It’s a quiet Sunday morning and after two cups of coffee, baking oatmeal cookies, and humming Gray Skies Are Gonna Clear Up, I am getting ready to head out to my first barbecue of the season.  The weather isn’t being overly cooperative, but the wind is frisky and so here’s hoping we see some sunshine.  I don’t have too much to report today, but it makes me sad to see the story about Cinder every time I open my blog, so I thought I would write a little something.

Earlier in the week I met a lovely couple from South Carolina who after we chatted for a minute asked me if I was the author Jenny Criswell.  After I affirmed that I was, they ebulliently informed me that they’d read my book.  ROCK STAR.  MOMENT.  It was awesome.  Not only did they gush about me to the other poor souls who were on our afternoon wine tour, but I am giving serious consideration to asking them to handle my publicity.  Seriously, they know my life better than I do.  I met them for drinks the other night and we chatted about Montepulciano.  They come here frequently, so they get my love of this place.

But probably the biggest news of the week is that I passed the first level of my FISAR Sommelier course…. in Italian!!!!!  We celebrated last weekend with a dinner with many many bottles of wine… and now I eagerly await the second level of the course in the fall.  Not only was the course fun and instructive, but I have gotten to know a lot of wonderful new people.  I also want to say thank you to Christian and Bianca, my Poliziano clients from Germany who when they heard I passed my exam came back the next day with chocolate cake!

The book continues to do well, so thank you to all of you who have read and rated online.  I am grateful for your support.  And not just support on the book.  All of the love and messages that I have received since Cinder died have been appreciated.  My house is still lonely, but I am accepting lots of invitations and getting out more.

Here’s to sunny skies all around.  Buona Domenica!

Federico and Anna Carletti may own one of the most important wineries in Montepulciano, but they didn’t hesitate to pitch in and prepare wine for clients one Saturday when I was working alone!

Rosso di Montepulciano 2013 vintage in progress… Honestly how great is my job?

Our celebration dinner for the wine course… before we started taking turns slicing champagne bottles with swords… Don’t try this at home folks 🙂

One of our instructors, Luca, explaining to Giulio the importance of finding the g-spot of the champagne bottle before slicing off the cork… erm it didn’t go so well!

When I awoke this morning I was conscious of the fact that I was alone for the first time in over 15 years.  There was no sound of Cinder’s yawning, stretching and general head shaking to rouse me from sleep.  There was no pacing up and down the hallway, long toenails clicking away, making her morning routine sound like a tap dance.   My beautiful girl was gone.  The tears, which have been flowing freely since yesterday once again commenced.

The last year has been a roller coaster of ups and downs.  I thought last summer that Cinder had finally decided to leave me, but she’d hung on to see one more spring in Tuscany.  Next week makes four years living here.  And while it may be unusual for a Weimaraner to live to 15, I shouldn’t really be surprised.  All of my Italian neighbors seem to live well into their 90s, so it kind of makes sense that Cinder would get a couple extra years out of her retirement.  She was living with blurry vision from cataracts, had become almost completely deaf and her weakening back legs gave her a slope that resembled a German Shepherd.  And then there was the incontinence.  But she was still full of life.  And she still greeted me with amazement and delight each time I entered the house, even if I had only been gone ten minutes.  When telling my Italian friends yesterday that she had died, I used an expression that one of my friends here told me when her grandmother died: si è spenta.  Which basically means extinguished like a light or a flame.  And I think it’s an apt way of describing Cinder.  Because she really had been the essence of burning energy and light.

Our early years together were not easy.  We met in Miami where she’d been taken in by friends.  A rescue, she was an emaciated puppy, probably nine months old, all spindly legs and sporting that gaunt look famous among supermodels.  She was scared of everything, especially men.  I had more than one postman who looked on the verge of cardiac arrest when she would jump up on the screen barking.  She was full of energy and most of our walks were more like trots as I valiantly struggled to keep up with her.  She was quite horrible to my Labrador Miranda, always showing off her alpha status and making poor easy-going Miranda get off the couch or give up a toy.  It took a long time for us to establish a bond with Cinder because of this.  She moved in and definitely made her presence felt.  I haven’t had to set alarm since she entered my life.  If she was not up with the sun, she was up before it.

She went from Miami rescue, to city girl when we moved to New York.  She and Miranda, now best of friends, spent many happy years socializing in the dog park and learning how to pee curbside. She suffered the torture of me dressing her up for Halloween each year and she took on a maternal role with the other dogs that I used to walk and take care of.  Her royal bearing made many a puppy tow the line.  She loved the snow in New York and would bury her head in it like she used to do in the sands of the beaches of Miami.  We spent Sunday mornings walking off leash in wilds of Riverside Park.

And then Tuscany.   Some of my favorite reviews of At Least You’re in Tuscany have been by people who have called it a book about a girl and her dog.  I didn’t seek to include Cinder in the story as I wrote it.  It just happened naturally because she has been such a part of my life.  And I relied on her a lot especially in those first isolating moments of the first year here.  Cinder outlived boyfriends, some friendships, put up with my terrible PMS, and saw me through some of my toughest moments as well as my greatest joys.  She had a sense of comic timing and was really quite funny and expressive.   She was a cuddler even though she was big and even in the last months as her legs were getting worse, she would stand next to me, her big silky grey head on my leg as I worked on my computer.  She slept a lot in the last year.  Only the scent of roasting chicken or baking sugar cookies would rouse her immediately from her naps, which were getting longer and longer.

In the last two weeks or so I could see she was starting to really labor when walking.  Marinella once again was taking her out when I started back to work at Poliziano, and she too noted that our time was nearly up.  I resolved that when she couldn’t get up, we would say our goodbyes.  We had a beautiful afternoon together on Friday.  I took her little mat outside and we soaked up the strong Tuscan sunshine in our parking area.  We were both lizards, happily lazing and enjoying the gorgeous scents of spring.

And then Saturday morning she didn’t get me up.  I woke up anyway on schedule ready to take her out for a pee, my body now on a sleep cycle usually reserved for nursing mothers.  I heard her struggle from her bed and then saw that her legs had finally had enough.  She was shaking and breathing hard and I could tell she was scared.  I sat with her for hours, soothing her, this time resting my head on hers.  Marinella’s son Giacamo, who is our veterinarian, came to us in the late morning and we agreed that it was time to let her go.  I sat with her in my lap as she drifted off to sleep, thanking her for being such a wonderful companion for these many years and telling her it was okay to go.  Miranda was waiting for her.

So now I am here in my empty house keenly feeling her loss.  This is one chapter of my life I have been dreading to start…

Cinder sunbathing while I studied for my sommelier course

New York…

1st Christmas in NYC. For some reason I thought it would be cute to make the girls wear I ♥ New York t-shirts.  They were troopers!

Our cozy apartment in the Big Apple

Cinder shows off her sexy side with feather boa…

After a bath, it’s best to roll in the disgusting dirt of the dog run. Repeat until the clean smell is but a distant memory.

You can blame William Wegman for these next photos!!

But I don’t wanna be a pirate!

Super Friends!

She’s got nerve calling me a witch when she put me in a tutu.

Retirement in Tuscany…

First apartment

Un bacio for Nan. Our first friend from NYC to visit us

First snowfall that dumped almost two feet our first winter.

Babysitting for a friend’s five children meant more costumes… At Least You’re in Tuscany… At Least You’re in Tuscany…

Addio…

A girl’s best friend…

Italy has changed me.  There was a time not so long ago when if I saw a piece of pork with a tinge of pink, I wouldn’t go near it.  And just ask my Dad how many Thanksgiving turkeys I denounced, when they arrived at the table, because I thought they were too juicy.  But now after almost four years of living here, I can happily munch a crostino con salsiccia e stracchino, basically sausage that is still pink after spending a brief time under the broiler.  What has happened to me? Did I undergo some intense therapy where I was forced to confront years of accumulated fears of trichinosis, salmonella, or E coli.  Nah, nothing so dramatic.  Instead, I have simply learned to enjoy local foods and to cook them in the traditional way they have always been prepared.  Mayonnaise with raw eggs?  Not a problem.  Carpaccio of beef?  Bring it on.

Then came Marinella’s announcement that our next recipe for our cooking lesson would be La Trippa.  Tripe.  I’ll admit, my old OCD self came roaring back urging me, “Easy tiger, let’s not go too native.”  When I mentioned to Marinella that it wasn’t a dish I was really comfortable with she replied, “Nonsense.  I am famous for my tripe, you will love it.”   Erm, ok.   In the end I agreed, but then hastened back to my house to find out a bit more about this trippa.

I’ll admit, I always thought that tripe involved the intestines of the cow, and in fact in some Spanish speaking countries, tripe does include the intestines.  But here in Italia, it’s just the stomach lining.  Whew!  For me the distinction was huge and I was able to get on board with what to many is a fabulous dish.  I made it first with Marinella and then again on my own to practice.

La Trippa di Marinella (Marinella made a huge batch, so for our purposes I cut it half… serves 4 people)

– 1 kilo of Tripe (around 2 pounds)  It will come already cleaned, but we cleaned it again with hot water and lemon.  When I did it on my own, I rinsed it two times.  You can buy the tripe already cut (which I did), or you can get the disgusting looking piece of stomach and cut it yourself into strips like Marinella did!

– 1 yellow onion

– 1 carrot

-1 celery stalk

-1 handful of parsley

-3 cloves of garlic

– small pieces of peperoncino (ATTENZIONE….  When I did the dish on my own I put way too much red pepper.  You can’t undo it once it’s in.  So I’d put one or two and then add more if it’s not spicy enough. )

– 5 whole cloves

– Medium can of peeled whole tomatoes that you have pureed.  (Marinella uses her food processor but I just did with a hand mixer.)

Chop the vegetables in a food processor  and then saute in heated olive oil.  Just eyeball the oil, should coat the bottom of your pot.  When the vegetables are softened…Marinella made me smell the aroma of when they were just right, but if you cook them until they are softened, you will be good to go.  Then add the cloves and the red pepper.

The next step is adding the tripe.  Slowly add to the vegetables and stir.  Add a generous amount of salt at this point and then you are a going to leave it partially covered on a low flame for almost two hours, basically until the water drains out of the tripe and then is reabsorbed.

After the two hours and the tripe has reabsorbed the water, you add the pureed tomato.  Then add enough hot water to cover.  Salt again.

You then let it cook slowly on a low flame for 4-5 hours.  You’ll know it’s done because you’ll see the oil rise to the top.

Now, I made of couple of mistakes, the first being the red pepper.  The second was that too compensate I added some more water so it took longer to cook it down.

So did I like it??  Marinella’s was obviously very tasty, but there is something about the consistency of the tripe that doesn’t work for me.  I like the sauce that it makes.  But I would not make it if I was cooking just for me.  That being said,  I did make it so that I could share the recipe with you guys.  Selfless, right?  And then I rounded up some friends to fare la cavia and try it.   I discovered that la trippa is not universally adored here either.  People either love it or leave it.

I brought my finished product to Marinella for a verdict, even though I knew it was too spicy.  “The perfume is perfect,” she told me.  “The taste is spot on…. except that it is troppo piccante!”  She told me to bring it to my guinea pig friends only if they loved spicy foods.  Granted one is a fire fighter so I thought he could probably handle it, but in the end I couldn’t bring myself to serve a dish that wasn’t just right.  My poor friend, Marco, wasn’t so lucky.  I gave him some last night before the verdict and he agreed to try it spice and all!  No word from him today and one assumes he is in the emergency room with a burned palate!
On the plus side, the baguettes that I made to serve with la trippa are just lovely!

Making Tripe with Marinella

the washed tripe, ready for cooking…

cooking the vegetables, and adding the spice.

Here’s what it looks like after the first 2 hour cooking time

after adding the tomatoes and water, this is what it will look like at the end of the 4 or 5 hours.

Here’s what mine looked like at the end, you can see it was a little too soupy.

Marinella’s trippa…

This morning, as a weak sunshine melts away the remaining bits of snow from yesterday’s brief snowfall, I find my spirits much improved.  And it’s about time!  The past month has been fairly miserable.  First the flu, then a hacking cough that still stubbornly refuses to leave completely.  My Italian friends are, of course, quite worried because if there is one thing they do well here, it’s illness.  I have been given advice on every home remedy concoction you can think of to help my cold.  The standard, and my personal favorite, is hot water, lemon juice and honey.  This morning as I went to buy more lemons, my fruit lady, Franca, pulled out some eucalyptus honey, saying it would do the trick.  I obligingly added it to the pile of blood oranges for juicing my spremuta.  We shared a conspiratorial laugh when I told her I liked to add a healthy shot of vin santo to my lemon, honey cure!  That’s just good sense.

Some of you know of my passion for wine and that my day job during the season is slinging said vino at the winery, Poliziano.  I have been wanting to do the Sommelier course for a while now.  First so I will be more knowledgeable on my tours of the cantina,  and also so that when I have to do tastings with professionals, which sometimes happens, that I don’t go into meltdown panic.  But really, any class where a major course component is drinking wine…well, you had me at vino!

Finally this winter FISAR is offering the course here in town.  Last week they gave the presentation and over forty people showed up which was way more than they anticipated apparently since they had only six applications.  Last night was our first lesson.  The Consortium of Vino Nobile in Piazza Grande has offered the space for our lessons but due to some scheduling snafu, someone forgot to turn on the heat.  Picture a centuries old, stone palazzo with a room that has been left unheated all winter.  We eagerly handed over our euros for the opportunity to sit huddled in our down jackets trying to concentrate on the overview being presented.  I chose a spot near the back, looking like a consumptive as I coughed delicately into my tissues.  Since I am still congested, I was quite fortunate that the only tasting we did last night was a toast with some prosecco at the end of class.  “The temperature of the room is perfect for spumante,” our teacher joked.  By that point, no one was laughing and we couldn’t feel our feet.

We all received course books and fancy bags with our tasting glasses, corkscrews, and other gear that will make us look professional as we embark on this adventure.  One of my colleagues at Poliziano is also doing the course and when they showed us the proper way to hold and open the bottle without moving it, we looked at each other and laughed.  Our methods to date have been much more haphazard!

But for me, the best part of last night was that I actually understood everything that the energetic instructor was saying.  I was so pleased I wanted to stand up and announce it to everyone.  The Americana understands!  Finally, after almost four years of living here, my comprehension is at a level that I can take a class in Italian.  Of course, there is also the little matter of the exam at the end but I’ll jump off that bridge when I come to it….

Salute!

The presentation of the F.I.S.A.R. Sommelier course.

Janet, forgetting that we are in Italy, insisted that we get to class 20 minutes early…

They might make a professional out of me yet…

Happy New Year!  Tanti Auguri.   I didn’t quite get my act together to post anything for the New Year, but since today is the last day of the holiday season in Italy, I think technically it still counts.  La Befana visited last night.  Well, not my house, but I have it on good authority that she was spotted on her broomstick.  The Italian tradition of the Befana is linked to the Epiphany and while there are various legends about her, the one I like best is that the Three Wise Men stopped at her house to ask for directions on their way to find the baby Jesus.  She was an exceptional housekeeper apparently.  There are other slightly darker variations on this theme but I like this one because it’s evidence that men did at one time stop for directions!  Anyway, La Befana visits the children on the eve of the Epiphany and leaves either coal or some little treat.  After this final day of celebrating, Christmas decorations will come down, grocery carts will be laden with healthy veggies as people cheerfully grumble that they are starting their dieta, and everyone will attempt to get back into work mode.

I got back into the swing of things this week.  Not at Poliziano– I won’t be back there until April (although I did work one day  New Year’s Eve weekend because Fabio had some bookings).  Instead, I have some new students coming on board, which is a help during these lean winter months.  So teaching English and my own writing are now occupying most of my time– a bit of a harsh transition after a December of watching holiday films nonstop, but it feels good to have the synapses firing again.  As much as I love the holidays, I also love the austerity of January where you can visit someone without having to weakly protest as they pull out all types of chocolates and treats to tempt you with a glass of wine or afternoon tea.

Today is sunny and crisp, so I am going to head out with the old girl and get a bit of a walk in.  Cinder, who has been sleeping nonstop, for some reason has become sprightly in these last few days, and this morning actually trotted down the street.  It’s like she knows its January and time to get the holiday kilos off.  Can’t argue with that!

Wishing everyone a wonderful 2013!!!

New Year’s Eve at Charles and Peter’s house – Charles’s new oven was put through its paces with our huge turkey!

My gorgeous lemon meringue pie went into meltdown and by dessert I served a fluffy yellow soup that seemed very “Bridget Jones”

Italian friend, Vanda, got into the spirit of the Christmas crackers and even wore her crown. When we attempted these at Anna’s house for Christmas Eve dinner one was set on fire by a candle!  It may be a while before this tradition takes hold here…