It was interesting as they didn't speak any English and our fluency in Italian was very limited so for example if I was looking for marriage records I would point at my wedding ring.
Walking around Villafranca Tirrena we came across many examples of family names in the area. I had already shown you a photo of the Giacobbe market, here is a photo of the office sign for Giacobbe Financial Services.
Some of the other names that show up in are family tree are Stornante, Badessa, Inzodda, etc. Here is a notice that was posted at a number a location in town about the death of an Antonino Stornante.
And this memorial is to residents of the town that died during one of the wars.
This evening we had a very special dinner prepared for us. For those of you who remember having dinner at Grandma's, there was one specialty that she used to make that we called "fasimaggi" (spelling?). It was like a small meatloaf or large meatball with a filling of hard boiled egg, salami, cheese and spices. It was then cooked in the tomato sauce and served after the pasta course along with the meatballs. Over the years I have researched this to see if I could find a recipe and directions for making it but I never had any luck. What I did find was a classical Sicilian entree called "farsumagru". A literal translation is "false lean". For the recipe see: http://www.latimes.com/features/food/la-fo-farsumagru-s,0,7458664.story. It differs from what Grandma used to make in that is has an outer layer of round or flank steak. On Tuesday, when we were eating lunch in the hotel restaurant, I asked the waiter if he had ever heard of fasimaggi (since we were in Grandma's home town I figured they might know what it was). He had never heard of it but he did ask Giuseppe, the restaurant manager, about it and he came to our table and talked with us. After a lot of discussion he offered to have a special Sicilian dinner prepared for us on Wednesday (his wife is the cook). Here is a photo of the restaurant's sign.
Our appetizer course consisted of caponata, stuffed olives (both just like Grandma used to make), salami, cheese, pieces of eggplant stuffed with anchovies and bruchetta. Here is a photo.
That was followed by pasta al forno alla siciliano. It has ground meat, hard boiled egg and eggplant in it. Here is what it looked like.
Then came the farsumagru. Not exactly like Grandma's fasimaggi but it was really good. Here is a photo.
It was served with a tomato sauce containing peas. For lunch the day before they had fixed us braciole which is thin strips of steak wrapped up with breadcrumbs and spices. It was also served with a sauce containing peas. I remember that when Grandma made braciole she also had peas in the sauce. Then for dessert we had ficus d'inde (what we call prickly pear), figs stuffed with walnuts and mostarda sicilaina. Here is a photo of the ficus d'inde.
The ficus d'inde tasted something like watermelon but it had a lot of small seeds in it so you spent a lot of time spitting our seeds. The mostarda is a jelly made from grape must and spices, very good. Finally here is a photo of Giuseppe with Chris and Pat.
Tomorrow we catch the train to Palermo and join our tour group.
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