Italy in Books Reading Challenge November 2011

Passeggiata Strolling Through Italy by G.G. Husak

Paperback: 355 pages

Genre: Travel memoir

Publisher: Booksurge Publishing 2008

Source: Sent to me by another blogger Maggie of Normandy Life via Bookmooch

First Sentence : Prologue ‘for almost fifteen years, March has signified not only the coming of spring, but my husband Al’s and my pilgrimage to Italy.’

Quote From Amazon.com : Ms. Husak’s memoir of travels to Italy with her husband will appeal to those who love travel in general and Italy in particular.

My Opinion: Suited especially to the first time visitor or virtual traveller to Italy.

The November post for the list of books that the other people taking part are reading this month has already been posted. November Reviews

Although I enjoyed this memoir about this couples travels in Italy, I did not really find it excited me. I hope that does not mean I have been living here too long for a travel memoir of Italy to inspire me. Personally I feel this is more suited to the first time visitor or virtual traveller to Italy and better read in small doses as it did tend to be repetitive in parts. The repetitiveness was a shame as I felt it was due to poor editing as were some of the mistakes I found. Mistakes I hasten to add that those that do not live here or speak any Italian I doubt will even notice, so I am not going to be pedantic and will not even mention them in detail.

The Cinque Terre is one of the couples favourite places and it also saddened me somewhat to be reading this so soon after the recent disasters caused by flooding in the area. That withstanding they covered many of the major tourist centres on their annual holidays, including Roma, Florence, Venice, Milan, Orveito, Siena, Naples, Sorrento and Positano. A wide selection indeed. Some of the things that they had to say about various places and the way things work here in Italy did niggle me a bit at times. Again this was probably a case of knowing both the places and the vagaries of life in Italy, a little better in some aspects, not others) than this intrepid pair of adventurers. Also one must remember that this was the early nineties they were writing about for their first trips and times have changed a lot since then.

There is no doubt in my mind that Italy has got under this couples skin and really enriched their lives, otherwise why would they still be coming here, as we are led to believe they still do. I would be very interested in a sequel as I think they may have learnt a lot more about Italy since those early days. Although even on those early trips they soon learnt to relax and go with the flow, it is the only way to happily exist in Italy.

‘Passegiata strolling through Italy’ certainly has a lot to recommend it to lovers of all things Italian, who wish to immerse themselves in the personal details of the Husak’s adventures.

Since 1993, Glen Grymes Husak has made an annual pilgrimage to Italy. Glen brings her background and insight as an English teacher and museum docent to the history and art of Italy.

Glen Grymes Husak has travelled with her husband Al to Italy since 1993. Their adventures in Italian cities and villages and growing love for the Italian experience provide the inspiration for her writing. She brings the background and insight of an English teacher and museum art docent to historical sights and art of Italy. She tells her friends that she enjoys writing about Italy almost as much as being there.
In more recent years, Glen and Al have added other Mediterranean destinations to their travels but always end up in Italy. They have not found a place that they like better. The author is I believe currently based in Houston, Texas.

Other sources of information used in this post :-

Author's Goodreads Profile

G.G. Husak's Official Website

I also post these ‘Italy in Books’ reviews on my other blog.
LindyLouMac's Book Reviews

Olive Harvest 2011 – Milling from Olive to Oil

   
Once we had decided that five days picking was more than enough, certainly in one stretch, the next task was to get the olives to the mill. A good job we did stop when we did as we only just got them all in the X-Trail and the Smart Car would really have not been much help would it! If you have not yet read my post on our picking and would like to do so just click on this link. Olive Harvest 2011 – Picking
Loaded and ready to go!

Off we then went on a short drive to the Oleificio in Montefiascone, where they were expecting us. We had arranged to arrive with our crop sometime on the Tuesday morning when we we would be given a more precise appointment for our milling.

Arriving at the mill olives are unloaded into a large crate.

Our crate is the one in the top left hand picture and when we left on Tuesday it had been moved into the warehouse area for storage, photo top right. Before leaving we confirmed in the office that our slot for milling would be the next day, Wednesday 16th November verso (towards)2pm.

Having been through this process before we warned my sister that we were probably in for a very long afternoon at the mill. Fortunately she did not seem to mind, although she did take her book as I suggested she never actually got to read it, as she found the whole process interesting, well I she seemed to! We arrived at the appointed time and our arrival was acknowledged immediately, however it was probably half an hour later when someone decided to tell us that due to a breakdown during the night, they were running a couple of hours behind, so why not go off somewhere else for awhile. We took the advice and went off to the station to check the times for my sister’s train to Roma the next morning, we were unable to buy her ticket though as the Tabac (where they sell train tickets) was of course closed for the afternoon as were most of the local shops. There is a new branch of Todis in Montefiascone opened on 26th October which is unusually ‘orario continuato’ continuous opening with no afternoon closure, so we did a little food shopping before returning to the mill for our rescheduled appointment.
On our return we located our crate, now outside, see the bottom row in the mosaic above, just before 4pm our turn arrived. The crate was weighed we were given our ticket, for use later to pay for the milling process which is calculated by the amount of oil produced, then the olives were loaded into the hopper and the process began. The olives would appear as olive oil in approx two hours time, I followed the process as best I could in these photos. The first mosaic of photos show the olives being weighed, before being tipped into the hopper, the leaves are then separated from the olives by being blown and deposited in the basket outside, see bottom left of picture, before the olives are sent off into the milling machinery.

As mentioned above the leaves have been separated as the olives make their way into this first stage of the milling process where they are washed and ground.

In the next stage of the process the pulp is transferred into tanks, there are six in all and they are used in rotation, our olive pulp was designated to tank number two.

An impressive looking beast here are some close ups of the procedure, notice how red the pulp is going down the tube in the first photo, top left!  The operative kindly opened the lid so that I could photograph the pulp entering the chamber.

While we waited for the oil, I will took a few photos around the mill, including where the waste product from the procedure is transferred to. It appears to lose its colour looking at the last photo ‘ stuff’ which had been around for awhile maybe used as a compost product but this is just a guess.

The setting sun, Montefiascone Duomo and general environs of the mill.

The green lights indicate that the pulp is ready for the next stage and the chamber is emptied as it passes through the next batch of machinery to the final stages, the waste product is removed and ends up where I showed you in a previous collage. It gets exciting as the procedure enters the final stages as you wait for your very own olive oil to appear.

Which it finally does and to our delight the operatives told us that not only was our oil of a very good quality, but in fact even better it was excellent, they knew this because of the transparency, just take a look at the large photo!

We are very pleased with the end result and I hope you have enjoyed my very basic description of the process, any mistakes are my own!

For those of you that are new to this blog and may be interested in the previous Olive Harvest posts, here are the links.
Olive Harvest - Phase One – 2009
Olive Harvest - Phase Two - 2009
Olive Harvest 2010 - Che Disastro!Travel Tales
Olive Oil 2010
and the prequel to this post  Olive Harvest 2011 - Picking
Lots more photos can be viewed in in My Flickr Albums in the collection entitled Olives and Olive Oil.
All rights reserved by LindyLouMac Photo Collection

Mosaic Monday
This is a series which I participate in from time to time and I have done so with this post. Welcome to News From Italy to anyone who has called by from Mosaic Monday at Little Red House and of course all my supportive readers who call by and leave comments both here and on my other blogs.
LindyLouMac's Book Reviews - LindyLouMac's World in Photos  - Travel Tales
 

Friday Photo – Marta in the November sunshine

As you know I sometimes have a few single photos to post here that are relevant to our life in Italy and therefore this blog and this has probably meant that most of you realise how keen I am on photography.  It would hardly go unnoticed as most of my posts do have rather a lot of photos!

What many of you probably do not know though is that for the last eighteen months I have contributed almost daily to a Photography Blog - Beautiful World but sadly it is closing down on December 8th. I have decided that I do not want to stop experimenting and learning, so I have transferred my work to a new blog and will continue to post my favourite photos there. The purpose of this new blog is to share the world I have learnt to appreciate so much more through the camera lens. A lot of the photos will be off subject for News From Italy, hence the separate blog where I can be more diverse in my posting.

I would love you to join me on this journey and am therefore hoping that some of you will be willing to give me some encouragement and support for this project by following me there.

Looking forward to seeing you there. LindyLouMac's World in Photos

No this is not the photo I published there today but one of Marta in the November sunshine. Have a lovely weekend everyone.

All rights reserved by LindyLouMac Photo Collection

Olive Harvest 2011 - Picking

After our Olive Harvest being so disappointing last year we were really hoping for a better one this year. In fact it turned out better than we had hoped for, but unfortunately we did not have the labour to complete picking in the time we had allowed this year. Two years ago when we had a massive harvest of 1,074 kilos it took four of us, two sessions of four days to pick this quantity!
Our friends who have helped us for the last few years were this year unavailable, but fortunately my sister was able to time a visit to help us and some other local friends managed to give us a few hours between them. This meant that for the majority of the time it was just three of us harvesting, for the four days we had allowed. With the mill accepting a minimum quantity of 300 kilos we decided we needed to carry on for a fifth day, which pushed our harvested weight to the 380 kilos.  With time and labour there is no doubt we could have harvested a second batch, but quite honestly as this amount was going to provide more than enough for our own use and family and friends that we share with, we decided to call a halt. Shame about the unpicked olives but there you go, that’s life, no one else wants them as everyone has more than enough of their own!
David and I have been harvesting olives every year since our arrival in Italy in 2004 and quite honestly we sometimes feel we have been there and done that! Having an Olive Grove is hard work needing attention throughout the year, although of course it is extremely rewarding to produce your own olive oil. For those that do not know from previous years we harvest all our olives by hand, just using little rakes something like a child’s sand toy. This method ensures that there is very little damage to the olives during the picking, but it is of course a slow and labour intensive method. Rewarding work in the sunshine though, we have always been lucky with our timing of the harvests as regards the weather, only getting soaked to the skin once, as heavy rain arrived just as we were completing picking one year, with no option but to carry on.
We were certainly lucky with the weather this year. My sister had beautiful blue skies to enjoy while she was here and it was a pleasure to be outside in the sunshine all day.
I will follow this post up with one about the milling process soon but for now I will share photos of the harvest from November 10th to November 14th inclusive. Good timing as the following morning we had our first frost, although it disappeared quickly and we had another glorious day of which we spent a good few hours of at the mill, but that is for next time.











For those of you that are new to this blog and may be interested in the previous Olive Harvest posts, here are the links.
Olive Harvest - Phase One – 2009
Olive Harvest - Phase Two - 2009
Olive Harvest 2010 - Che Disastro!
Olive Oil 2010

Lots more photos can be viewed in in My Flickr Albums in the collection entitled Olives and Olive Oil.
All rights reserved by LindyLouMac Photo Collection
Ciao Christy - La Dolce Vita
This is a series which I participate in from time to time, welcome to News From Italy to anyone who has called by from this link about sharing La Dolce Vita in Italy.