A day or two in Rome passed quickly when all I could think about was returning to dig at my favorite place in Italy: Orvieto. Technically our excavations take place just outside, in a frazione del comune di Orvieto, called Tamburino. I suppose the easiest way to compare would be to call it a “suburb” in the sense that it is outside the urb, being the rupa of Orvieto. Tamburino has probably 60 homes or so, most of which I’ve seen from the outside during my passage to and from the dig site. I have the good fortune, once again, to be staying with a wonderful hostess who generously housed me when I did research in Umbria in 2008. At the top of a hill in Tamburino her house is perched, and from there I can see the entire clifftop town of Orvieto. The duomo and its gilded facade faces us, towering over the rest of the palazzi and churches. The house is nestled among trees, and it is one of the first places in my memory I saw fireflies. Three stories and many rooms compose the sturdy building, and there are books, books, books here. When I was doing my research I had most of the resources I needed right here. Now it is a convenient place to use as a post for the dig; I wake early and eat, and the road, only accessible by car to those who live there, is a straight shot down Tamburino to Campo della Fiera.

Italian light, I’ve decided, is a little less fiery, which is ironic considering the general stereotype of the country’s inhabitants. It is more yellow, more solar, and is magical both in the mornings when it filters through the grape leaves climbing sticks as well as in the evenings in the pre-sunset hours. Yesterday, in this light, I strolled to the bar, a nightly tradition: get an aperitivo before dinner, begin the evening’s catch-up with friends. Knowing I had no one to meet yet at the bar, I took my time. Almost immediately after I found myself over the old Roman road and onto the paved one, I saw a beautiful golden retriever smiling and wagging her tail. She wore no collar, but looked well fed and I assumed she had a home. Italian dogs wander more often than American ones do, or perhaps it’s just the nature of small places allowing such safe exploration. I thought nothing of it and offered the back of my hand for her to sniff.

“Mi accompagni?” I asked her. Are you coming with me? Her reply was the best she could give: she came with me. She trotted in front of me and sniffed what was available to sniff. Much like my own darling doggy at home, she would go a bit ahead and then make sure to come back and keep pace with me after checking out what lay ahead. A few times I even stopped to take photos and she waited, standing still but head turned back to me expectantly, as if to say, “Well? Are you coming or not?” I finally got to the bar and she disappeared. I hope my canine spirit guide made it home safely.

I guess I’ll leave you with something to consider before my trip: my photo collage from the Baths of Caracalla, which Big Kitty and I spent quite some time trying to find…if only our spas were as intricately designed as these 3rd c. AD baths were…

Last night I cooked Mexican food—read: burritos—for Esa and a group of her friends (the number for which I was cooking remained a mystery until 9pm, so I did the best I could with what information I had). What I want to be clear about first is that the meal was generally very well received, and the kids were polite. That is my disclaimer. She and some of her girlfriends worked as sous chefs, cutting onions and dicing tomatoes, and I made “Mexican Beans” (kidney beans dubbed Mexican, with a landscape of cacti on the can) and cooked ground beef with only two cloves of chopped garlic. We had tortillas, which were made in Holland; to be fair, their overall quality was the same as the packaged kind in Safeways, I believe the brand is Mission or something similar…they’re flour, but not like the handmade ones we eat at home, that can also be easily found at a grocery store. Ah, I miss tortillas. We served it buffet-style, and twelve (rather than the 8 I had bought portions for) showed up. We ran out of meat promptly, and almost all the tortillas were gone by the end of the night (we had a stock of 24). They also liked the makeshift “nachos” I had made, which really was just melted provolone on tortilla chips. Oh, yeah: cheddar, American or Mexican cheese is un-findable in most places here. I made do with the provolone, and it was fine.

What struck me as most interesting was how funny they were about the food. Okay, so I understand the concept that certain cultures are more habituated to eating certain flavors. Fair enough. I would suppose that more Italians than Americans enjoy anchovies, and cook more with capers, certain bitter flavors we are less accustomed to. (Those are only two that come to mind, though there are tons more, of course. If anyone wants to share their observations, feel free.) What struck me as so odd was that onions and garlic were two ingredients that they seemed to avoid. In American-Italian cooking, garlic is abundant. Perhaps it is also that they use garlic more in the South of Italy? I have no idea, because the original bruschetta recipe is just toasted bread with garlic, olive oil and maybe salt and/or pepper.

Onions, in retrospect, I have seen less of in dishes on menus, although I am going to keep my eyes peeled to confirm this suspicion. In any case, some of the boys came in and one of the first things one kid said was, “che puzza!” (What a stink!) More than one commented on the odor of the cooking meat, and it must have been that—and the miniscule amount of garlic added—that so offended his sensibilities. Perhaps, too, the wafting scent of the chopped onion. I think I was the only one who added onions to my burrito. Granted, onions perhaps would have been better sauteed and put into the meat, but that was objected to adamantly by the co-hostess, whose tastes were not partial to onion. I promised her we could leave them on the side for them to choose whether they’d put them in their burritos. Personally, I adore the scent of onions cooking, and don’t mind at all when the kitchen smells that way for hours after. Apparently this is not a shared opinion in Italy?

When we finally gathered around to the table to serve ourselves, I introduced the dish and just said what we might normally put in a burrito, which was, essentially, everything on the table. I granted, of course, that they should eat how they wanted to, and they did. The beans were mostly left to the side, as were the onions. In a way, I guess I almost felt like the remaining food on the table was evidence of some sort of Italian hypocrisy—if I eat something “wrong” at an Italian table, trust me, I’ll hear about it. I can’t recall the number of times I’ve been chastised by friends for either mixing food on a plate (God forbid the balsamic vinegar from the salad touches the stray sauce of the pasta! Pasta must have its OWN clean dish!) or even eating things out of order (for example, eating another snack of olive oil & vinegar with bread AFTER the dessert/fruit course. OMIGODTHEWORLDISENDING! I can still hear Giovanni: “Ma, Sara, fa schiffo!” “But Sara, it’s gross!”). As much as they have my best interests at heart, I say this now and will forever believe that my dining experience is not lessened by those choices. I promise. Attribute it to my brutish Americanness, but I speak the truth. Part of me wanted to say, “But this is how it’s eaten! You have to eat it like this! Put some cheese on it, darnit!” because that seems like how things run in this country with their food. Not like burritos have specific rules or anything, and really you can put whatever you want in them, which is also part of their beauty. However, the food was enjoyed by all, and I was glad to be able to share it with them.

The reminder I got out of the experience was this: I am American. There are certain things that, no matter how many times I come here, will never change, just as there are certain things for Italians that would never change if they went to the States. Eating habits—other than my conversion to preferring aqua frizzante—I haven’t found to be very flexible for me. I’m happy to do things as much their way as I can while I’m here, so I can’t help but be a little sorry that a love of onions and garlic is not shared by people worldwide. One thing I am certainly looking forward to eating when I get home is a nice, real Mexican meal!

The other night I had a Skype date with my marvelous fella, and by the time we had finished our conversation it was 12:30 pm my time and everyone was in bed. No big deal, I thought. All I had to do was turn the lights off in the living room. Simple enough. I put away the computer, and find the switch that I think corresponds to the runners on the ceiling (they have lots of cool lighting in this apartment). I press it. They dim, but do not turn off. Thinking perhaps that I have to turn off some source of light, I press on all the buttons on the lighting panel, to no avail. Lights are flickering in the living room, the dining room, lamps and runners, but the ones that I have dimmed will not turn off. I begin to get concerned, because I don’t want to go to bed leaving the lights on. It would be rude, but also it’s not culturally acceptable—in my experience in Italy, at least—to leave lights on in a room if nobody is in it. They are great energy conservers in that way, and of course I didn’t want to seem disrespectful to my infinitely generous hosts. I try all the switches again, nervous that they might even wake up since each time I flip a switch, the click is quite loud, and I have flipped many. From the outside, it may have looked like the apartment’s inhabitants were trying to put on a disco, but only with normal lights instead of colored ones or a disco ball. I tried double clicking, which just turned things on and off. I tried dimming and clicking fast, but nothing worked. Finally defeated, I found a piece of paper and wrote them a note that I was so sorry, but I couldn’t figure out how to turn the lights off and that I would like to learn in the morning. I apologized again, and hoped that nobody would be mad. The next morning I woke up and the lights were out. I asked the housekeeper if she had turned them off and she said no. Maddalena found my note hilarious, and admitted that the lights were quite difficult to organize. The dad, the earliest riser in the family, had turned them off in the morning. I guess the trick is to click twice, but I still have had little luck in this endeavor. Let’s just hope that, in the remaining evenings I have here, I go to bed before the last person does and will therefore not have to worry myself over the lights…