Archive | August, 2012

a hike up Mt Etna, our local volcano

August 22, 2012 at 3:35 pm

This past weekend was Elliott’s last time to adventure around Sicily with his sister before she and Sarah leave on Friday. To make the most of our time together, we went to a beautiful beach in a nature preserve on Saturday and then headed to the slopes of Mt Etna on Sunday.

Do you remember our super eventful, super long hike up Mt Etna last summer? The volcano erupted right as we reached the highest observation point! This was also after we’d been showered with huge chunks of volcanic ash right before we our hike. But today Etna had only lovely vistas for us today… no hot lava or flying ash. Sorry, Jess and Sarah!

We drove up to the southern station on Mt Etna and then parked just beyond all the restaurants and souvenir shops. An unassuming trail veered off to the right from the tiny parking lot, and we followed it for about an hour up undulating trails of soft volcanic ash. After about an hour we reached the edge of a massive lava flow, which is pictured above. Doesn’t it look like Mordor?

Jess and Lena went to explore a nearby atmospheric research station. Then Sarah helped Jess get rid of a worrisome blemish on her shoulder.

Jess and Sarah headed up the volcano a little farther to see a plaque Jess had read about in the guidebook. Along the way they came across a flock of goats grazing on the hillside. Sarah took a stunning photo of them.

We stayed behind to smell the flowers.

Although this hike was a little less eventful than our hike last August, I think we’re more likely to choose this route again. We’ll take you if you come and visit!

4 :: in hiking, Sicily, visitors, weekend

a hike up Mt Etna, our local volcano

August 22, 2012 at 2:35 pm

Jess and Lena went to explore a nearby atmospheric research station. Then Sarah helped Jess get rid of a worrisome blemish on her shoulder.

We stayed behind to smell the flowers.

Although this hike was a little less eventful than our hike last August, I think we’re more likely to choose this route again. We’ll take you if you come and visit!

4 :: in hiking, Sicily, visitors, weekend

life lately

August 20, 2012 at 12:30 pm

We have been so busy and have been having so much fun around here with Elliott’s sister Jess. She is with us until the end of the week, and we are packing each day full of adventures around Sicily. Her dear friend Sarah joined us last week to stay for the final week and a half of Jess’s trip, and those two girls have been great friends to me as well as such a big help around the house. I don’t want them to leave!

I have some photos to share of our adventures, and you can also check Jess’s blog and Sarah’s blog for fabulous and funny updates, too. In the meantime, here are a few recent iPhone photos from around here.

the last of the spring strawberries with ice cream and a generous dollop of Nutella

& summertime means breaking out the espadrilles!

Jess knocked a stick off butter of the counter after it had been unrefrigerated for a couple hours and it went splat… proof that our un-air conditioned house is just too hot these days

& morning snuggle photo for Daddy when he was in Ghana for work last week

Lena was so excited to board the cable car in Taormina and then said, “Wooow! Woooow!” all the way up the mountain

& Jess and her dear old friend Sarah at the medieval festival in our town (more about that soon!)

favorite stop in Taormina: Bam Bar for delicious granite, the Italian version of sorbet,

where Lena and I their enjoyed raspberry and lemon flavors

Lena wakes up at 7am and I am just too tired to do much before 7:30,

so we lie in bed to read books or snuggle. It’s a precious time.

3 :: in Lena, life lately, visitors

life lately

August 20, 2012 at 11:30 am

the last of the spring strawberries with ice cream and a generous dollop of Nutella

& summertime means breaking out the espadrilles!

Jess knocked a stick off butter of the counter after it had been unrefrigerated for a couple hours and it went splat… proof that our un-air conditioned house is just too hot these days

& morning snuggle photo for Daddy when he was in Ghana for work last week

Lena was so excited to board the cable car in Taormina and then said, “Wooow! Woooow!” all the way up the mountain

& Jess and her dear old friend Sarah at the medieval festival in our town (more about that soon!)

favorite stop in Taormina: Bam Bar for delicious granite, the Italian version of sorbet,

where Lena and I their enjoyed raspberry and lemon flavors

Lena wakes up at 7am and I am just too tired to do much before 7:30,

so we lie in bed to read books or snuggle. It’s a precious time.

4 :: in Lena, life lately, visitors

making jam in my bread maker

August 17, 2012 at 6:26 pm

I have many fond memories of the delicious homemade bread my mom made in our bread maker during my childhood. For our first anniversary, our four parents got together and bought us a very wonderful gift: a Cuisinart bread maker. Of course during the time of our first anniversary, Elliott and I were living in a studio apartment on Capitol Hill. So, sadly, our bread maker sat in the downstairs storage room the entire time we lived there.

Soon after our boxes were unpacked here in Sicily, I pulled my beautiful bread maker into the daylight. Shortly thereafter I stopped buying sandwich bread and have been making almost all our bread since early this spring.* I even convinced a friend of mine to buy the same bread maker.

(*I do recommend keeping an emergency loaf of sandwich bread in the freezer for that time that you run out of flour or milk or–gasp–just forget… and your husband has no sandwich the next morning for his lunch!)

Anyway, to get to the point, my nifty bread maker also has a jam setting. I started using it with strawberries this spring and have been jamming every fruit in season ever since (so far, cherries, peaches, and apricots). The entire process takes about 20 minutes to set up, then the bread maker works for 1.5 hours, and then you slide your jam into a jar and… you’re done! No sweating over the stove, no fiddling to get your canning jars to work, no huge messes or sticky pots. Here is what I do:

First of all, assemble your ingredients. It’s a short list: a few apricots, a box of pectin, one lemon, and some sugar. Cut up 2 cups of apricots into chunks and slide them into the bread maker pan.

Squeeze a tablespoon of lemon over the apricots.

Dust half of a box of pectin over the fruit. Let it sit for 10 minutes.

In the meantime, enjoy your beautiful daughter. She has assumed her usual position for whenever I am cooking or baking anything: right in the middle of my kitchen counter.

The recipe calls for 1.25 cups of sugar “or to taste.” I prefer my jam on the tart side, so I put in only 3/4 of a cup of sugar.

Then snap the pan into the bread maker and program it for the jam cycle. The bread maker uses the paddle in the middle of the pan to mix the jam and uses extra high heat to bring the fruit up to the proper temperature. After 1.5 hours, you have fresh jam! I put mine in recycled jars since I will just keep it in the fridge or freezer until we eat it; I would need brand new canning jars if I wanted to keep it for any length of time at room temperature. It will keep in the fridge for up to 6 weeks or in the freezer for… well, I assume a really long time.

Come on over and I’ll put some homemade jam on some homemade toasted bread for your breakfast!