La Festa Della Donna, scuola e Un Giorno Speciale
Buongiorno!
Welcome back to Salerno! Since we last posted, the world has celebrated International Women’s Day. In Italy, this day is called “festa Della donna” and has a long history.
Over the years, legends and unfounded stories have spread about the birth of International Women's Day. One of the most common is that it was established to commemorate a fire that killed hundreds of female workers in a shirt factory in New York on March 8, 1908.
This celebration recalls the struggles, violence and discrimination experienced by women in history. The mimosa was chosen as a symbol of this day and is linked to the sense of freedom, autonomy, and sensitivity.
This is a picture of the students and instructors from L’Acadamia celebrating the day. Each woman was given a mimosa. Nice touch!! Can you find me in the picture? I’m the one with the crazy hair!
Our session of Italian lessons finished last week and, as in the past 2 years, we were presented with our certificates! This year, we decided that we should do something special for our instructors. Rachele Fortunato, pictured below, designed all of our lessons according to our wishes and presented them to Vince and I. One-on-two. How good is that?!! We feel like we made a lot of progress. Lots more to do, so we’ll be looking forward to going back next year! She is absolutely terrific!
This is Dario. He was our instructor for 3 of the 10 days. Lui era molto gentile!
Ok, so you guys must be getting used to our routine by now. As soon as we have something to celebrate, we look for great pizza! After graduation (hahahahaha), we went to one of our favourite pizzerias, Gia Giu’. Vince had something called “La Conquistador e La Scoperta” (the conqueror and the discoverer), which had yellow and green tomatoes, onion, mozzarella, sausage and spicy oil.
This picture really captures the Neapolitan style beautifully - a big puffy crust around the outer edge, very thin on the bottom and all of the toppings spread across the bottom. Mmmmmm…
I decided to go with “Fritta al Forno Sud Story”, which turned out very similar to a Margherita pizza. Oh so good! Oven-roasted Pomodorini, fior di latte, cacioricotta , basilica e olio EVO.
Ok, we’ve covered the Festa, our success at school and our post graduation celebration. Now we get to talk about Un Giorno Speciale - a Special Day. I think that there may be only a few people on our distribution list for this blog that are aware that March 11 is a very special day in the Spencer-Fay family. First of all, we have 2 birthdays in the family. Vince’s wonderful sister Anne, and our lovely niece, Erica. Buon compleanno, signore!
And, as it happens, this particular March 11 happened to be the 35th year anniversary of the first date Vince and I had together. It seems like just yesterday! And this day started REALLY well for me as I woke up to a presentation of a beautiful red rose.
It has filled the apartment with such a lovely aroma! Secondly, Vince prepared colazione (breakfast) which was a new creation using fresh cornetti, prociutto, formaggio, senape, e pomordoro, all grilled in the oven. A fresh brewed caffelungo rounded out a very satisfying morning.
We decided to go for a walk in the afternoon and had an absolutely brilliant day for it. The winds off the sea were very light, the sun was dazzling and the temperature was about 20 C! As part of our walk, we covered a large part of our neighbourhood, the Centro storico, (historic city centre) and a much longer part of the lungomare. As we wandered, we re-discovered a lovely restaurant that we enjoyed last year. It is the first place we tried Fiano white wine - it is sensational. So, guess what?? Yep, we stopped to have a glass! Just as wonderful as we remembered.
As you can see from the picture below, Bar Umberto, has a great location just off one of the main streets. The owner came out to serve us and actually remembered me from last year!! (Not Vince, though, oops!)
Here we are with due caliche of fiano!
Hey, who’s that chick with the grey hair??
The last surprise of the day was Vince springing a dinner invitation to Angolo Masuccio. Wow! Another terrific seafood restaurant.
Our fabulous waiter, Fabio, recommended that we start with shrimp cooked in oil, lots of garlic, and a bit of cream. It was a very pretty presentation in this copper dish with the flame and the flavour was just marvellous. Next, we shared “Risotto Gamberoni” which came with prawns, broccoletti and spinach powder (that’s what the green slashes are around the edge of the plate).
For our Secondi (main dishes), I took a VERY big chance and chose tuna, for the first time ever. It was described as “Tonno Scottato Con Cipolla di Tropea” - Seared tuna with Tropea onion. Wow! What a discovery! It was soooooo good. Now I’m going to have to learn how to prepare it myself!
Vince chose the “Branzino Grigliata Su Spinaci Crudi a Limone” - grilled sea bass on spinach with lemon. It was fantastic1
By the time we got to dessert, my phone ran out of juice. Nuts! So I have no pictures of a very tasty fruit, crème anglais, and chocolate dolce! Fabio also brought us some house made limoncello, which finished everything off beautifully.
As we were walking back to the apartment, we came across this nifty little wine bar called “Uvenude”. Vince figured out right away that this meant “the naked grape”! He’s really clever, isn’t he? The logo is captured in the neon light pic (2nd below)
If you can’t make out what’s in the neon, here’s a pic of the coaster:
That’s the latest from Salerno. It’s now 5pm here - time to go to the Polleria to find out what we’re having for dinner tonight!
Ciao for now!
Susanna e Vincenzo
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