ItalyTravel | Valentina Expressions

Flavors and Colors Of An Italian Summer | Valentina Cirasola | Author and Designer

17 Aug 2011 2 Comments

by Valentina in The Good Life Tags: #ItalianCustoms, #ItalianFood, #ItalianLifeStyle, #ItalianSummer, #MediterraneanDiet, #PugliaFood, #SanJoseItalianFesta, ItalyTravel, Truffles

The annual summer Italian Family Festa in San Jose, CA is almost ready, we are at the last few details of preparation and the celebrations will begin soon.
For two days Aug.27th-28th all the Italian descendants, Italian born and Italian lovers will celebrate our culture with music, food, craft, art, books and entertainment. (Click on each photo to view it larger).

The Italian Family Festa in San Jose, CA started 31 years ago by Italian emigrants with the goal of keeping our roots and traditions alive. The character of this festa is more like a country fair called “sagra” in Italian, reminding me of the autumn celebration of the earth’s bounties I have seen in Italy when I was growing up.

Sagra (sagre plural) happen in every Italian small towns and Medieval villages through August and September. The larger sagra has music bands and some sort of competition, along with food ready to purchase on the street.

The smaller sagre are mainly organized to present local food grown and cooked by passionate people, a way to share a communal table and to spend a happy day in the country. Both vendors and visitors are innamorate of their culture and history, love to show off the food they produce and often give away ancient secrets on how to cook this and that food specialties. Of course we are Italians, we love to tell people how to eat good!

Sagre in Italy used were an escape from rural life during the harvest time that preceded the long winters and for a couple of days country people and farmers had an opportunity to be social with the rest of the world. Today, sagre are a way to preserve our gastronomic traditions of the past and to bring tourists to small country towns.

(Photo truffle found on: https://www.yahoo.com/news/worlds-largest-truffle-worth-thousands-024053846.html)

In many sagre Italians celebrate food fit for a royal, like the truffle sagra in Ferrara. Truffle is a rare underground mushroom forever considered a mysterious delicacy in the culinary world and super expensive (over $1,000 per gr.). People can delight themselves with the pleasure of tasting many food prepared with truffle: Cheeses Entrée with honey and truffle, truffle antipasti fantasy, meat rolls with prosciutto and truffle, fowl meat with truffle, lasagna with truffle and so much more. I say: Eat truffle in small amounts, but eat it often!

The sagra’s themes vary from town to town.

We celebrate the harvest of watermelon, chestnuts, San Marzano tomatoes and many products from the earth. Sagra for the prepared food as grilled meat, prosciutto, salami and sausages, rice arancini and potato croquettes, pizza rustica, polenta and birds, mushrooms and much more, not only emanate mouth watery aromas miles away, but they give an opportunity to get familiar with very traditional home cooking not otherwise prepared in restaurants.

Modern Italy goes on vacation during August and September, but farmers are at work to bring us the pleasure of food from the earth that is going to sustain us during the winter. Therefore we celebrate their harvest, their hard work and the abundance of Italy.
Italian Family Festa in San Jose, CA in the way will turn into a sagra due to so much food available, but mainly is about being Italian in a foreign country and to remind ourselves of the contributions we have made in the world with our culture, art, history, architecture, philanthropy, inventions and of course food appreciated by the entire world. Being Italian is an art not taught in any school!

I have been invited to speak at our Italian Family Festa about my Puglia native land and my books on Puglia cuisine. I will be on the stage Sat. Aug. 27th at 2:30 pm.

Please come to the Italian Family Festa at Guadalupe River Park downtown San Jose between Julian and Santa Clara Street. Guadalupe River Park is conveniently located two blocks from San Jose Diridon Station. Hope to see you there. Ciao,
Valentina
www.Valentinadesigns.com

Valentina Cirasola is an Italian Interior Designer with a passion for kitchens and cooking. She operates in the USA and Europe. She loves to remodel homes and loves to turn ugly spaces into castles, but especially loves to design kitchens and wine grottos, outdoor kitchens and outdoor rooms, great rooms and entertainment rooms.
She is a published author of two Italian regional cuisine books, available here in the Books page and in various locations, including Amazon:
http://outskirtspress.com/ComeMiaNonna
http://outskirtspress.com/SinsOfAQueen

Floralia | Valentina Cirasola | Author and Designer

20 May 2011 Leave a comment

by Valentina in The Good Life Tags: #AssisiFloralia, #AssisiItaly, #Calendimaggio, #CulinaryTrips, #HistoryOfCostumes, #ItalianHistory, #ItalianLifeStyle, #MayInItaly, #MayItalianCelebrations, ItalyTravel

P15e5.1 Unframed
(Photo: Wikimedia Commons – Public Domain – Triumph of love , by Francesco Pesellino (1450), celebrates the arrival of spring and the flowering associated with May)

So much is happening in the world of Italy in the month of April and May. I have been there working, vacationing and taking notes.
Not knowing when work and play stop and start, I am considering myself lucky. The dilemma is what to write about first. Do I write about the Saint Nicholas celebration in Bari, which happens again in December, or do I write about Saint Francis festival, the “Calendimaggio” in Assisi, which happens only in May? I have seen both celebrations in the same month, they are unforgettable historic folklorist events and I don’t want to lose the opportunity to spread the words.
(Photo left source: http://www.inumbria.net/ita/ita_evento.html?ID_evento=558979221)

“Calendimaggio” festival happens every year on the first Thursday, Friday and Saturday of May to inaugurate the arrival of spring, greeting the rebirth of life, after winter hibernation and hardships. During the centuries many northern European cultures have celebrated the arrival of spring with flowers and colors.

The Celts had two seasons in a year, the dark and the light season, the effect of spring did not come until the beginning of May.
The Romans during the “Floralia” celebrated Maia and Flora, two goddesses of Spring. Groups of young gaudentes in flowery dresses decorated with flowers in the hair and all over their bodies, sang, danced and charmed the people in the streets with their serenades.

During the Middle Age the newly adopted Gregorian calendar changed the name of the spring celebration to “Kalende di Maggio” (Calendar of May), but the objective was the same: to propitiate the abundance and good fortune at the beginning of the season transformation, when trees bloom and start producing fruits. This transformation of nature is the fundamental base of a better life. Good food means good health, which in turn means better spiritual life. Banquets, bonfires, songs and dances at the top of the hill celebrated the season transformation, while inevitably the so-called “honorable” citizens erupted in horseback fights.

(Photo left Sbandieratori -source: http://www.fideacademy.com/assisi/speciale-cerimonia-di-premiazione)

Bitter and hard conflicts between various factions were the reason for creating Saints, symbols and flags in most history of people and Assisi’s history is no different. Today, the show of the skilled flag wavers is magnetic. The colors of the flags are blue for secular authority and red for pontifical authority, both temporal and religious powers in the Middle Age.

The spring celebration, a pagan custom, blends well with the religious celebration of Saint Francis, the patron of Italy, which happens simultaneously. Young Francesco (Francis) renounced his nobel and rich heritage, adopted a simple brown robe with a rope in the waist as his dress and served as the “poor of God” looking after the poor and sick people, spreading the Word of God.

The beginning of the spring season today is celebrated much the same way with love songs, choral music and street dances accompanied by violins, guitars and lutes. There are competitions, games and events, without the bloodshed of the old Middle Age. Medieval processions and torch-lit parades will recapture the old charm.

The festival leads to the prestigious Palio with two districts of the town of Assisi competing against each other for a valuable prize. The districts are the ‘Magnifica Parte de Sotto and the ‘Nobilissima Parte de Sopra’, meaning the Low and High Districts of Assisi.

All of this fun and re-enactment of history happens while the aroma of the traditional porchetta and roast-suckling pig fills the air of the entire town.

It was worth going out-of-the-way of my designated path while in Italy. I had never seen the city of Assisi overflowing with a kaleidoscope of colors, flowers, adorned trees, various symbols, statues, altars, religious figurines, flags and gonfalons, as in this three days of celebration of life, peace and food.

People were so happy and proud of their Italian heritage and I am too. Ciao,
Valentina
www.Valentinadesigns.com

Valentina Cirasola is a trained Italian Interior Designer in business since 1990. Being Italian born and raised, Valentina’s design work has been influenced by Classicism and stylish, timeless designs. She will create your everyday living with a certain luxury without taking away your comfort. She loves to restore old homes, historic dwellings and she focuses on remodeling. She is interested in food in history studies and historical events.

Author of two Italian regional cuisine books available here in this site on the Books Page and in various other locations:

Come Mia Nonna-A Return To Simplicity http://outskirtspress.com/ComeMiaNonna
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lnq8baaAq0M
Sins Of A Queen http://outskirtspress.com/SinsOfAQueen

Hollywood Lives In Cookie Wonderland! | Valentina Cirasola | Interior Designer

23 Sep 2010 4 Comments

by Valentina in Home Designs Master Tags: #EatPrayLoveFilm, #FilmInItaly, #ItalianArchitecture, #ItalianStyle, #JuliaRoberts, ItalyTravel

Love to go to matinees, especially when the expectation is high. Good film, good stories, attractive images, fantasy flies high, resulting in a few hours of daydreaming. That is time well spent.
I cannot say all of this about the film I saw last Sunday Eat Pray Love, a two hours and half wasted in the cinema. As an Italian born, I am totally offended about the view of Italy that Hollywood portraits.
Take a look of that scene in Rome when Liz Gilbert (Julia Roberts) is looking for a place to stay for a few months. She enters a dilapidated building, with no hot running water.

The owner of the house tells her to boil the water three to four times to fill up the bathtub. Liz responds the water will not be enough for a bath and the Italian woman rebuttals that she will have enough to wash the most important parts. What an absurdity! There is no house in Italy, old or new that doesn’t have hot running water. Italians don’t live in dilapidated homes, nor they rent them to travelers. We might be surrounded by antiquity, we open our windows and often see the beauty of history all around us, but Italian home interiors are very modern with sleek lines, chic décor, valuable furnishing and most of the time very avant-guard style. Where has Hollywood gone on vacation and experienced no hot water bath?

Another stereotype is the scene of a boisterous group of young lads going after the women tourist pinching their bottoms and vocalizing their pleasure. Italian men might have done that in the 18-1900s when education was a privilege of the élite, but that custom no longer exists in the civilized Italy. Italy is a very modern and vibrant country. We have everything the world wants from style and beauty to good manners and to the art of knowing how to live well, but we also have all the problems of every modern industrialized country. Italians have a high level of education, men don’t have time to spend their days pinching ladies’ derriere, they are too busy keeping up with the tough demands of the European Union as much as Italians in general don’t loose their days eating spaghetti and pizza all the day long. It is an archaic myth, Hollywood!

In the film Julia Roberts is in search of herself and her purpose. For one year she takes a yuppie vacation around the world, her hair is well highlighted for the entire trip and she is somewhat well dressed. That is not what people do when they are lost in life and want to find a new direction. I believe when people are questioning their life is because they want to find a deeper meaning and discover their soul again, certain futile aspects of their life might and will pass in second order, but not in this film. Ok, I forgot, this is Hollywood and I want to be critical.

All in all the scenery is OK, Hollywood could have done better with the means it has, it feels more like a travel log than a film with a spiritual meaning. It teaches us that anytime there is an obstacle in a marriage, it is better to break it up and go on a world trip, instead of understanding each other and work it out. Good teaching for the young generation……!
OK, so last Sunday I spent my two hours and half in a very boring seat, I guess Hollywood needed my $11.00. Ciao,
Valentina

http://www.valentinadesigns.com

Valentina Cirasola is an interior designer, in business since 1990 and a former fashion designer. She helps people realizing their dream spaces in homes, offices, interiors, exteriors, restaurants and more. Author of three books available on:
Amazon: http://goo.gl/xUZfk0
Barnes&Nobles: http://goo.gl/q7dQ3w