Haven’t you noticed that it is easier to ease children’s simplest concerns and fears if we encourage them to open up about what troubles them, and that it often helps to gently poke a bit of fun at what seems to be the matter? My children and I eventually figured out that the huge scary monster would shrink into a pitiful tiny bug when we talked about it, and dissected it with some light-hearted reasoning and laughter.
Thunder and Lightning is another story from the Jenny&Josh‘s series.
Thunder and Lightning is a work in progress. You might have noticed that the illustrations’ style is different from The Worldly Tooth Fairy‘s. I enjoy ‘experimenting’, and since I happen to be undecided about which illustrations I like better, your input would be much appreciated. Thank you.
Jenny and Josh is a series of books about the daily occurrences in the life of growing children. It involves events important to them, like the loss of a tooth, the fear of a nightly thunderstorm, isn’t the bank going to give us money? Why is our skin all kind of different colors? We will follow Jenny and Josh, two young siblings, through their early years’ growing up journey.
Loosing a baby tooth is a big event in children’s young lives! The fear of feeling pain is usually eased by the thought of the reward the Tooth Fairy will bring overnight. But what if the child is sleeping in a different bed, in a different country; will the Tooth Fairy know where to go to collect the fallen tooth and leave the reward?
Jenny finds a foreign coin.
It is an Euro
The Worldly Tooth Fairy‘s introduction.
A brief history of the Tooth Fairy:
Centuries ago, in Europe, when a child’s baby tooth fell it was customary to bury it in the ground with the belief that a new tooth would grow in its place.
As long ago as the Vikings’ time children’s teeth were said to bring good luck in battle and warriors would hang them on a string around their neck. It is said that the children received some sort of payment for their teeth.
When, eventually, most people left the fields and moved to towns and cities, land wasn’t always available any longer, and people began placing baby teeth in flower pots. After which teeth are placed under a child’s pillow or a glass on their night table. The parents’s task is to quietly exchange the fallen tooth with some money during the night, when the child is asleep.
Curious children wanted to know what happened to their fallen teeth; the Tooth Fairy was born. The myth of the Tooth Fairy helps assuage and comfort children fearful of the pain that might result from the loss of a tooth. Also, parents use it to encourage their kids to take care of their oral hygiene as it is made known to children that the Tooth Fairy will reward them more for a perfect tooth than for a decayed one. Tooth Fairies have been known to leave appreciative notes praising the children for their good dental habits.
Contrary to the looks of other famous folk characters like Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny, over the arc of time the Tooth Fairy has been rendered in different shapes and sizes: from animals like mice, cats, dogs, beavers and squirrels, to human males or females of various ages. Jenny’s is a modern, green haired, purple skinned Tooth Fairy. She is well traveled, able to find Jenny anywhere in the world, and smart enough to know what kind of currency to bring her in exchange for her baby teeth.
I’ll see you tomorrow with more from Jenny and Josh.
Fun fact:
Once, while in Switzerland, a Tooth Fairy friend of grandmother’s left one Swiss Franc for our little boy’s fallen baby tooth. Either she particularly liked that tooth, or she was very generous, or math wasn’t her thing and she didn’t realize that with the current exchange she was overpaying. The good thing is that our little fellow was too young to realize that when back in the States the Tooth Fairy would short change him of about 50 cents for each of the baby teeth that would fall next!
Here is the recipe for the rice salad we, moms, brought to dinner time picnics on our Tuscan beach, and the kids devoured! An easy, refreshing and nutritious summer salad to be enjoyed during all kind of gatherings with family and friends. A great idea to bring for a pot luck, you will be invited again!
Ingredients for 8 people:
1 pound of raw rice, either Arborio (a bit creamier after cooking), or long grain (separates after cooking)
2 chicken bouillons
1/2 cup of canned corn (drained)
2-3 tbsp pitted and chopped black olives
2 tbsp cocktail onions
2-3 tbsp of capers
1 red or yellow pepper, diced
2 middle size carrots, peeled and thinly sliced
2 sticks from the heart of a celery, diced
2 salad tomatoes, diced
fresh basil leaves, torn by hand
extra virgin olive oil (best if first cold pressed)
the juice of a lemon, 1/2 if large
salt and pepper to taste
What to do:
In a large pot, put enough water to cook the rice and the bouillons. Bring to a boil, add the rice and cook until done, to your preference, but not mushy. Drain the rice.
While the rice cooks, put all the chopped vegetables into a large salad bowl, and dress them with some olive oil and lemon juice
Add the drained rice to the veggies and gently mix all together. Let the salad cool off, and adjust the dressing adding some oil, lemon juice, salt and pepper.
You might add any other fresh raw vegetable to your salad, as well as other herbs, like cilantro (more pizzaz) or parsley.
For a more satiating dish, you might add hard boiled eggs, diced fresh mozzarella, canned tuna fish or small cubes of salami. I am obviously partial to the salame Toscano.
During the summers of our youth my siblings and I spent time at our grandmothers’, which didn’t take a lot of traveling since both our mother and father’s families are from Tuscany.
For my children, all born and living in the US, the story was different. My family is in Tuscany and my husband’s in Switzerland; which means we didn’t just have to cross the Atlantic, but also ‘travel whit-in the travel’, as we all came to call it. The first visit was to the Tuscan countryside, followed by the seaside along the Mediterranean coast. From there we would leave towards the Swiss Alps to vacation with the other grandparents.
Like we had done as children, the kids always played using a lot of their imagination. At the beach rules were looser compared to the ones we grew up with. Beside building sand castles and racing marbles the older kids, always in large groups, spent hours biking in the pinewoods bordering the beach. Also, the children didn’t have to beg to play for hours coming in and out of the water as much as we used to.
Old habits are hard to break and, as I had done as a girl, I took the children on long walks along the shore while the sun was setting, searching for the most colorful rocks we could find. That had a dual purpose: to calm the children down after the energetic games they had played until then and, yes, to give myself a treat since I have always been fascinated by the awesome beauty of the rocks along the shore*. The children would come along and enjoy the search. I have always suspected that in those already very capable little brains they had figured out that if they agreed to play mamma’s game towards the end of the day, she might then be very nice to them? Who knows, fragole (strawberries) or lamponi (raspberries) with gelatoal fior di latte for dessert?
We, young and brave mothers, also organized some picnics on the beach at dinner time, when the sun was almost gone from the sky. One of the kids’ favorite dishes was insalata di riso, rice salad, which they devoured to then go back to… play. After dinner it would be dark, and the children dedicated whatever was left of their energy (which seemed to be endless) to playing for a while with flashlights in the dark. Let me tell you, by the end of the day, it wasn’t clear who was the most exhausted; the children or their mothers?
*The awe for the stunning nature’s artifacts inspired me to create “Antologia di Sassi“, ‘The Stones’ Anthology‘, the painting project I worked on while raising my family. (See ‘About me‘)
Fun Fact:
After our stay at the seaside my siblings and I used to bring our collected rocks back to nonna’s garden in the countryside. Of course also my kids and I didn’t want to part from our newly found treasures?! So, the rocks would travel by car with us to the little town in the Swiss Alps that was our next destination. From there I would send them back to the States through the Swiss Post Office. The first couple of times I did it, when I was asked, “What is in the (heavy) box?” and answered, “Rocks.”, the facial expressions of the usually unflappable Swiss tellers was a sight to be relished. At the Post Office of the small Swiss mountain town they eventually got used to my yearly August oddity and didn’t pay attention to it any longer: “Here she comes. It must be mid August!”
I will see you tomorrow for a simple and delicious insalata di riso recipe.
Below is what is needed to make our original Tuscan panzanella and enjoy it this summer; a great idea as a side dish for the Fourth of July celebrations or any other summer gathering with family and friends. Also a great idea for an original summer salad to bring to pot lucks!
Ingredients:
bread (best if Ciabatta, Italian Rustic loaf or French Country bread, a few days old and hard), chopped, soaked and squeezed
ripe (not mushy) tomatoes, cut into bite size pieces (best if Pantano Romanesco salad tomatoes, Beefsteak or cherry tomatoes)
red onion (thinly sliced)
fresh basil (better if chopped by hand)
virgin olive oil (better if first cold pressed)
a drizzle of red wine vinegar, salt and pepper to your liking (you can substitute red wine vinegar with balsamic vinegar)
What to do:
In order not to discard old bread, chunks of it are soaked in water then squeezed and ripped into smaller morsels.
The wet bread is then put in a salad bowl and typically topped with chopped tomatoes, red onions and basil.
Everything gets mixed together and dressed with olive oil, some vinegar, salt and pepper. Any other fresh vegetable can be added to this delicious summer bread salad.
Panzanella is delicious at room temperature, even better if enjoyed after refrigerating it for a couple of hours. Your family and friends will love this refreshing and easy to make bread salad!
My siblings and I learned from a young age that especially when it comes to food nothing is thrown away in the countryside! It is a habit passed from a generation to the next that originated during tough times, when food was scarce and every bite was to be cherished.
This brings back to mind several dishes that originated from putting together left overs stored in the ghiacciaia: the coldest room of the house, usually near the kitchen (often underground), where hunks of ghiaccio, ice, were stored in order to preserve meats, milk, cheeses and all perishables before every household had a refrigerator. Our nonna kept her ghiacciaia long after she got a refrigerator, as did many people in the countryside still preferring to store some perishables the good old way. We, kids, loved that freezing room so rich of mouthwatering scents, and nick named it Siberia. To keep the ice from melting and the temperature from raising the door wasn’t supposed to be opened often, so we would sneak in any time we caught an adult enter it to leave or retrieve something.
Panmolle.
Left overs make a delicious summer salad,panzanella. As it has happened for many other dishes that humbly originated in the countryside centuries ago, today there are different recipes for panzanella; they all sound delicious, but some require roasting the bred or making a vinaigrette when, in fact, the essence of the original Tuscan panzanella, or panmolle (soaked bread), we grew up with is just that, soaked bread!
Join me tomorrow for a simple and delicious recipe for the original Tuscan panzanella.
When my youngest kid left home to college I felt a pang of uselessness and, although always on the move, felt that nothing was enough to fill my days. After feeling troubled and dissatisfied for a while, I resolved to concentrate on what I love most, drawing and painting, this time recollecting bits and pieces, morsels, about life with my growing kids.
My children grew up with two of the smartest and ‘curiousest’ felines I can think of; so keen on being constantly between our feet that, if you didn’t know better, you would think they were dogs in disguise.
Elton peeing in the girls’ bathroom. He then would reach to scratch the toilet paper roll before jumping down from the toilet.
Elvis and Elton decide to adopt cute human pets.
Elton describes his and Elvis‘s newly adopted human pets.
Elvis and Elton have been such inherent participants to our family’s young years that I wrote stories where they, as our owners, tell about daily life with their pet humans.
MEEEOW! Our book will soon be available for the sophisticated human cub. We’ll keep you posted.
Enjoy your Memorial Day week-end! I will be back next Tuesday with more morsels to share. Ciao, Alessandra
There was one merenda we, kids, loved that someone could have considered… controversial? Tuscany is the land of good wine, and among our various tasty merende (plural) was pane, vino e zucchero, bread, wine and sugar.
A drizzle of red wine was poured over slices of freshly baked bread, then covered with a thin coat of sugar.
Although we devoured merende of pane vino e zucchero at a single digit age, and we grew up with wine on the table at every meal, my siblings and I (five of us) never had a problem with alcohol. Wine wasn’t a forbidden fruit, which made it not interesting. Just saying…
In fact, although there are producers of great wines in our immediate family, I didn’t start to drink it until my mid twenties, when my father in law, a true connoisseur and collector, would take me into his cellar to choose the wine for the meal our family was about to share. Far from being an expert, at least I now know what I like or don’t. As a Tuscan D.O.C., I favor red wine!
Fun fact of the Fun fact
My in laws lived in Switzerland where by law all homes were required to have a ‘bunker’ in the basement: a windowless room with cement walls and a ‘safe like’ metal door. Also by law, people were required to store non perishable food and basic necessities in the bunker, to be able to survive for a while in case of a nuclear attack.
My in laws’ bunker was furnished with stacks of shelves on all walls. One wall stored what was required by law. The other three walls were my father in law’s cellar, and contained a collection of a couple of hundreds bottles of wine from all over the planet. The way my father in law looked at it was, “If we have to die we’ll die happy!”
During our summers at our grandmother’s in the Tuscan countryside, my siblings and I were playing outdoors for most of the day. Italian grandmothers are pretty authoritarian, especially when it comes to feeding their growing grandkids. Nonna carefully monitored each meal, making sure we were fed the freshest food. Needless to say, everything was made from scratch.
Given the fact that every day we spent many hours outdoors, nonna made sure that in the middle of the afternoon, between lunch and dinner, we were given a healthy merenda (snack), to support the growth of our young bodies, constantly on the move.
Merenda is a common daily tradition in Italy, but in the country those were occasions to witness the preparation of simply made, delicious treats.
One of our favorite merende (plural) was the fregata (rubbed slice). We loved it because it was delicious, but also because we could actually prepare it by ourselves. Thick slices of rustic Tuscan bread were grilled (by a grown up) on embers in the large kitchen hearth. Then we were each given a plate (not that much actually stayed into it for long anyway…), half a clove of garlic and between a quarter and a half of a ripe tomato (depending on size). And here the fun started! Each of us was to rub, first the garlic then the tomato, lacerating it, on the grilled slice of bread. We then would dress it with some virgin olive oil and a pinch of salt. So yummy!
In the States I went to one of my kids’ kindergarten classes to show how to make fregata. What fun the children had! We all had! And we all loved every morsel of it!
We still call it fregata because that is how it originated, but the recipe is famous now in Italian restaurants as bruschetta. In many cases, instead of rubbing the tomato on the bread, like described before, the slices are coated with tomatoes cut into small cubes, and mixed with torn basil leaves. Everything is dressed with oil and salt. Some people also add a few drops of balsamic vinegar.
This is a merenda that children can prepare themselves. Simply hand them the grilled (or toasted) slice of bread, garlic, and a half of a ripe tomato (if you are the brave kind). Or prepare beforehand the chopped tomatoes mixed with torn basil leaves, dressing them with some oil and salt. The children will have fun rubbing the garlic on their bread, and either lacerating the tomato on their slice with gusto, or loading the bread with the tomato cubes! De-licious!
All you need is:
bread (best if Italian rustic or French country) cut into slices
extra virgin olive oil (best if cold pressed)
ripe tomatoes, either cut into a quarter or a half to be rubbed on the bread (for the fearless grown up), or in small cubes
garlic cloves
basil leaves, better if torn by hand
salt
I am looking forward to sharing more morsels with you again on Tuesday. Enjoy the week-end.
I could keep sharing with you non stop, but should probably schedule a couple of days of the week, and a time during those days, when I will publish my new posts, so that you can come and visit. It has been suggested that I publish on Tuesday and Wednesdaymorning,eastern time.
There is so much I want to share. I should start with giving you an idea of where I come from, and how recollections of my childhood have partially inspired me to write for children, about children.
Growing up in Italy, I had the fortune of spending long summers in the country side. To escape the torrid heat of the city, our mother would take us to visit grandmother; from Florence, we would move to the much cooler, small village in Tuscany where our nonna resided.
It is in the country side that I learned that a delicious snack doesn’t have to cost much at all, or be tremendously complicated to make. During those beautifully carefree summers, I witnessed the making of some of the most mouthwatering food I have ever tasted! Everything was made from scratch, with the natural ingredients provided by nonna’s garden, orchard, hen-house, sheepfold or pigpen.
Some of the most humble, rustic dishes, over the years and with many influences from our shrinking world, have become more sophisticated, and quite costly in Italian restaurants around the planet. The original, ancient versions, teach us that a snack or meal, does not need any added frills to be delicious, healthy, and cheap!
Today I will recall the festive gatherings we enjoyed every year for the ‘fett’unta’, a mouthwatering treat made with the deliciously tasty oil from the olives’ first pressing.
In the fall, olives are harvested, then brought to the mill, were a big stone wheel grinds them. The olives’ first squeeze is cause for celebration at the mill; farmers and their neighbors gather around big rustic tables to taste, for the first time, the thick, spicy, green liquid; one of the many nature’s bounties for which Tuscany is famous.
Thick slices of country bread are grilled over embers. Cloves of garlic are then rubbed over the warm bread, where the new oil is poured and spread, for the delight of all participants to the feast!
It is still possible to enjoy a delicious fett’unta, even if not at an old mill in the Tuscan country side!
What we need is:
good bread, best if it is country style
pealed garlic cloves
virgin olive oil, tastier if it is cold pressed
salt to taste
What to do:
Cut the bread in slices of about three eights of an inch
Grill (best) or toast the bread
Rub the garlic, pour and spread the oil over the slices, add salt as you wish
ENJOY one of nature’s simplest, most delicious gifts.
