May 25, 2010
Can you say that five times, fast?
Pronounced chic-ly, Scicli is not at all chic, though I suppose you could call it shabby chic. It’s got that vintage, distressed look—complete with a baroque voluptuousness, flakey paint, and mottled sandstone walls.
Go if you like out-of-the-way little gems.
It was a Moorish town a millennium ago, later a Norman one, and was rebuilt in the Baroque style after the 1693 quake. Then Time forgot little Scicli until it was declared a World Heritage Site in 2002. It is slowly waking up from a long torpid slumber.
It has its share of ogres, meant to keep foreigners and evil spirits at bay.
Hike up to the decaying Church of San Matteo if you dare. You’ll be amply rewarded with stunning views: a sapphire sea on your left and a town that looks like a stage set at your feet.
xxx
The best place in town for lunch is Pomodoro, owned by Enrico Gugliotto (pictured here) and his brother Giuseppe (in the kitchen). It’s about a five minute walk from the baroque heart of Scicli (Corso Garibaldi 46, closed Tuesday, 0932.931.444).
And check out the gorgeous Scicli cemetery if you’re into stone cherubs and angels. It’s just outside of town.
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Readers, can you help me? Will you consider voting for my Sicily photograph in the Islands poll? Here’s the link. The link will bring you to a photo I shot of a Sicilian woman in Capo Passero (in the extreme southeast corner of Sicily). You can vote by clicking on *My Favorite* underneath the photo. (I could win a photography course and you could win a camera!) GRAZIE MILLE! (To see thumbnails of all 22 photos in the competition, click this link.)
May 20, 2010
Shoes wear out fast in Sicily, and so do feet.
I buy every Dr. Scholl’s pain relief product on the market. I slather callus goop onto the soles of my feet. I wrap them in moleskin. I’m gellin’.
But I gladly suffer the pain. Because nothing can beat the sheer romance of old cobbles.
When your heels hit these medieval stones, they sing! (The stones that is, not so much the heels.)
I love the texture of cobbles under my toes, and the shine rubbed in by generations of hooves, wheels, and feet.
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Readers, can you help me? Will you consider voting for my Sicily photograph in the Islands poll? Here’s the link. The link will bring you to a photo I shot of a Sicilian woman in Capo Passero (in the extreme southeast corner of Sicily). You can vote by clicking on *My Favorite* underneath the photo. (I could win a photography course and you could win a camera!) GRAZIE MILLE! (To see thumbnails of all 22 photos in the competition, click this link.)
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May 17, 2010
Doing the bathroom twice was not fun.
In the aftermath of Round One, I was tempted to give up and flee Sicily for good.
 Results of Round One “You get no respect from your crew,” noted a friend. She persuaded a local bigwig to throw his weight around, Sicilian-style, as my proxy.
That did the trick.
Early one morning a new piastrellista, tile setter, showed up on my doorstep smelling of cologne and rubbing sleep from his eyes. He toiled away in a no-nonsense fashion, furiously attacking his predecessor’s work. Glass shattered kaleidoscopically.
“Io sistemo tutto,” he kept repeating. I systematize all. (Sistemare is one of the highest Italian virtues.)
To fuel his fury, I ran to the local bar for tiny cups of thick black coffee and sweet ricotta tarts.
Round Two produced an apple-green bathroom. The tiles are ceramic and plain—not the pricey designer ones of yore. But you know what? Good riddance to those fancy-pants glass tiles. I like the brighter cheap-o ones better.
 Results of Round Two I hate to trivialize Andre Gide’s words by using them in this mundane context, but I’ll do it anyway: “One does not discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time.”
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May 13, 2010
Of all the things I love about living in Sicily, at the top of my list are the venditori ambulenti, roving vendors.
Can you believe a produce market comes to me?
All I have to do is hang around the house in my sweats and wait for the vendor’s croaking call (Carrote! Asparagi!) to get a garden-fresh lunch. Sometimes, when I don’t appear in the street fast enough, he rings my buzzer to announce his arrival. I shuffle out in house slippers with the other Sicilian housewives.
The back of his truck overflows with floppy lettuces, cauliflower the size of your head, ripe tomatoes, wild artichokes, and just-plucked oranges—their green-leafed stems still attached as proof of freshness.
He never weighs anything. The total price is always €1.50, no matter what. Today I chose some fat fennel, wild strawberries, and a kilo of plump tomatoes. He smiled and tossed in two unexpected cucumbers “for the tomato salad.”
He shows up a few times a week, always chomping a toothpick. He flirts like crazy with all the housewives (Sicilians never outgrow this game). He shares his recipes, and I pretend to understand his rapid-fire Sicilian.
Then there’s the hawker with a megaphone who pulls up in a white van. He carries around a whole mini-market: tomato paste, biscotti, lentils, toilet paper, you name it. He saves me a trip down 100 steps to the nearest little Alis market.
I ask you: is this not a beautiful thing?
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Thanks everyone for your recent comments. A big CONGRATULATIONS to Christine Hickman for winning the random drawing on May 10 for Toni Lydecker’s Seafood alla Siciliana. Christine lives part-time in Perugia (Umbria), where she runs cooking classes. What a perfect fit for the book! Check out Christine’s website at sonomarcella.com.
May 9, 2010
Love is the crowning grace of humanity, the holiest right of the soul, the golden link that binds us to duty and truth…
Francesco Petrarch (Italian poet, 1304-1374)
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Buona Festa della Mamma!!!!!
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