Assisi’s school children well-know the significance of that Giorno della Memoria (“Day of Remembrance” (or “the Day of Memory”) – and a good group participated this year in Assisi’s annual January 27th ceremony commemorating the liberation of the Nazi concentration camps with the ending of the Holocaust on that day in 1945. ·A law passed in…
(Photo above thanks to Assisi News – www.assisinews.it) You might consider St. Francis of Assisi the patron saint of animals but Italians well-know that this honorific appellation belongs to St. Anthony Abbot, Egyptian hermit monk who died after years of penitence and deprivation at the age of 105 in the Egyptian desert on January 17,…
La Festa di Santa Lucia is celebrated December 13th, the shortest day of the year and in fact the name of this 3rd-century martyr saint of Siracusa in Sicily signifies “promise of light” or “shining, illluminating.” Our recent early December visit to Pino’s family in Palermo concluded on December 12th, la vigilia della Festa di…
Pasticcerie (pastry shops) in Sicily are veritable altars of culinary history. One of these “culinary altars” is certainly Pasticceria/Bar Gardenia, a splendid showcase of culinary creations in Cardillo, a nondescript borgata (small suburb, an outcrop) just outside of Palermo. Pino grew up in Cardillo, though the bar – opened just over 40 years ago – was not there…
Near Pino’s childhood home in Cardillo, a small Palermo borgata (small suburb, urban outcrop), a grandissima pasticceria/bar, Pasticceria/Bar Gardenia, draws in customers from all over. The tempting goodness on rows and rows of shelves does it: Veritable opere d’arte di pasticceria (“pastry artworks”): I’d head there every morning during an early December (2022) visit to Pino’s family – sometimes on…
Time passes quickly as you wait in line for fresh seafood at the stand of Claudio in Palermo. Pino, his longtime Palermo friend, Nino, and I joined the waiting customers there on an early December day. Everyone takes a number and lines up with those other faithful Pescheria di Claudio clients – who all know…