November 30, 2011
I don’t know about your Big Dream, but mine was born in a flash when I laid eyes on Europe as a teen. I gotta move here, I thought.
A decade or two passed. There was always some excuse: too far, too expensive, too late, too early, too impractical, too scary, too risky, too crazy. Too, too, too. There was marriage along the way, and it was too hard to convince my husband. The dream remained nothing more than that. A fantasy moldering in a dark corner of my mind. Another decade passed: 9-11, my mother’s death, more gray hair.
You try hard to push it away. To pretend a dream is just not that important.
Then came the day “when the risk to remain tight in the bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.” (Anais Nin)
But it was a slow flowering; there were long delays and growing pains. That frequent feeling of What in hell’s name am I doing? What don’t I just go back to where I belong?
I was looking through photos the other day and found this. It caused a small feeling of horror.
My kitchen 2009-2010:
But I’ve learned: it is so worth letting yourself bloom.
There will be tears, fears, the gnashing of teeth. That’s inevitable.
Push through it and grow.
What a gift to yourself.
What are you waiting for?
My kitchen 2011
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May 29, 2010
I’ve cooked up the idea of installing in my kitchen a tile baseboard (called battiscopa, literally hit-broom) with a floral design. It’s going to be more than twice as high as a normal Sicilian baseboard.
When I explain my brilliant idea to the project manager, he knits his shaggy eyebrows into a scowl and gives his head a sad shake.
“No, Gianna.”
I get a whiff of his strong aftershave.
“Perché no?” Why not?
He shoots me a look you might give a very slow learner.
“Non si fa in Sicilia.” It’s not done in Sicily.
Oh.
I search for the right words. I tell him the ceiling is very high “e a me piace i fiori.” And to me pleases the flowers.
“Non si fa,” he repeats with steely authority. It’s simply not done.
Does he think one non-traditional battiscopa will throw the whole island out of whack?
This isn’t the first time I’ve run smack into the Wall of Tradition. Sicily is a culture that values the Old Way, the Way of Granny.
I adore this about the island, really I do. In fact, I’m restoring my house in the Way of Granny. Mostly. I’m preserving and enhancing whatever is old. The floor tiles I’ve chosen for the kitchen are traditional Sicilian ones made in Palermo. The floral tiles are also an old Sicilian motif.
But I just want to tweak things a bit here and there, add my own little spin.
In the end, I defy the project manager. The new stonemason masterfully installs the butterscotch-colored daisies while crooning Sicilian love songs.
“Beh, non e brutta,” the project manager concedes when he sees the battiscopa. “It’s not ugly.”
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Readers, can you help me? Will you consider voting for my Sicily photograph in the Islands Reader’s Choice 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 6, 2010
My kitchen sink arrived from Tuscany in a beat-up truck with a blue plastic curtain. The truck came to a halt in front of the house. A burly driver got out and slowly slid open the curtain to unveil the sink as if were an opera d’arte.
Which, in a way, it is.
Having walked into my renovation blind as a bat, I’ve been, generally speaking, a catastrofista. But not this time. The sink is perfect. It’s made of graniglia—whatever that is—and is supple as silk. I run my hands over it the way you’d stroke a cat.
It awaits a backsplash of colorful Caltagirone tiles.
I no longer need to bathe from two old buckets or stoop over an old shower drain to brush my teeth. I have a sink!
I’ll be washing dishes in this sink soon. That’s right: No dishwasher.
My life in Sicily is all about getting into the rhythms of a slow island life, stepping back into another century, learning to dawdle. Less is more is my new mantra. This does not mean that I’ll give up my computer and subsist on snails and wild chickory, but it does mean I’ll forgo a dishwasher. A dryer, a freezer, a car. Even a TV. I’ll start savoring the way stars light the night. The way vines drip with grapes. The way doves strut and coo on bleached terracotta roofs.
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You can win this cookbook!
Toni Lydecker’s Seafood alla Siciliana is somewhat smaller than coffee-table size, with thick, glossy paper, wonderful recipes, very pretty photos, and stories about Sicily’s cuisine. All you have to do is leave a comment on any of my blog posts between now and May 9, and I’ll enter your name for a random drawing on May 10, 2010. (You can enter one comment a day, max.) The only hitch is that you must provide a US or Canadian address for the shipping, so my apologies to readers on other continents.
April 26, 2010
Tragedy in the bathroom.
Remember those beastly expensive Italian glass tiles I naively ordered?
These are them, installed.
When I sprayed glass cleaner over my new sea-blue walls, wiping away the obscuring film of white plaster the mason had left, I could not believe my eyes. Not a single straight line! As if an ill-tempered four-year old had been hard at work.
How could I have allowed this to happen, you ask?
Well, early in the day, curiosity kept prompting me to run down two flights of stairs and check on the work. After 30 minutes of this, the mason said I made him nervous, and would I please go away and cease to bother him? The work is molto delicato, he said, and it is necessario to concentrate and be left solo.
And so away I went, full of cockeyed hope that I’d soon have a useable bathroom.
I returned to the house after two days, descended into the winery-cum-guest quarters and beheld anarchia. Thousands of tiny mosaic tiles stuck willy-nilly onto the wall. I felt like I’d been gored.
But I refused to face reality. Don’t panic, I told myself. It’s rustic. Rustic is good. It fits the theme of the wine cantina. Molto rustico! Charming in its own way. Isn’t it? Isn’t it?????
I called over a few friends to have a look. Horrid, they said, daring to utter the bald truth. Really horrid.
It doesn’t look bad from afar, though, does it? If you kind of … squint at it?
Now what do I do.
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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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