Carnevale treats

Wednesday was our day at home, with Dee working on her lesson for Thursday. Because her Family History class is online, it really needs Powerpoint slides for all to see/share in order to be effective, but that takes a lot of time to prepare, especially because of the need to translate everything. By contrast, my lessons tend to have only a few visual aids, with mostly discussion and reading scriptures together. Dee writes: Doug gives several lessons EVERY week, so he spends quite a bit of time preparing. He's an amazing teacher with a depth of materials lodged in his brain and heart that he can share readily. He loves it, but it's a huge job.

The woman who lives across the hall from us mentioned to me in the elevator that somebody had made a snowman (pupazzo di neve) in the piazza on Monday. I had never heard the term before, but figured out what it meant easily enough! We had missed it, but it was still there, a bit melted. I asked her daughter Angelica, who's maybe 12, if she liked the snow, and she just broke into a huge grin.

I made trips to three different grocery stores while Dee was working. First, I walked up to Todis and bought some fresh produce for me as well as eight packages of tortillas (yay!). Then I went to Metro to get cheddar, sour cream, jalapenos, and beef for next Taco Tuesday.  The first three items are extremely hard to find anywhere else in Rome. Our plan is to have a larger amount of supplies, just in case! On the way home from Metro, I stopped at Lidl and bought a bunch more food, both for home and for the Institute. All that shopping went pretty fast, with very little traffic.  I also read the gas meters for our apartment and the sorelle's apartment and turned in our mileage report for the month. The name tag from my coat was missing when I went out, but I found it on the ground in the snow next to our car; the night before we found only a very tight parking spot, and I apparently knocked it off doing my Houdini exit from the car.

Around 4:30pm we headed into town for our Wednesday evening activity at the Institute: a lesson on making Carnevale pastries from Sheyla, who works in a pastry shop these days. When we got to the campus, she wasn't there yet, and a couple of our non-member girls were outside waiting in the cold for her, because the place was locked. Sheyla has a key and was supposed to be there early, so they were very glad to see us. Unfortunately, we couldn't open the door. The lock has been getting harder and harder to turn, and it simply wouldn't open. Several of us tried, and we were about to give up and cancel the evening's activity, but then Margie (our non-member gal from Honduras, tiny and slight) gave it one last try and somehow managed to open it. Whew! After that I ran down to the hardware store to get some spray lubricant; I wanted graphite, but all they had was WD-40, so I bought it and sprayed it into the lock, which seemed to help. A locksmith is supposed to come Thursday afternoon to fix it better.

Dee writes:
What in the world is Carnevale? It's basically the Italian equivalent of Mardi Gras and Halloween costumes mixed together, lots of fun before Lent. Here's a great little article on it which I think you'll enjoy.

Kids started showing up for the 6pm start time, which Sheyla had selected, but she didn't show up until 7pm. It's Italy, so nobody seemed to fret much, except perhaps my wife (just a bit :-). Sheyla first demonstrated how to make frappe and castagnole, then she had two different groups each make their own. She was great.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Castagnole

Frappe

Fifteen kids showed up during the evening, which is a record for these new Wednesday evening events; the Institute used to be closed that night. The fried goodies were awesome! The kids had a great time together. We had to leave soon after 9pm, with lots of deep frying still going on, so we are hoping for a fully cleaned up kitchen on Thursday -- stay tuned!