When I came to Italy I was determined to make the best of it. Of course, I was also very optimistic about the future too. Love does that to people, I guess.

Actually, it has been very refreshing living here. I find that the lifestyle is less materialistic. My life certainly is, anyway. I don’t own an i-anything and I don’t have a flat screen TV or a Wii or any of those little handheld gadgets other than a very simple cell phone. We have a decent car, but nothing fancy, etc.

One of signs of a less materialistic lifestyle is that people here aren’t constantly moving to a bigger house with more square footage and more rooms than they could ever need. It seemed a constant thing back in the states. Most of the people I worked with moved every few years into a  newer house and bought a new car every couple of years as well. Fortunately there’s no “keep up with the Joneses” here – at least not where I live.

But, there is one thing that I miss and that I made O promise me that I could have if we ever decide to buy or fix up a house. That thing is an American-style kitchen. Why? Because, frankly, Italian kitchen design is stupid. OK, maybe there are some well-designed Italian kitchens out there but I have to admit that I have never seen one in any of the houses I’ve been in. The only smart thing in an Italian kitchen is the dish rack. (Mine no longer looks like the one in that post since I moved to a new apartment shortly afterwards. Now the one I have is smaller and less efficient.)

The reason I say this is because Italian kitchens have no counter space and very little storage space. My kitchen, for example has very small top cabinets that are built so that you can put things to display on top of them – knick knacks and the like. I’d much rather have space to put stuff in them considering that there are so few of them. Knick knacks just need to be dusted.  Plus, the kitchen is just along one short wall so I’m only left with about 10 inches of countertop that I can actually use for anything. That’s a pain when chopping vegetables and mixing batters.

Another thing I hate about my kitchen is the stainless steel. Now I know that there are kitchens all over the world that also use an overabundance of stainless steel, so it’s not an Italian-only thing. I can’t stand it though. Besides the fact that your kitchen looks overly institutional, it’s also a pain in the neck to keep clean. All it takes is one touch and it looks like you never clean it. In order to keep my stainless steel rangetop and sink clean I have to spray it with special cleaner and buff it dry. Come on people, who has time for that? Who in their right mind would design a kitchen that takes twice as long to clean?

And speaking of design.. who’s designing these Italian kitchens with all of the wasted space? Maybe I ought to go into the kitchen design business here.

**End of rant**

Many, many years ago, when I was a senior in high school (and it is truly many, many years ago), my AP English teacher assigned us a daily diary. Every day we were expected to write something in our diaries and she would periodically collect them. Now, this was a lot of work for her as well as for us since she had to spend time reading all of these diaries.. Or maybe it was her way to save money since she didn’t have time to read anything else. After all, who needs fiction when you have teenage diaries, right?

Believe me, we didn’t write anything personal in them though. And sometimes, as I’m sure you can imagine, it was extremely difficult coming up with something to write that was more than just a simple summary of how the day went. I found it particularly difficult because I’ve really never been one to share my thoughts and feelings and I’ve always been very sensitive about letting people read things I’ve written. I won’t even let anyone read the things I’ve written for my blog before I publish them, which is silly really since they’re going to be public in a short period of time. But, sentiments don’t always follow logic.

Despite the initial difficulties, as time went on it became increasingly easier to find something to write about. Those diaries held observations about life, crazy ideas, silly poems and even some funny tongue-in-cheek entries. I have no idea whatever happened to them, but I’m sure it would be hilarious reading them again. Unfortunately, they probably were left behind in my last move. Going overseas means taking nothing but the bare essentials.

When we graduated our teacher extracted a promise from us to continue with our journals but, as you can probably imagine, it wasn’t long before that habit fell by the wayside. It was hard to keep up at college and once a habit is broken, it’s difficult to start up again. (Except for maybe cigarette smoking since I know many people who keep quitting and going back to it.)

I read the diaries through a couple of times throughout the years. It was amazing how in the beginning the entries were rather dull and lackluster, but by the end of the year they became much more interesting, my writing flowed better and the entries called out to be read.

Oh, if I could only recapture that ..not the awkward adolescent/teenage years from hell, thank you very much, just the ability to write with style and flair.

Luigi, like most toddlers, likes to snack throughout the day. He eats only a little at a time, but he eats often, which is actually quite challenging since I want him to eat healthy things. Most snack-type foods don’t even qualify remotely as “healthy”, so what’s a mom to do?

Luigi’s favorite all-time food is cheese, but eating too much of that can produce rather unpleasant results.  His second favorite is pizza – at least there’s some tomato there – but it’s not very convenient as a snack food. The idea is to have something that is already prepared that he can have whenever hunger strikes.

With that in mind I started wondering what I could do to make a quick, toddler-friendly (in other words hand-held and non-messy) snack. Cookies are handy, but not healthy. After looking through tons of recipes I modified one and came up with

Pizza Cookies

4 Tbsp butter
1/2 cup shredded provolone cheese
1/2 cup grated parmigiano
1 Tbsp.tomato paste
1 pinch garlic powder
1 pinch oregano
3/4 cup whole wheat flour
1 pinch salt

I put everything in the food processor and mixed it together until I could see it was getting very moist. Then I took it out and formed it into a ball with my hands. I rolled it out to about 1/4 inch thick and cut it with some of my smallest cookie cutters. (I didn’t like the dog too much, the legs were too small and tended to brown too fast). I experimented with various thicknesses, but less than 1/4 inch became too crunchy.

Oh, and I cooked them at 425 degrees in a preheated oven for about 8 minutes.

The verdict, delicious….

Today marks the third anniversary of expatwomen.com – an outstanding resource for women living abroad and those preparing to move or considering moving abroad.

In their words…

ExpatWomen.com is a comprehensive, global website helping women living overseas. The site displays 1,000+ quality content pages, over 1,000 expat women blogs, 200+ readers’ stories, invaluable country resource pages, interviews with successful expat women, loads of motivational articles and an inspirational blog and monthly newsletter.

ExpatWomen.com was created by two friends, Andrea Martins and Jill Lengré, when they were both living in Mexico City. Their dream of connecting expatriate women worldwide was a result of their combined 20 years of experience living overseas.

Andrea and Jill worked together on the web site for two years (one year prior to launch on 16 January 2007, then one year after launch) before Jill stepped aside from the web site to focus on her move back to the US. Andrea now coordinates the web site from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia and Jill now lives and works in sunny California.

ExpatWomen.com’s mission is to inspire your success abroad by providing you with a first-stop website to share stories, network globally, develop personally and find the best resources. Whether this is your first experience living overseas, you are a seasoned expat, a returned Expat Woman, or you are about to embark on your big adventure, we have something for everyone.

Just take a look at the home page and you’ll see that the site is chock-full of information.  You’ll want to hang around and explore all of its features.

Congratulations expatwomen.com and thanks for the great content!

The day before La Befana was certainly an interesting day for us.  After all, it was the day our newest little piggies were born. But we also had other news on that day and some good fortune came our way.

La Befana, for those who don’t know, is another day of gift-giving in Italy for the Christmas season. On the night of January 5, La Befana passes through and fills the stockings of good little boys and girls. Of course, sometimes those gifts can be larger than the stockings.

That being said, I was determined to find Luigi a stuffed Winnie the Pooh. He had gotten various things with Winnie the Pooh on them as gifts and he really loves them, calling Winnie “Bee Ba Booh”. I looked before Christmas and, although I’d do anything for my son, I thought the prices were outrageous and decided that he didn’t need Winnie all that badly. (Is that terrible or what?)

Fortunately, I was able to find one on sale in time for La Befana. And, not being one to go overboard with material things, I figured one stuffed animal was plenty.

Before Christmas, however, we had bought a ticket for a lottery that one of the local stores was having. The prize was a collection of Winnie the Pooh stuffed animals – a large Eeyore, a small tigger, small piglet and a Winnie the Pooh that was also a picture frame.  Since I never win anything, I doubted that we would be that lucky but, lo and behold, the night before La Befana we got a phone call saying that we had won.

As you can see, Luigi was thrilled

Every little boy should have a playmate, right? That’s the way we looked at it anyway. But, living on the 4th floor (with no elevator), a dog was out of the question. I didn’t want to get a cat either that could never go outside. So, when O’s niece mentioned that someone had given her a guinea pig as a present, the bells went off in my head and I figured it would be the perfect thing. After all, guinea pigs are affectionate yet still small and they can even be litter box trained or trained to do their “business” in one corner of their cage.

About a month ago we took a ride to the pet store and they just happened to have one guinea pig. The salesperson told us that they had had two but the other one was sold the day before. We decided to take the plunge, buying a small cage for it since O was planning on building a larger cage.

When we asked Luigi what the guinea pig’s name was, he said Wee-ee (probably because of the noise that it makes), thus we decided to name it Willy.  Since they told us at the pet store that it was male, the name seemed ok, but upon examination I decided it was female. Willy is short for Wilhelmina in this case, I guess.

Not wanting it to be lonely, our intention was to wait a little while, then purchase another guinea pig so that Willy would have some company.

Then, about a week or so ago I told O that Willy obviously needed some exercise because she was getting fat. We would take her out of the cage and let her loose on the floor, but she wouldn’t go anywhere. She would want to be held though and made noises of contentment while being petted but she wasn’t interested in moving around.

Today, we returned home to find that Willy is not only definitely female, she was also pregnant. Now instead of one guinea pig, we have three.

Here are the “twins”

Wishing everyone a magical Christmas and hoping that all your dreams come true in 2010.

Like most moms who have a toddler, childproofing my house was a big priority for me.

Some of my closet doors required a special device, so I sprang for some that I found at Chicco. Needless to say, they were rather expensive.

They didn’t stop my “bull in the china shop” though. He was determined.

Yes, it is snapped in half

It is a chicken dish and it’s named after a king, but that’s about all it has in common with the chicken a la king that we’re used to seeing.

I found this recipe in a book called “I sapori di Abruzzo e Molise” (the flavors of Abruzzo and Molise) that I picked up here in Italy. And while it does say the recipes are from this area, there are few that I recognize as having eaten here so they must be from other parts of Abruzzo.

Of course, like a lot of other Italian recipes, it doesn’t really give a lot of detail on how to cook the dish, basically saying, cook the chicken, sprinkle it every once in a while with white wine and add some giardiniera. The ingredients were also just a hodgepodge of items with no measurements. So, I had to fiddle with it a bit to find the right ratios.

The dish is called Pollo alla Re Francesco II or Chicken a la King Francis II. According to the story, Francis II tasted this dish while on a hunting trip in Abruzzo. Now, the dish was also served by a pretty peasant woman, so there is some doubt that the king only praised the dish in order to conquer the girl.

I found the dish to be quite tasty with an interesting mix of flavors considering the use of giardiniera (Italian mixed pickled vegetables). But give it a try yourself and see if it deserved such praise from Francis II.

Ingredients

1 chicken cut into pieces
1 cup white wine
1 cup giardiniera (Italian mixed pickled vegetables), drained
1/3 cup sliced green and black olives
1 tablespoon capers
2 cloves of garlic, minced
1 tablespoon rosemary
1 bay leaf
½ hot red pepper
Salt
Pepper
2 tablespoons olive oil

Heat the oil in a large frying pan over high heat and brown the chicken on all sides. Lower the heat to medium, add the garlic, rosemary, bay leaf, hot pepper, salt and pepper and simmer for a minute or two, turning the chicken to distribute the spices evenly through the pan. Add the white wine and lower the heat again to the lowest setting, cover and cook the chicken and vegetables for about 20 minutes. Check the pan occasionally and if it starts drying out, add some water. Once the 20 minutes has passed, check the chicken to see how close it is to being fully cooked. If it is almost done, add the giardiniera, capers and olives and cook for another 10 minutes, adding water if necessary to keep it from drying out. Remove the chicken to a platter, remove the hot pepper and discard, then spoon the giardiniera mix and juices over the chicken and serve.

Over the weekend an uninvited house guest came to stay with us…influenza. He arrived in the early morning hours on Saturday morning and hung around until Monday night. Of course, it was every parent’s nightmare, a holiday weekend and a child with a fever of 103.8.

We do have what is called the “Guardia Medica” here, doctors who are available in the evening, all day Sunday and on holidays, so I was able to call them on Sunday afternoon when I had a concern about Luigi’s fever returning too quickly. I had given him fever reducer, but the instructions said to only give it every 8 hours (based on his weight). When his fever returned after 5 hours, I called the Guardia Medica and they were able to tell me that I could give him some more. They would have come to the house too if needed.

On Monday, forgetting that it was a holiday weekend, I called the pediatrician on his cell phone. He explained that he wasn’t in the office, but he spent a good 10 minutes on the phone with me, asking what Luigi’s symptoms were, explaining that I could give him some medicine after 4 hours had passed and telling me that if the fever should return on Tuesday to call the Guardia Medica right away.

At first, I was a little peeved that he told me to call the Guardia Medica thinking that he’s the pediatrician, it should be him that sees him. Then I sat back and thought about it a bit. Here I had called him on his cell phone on a holiday weekend. How many pediatricians give their cell phone numbers to their patients’ parents in the states? Maybe I’m mistaken, but I figure that’s pretty rare. To get him care in the states, I wouldn’t have been able to call anyone for an answer to a question, I would have had to take him to the Emergency Room full of sick people, and forget about having someone come to the house.

Fortunately the fever passed and I didn’t have to worry about getting him further care, but it’s nice to know that the Guardia Medica is there for house calls and my pediatrician is just a cell phone call away.