After quiet Christmas celebrations we were looking forward to a new year. Although I'm not sure how much will change. We celebrated the new year at home along with everyone else. I couldn't help remember the incredible celebrations downtown last year. This year there was a televised concert and fireworks from Circo Massimo, but we didn't watch. It turns out there were plenty of fireworks in the neighborhood. The noise was incredible! It was well after curfew and the sound of the fireworks echoed through the empty streets. We added our own with sparklers from the balcony and a few fireworks in the piazza. John and Jack picked some up in San Marino earlier this fall. They were fun but didn't go quite as high as they probably should have to avoid the risk of serious damage or injury. The boys had a good time with it. I was nervous. We could see other fireworks on other balconies. I couldn't help think of the fire risk, but people didn't seem to worry to much about that. Our neighbors upstairs a couple of floors dumped water before lighting their balcony fireworks, Roman candles I think. That was probably a good idea, but a bit surprising, especially since we were directly below.
After the holiday lockdowns I was looking forward to reopening in the new year. I was especially excited to hear that museums would be reopening... in the yellow zones only... not in Rome. For the first time Rome is in the orange zone based on infection and transmission rates, hospital capacity, and a few other indicators like contact tracing capacity. It doesn't mean much for our day to day life since shops are open and restaurants are open only for takeout. But many of the things I want to do and see are closed and travel is quite restricted for now. At least our favorite gelateria, Gelateria Procopio, is still open.
The best thing is that both kids are back in school. Evelyn has been going to school all year, which has been fantastic. They follow precautions with masking, distancing, and ventilation and have had only a very few cases among students and no cases in the last two months. The open doors and windows keep it rather cold during the winter, but better than having to stay home. She has after school activities three times a week with robotics on Monday and soccer on Wednesday and Friday. The late bus stops near our favorite gelateria so we can continue our tradition of stopping by on the way home. Soon she will start helping with the school play costumes and props. She is quite excited about the chance to be involved.
Jack has been at home doing online school since October. It has improved a lot since last spring, but still far from ideal. Toward the end, arts classes and labs were allowed to meet so he could attend his drama classes twice a week. Now they are allowed to meet half of the time. Students had to have a negative COVID test before returning to school. Now it is fairly easy to get one. There are many pharmacies around town where you can easily get a test if you can find the times that they are open for testing. One Saturday afternoon we went to four pharmacies without luck. The only risk with that is that if the test is positive you get caught up in the Italian quarantine and tracking system. They are quite strict about this. You aren't even supposed to leave your apartment to take out the garbage. People come to check on you and if you aren't home you are fined. It makes no sense that our Region went up a restriction level and the high schools were allowed to go back to campus. That's not a complaint. I'm glad, but it doesn't seem logical. I'm OK with the Italian lack of logic on this one.
Over the holidays we got a break from the constant hammering from the neighbor's remodel. They were breaking out the tile. There was a LOT of tile. The hammering lasted all day for weeks. With the new year the hammering has lessened, but has been augmented by some kind of power sawing on the balcony. The joys of city living. The best days are when they are applying plaster, just a gentle scraping sound. I'd definitely hire these guys to work on my apartment. I know they show up Every
Single Day. The arrive early each morning while Evelyn and I are waiting outside for the school bus. We exchange greetings and I try to catch a glimpse of the work inside while the door is open as they carry the bags of plaster up the stairs. The work is happening in apartment 2. We are in 6. The couple in 4, in between, has a new little baby. I worried about her sleep until I ran into the mom who told me that the baby seems to like the noise.
We are still attending Zoom church from home. Fortunately, there is an English Sunday School class which we enjoy and help take turns teaching. Evelyn even had her turn. She did a great job teaching a class with both adults and teenagers. On the day that Jack was sustained as a Priest he dressed up for the occasion by putting on a white shirt and tie. He kept the three pajama plaids and added a striped tie. Quite the fashion statement.
After the Marvel movie marathon over the holidays we have moved on and changed directions with Jane Austen movies. We started with Sense and Sensibility, then the full 6 hours of BBCs Pride and Prejudice. Up next, Emma. It is fun to watch them with My Girl. My Boy is less than interested and hides in the other room while we watch and discuss.
One weekend there was a threat of snow. We'll take anything for a bit of excitement. It was all over the news and the mayor issued a brochure about what to do if it did actually snow. The last snow was in 2018. So it happens sometimes. Things like remove the snow in front of your building and be careful moving around the city. It has been rather cold (for Rome) with occasionally freezing temperatures. It might not sound like much to my family in Idaho, but even though they are colder, damp mornings in the 30s feel cold. It's cold enough to frost the ground and make things slippery. Evelyn and her friends have fun sliding around on the frosted basketball courts before school. The coldest nights never matched the rain so we didn't get snow where we are. There has been plenty of snow in the hills and even a little bit on the other side of town, but it missed us.
Tour busses have started showing up on the streets. I was quite surprised since there aren't any tourists. The city is using the tour busses for new express routes to reduce crowding on the metro. More busses have been added to existing lines to reduce crowding as well. You still occasionally find a crowded bus during rush hour, but for me that is easy enough to avoid.
One of the missionaries asked if I am cooking all Italian now. Not at all, but we have added a few things. We've been eating a lot of pomegranates this winter. These aren't new, but they are much easier to eat now that I have learned an easier way to open them. Blood oranges are also something we like a lot that aren't new to us, just much more available. We've started eating arostacini, little mini lamb skewers. These should really be grilled outdoors during the summer. We broil them in the oven and call it good enough. Probably the most popular addition is pasta gricia. It is one of the four classic Roman pasta dishes. They all center around pecorino cheese and black pepper. Gricia adds either guanciale or pancetta. I've heard, guanciale is more traditional, but I find it a bit greasy. Amatriciana adds tomato. Carbonara adds eggs.
I also like suppli, but I haven't tried to make them yet. They are easy enough to find at many of the little pizza places in the neighborhood. They are little breaded and fried balls of rice and tomato sauce with a bit of mozzarella cheese in the middle. Sometimes they are called suppli al telefono because you can pull them apart and the cheese strings out between the two halves like a telephone cord. Further south a similar food is called arancini. I don't know the difference between the two, but I'm sure a food purist could tell me. Food here is so often strictly traditional and very regional. In the US, especially in California we like to take the best food from anyplace in the world and mix it all up together. Fillipino Hawaiian burritos with tater tots or Korean tacos anyone?
One thing I want to try cooking is rabbit. It is fairly common in the grocery stores and butcher shops, but I don't really know how to prepare it. I got some tips from my cousin so I'll try it soon.
The kids like the Babish cooking videos so we have made his baguettes and one of his mac and cheese recipes. There are four recipes in the video. We made the last stove top version with cheddar and fontal, something similar to fontina. In Ireland there is cheddar everywhere, here it is rare and sold sliced to go on your American hamburgers. We eat cheddar with chili and burritos but never hamburgers.
I'm quite excited by a new place that sells bagels. Before this there were a couple of places you could buy a bagel sandwich, but there wasn't anywhere in town you could just buy bagels. This new place is run by an American couple who started their business as a bed and breakfast hostel. When tourism dried up due to the pandemic they started selling their bagels and bread to the public and their business exploded. You have to pre-order bagels and the sourdough bread is only available to people willing to commit to a regular subscription order. It might all be worth it. I'll know next Monday when I pick up my bagel order.
One sad note is that the cookies here have been a bit of a disappointment. The are beautiful, but the flavors and textures are mostly disappointing. I would like them better if I liked shortbread. The best we've found are the lingua di gatto, cat's tongues. They are thin sweet butter cookies that are sometimes dipped in chocolate. I've also seen two made into an apricot jam sandwich and then dipped. They are what Pepperidge Farm Milanos are trying to be.
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