Sicily Guide

I follow politics and try to be objective. I do not think it is black and white. I hate partisanship: I do not see why two parties cannot work together. I find Italian politics entertaining and upsetting at the same time. As I briefly wrote a few weeks ago, the Prodi administration - brought to power about two years ago - failed a confidence vote and Italy faces new political elections this coming April 13. The electoral campaign has been feisty. What do you expect from us? We still carry medieval hatred among some of our cities. And Guelphs and Ghibellines seem to have abruptly come to life aga!in

I have been in the USA for eight years now. I really do not know what to do for these political elections. I am an Italian living abroad and my passport expired a couple of years ago. So, I had to join AIRE (the Italian Association of Italians Living Abroad) to have it renewed by the Italian Consulate in New York. Now I can vote from here.

The last few weeks, I have been receiving flyers to vote for specific candidates. However, I am hesitant to vote. These are my main reasons:

1) Even though I am well informed of what is going on in Italy, I do not think it is right for me to vote and influence Italian politics after eight years abroad. (England, for instance, does not allow its expats to vote after five years abroad). Under the current electoral law, anybody abroad with an Italian passport - even if they never been to Italy or speak any Italian - can vote.

2) I do not even know if I want to go back and live there again. The work situation looks unattractive in Italy.

3) I know little about the politicians on the ballot (almost nothing). If they are these great business people (as it appears from the flyers), why do we always need public money to finance events and put together associations here in the USA?

I discovered Renee’ Restivo through a group of foodies on meetup in New York. She is creator of the NYC Sicilian Food, Wine & Travel Club. I love receiving her email updates and news.

A cooking instructor and writer with a passion for authentic Italian regional cuisine, Renée Restivo divides her time between Italy and New Jersey. Known for her vivacious spirit, sincere enthusiasm and a love for lesser known ingredients and hill towns in Italia, she leads culinary tours and cooking lessons in Sicily, Veneto and Tuscany, where she gathers recipes and stories about opera-singing fish sellers, shepherds on vespas and thousand-year-old olive trees. When she is in the states, she teaches regional Italian cooking.

When you are around, you When you are around, you definitely should join her to one of her meet-ups in New York City.

Here are some links to learn more about her:

Radio
Radio Show with Rick Steves

Videos
Silversponcookbook

Articles
Article I
Article II
Article III

Her meet-up group in New York

For the Palermo’s Cultural Week, all city’s museums offer free entrance thru March 30. An exhition dedicated to Giorgio De Chirico sounds particularly interesting: “La Metafisica continua - Opere della Fondazione Giorgio e Isa de Chirico”. Check the schedule of the museum and the gallery you are planning to visit before making plans to go. All the museums close and open at different times. Enjoy!

A tourist guide about Mafia… I really want to see this one! According to ABC News, Augusto Cavadi, a Sicilian high school teacher and Mafia scholar, tells tourists everything they’ve wanted to know about the Mafia in a 55-page handbook.

“You know, I couldn’t be bothered to always answer the same questions,” said Cavadi, who holds seminars for tourists wanting to know more about Sicily’s social and historic background.

Read more at ABC News

The first time we visited Sicily, we were very pleasantly surprised by the delicious food and the excellent wines that we enjoyed.

I remember our first dinner in Palermo, when we tasted a fabulous wine at the recommendation of the sommelier Mille e una Notte (”a thousand and one nights”). We were intrigued by the name of the winery, Donna fugata, which we immediately associated with the name of the summer home of the Principe di Salina, played by Burt Lancaster in the film “Il Gattopardo” (”The Leopard”). The movie was based on the famous novel by Sicilian writer Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa.

Read more at El Paso Times

“Elegance, fruit, balance, and organoleptic nobility; it’s a four to five star harvest. 2007 will also be remembered for the reappraisal of production processes that induced high quality Sicilian wine producers to create wines capable of satisfying the new demands of consumers”.
This is the conclusion made by one of the most famous and authoritative enologists in the world, Riccardo Cotarella, on the progress of Sicilian wines (an island that has become a central winemaking region) and of the ratings given by wine enthusiasts for the 2007 harvest (with production registering a decline of 40%).

Read more at Wine News

Easter comes earliear this year. There are lots of traditions in Sicily to celebrate this feast. The parade of The Devils in San Fratello, a mix of sacred and profane customs, is particularly characteristic. I do not particularly agree with the theme, but it is a tradition.

The Chicago Sun Times writes about another Sicilian village very similar to San Fratello: “It’s Easter Sunday in the Sicilian town of Prizzi. Devils are dancing. Death is everywhere. “Death” actually is a big Italian guy in an even bigger yellow jumpsuit. He’s wearing a macabre mask and toting a wooden crossbow.
His devil buddies are similarly decked out in red costumes with giant heads and Lucifer-like horns.” Continue

Look at this slideshow

No one will win next month’s elections in Italy, especially not the nation’s citizens. For all the campaign rhetoric about change and reform, everyone seems dead set on ignoring the country’s fundamental problem: organized crime, or what we might call our criminal economy. Talk of this corruption crisis never goes beyond expressions of solidarity with the victims, praise for the valiant police, and generic appeals to morality. All of which leads nowhere. Last year, a report by the Italian business association Confesercenti estimated that the Mob in Italy generated more than $125 billion of annual revenue, a figure equal to 7% of the country’s gross domestic product. That’s more than double the annual income of Italy’s entire agricultural sector.

Read more at Time

I have many people named “Giuseppes” in my family, plus it is father’s day in Italy today. Happy San Giuseppe and Father’s Day to everybody.

If you wonder about the sfingi recipe for San Giuseppe, please have a preview from last year post.

One of our readers signaled an interesting article to us. Southern Italy’s active volcanoes mean that living in the region is not for the risk-averse. Less well known, though, is the threat from the sea.

Tsunamis occur around once a century in the Mediterranean Sea. In 1908, a magnitude 7 earthquake created a tsunami that almost destroyed the Italian cities of Messina and Reggio Calabria.

Read more at New Scientist Environment

Kempinski Giardino di Costanza Grand Hotel & Spa in Mazara del Vallo (Tp) registered a record of presences in 2007. The hotel is the first in Italy to obtain the seven stars by the American Dream Academy.

The Kempinski Hotel Giardino di Costanza recalls the traditional architecture of the area within the natural element of the surrounding olive groves and vineyards. This hotel is a hideaway country resort, elegant, nestled amidst 328,000 sq ft (100,000 sq m) of landscaped park, inspired by Arabian gardens with fountains, gazebos and water features.

More about the hotel.

Fishing can be a tourism activity. Eight families involved in the traditional swordfish fishing in the Strait of Messina decided to unite their forces to start a new organization and promote sustainable tourism through fishing. One of the first goals of the organization is to build a small harbor for fishing boats in the Northern side of Messina and try to revitalize the Massa San Nicola area. For more information, stay tuned.

I keep publishing articles I find about Sicilian wines here and there. Beppi Crosariol reports his experience at an Italian wine showcase in Canada.

One of the defining moments of this year’s Vancouver Playhouse International Wine Festival, at least for me, involved Pinocchio.

Not the mendacious marionette of the Italian fable, but something else with an impressive nose, a wine by that name made from the almost-famous Sicilian grape nero d’Avola.

“I lo-o-o-ve this wine,” declared a woman displaying the Valley Girl legato tones and denuded midriff of someone in her mid-20s.

Seeing as supplies had sold out at the festival’s temporary liquor store in the waterfront convention centre, would the visiting Italian exporter sell her a bottle under, ahem, the table?

Her ample charms notwithstanding, the woman failed to persuade Alessandro Costantini to break the rules. “Sorry,” said the co-founder of Milan-based Wineoclock SRL, with a smile. “Cannot.”

Emerging Mediterranean grapes, catchy modernist labels and dulcet Italian accents were everywhere at the 30th-annual festival, a week-long downtown blowout that culminated on Sunday and featured Italy as its theme.

Read more at the GlobeandMail.com

Teresa Levonian Cole wirtes that beyond Palermo’s faded grandeur you’ll find narrow streets filled with ancient workshops, tiny churches oozing atmosphere and a sweet reward at the end.

She goes on: “Sicily has long suffered from its associations with the Mafia, which leads visitors to fear a machine-gun beneath every tuxedo. The situation, we are assured, is much better these days, with local godfathers living it up – like Noel Coward in The Italian Job – behind the bars of the infamous Ucciardone prison, on a prime piece of real estate near the famous Villa Igiea hotel. But despite heroic efforts at clean-ups, both literal and metaphorical, Palermo can’t quite slough off its unsavoury image. Its very buildings exude a sense of former glory and present decadence”.

Read more at Scotland on Sunday

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As many of you know, I am following politics. I have not seen this news on any of the Italian newspapers though. According to the Interactive Investor, Italy’s centre-right political leader Silvio Berlusconi said he has held contacts with construction companies on building a bridge across the Straits of Messina, from Italy’s mainland to Sicily.

Berlusconi is ahead in opinion polls to win the April 13-14 general election and wants to launch his previous plan to build the bridge, which was halted by the outgoing centre-left government.
“I want to do it immediately. I have already spoken to all the companies. The plan is ready,” said Berlusconi, referring to the bridge during a presentation of his electoral program.

Read more at the Interactive Investor