Sometimes I am asked why I keep returning to Italy. However, I usually just shake my head slightly and smile to myself. “Pfft.. silly question!”
Alessandra, Mimmo and their son Tommaso, live in a fifth floor apartment about 3 miles north of the Vatican. While no bigger than my old Andersonville apartment (which is HUGE by Roman standards!) Alessandra and Mimmo’s upper class home is filled with warmth, plants and beautiful books. Located on the top floor of the building, this lovely home boasts a stunning patio that extends the entire length and width of the apartment and overlooks a garden shop below. With multiple chairs and tables, a swing, a well loved foosball table, a plethora of healthy growing herbs, a couple fruit trees and enough plants to rival the garden center below, it is clear that life is lived on the patio.
I arrived to a mixture of family, friends and work companions.. some of whom fell into all three categories, mingling on the patio. Luca, a confident, middle aged, fit pilot with impeccable english, cut limes and mixed drinks with the intensity of a nuclear scientist. I sipped a shockingly potent Caipirinha, a Brazilian drink made of lime, sugar cane and Cachaca (a liquor distilled from sugar cane,) and as the level of my drink slid lower, the warm tingling in my fingers and toes became more prominent.
L’aperitivo (or the meal before the meal,) consisted of drinks and little bowls of nuts and crackers placed strategically throughout the patio. People chatted happily while heaping salsa di salmone and tzatziki onto their crackers and children raced and weaved between the adults. Men gathered loudly around the foosball table, their overly enthusiastic play gradually shifting the table across the floor.
As Alessandra set plate after delicious plate onto sturdy tables, we drifted happily towards our seats. I sat next to beautiful Isabella, the perfectly poised and kind wife of Luca who laughed and said “this is Italy,” while gesturing to our unconsciously gender segregated seating. I reached forward to giddily load my plate... pizza di ceci (chickpea pizza made by the talented Teresa,) pasta with smoked salmon, sesame seeds and cilantro, salad, and mozzarella di bufala (mozzarella the size of softballs.) I unwittingly asked a friend how to say “fresh mozzarella” in Italian and received a look of horror.. “but mozzarella is ALWAYS fresh!?”
Multiple bottles of rich red wine were passed around as Alessandra set the next course on the table, Pasta con ricotta, cherry tomatoes, basil, and black pepper. While I ate to bursting, yet another course appeared, flavorful roasted zucchini and eggplant. The children, three adolecent girls and two boys, having no interest in vegetables or the adults lingering over them, slipped off to find their own amusement. Rather than rushing off to computers or Ipads, the kids had instead set up a store in Tommaso‘s room, selling little unwanted knick knacks and assorted hotel lotions. Lacking cash, I traded a Chicago button pin for an owl bracelet.
I returned to my seat, gleefully accepted a glass of Vueve Cliquot and settled in for the dessert course(s).. I dipped my spoon into a tiny cup of sweet, light watermelon jelly and fresh creme, while recognizing that I would HAVE TO try the little cup of apricots and creme. I drooled over a plate of delectable beautiful pastries filled with an assortment of pistachio, creme, chocolate and fruit, and I nearly wept in gratitude as the profiteroles appeared in front of me (profiteroles are tiny little balls of pure blissful joy… one who eats them immediately attains nirvana) I ate until my stomach filled to my esophagus, while people drank expresso in the cutest daintiest little disposable cups I have ever seen and bowls of cherries and plums were passed around. As I waddled to the front door at the end of an evening of irrepressible gluttony, a bag of profiteroles and plums, fresh from the patio garden, was handed to me.
Sometimes I am asked why I keep returning to Italy. "Pfft…"
