Ascoli by night, st. emidio fireworks

DON"T MISS the next post also from today!! dds

The Quintana and St. Emidio fest

6 agosto Buon viaggio, AKI!!
8 day countdown
Yesterday was the 2nd Quintana of the year at Ascoli Piceno with a nice parade and a sold out jousting event. I have enclosed some crowd and parade pix and then must admit the fotos of the fireworks at the festa for S. Emidio were taken by Raffaele as I couldn't do 2 nights in a row finishing at 0230! the fireworks started at 0100!
We had some friends of Raffa's stay with us this weekend and they had a nice relaxing time here I think. Lots of good food and comradeship. One of their friends Don Domenico is the priest at Offida and he came for lunch yesterday and blessed the B&B, which was also very nice. This week another big festival in Ascoli for San Lorenzo the 10th with all night concerts thruout the city. Hard to get the old internal clock set here!
The forecast for the night of the 11th and 12th has cleared up, so hopefully we will have clear skies for the Perseid meteor shower. I highly recommend everyone escape the city lights and if possible head above timberline after midnight to watch the falling stars!
More friends start arriving the 13th for a long drawn out birthday celebration. We still have room at the inn for anyone who gets a wild hair and wants to come over!
A little more about the patron saint of Ascoli Piceno, S. Emidio, who is their protector against terremoto or earthquakes.
He came to Ascoli from Germany and baptized many believers before being beheaded august 5th, 303 AD. He then picked up his severed head and walked to the Christian cemetery so he could be buried in consecrated soil. He was given credit for protecting Ascoli from a huge earthquake in the 1700's while many surrounding cities were levelled. Many surrounding towns asked afterwards to come under Ascolan citizenship to share this protection. You can visit the Saint in his sarcophagus in the cathedral here, if you want. Have a great week, everyone and pass on the blog to friends and visit the links to see more stuff regarding my former classmates and Nascondiglio di Bacco. ciao dds

Il Concerto di Daniele Silvestri

5 Agosto
Last night 39yo Daniele Silvestri filled the Piazza del Popolo in Offida, a town of 5,000 which acts like 50,000 (they are quite forward thinking and are always promoting their city with festivals, concerts, etc). As a fan of music of all types, I really enjoyed his varied styles of music, everything from pop to rock to metal to folk to "beat" (and I mean the sort of slam poetry of the 50's circa Jack Kerouac) I understood about a 1/3 of the song words, quite a bit more with the spoken words and all of the rhythm and musical cords. There were fans of all ages and at the end since we were hosting the fan club at Nascondiglio di Bacco, Raffaele was able to get his T-shirt signed by Sr.Silvestri. (1st foto)
The hair styles here as you can see in one foto tend toward the shaved side which helps me out having little hair left myself.
I got to bed about 2:30 after checking out my friends around the world on the internet and up today at 9 for breakfast preparation.
Today is the famous Quintana at Ascoli Piceno, a recreation of a medieval festival with all the costumes and contests one would see in ages past. Pictures will follow tomorrow for that.. Buona domenica. dds

Sabato

Happy Birthday Cindy #50!!
A few minor things to relate: yesterday the package which customs threatened to send back the US unless i gave them a list of the value and merchandise inside, both of which were attached to the package, was released! Set free for a customs fee of 2.07 euros and inside were instruction books for the espresso machine and camera, a tie bar with my eagle scout insignia, 2 butter knives which match the set i sent in the container, some notecards, and the accessory kit for my power drill and an american extension cord. This cost 39.00 to send! Customs here is the baine of my existence!
Yesterday everyone cleared out, so it was a day of cleaning and laundry and after i hung the second load of towels (we were very short on big ones) , It poured rain, blew like a hurricane, spit hail and shot lightning! Truly WONDERFUL but only for 20 minutes enough to blow all the towels to the ground so I could rewash them. Small price to pay!
My mother in heaven is happy today as Raffaele told me the cheese grater I brought over from america was the best he had ever used!! High praise from an italian, and it was a gift my mom gave me for Xmas one year and was extremely proud of finding for me.
Today, I got up at 9AM, a real luxury, and after breakfast I spent 2 hours putting my room in order and cleaning it up, so everyone should come today and see it before I mess it up again!
Later today we get 6 guests who head up the Daniele Silvestri fan club. He is very famous in Italy and sings tonight in Offida so we are all going to attend.
The pictures today show a hill in the distance we almost bought before finding Nascondiglio di Bacco, but as with all the vineyards we were interested in, it had a problem; the owner didn't show up for the negotiations. Another is of the sheep in their mountain pasture where they eat the flowers and grasses which make pecorino cheese from the mountains so good and finally a pic of mountain flowers along the trail up to Monte Vettore. Buon weekend a tutti!! dds

Climb every mountain

3 agosto
Yesterday after making breakfast for a lovely couple from Piemonte who interestingly enough gave me a book about scaling mountain peaks later in the day as a gift, I headed to the mountains of Sibillina and began a search for the best Pecorino cheese and cured meats of that region. Driving over a mountain pass I saw the trailhead for the tallest peaks in the Marche and then headed down into the beautiful plateau below the town of Casteluccio. (One picture of each are included.) Then I went on to Visso where i spent a delightful 1.5 hours talking with the proprietor of a shop for cheese and cured meats called Pettacci. I know the butcher in Tuscany is famous and a media hound, etc, but if you want a down to earth, passionate producer, you must make a visit here to visit Giuseppe Tarragoni. He has a friend who raises the native sheep of the zone (which I think are Duilio Psqua) up in the mountain pastures and Giuseppe does the aging and selling. He also has invented a cousin to culatella which he calls vissatello (top foto) where he takes the skin of the exposed part of the coscia or butt end of the pig from which we get prosciutto and after bathing the muscle, which is similar to our gluteus, in white wine and spices after salting, he then wraps the meat with the skin and ages it for many months and it is wonderful. He also makes his own prosciutto and guanciale and salami including the fresh type famous in the Marche known as Ciauscolo. After I bought 2 whole pecorino cheeses, fresh salami and some of his vissatello, he gave me a nice sandwich and 2-500 ml bottles of water for lunch and I was back on the road after taking a coffee at the bar in the piazza, of course.
As my 50th is just 11 days away and as it has been my habit to climb some peak for every birthday, I got to thinking, why not climb Mt. Sibilla today on my way back? So I drove really quickly on the curvy roads back to the trailhead and being well prepared (not), I took my little plastic grocery sack with 3 bottles of water with me with the 2 cameras and a driving hat, but no sunscreen and started up the hill. In Italy, there are no real indicators of how far something is, so I took a slight leap of faith and my friends had said I needed 2.5 hours to scale the peak. Boy, am I out of shape!!! I was huffing and puffing and Pausing a bunch, but at my usual fast pace, I made the summit (the wrong summit) in 1hour and 58 minutes. I scaled Mount Vettore instead which is the tallest mountain in the chain and took some photos and then descended in 1 hour and 1 minute, I had finished all the water, so timing was perfect. By my calculations of my normal pace, I think it was about 7 miles round trip. I had an amazing endorphin high afterwards and headed back to Nascondiglio, filling up the tank for the usual 90 dollars. We treated the guests to some of the good cheeses and I then lost my high form endorphins and adrenaline and crashed at 10. Full, wonderful day!! dds

le foto da oggi

Here are the pictures from primo agosto. I lied, Raffaele and I went to the beach instead of the mountains and the pix are of Porto d'Ascoli, adjacent to San Benedetto del Tronto.. Those of you who know me well understand I am not a beach person, but the beach here is nice and you can walk along it for miles and see different people, different colored umbrellas and chairs, different games, sand castles, etc.
Also, today was a good day to see Grand Sasso, the tallest mountain in these parts about 100 km away as the crow flies. It is the one way in the distance.
Then there is our gardener, who is persisting despite the lack of rain and he is pointing out to me how bad the zucchini are this year and finally Filu, Raffaele's pup who guards the place. dds PS: for those of you in KC, don't forget to go to Jasper's, have dinner or an appetizer or lunch or buy the great dried pasta and some San :Marzano tomatoes and pick up a Nascondiglio di Bacco brochure! And also, send any rain our way which you don't need.

13 days

1 Agosto
We have started with a truly beautiful day here, though we missed out on the forecasted rain yesterday. Raffaele's parents and sister came to dinner last night and I made the antipasti with prosciutto, melon and cheeses and the salad Tuscan style which I learned from Judy at Jasper's cooking event. Both went over well as did our local wine Rosso Piceno and a little bit of Ch. D'Angledut from 2002.
I wanted everyone to know I am honing my surgical skills here: I cut prosciutto very thin, which is just like harvesting a skin graft and I cut up all sorts of fruits and vegetables to keep the fingers nimble although I did cut myself last night trying to cut up dried bread (nice to know direct pressure still works). Also I am tying knots when I cinch up the garbage bags although it is a very fine plastic and tends to break if i cinch too hard! Finally, I am always washing my hands to keep in practice. Plus I freely give out medical advice to friends and guests and offer H2 blockers to the guests when they have overeaten.
Today is a good day to learn a little more about the zone, maybe drive into the mountains, find some really good pecorino cheese producers and enjoy the convertible.
I have a new toy which is a little canon camera to replace my broken Olympus, so I will chronicle the day and post some photos later. Have a great week! dds