Here we go!
Our last week in Sunny Italia was an all-hands-on-deck series of concerts, lessons, classes and eating!
So much to sample, so little time!
This little one had a couple of amazing opportunities with some top teaching talents. She and her brother had prepared, over the course of the past year, a challenging duet which they’d hoped to have ready for public performance.
Prior to the public performance, however, there was a ‘check in’ (aka an audition) for all the performers. Well, turned out the piece wasn’t up to the festival’s public playing standards and while the two were allowed to play other pieces, this one was out for various but very understandable reasons.
While the violinist was relieved, the cellist had some tears.
“But we worked so hard!”
There were some motherly and relatively unheard words of consolation and we all carried on. A couple of days later, my princess bravely approached a serious cello talent and asked if she might have a lesson.
Following the lesson, in which she’d made some mighty progress and conquered a couple of stumbling blocks, I asked her why she didn’t play like that all the time.
She smiled. “I didn’t know I could.”
She also said she was wondering if she could regularly travel to London for more lessons with this professor.
Very funny.
A couple of nights before the end of our time in Casalmaggiore, our lovely B&B proprietress Barbara prepared a dinner for all her guests based entirely on the traditional dishes of her hometown, Modena.
She’d wanted to take us there for a little day trip to her parents’ place in the country and where her father makes his own legendary batches of balsamic vinegar (two wee bottles in my luggage; the stuff is 34 years old and tastes like everything good).
Here she’s showing packages of pasta produced and available only in Modena and which we — of course! — sampled later.
Cooking pasta and, for reasons not clear to me, transferring pasta from one pot of hot water to a second.
These other tasty babies (I was told the name but have forgotten) were rolled and rerolled to perfection on this electric pasta maker. Nice gadget.
Cut and then left to rest beneath a tea towel while the rest of dinner was prepared.
The perfectly cooked tri-colour Modena pasta with a bologne sauce (tomato and meat).
For the non-meat eaters, quattro formaggio. His life will never be the same.
And these tasty bits are the piece of dough seen above, dropped into hot oil until puffed up.
And then opened, stuffed with a very creamy (although with a different texture than you’d call ‘creamy.’ The proper word escapes me and I will seek out this cheese — I promise! — on our return. After stuffing with cheese and arugula, one could also add some parchment-thin transparent slices of home-cure prosciutto ham or salami.
Happy happy kidlets. They ate and ate and would have eaten more had the Princess not been part of a so-lovely ensemble, playing music in the town cathedral for a mass in remembrance of all the dead children known to the parishoners.
This pic is before the Mass began and you may just be able to see a couple of heads above the railing to the left.
The list of children’s names went on for such a long time. So much heartache, even if now old pain.
But the music was exquisite, enhanced by the indescribable acoustics.
The feeling on the walk home was like sunshine.
The Country Mice 