February 12, 2011
I found this menu outside a pub in Palazzolo Acreide in Sicily. I would not grace Pub dal Maestro with my presence even if my favorite chow were carne di cavallo (horse meat) and I were dog-hungry.
Maybe Italy’s emperor and his Italian TV empire relegate women to a “decorative role” in life, but that does NOT give some pub owner in the wilds of Sicily the right to exploit women to sell his horse and wurstel. Or does it?
Is this dewy-eyed nymphet making the cuckold sign? I hate to sound like a sourpuss, but why would she do that?
My Italian sisters are finally beginning to speak out. There’s going to be a nationwide protest by women tomorrow, February 13. You go, girls!
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UPDATE: The main protest in Rome’s Piazza del Popolo was jammed with about 100,000 women. Click here for story.
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December 11, 2010
Fifty cents. What does it get you? Not much of anything in the US these days, and certainly nothing beautiful.
But here, in Sicily, look what 50 cents will buy:
 Canestrino (basket) with sweet ricotta, garnished with almond brittle and candied lemon peel
 Sfogliatina (puff pastry) with hazelnut cream and pistachio nuts  Bigne (cream puff) with sweet cream and cantalope slice With their opulent use of ornamentation and chiaroscuro, Sicilian pastry chefs are small-scale baroque architects.
 Cannolo with sweet ricotta cream and pistachio nuts  Bigne (cream puff) with chocolate cream The little pastries are less than a quarter the size of a Starbucks muffin. Why does a single one, then, fill me up, when a Starbucks muffin leaves me hungry for more?
I think it has something to do with beauty.
Anche l’occhio vuole la sua parte, say Italians, the eye also demands its share. In other words, what we eat doesn’t just have to please the belly; it has to satisfy the eye.
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Congratulations to Lynn in Florida who has won Palmento: A Sicilian Wine Odyssey in the random drawing. More book giveaways to come, so stay tuned!
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September 3, 2010
Yes, Sicily has changed me. I hang out my wash, speak in pantomime, keep odd Sicilian hours, wear D&G spectacles, tolerate absurdity. And knock back raw milk.
Not quite straight from a cow, but almost. You situate your empty bottle just so under a teat-nozzle, deposit your cash (80 cents a liter), squeeze START, and out spurts a stream of pearly-whiteness. And this cow doesn’t kick!
 "Just-milked (appena munto) Ragusan milk" I glug the fat sweet stuff right from the bottle; it’s half gone by the time I get home.
Could this be dangerous? Am I really “playing Russian roulette with my health” as John Sheehan, director of dairy-food safety at the FDA claims? Was there a good reason for Pasteur’s discovery?
When I Googled “raw milk” a thousand things came up. I was surprised to find that only 6 US states allow it, that there’s a raging debate in the US, and a raw-milk campaign. “Why is it that in America it’s easier to buy drugs, guns, and political favors than it is to buy a gallon of raw milk?” asks one site.
“Americans are afraid of their own shadows,” someone in Italy said to me recently. Is he right?
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July 12, 2010
The street sweepers here wear suits bright as orange rind and dance with twig brooms.
I see them in the early morning as I stumble across the piazza in the direction of a latte macchiato. They clear the streets of bougainvillea petals and the debris of summer weddings: hearts of confetti, bottles of Asti, handfuls of rice.
And every morning I pray, “Please Signor Sweeper, hold tight! Hold fast to those twigs. Don’t go all plasticky on me.”
I want to weep when I see the changes sweeping Sicily, her Americanization: the new shopping malls plunked down among the olives, the SUVs, the McDonald’s in Upper Ragusa (though grazie a Dio the one in nearby Modica went belly-up).
So I savor the twigs. Because someday soon they’ll disappear, never to return.
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March 17, 2010
Sicily is an old wall, pitted and crumby as stale cake.
Burning with Pompeian colors.
Glowing with graffiti.
Wrinkled as an ancient face.
Yellowed as old newsprint.
Fresh-plastered walls don’t have half the charm.
UNESCO money has poured into Southeast Sicily’s eight World Heritage towns. Let’s hope restorers don’t get too zealous.
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All photos and text on BaroqueSicily are Copyright of Jann Huizenga ©2009-2015, unless otherwise noted. Material may not be copied or re-published without written permission. All rights reserved.
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