it was a bit bland. I needed to do an Ina Garten on it and ramp the flavor up a bit. So after reviewing several other recipes I decided to add some tomato paste and red wine and cook it down some more – and that worked. So in the future I will...

(See menu under Food blog) A couple weeks ago we had our first party which was an opportunity to thank some of our new friends who have gone out of their way to be helpful to us. Attendees were: Italian angel Cinzia M. (in case you’ve forgotten she handles public relations for the Comune of Ascoli Piceno, and it appears for us) and Roberta (who also works in her office); Grace (a ESL teacher) and her partner, Maurizo (who is an ESL teacher by day and an Alto singer, actor and dancer by night); Italian angel Cinzia V. (our agent immobilare and geometra); Mario (our unofficial food critic who also works in the comune office) and his wife Giovanna (a teacher), Giampaolo (Mario’s brother and our authority on all things Ascolani); David and his mother Antonella (who are our upstairs neighbors, David is a geometra); Avril (doctor of holistic medicine as well as the wife of Mike, the British artist) and her good friend from London, Allison (a physical therapist who has also been active on our equivalent of the school board). Everyone seemed to enjoy each other’s company and it we shall consider it a success for our first effort. We feel so very fortunate to have such an incredible and varied group of acquaintances that are quickly becoming our friends. I told Cinzia M. that if she ever doubted what her kindness to us had accomplished, well look around. We would not know any of the people at this party or be in this wonderful apartment if she had not befriended us. Of course we will never be able to pay them back for their generosity because they all brought plants, flowers, gifts for our home and spirits of all kinds including a homemade coffee liquor and a traditional dessert wine made form an ancient recipe. Since we have been in this apartment we have been gifted over 20 bottles of wine – who wouldn’t like friends like that! Thankfully, our social life is ramping up as winter approaches. We were invited to Grace and Maurizo’s annual Halloween dinner. (See Food blog for menu.) Cinzia M. offered to pick us up and take us home, which was...

The other day, we joined a guided, three hour walking tour of Ascoli. At the outset, the guide asked, “How many tourists are in the group?” Appropriately, neither Arlene nor I raised our hands. It was one of those little reminders we fortunately get that we actually now belong here – we aren’t visitors! But being stranieri, resident foreigners, in a land different than where you have spent your life up to now is quite a new experience for us. It has been a little over four months since we first stepped onto the ground in Ascoli. There has been the inevitable, readjusting to do – in particular, overcoming the challenge of attempting to communicate in a language other than our own. From the minimal amount of Italian we acquired on previous visits to Italy, augmented by Rosetta Stone, we can, sort of, get by – that is until we encounter the local dialect. Then all bets are off – for now. Progress with communication seems slow at times but we are making some progress, thanks largely to the very tolerant Italians. Being ‘off the beaten track’ means there has been little necessity to use or acquire English by many of the Ascolani. As a result, most Italians are grateful for our still inadequate attempts to speak Italian. We sense some occasional amusement at our feeble attempts that we have generally found to be a source of mutual enjoyment. Thankfully, this has been a shared amusement and not condescension. Just one more element in the generally socially positive and open attitudes we experience in Italy. When it comes to learning Italian, first, the ear needs to get retuned to new pronunciation pitch sounds and cadences. For some reason, understanding Italian doesn’t seem to work well if you are expecting it to sound like English. The vowels are all different sounding and then there is that staccato, r-r-r-rolled “R.” Each day seems to add a couple of new words and retunes the ear to the point of recognizing, ‘so that is what they are actually saying!’ And the Italian proclivity to gesticulate does wonders. Reading sign and body language turns out to be an excellent augment to an inadequate Italian...