Author Archives: sarabutton

Update: What’s Next

07 Sunday Oct 2012

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Ok, so you guys read about my month in Baschi WWOOFing, then I spent about 5 days in Rome mostly catching up with friends, getting some work done with both writing and grad school apps, and generally being lazy. I did go see Ted, which is probably less funny dubbed in Italian but I definitely was the only one laughing at some of the very quintessential American joke and references. Also saw a sweet Italian film called Il Rosso e Il Blu, about high school teachers in Rome. I also ate a LOT of pizza and some gelato and started working again on my morning yoga practice thanks to an inspiring Orviet session with my friend/yoga instructor, Emily.

Currently, I”m in Gaiole in Chianti, Italy. Rather, we’re about 7.5 km outside of it, but the event I’m checking out is L’Eroica, a vintage bike ride that has varying degrees of duration, from 30 km to 205 km. Yes, people are crazy, and crazy fit. I, however, am not, and am instead here to admire the physical prowess of these insane individuals who ride steel-framed bikes up and down Tuscan hills, as well as translate things for my friend, who’s writing a piece, and perhaps pick up a few things for some of my own writing, as well.

The plan, most of which consists of hanging out with dearly missed friends/sleeping on their couches:

 Hang out in Gaiole for a few days.

Go to Siena for a few days. Meet up with some dear American friends of mine who are moving to Siena for the year. I have been looking forward to this for literally months.

Maybe hit up Florence on the way to a night in Bologna.

Head to Mulhouse in Alsace, France around October 15th or 16th for more friends

Hop on a flight headed on Amsterdam on the 21st for even MORE friends (CdF nel cuore!) and hopefully to see more of the Dutch countryside

Fly to Dublin (!!!!) for my first foray into Ireland. Am particularly excited about this because a lot of my blood is Irish and I have always loved spontaneous jam sessions, singing in harmony, dancing, eating potatoes, and the like. I fully intend on heading to County Sligo at some point to find someone distantly related to me. Halloween, basically my favorite holiday, is going to be amazing. I am totally hitting up some ghost tours while in Ireland, as well as asking old and wizened barkeeps for their ghost stories. Stay tuned for those. I’ll be doing work exchange in a hostel in Kilkenny, doing hostel-y things in exchange for board.

During this time I”ll also be finishing many of my applications to graduate school, which are stupid and annoying and expensive and the bane of my existence because I really want to get in somewhere but oh, what a hassle it is. Just take me, people!

Of course, I”ll still be doing my weekly interviews on Go! Girl Guides and working on pieces to submit for other sites. Yay for writing, and traveling, and writing about traveling!

‘Sta Mattina: This Morning, By the Minute

06 Saturday Oct 2012

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5:43 a.m. wake up from dream about the time being 5:45 and checking cell phone to confirm time.

5:44 a.m. check phone. Realize I am psychic. Or have impeccable internal alarm. Am going with the former, because it’s way cooler and more useful.
6:15 a.m. leave apartment in Rome.
6:25 a.m. arrive in new metro station for the B1 line (it only took them 83729 years, but hey, better late than never, right?)
6:30 a.m. Get on train to Termini
6:35 a.m. arrive in Termini
6:42 a.m. Get ticket to buy my train ticket. This is a newish system they’ve been doing in the station to “expedite” things; however, it’s just like the post office.
6:45 a.m. Realize B31 (my number) is a big difference from B12 (the number they’re on) and the dreaded* auto ticket machines would be faster. *dreaded because they NEVER seem to take my credit/debit cards and I always end up running around a station asking strangers for change for a 50 because I manage to always find the one machine that doesn’t give the correct change.
6:48 a.m. Successfully acquire dreaded auto ticket machine ticket! Huzzah!
6:50 a.m. Validate ticket. Since 2003 when I was traumatized by a Trenitalia agent fining me for traveling without a validated ticket (what did I know? I was 16 and alone and had no idea what was happening!), this is priority uno for me in a train station.
6:50-7 a.m. Walk to stinkin’ Piazzale Est, another newish part of Termini, which include tracks that were essentially laid in China.
7:16: Train departs. Realize it’s the first time in years that I’ll make the trip straight past Orvieto on the Rome-Florence line to switch in Chiusi.
7:17 a.m. Reflect on how little I enjoy seeing the sunrise on travel days, ebcause it normally means I’ve slept poorly the night before.
7:35 a.m. Sun gets me in the eyes and I look outside and see the landscape of Lazio in a thin coverlet of fog. Wonder if this is what the ancient Romans saw and assure myself that it was indeed. Am reminded that dawn isn’t so bad, after all.
8:03 a.m. Whole world is invisible outside or, at least, only silhouettes in the fog; here, a tree. There, the suspension of the bridge. Alfred Hitchcock’s ghost would derive great inspiration.
8:04-9 a.m. Read Book 3 of Game of Thrones and wonder when/if/how I can/will write such an engaging story to be sold worldwide and made into a killer HBO series.
9:01 a.m. Change trains in Chiusi.
9:38 a.m. Have brief conversation with Canadians about why I speak Italian after translating for a couple of women for the conductor. Remember Canadians can be just as loud and conspicuous as Americans.
10:38 a.m. Arrive in Siena, eat food, write postcards of places I went years ago but still remember and can report back about.
My morning ends technically at noon, at which point I find myself still waiting for the 12:50 bus to Gaiole in Chianti. By now I have run into 2 L’Eroica riders, been made fun of for knowing 0% about bicycles, especially antique ones, and learned a) what a sprocket is and does, b) what the distinct characteristics are of an antique versus modern racing bike and c) that I really don’t know a darn thing about bicycles. NO, really, at all.
This is the main house of the apartment where we’re staying in Castellare in Chianti. You can’t tell how pretty it is from this, but trust me. It’s pretty.
The afternoon was full of stuff, including a butt-breaking uphill ride to our apartment and really tasty pizza, not in that order. Full report on L’Eroica and Gaiole in Chianti coming soon.

Chickens

04 Thursday Oct 2012

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See how weird they are?!

When I was at the farm, I kept thinking about the chickens. See, I’ve never spent much time around chickens. I never had any friends growing up whose families did that urban farm thing that seems to be growing in popularity these days. The only chickens I ever saw in someone’s home, in fact, was in Portland (of course) when I babysat for some neighbor’s kids. Also, at a professor’s house on the outskirts of Tucson, too. When we saw that, Boris immediately took to the idea. I liked the idea, too. We eat a lot of eggs, after all.

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My Favorite 5: Things to do in Orvieto

04 Thursday Oct 2012

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This is what it looks like from the clock tower. Sorry it’s so small.

For those of you who have either a) known me for a while (which is to say, probably most of you), or b) seen the backlogged entries from 2007 and after about my love affair with the Umbrian hill town of Orvieto, you know this will be a difficult post to write. But, dear readers, I am always excited to spread the Orvieto love, and this weekend I got a chance to show some Tucson friends around. So I give you my top 5 recommendations for sightseeing in my dear Orvieto, especially if you’re only there a couple days.

Also, I’ll give no excuses, but I do offer my apologies for such sparse updates lately. More to come soon, I promise. Also, photos, once I get my cell phone working.

Umbrian countryside. Just chillin.’ (Unedited photo) 

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Walnuts

26 Wednesday Sep 2012

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Remember how I mentioned that certain things about where my food came from literally had never occurred to me? Well, this is one of those examples.Recently, I was asked to collect the walnuts.
“Sure,” I said. “Where are they?”
“There are two trees out by the tortoises. You’ll see them.”
So out I went on a dreary, gray day to raccogliere le noce. 

In the past I knew, intellectually, that nut woods, like walnut and chestnut, were real. Furniture was made out of them, after all, so vaguely in the back of my mind I acknowledged that these nuts belonged to the trees which bore their names. But when I went to gather them, I really was impressed by my own ignorance.This is what a walnut casing looks like.

See how it’s cracked like the fault lines on the earth after an earthquake? That mean’s it’s good to go!

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Look What I Did Today!

21 Friday Sep 2012

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Can I please have a gold star now?I spent literally all day today (from about 9 a.m. after feeding the animals to 6 p.m., with the exception of an hour for lunch) working on building a new hut for the rabbit. I wrangled chicken wire, hammered, sawed, and even used an industrial-strength drill for the door hinges (with a little help on that item).

See how happy Rabby is in her new little home? 🙂

I’m quite pleased and proud of the work I did today! More coming soon about walnuts, chickens, and death at Happy Valley Farm.

Capon Capers Update

20 Thursday Sep 2012

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This is not the capon, but I liked it so I’m posting it.

A few of you have asked me whether we’ve eaten any capon lately as a result of his misbehavior. I am glad (I guess) to say, “no.” After a few days of having severe anxiety whenever the capon would be within eyesight or not, I knew it had to end. Not only was it my JOB to keep these things fed, watered and poo-free, leaving me to hang out in their enclosure a couple times a day and seeing them around the farm all the time, the family was taking a weekend camping trip and I was going to be ALL ALONE on the farm. It was going to be up to me to run the place, and I wouldn’t have anyone else there to help me out.

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Photo(s) of my Day: After the Rain

18 Tuesday Sep 2012

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Last week we had a rain, a long one that lasted from night into day. It stopped and stared throughout the morning and afternoon, lingering until past noon on Friday. Here are a few shots I snapped while doing some weeding on the farm. I liked finding the little splashes of color among the dry, dead foliage that had survived the sweltering summer.

How to Make Homemade Pasta

17 Monday Sep 2012

Posted by in Bumbling Bites

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It’s been quite awhile since I’ve posted any recipes here, and I think it’s time to start up again. As an Italophile and food-lover, I’ve always wanted to learn how to make my own pasta. While studying in Italy, I learned how to make potato gnocchi, but the crux of the Italian diet is really in tagliatelle, spaghetti, farfalle and more.

The first thing to know about making pasta–and, really, any kind of cooking–is that fresh ingredients are the best. Organic, if possible. We’re lucky enough right now to be on a farm where the eggs are so fresh they’re literally still warm from the chicken sometimes when I collect them. So, that’s awesome.

Ingredients/supplies:
Eggs (1 egg per person)
Flour* (100 g of flour per person)
*The thing about flour–in Italy, there is actual legislation and such about the types of flour restaurants and commercial pasta-makers can use so that it’s legit. You can use regular flour for this, but the best flour to use is farina di grano duro, or durum wheat semolina flour. Sometimes it’s sold in stores with the label “pasta flour.” If you have an Italian food store or the like in your city, that’s your best bet for finding good flour. Otherwise, all-purpose flour should be fine with egg pasta. I’m afraid I don’t know yet how to make gluten-free pasta, but when I do, I”ll be sure to share it with everyone. 🙂
Salt (optional)

A CLEAN, flat surface
Rolling pin or pasta  machine (you know, the crank kind)
Fork

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