Caleca

As I have mentioned, before moving to Italy, I donated my old Pfaltzgraff dinnerware.  I think I had about 5 large plates and 4 bowls left in my set, so it was time for a new one.  I figured I would be able to find some nice Italian ceramic dishes once we arrived.  As I found out after a couple of days after moving in, there is a company called Caleca a couple of hours away where they make hand-pained ceramic dinnerware and all the accessories that go with it.  I had never heard of the company, but after looking at the patterns at the Nex, I think at least 1 if not all 3 of the pasta bowl sets we got for wedding/shower gifts are Caleca.  I will be checking that as soon as I get my household goods shipment.  

Saturday, I ventured out with a few friends, and we headed for the warehouse.  After driving for a couple of hours, we arrived in the small town of Patti, where the Caleca warehouse is.

As you can see, there is nothing special looking from the outside.  As the picture below shows, it appears that we are in the middle of nowhere.

However, once you go inside you are surrounded by nothing but dishes.

Here is a picture of the all the plates and bowls which are seconds, and have flaws.  Some flaws are really bad and some you have to really search for.  On the left of the picture there are about 3 rows of shelves filled with all the accessories and bakeware that matches the dishes and are also seconds.  On the right are all the firsts, with no flaws.  The seconds are considerably less expensive and then we get a discount for being associated with Sigonella.

As you can tell from the plates, there are several different patterns to chose from.  I opted to go with a simple pattern for my dishes and then spice things up with bakeware and accessories.  I spent most of my time digging through the plates to find decent seconds.  I wanted, or needed, to get at least service for 4, but ideally 8 so that I don't have to wash dishes after every single meal.  Below is what I brought home.

I chose 8 different colors, so we have a festive looking table.  There are at least 4 more colors, and I think before we leave I will get the other 4 so I have service for 12.  

For each color I got the large plate, the small plate (there is a medium sized one as well) and the pasta/soup bowl.  The fruit/cereal bowls were tucked into the shelves, and they only had 3 of my colors.  I guess they are hard to come by.  So I picked up those 3 bowls and will look next time I go for the others.

I got yellow, pink, green (not a color I would like a whole set of, but looks good with the others)....

purple (the picture doesn't show the true color of the purple), dark blue......

red, tangerine (although in this picture it looks like the yellow, it is more of an orange)..

and light blue.

One thing I forgot to pack in my express shipment was a baking dish.  I never realized how often I actually use those, and I have been making due with the foil ones.  So I decided I could go ahead and get a new one to go with my dishes. 

I don't know the name of the pattern, but I liked it because it is simple and has all my colors.  They do make the solid ones to match any of the colors I got, but I didn't like them in the baking dishes and accessories.

So that was the excitement for this week.  The rest of the week was getting things taken care of for school.  We met with the guidance counselor, and I think we have schedules set for the kids, pending approval from the principal.  Sam was thrilled because they have enough students interested and a qualified teacher to have a strings program!  It has been a couple years since she has really played the viola, and she can't wait!

Here are a couple pictures of their school.  There is a middle school section and a high school section.  I think Mike said it was built for about 1500 students, and right now there are about 600.

We had sport physicals done, and both kids are officially on the swim team.  Next week we have to find the school bus office and get pictures done for bus passes and they have to have some sort of briefing on how to ride a bus.  Then on Friday is new student orientation and school starts the Monday after that.

Mt Etna

Saturday morning we decided to drive up to Mt Etna and check it out.  The roads up are narrow and windy, and the clouds were thick and dark.  The temperature dropped at least 20 degrees as we went from our house up the mountain.  I have to say the drive was beautiful, but freaked me out.  I do not enjoy narrow, windy roads that seem to be just inches from the edge of a cliff.  It brought me back to a drive we took from Florida to Indiana through the mountains in Tennessee when my dad thought it would be fun to stop at a scenic overlook and get a picture with Trisha and I standing at the edge of the cliff, not fun for me!  Turns out Tommy enjoys this kind of drive as much as me.  Put those narrow windy roads in Italy where people think the line in the middle of the road is just a suggestion, and it becomes that much more fun.

When you get a ways up the mountain, you come a cross this little village of stores and restaurants, and the scary drive is almost forgotten.

 This is a map of the mountain. You can see at the bottom of the map is the parking area where we were.  There is a lot of mountain above us!

You can take these gondolas up the mountain a little further.  We didn't, but might at a future date.

Here is Sam with some lava rock behind her.

There were a couple of craters you could walk up.  This is the small one that we decided to walk up.

You can't really tell, but Sam is sitting on a rock at the edge of the crater.  You can kind of see a dark spec to her right, that is a person in the bottom.

This rock and the one next to it had been 1 large rock up until about 3 weeks ago.  Originally it was shot out of the largest crater.

Mike and Sammie hiked around the entire edge of the crater.  Tommy didn't want to, so I stayed with him.  The picture above is of Mike and Sam on the other side.

We made the kids hike to the bottom, they are in the center of the picture.

Here they are posing for us.

After walking around, we had to make the drive back down the now wet (since there was a down pour while we were walking around), narrow and windy roads.  And if the Italian drivers were not enough to have to watch for, there was a herd of sheep in the road.  

They all stayed together in the lane and only crossed over when they saw a break in the wall.  You have to be careful with sheep in the road, because if you hit one, you have to pay for it.

This is just a picture of the roads through the little villages.  This is not the narrowest of roads we went on, but it was still a little close, especially when there is a car coming from the other direction.  If people are parked on the sides, that just adds to the fun and excitement!

Saturday night we went to another agriturismo for dinner with some neighbors.  I didn't take pictures, but it looked like what you would expect an Italian villa to look like.  It was up on a hillside and had a beautiful view of  a hillside town across the way.  We sat out on their large patio under a perfectly clear sky.  The food was amazing, and way too much to eat! There were about 10 appetizers, then pasta, then soup, then chicken done 2 different ways and salad, then dessert.  No kids, just adults.  It was really nice and relaxing.  Definitely not looking forward to getting my scale next month!

Market Day

Now that our classes are over, life is fairly normal.  Mike is working, and Tommy is swimming.  I pretty much drive Tommy to and from swim and then we just hang out around the house.  It is definitely time for school to start.  Of course we still have to hear back about an appointment to get the kids' schedules set before school, and the wait is bugging all of us.

One exciting thing, on my way out of housing to bring Tommy to practice the other day, I got stopped for a breathalyzer test.  I have never experienced that before.  Thankfully I didn't use any listerine that morning since the DUI number is really low here.  I also found out that day that my car is getting to take a side trip before arriving in Italy.  It's arrival here is being delayed because it is going to Germany tomorrow.  The word is that it gets to Italy August 20th.  I'll believe it when I see it.

I did get to go to the local market Wednesday with one of my neighbors.  I was excited to get some local produce.  There were several produce areas, but one booth had pretty much any fruit or veggie that is in season, so we got a number and waited in like there.  Here is some of what I got

Some white peaches and white plums

bananas

tomatoes, onions and garlic

I have only had the fruit so far, but all was good!  In addition, there was a woman selling fresh chicken and eggs.  I got some chicken, and if you ask she will slice it into really thin slices.  So I breaded and cooked that for dinner as well as trying out a recipe for pistacchio pasta that I had found.

It isn't the prettiest picture, but it tasted great!  I have not been a real fan of chicken for several years now, but this chicken was really good.

There were also people selling clothes, fabrics, plastic junk, and ceramics.  We don't have any good plates for 2 reasons, 1 because our household goods haven't come so we have only the dishes from the loaner locker.  2 because my dishes were old and we didn't have a complete set anymore, so I donated them before we moved with the intention of getting some Italian dishes, and we haven't gotten to the ceramic factory yet.  Well, Tommy has been complaining that the bowls we have are too small, and he wanted a bowl that holds more than 2 bites of cereal.  So I checked out the ceramic guy.  He had a lot of nice stuff, things you would see in TJ Maxx, and pretty cheap.  There were a couple of bowls that were nothing special, but were big.

this one is gray inside and out

This one is blue outside and white inside.

Each bowl was 1 euro, so I bought them and the kids were happy to use them as soon as I was able to clean them. You can't really appreciate the size of the bowl in these pictures.  So here is a picture of my bowl of cereal next to Tommy's this morning

A little bit bigger :)

Other than that, we did go to the mall a couple of times.  Sam and I went with a neighbor Sunday, and then I showed Mike the way the other day.  We went into the sporting goods store, which is unlike anything I have seen.  It is huge, and people were riding bikes, playing ping pong, playing baseball, shooting hoops.  It was crazy!  I also did some shopping at a store that is similar to a super target, but bigger.  I didn't really have a chance to roam, but I will.  So we are slowly learning our way around and getting used to the area.

Agriturismo

Saturday morning we went to an Agriturismo with a couple of the guys Mike will be working with and their families.

Essentially, an agriturismo is a farm style restaurant, and can be a bed and breakfast, too.  The one we went to is owned by one of the women who works in Mike's office.  They grow much of the food they cook and serve on their farm.  The orange trees in the picture above are all part of their farm.

We arrived for breakfast and had scrambled eggs, from eggs which she got that morning from her hens.  We also had some delicious bacon and sausage, which is very different from sausage at home.  At some point, she also brought out some bread and olive oil, from their olives.  Then we got some pastries.

This is a tart with apricot preserves that the woman had made that morning.

This is a croissant which was filled with apricot preserves as well.  I had a piece of the tart and it melted in your mouth.  Tommy had 2 of the croissants, which says a lot for a kid who normally wouldn't eat apricot.

To drink we had either water or this wonderful blood orange juice. I think it is the best orange juice I have had.  I imagine their groves are blood oranges.  After breakfast is when we were offered some coffee.  We all had cappuccino.   It was quite strong, and even with 3 sugars added, the kids were not fans.

She also brought out some grapes she had picked that morning.

There were some grape vines growing on the fence between the parking/pool area and the restaurant.

After breakfast, we sat around the pool for a little while.

It wasn't a large pool, but it was nice.  It looks like an in-ground pool, but the patio area was several steps above ground.  So they had to build the structure in order to have the pool. 

After a couple hours at the pool, it was time for antipasti.  This is essentially just appetizers, and we were all expecting a large platter with some appetizers that we could pick what we wanted to eat.  Instead, this is the plate that we each got

There were fried lemon chicken nuggets, olives, a cold eggplant lasagna, a hunk of cheese and a slice of bread with some wonderful pesto on top.  Maybe it was a pistachio pesto.  Since there was no way I could eat all of mine, and the rest of my family really only at the chicken, we had a lot to bring home!  All of it was delicious, and there was no way I needed to make dinner that night!

This is a picture of the orange groves from the patio.  You can't see the building from the road, so I am not sure how they get their business, but was a beautiful and peaceful place to spend the morning.