All it takes is time

Sometimes here in Sicily one simply has to be patient. When we first got here, and before I settled on Lilo and Loredonna as my usual purveyors of fruit and vegetables, occasionally I would go to a small street side ortofruttica at the circle in the Perriera section of Sciacca.

As an American, indeed, as a foreigner here, with very limited language skills, I was always afraid that someone would try to cheat me. I was afraid that someone like the car dealer who did not honor his guarantee on my Fiat Barchetta would do something like not honor the guarantee he gave me on the car. He was the first example I had of someone who wanted to take advantage of me. Thankfully, the salesman did treat me well, and fixed the car for me out of his own pocket. The dealer went bankrupt a year ago, and the former salesman now is manager of a different dealership. Funny how things work out, eh?

Then there was the fruit and vegetable dealer at the traffic circle. One time, when I was only getting one item, I think it was mushrooms, he tried to charge me based on the price in Lira (without three zeros) instead of in Euros. That means he was trying to charge me double. I complained, and he showed me the price in Lira, and I showed him the price in Euros. He told me that euros and Lira were the same without the euros. I pointed to the other examples of where the price in Euros was half the price in Lira (discounting the euros). After five minutes of litigation, and several customers putting their purchases down and walking away, he finally gave me the correct change. It was only a difference of a euro or two, but I did not want to be cheated by him.

A few weeks later, on our way home, Fran said she needed to buy some celery, so we stopped there. When she returned to the car, she said she thought she had been overcharged. She was right. Again it was a matter of only a euro or two. She wanted to go back so we could argue with the guy. I told her that I had gone that route once, and I had a different idea. We started telling everyone we knew that the guy was a cheat, and mistreated people from other countries. When they asked, we told them about our experiences.

A few weeks later, he came up to me on the street, and told me that he had heard that I was saying he was dishonest. I told him it was true, and told him why. He said I should have come back and gotten the correct change, and I told him that I had done that once, and the second time could not have been a mistake. He told me that he did not like me talking about him the way I had been, and I told him that I did not like the way he tried to cheat people. We left it at that.

Today I read in the paper that he had filed for bankruptcy two years ago, and the courts held yesterday that the bankruptcy was fraudulent, that he did indeed have the money to pay some of the bills he was trying to avoid, that he owed creditors and the courts fifty thousand euros (that would be one hundred million lira), as well as a fine of five thousand euros (ten million lira), and court costs. In addition, he was sentenced to four years of reclusion (that usually means two years in jail and two years of house arrest, which may be reduced by one third for good behavior).

Oh my, what goes around comes around. I wonder if I should now ask him for the one or two euros that he cheated Fran out of. After all, that would be two or three thousand lira.

The Chicken King

In the photo above is the staf f plus one of Pollo Doc. From left to right Annalisa, Dominica, Ginella, Giusepina, Massimo (owner), his wife Giusy, and their son Piergiuseppe.

There are times when I really do not feel like cooking. Sometimes when I do not feel like cooking, I go to one of the restaurants, La Vela, Hostoria del Viccolo, or even Bar Charley. However, sometimes I treat myself to spit roasted chicken. When I do this, I go to see the King of Chicken in Sciacca, Massimo, and his wife, the Queen of Lasagna, Giusy. Together they run Pollo Doc in the La Perriera section of Sciacca.

While there are five or six places to get spit roasted chicken in Sciacca, there is only one King of Chicken, and that is indeed Massimo. Not only does he know his job of cooking chicken well, he also knows customer relations. He always has a smile for me, and when he learned that Fran had died, he let me know that I could get just half of one of his chickens if I wanted. Half is just about right for a good meal, some bones for stock, and some left overs to go with the stock or to make chicken salad.

Massimo told me that his roaster will hold sixty chickens at a time, and on any given day he cooks at least 150 chickens in it. He also roasts his home made boneless chicken rolls, rabbits, and some other things in there. They come out well seasoned, moist, and delicious.

His wife oversees the kitchen as they prepare other dishes for the customers. There are hot roast beef slices, hot turkey slices, fresh boiled carrots, peas, beans, spinach, swiss chard, broccoli, cauliflower, or whatever else might be fresh. You can also get breaded and deep fried mushrooms, carciofi (artichoke bulbs), garduni (artichoke stems), cauliflower, broccoli, and eggplant. There are also chicken involentini, and a host of other dishes, all made with the freshest ingredients possible. Then there are the
prepared chicken wings, drum sticks, pork ribs, chicken fingers, and on and on and on and on.



Giusy is also the Queen of Lasagna here, as far as I am concerned. A lot of folks make a great pasta al forno, and I like them all. But she is the one I go to when I have a hankering for lasagna. Oh my, it is so good, and a single portion lasts me for two meals. There are also a few types of pasta al forno, and occasionally they make eggplant Parmesan. It is all good. So good.






Of course, if you need wine or soda or water to go with your meal, they have a nice selection of Sicilian wines and soda for you to choose from. They were the first folks I knew who stocked wines from the Calatrasi cantina in San Ciporella, which is one of the cantinas Fran and I particularly liked. You can also get bread, which is of course delivered fresh daily.



As an example of the excellent team that Massimo and Giusy have put together, when I got there at eight in the morning, just as the folks were arriving for the day's work, they all started their tasks in the spotless kitchen. When Massimo found out that one of the women was not feeling well, he rushed her off to the emergency room to be checked over. One of the other women started crying, because she was so worried about her co-worker. She came back an hour later, and someone had spitted the chicken for Massimo to cook, so pranzo, while it might be a little late, would be available for everyone. Everyone there is friendly to me, and they do a marvelous job of wading through my think American accent. These are folks who know good customer relations.

Excuse me, I think that the rice I cooked in home made chicken stock with fresh peas and leftover chicken is ready. I need to put this aside for now.

Castle Walls they all will fall

As sure as we get sand boats with the first few storms of late fall and early winter, we get mudslides and landslides with the late storms of winter. Roads are undercut, hillsides fall down, in the case of a small town in the Province of Messina, roads are filled with mud and buildings are knocked down. It is all covered in the news, and it is sad, but it happens to someone else, someone we or I do not know.

When I came back from the states, and approached the beach at Baia Ranella, we could see the results of the late winter rains, that gave more water than the already heavy clay soil could take.

Then we got around the corner, and past the beach, and we were able to see the really bad news. Paolo's wall had started to fall down two years ago, and a temporary fix was made, and then the road and cars were 'protected' by a new metal wall. The fix was clearly not permanent enough, and the road up to my apartment was closed. With good reason.
The wall had started to come down, undercut by water going down and out at the bottom, by the water pushing too hard on the top of the wall. The road was gone, undercut by the water that took the low route. The picture above shows part of the roadway that was done in, and further up there was another part that was even worst. The fence to close the area really is to protect cars, so they do not fall into some of the new holes.
There was also damage up above, where Paolo had a terrace area for parking his car next to his summer house. The wall holding up that terrace had given way. A large storage area was destroyed, along with Paolo's amazing collection of broom handles, broom ends, chicken feed mills, plastic buckets, metal buckets, electrical cords, tools, and on and on. It also destroyed his chicken coop, and the roosting area I had helped him build when we first got here. Dogs took care of most of the chickens, although there are still five or six that are running loose in the olive orchard that is between where the coop was and where the wall was.

Paolo is distressed, and so am I. The wall will be rebuilt at great cost to Paolo, and then the road will be rebuilt by the city. Meanwhile, I use a very narrow and curvy road to get into town and back home. That is a minor inconvenience for me. It is very sad about the loss of the chicken coop, the storage area, several olive trees, other fruit trees, and Paolo's chickens. So sad.

April Fish

There are some things here in Sicily, and indeed, in Italy, that I will never understand. There are some other things that are pretty easy to understand.

This is one of them.

Today is April 1st, and in the US it is April Fools' Day. Not so here. It is April Fish Day. So people try to tape a fish or a picture of a fish on the back of other people, and this is an invitation to everyone else to kick the 'April Fish' in the rear end. It also is, according to the television news, the day for kids to throw water balloons.

Like I said, this is one of them. Some things I will never understand, and other things are easy to understand. You might want to check your back side now to make sure you are not carrying an April Fish around with you. But then, maybe your friends will tell you, with a swift kick.