So December 8th is some sort of religious public holiday that most people use to put up Christmas decorations. Tancredi and I constructed the tree while hassling Selene to help is decorate it. We had a few issues with light distribution but eventually gave up with them spend unevenly. Most of the decorations were glass based but there were also the occasional plastic one made by Tancre when he was little and a few fabric ones that look to me. More like decorations for around the house. But Sara insisted we put them on also.
There are three different bridges and a well, all of which have to line up and then we used alfoil to create a river between it all. There is a sheep enclosure the size my Nanna's entire set, and so many people there's little space for them all. Mostly we disregarded perspective and just put people where they fitted although we did manage to get one lady washing her clothes in the river.
I managed to convince Tancredi to give the snow a miss this year and he in turn scolded me for putting jesus in his crib before the Christmas. Also the wise men aren't allowed to be there yet.
I must say I am rather proud of my presents this year. And not just how fancy they look all wrapped up. Mum and I went to lots of markets my last few weekends in Australia (including two right before I left!) looking for gift, mostly for my families here, but I also had an eye out for others to. Of all the presents I bought there's only one that I'm not entirely happy with, but it was the best we saw. It's for Giu, we were stuck for so long an ended up getting her a carved pine cone wardrobe perfume thing.
The great thing about having exams in November is that internet shopping for Christmas presents fits nicely into breaks, so between that and the markets/craft fairs I had most of my shopping done before I left. I've been wrapping my presents in a pretty similar way for a few years now, initially I used brown paper and coloured ribbon but the perfect ribbon is hard to come by and so is the right type of brown paper.
I brought a roll of gold with me to Italy so I could show off my usual wrapping style, but i still had to find ribbon. I was thinking 1" fabric and colours but I spotted this silver in the house and it looked really nice. I have since bought myself 10m to bring home and last me the next few years!
Christmas in the Giovannini house works like this; tree and nativity go up Dec 6, Nonno Aldo does the outside lights around the same time, then, you continue to ignore the fact Christmas is approaching all the way up until the 24th (with the exception of accompanying Nonna Irma on frequent shopping trips), then on the 24th you start cooking for the big dinner that night. This only really starts after lunch though since Sara is at work. Then you set up tables for the ~20 friends+family who come over for dinner that night.
This seems to be a bit of a 'those who don't have other family' thing, but it's hard to say since the families of Tancredi's and Selene's best friends were there. This format works out well because it means that no one person has to do all the cooking. Fully prepared to survive on large portions of a few dishes that were Breanna compatible I was surprised that everyone had put the effort into making a dish I could eat. When their usual offering contained something that I couldn't eat most people had made an alternate dish or modified some so that I could have it too. I felt very well looked after.
The one course I knew it would be hard to work around, though, was dessert. There are only so many integral ingredients you can substitute before things start to go wrong. The week before when Sara and Selene had created the food list for the night I snuck 'Breanna's cake' onto the list, so that i'd have something to contribute also. I didn't admit until the 23rd when we were writing the shopping list that my cake needed 6 eggs and fresh cream (bonus points if you can guess what I was making).
Earlier in the week I'd quizzed Tancre on the Christmas proceedings and ascertained that presents happened at midnight. And while the thought of such a long day was discouraging it did mean it provided a convenient time to talk to my family in aus.
It turns out that everyone else was also discourage by the thought of having to wait until midnight so we did presents at 11 instead. Tancredi was super excited when he unwrapped Perth addition Monopoly and we were playing it within 15 minutes! From Tan, Sele and Sara i got a lovely blue jumper, it's super soft and super warm and I just want to wear it all the time! Nonna Irma gave me a new red handbag since my old one is wearing out, and the mum of Selene's friend found me a jar of gluten free, Dairy free hazelnut spread which was lovely of her(she also heartily embraced the concept of making food experiments I could eat for dinner).
We played monopoly for 2+ hours straight, only stopping because I had organised to talk with my family at 1am and everyone else used this as an excuse to go home to bed. Dad, it turns out was more interested in his ham on toast breakfast than having an extended chat to me, but it was nice to catch up with everyone for Christmas.
Christmas Day we headed off to an aunt's house near Pinerolo (~50min drive) for lunch. Sara has decided not to tell her about all the things I can't eat, knowing there'd be lots of food so I could just choose what I could eat. This was true but the aunt was serving all the food so I felt bad always having to say no to the delicious looking cheese filled things.
The aunt's son was a carpenter but when work stopped being easy to find he went and learnt how to make bread. He bakes using a wood fire over and also makes bread without yeast (so i assume sour dough). He has a lovely workshop, all of the pine furnishings he made by hand. I would have loved to take some photos but my phone was flat and no one told me the reason we were going outside was to look at it so I didn't have my big camera =(
He made all the bread that was on the table at lunch, there were three different kinds; white, uvetta, and whole grain (all were delicious) and lots of them too! For mains we had anatra alla arancia (duck with orange) and while some bits were delicious others were quite dry. The ducks where ones they had on their property and Tancre asked about them, apparently they were both silver and green, their third duck had apparently been eaten in a previous meal.
Probably my favourite part of the whole meal was dessert. This is the course that is the most difficult for me to find something to eat so I was resigned to just stealing tastes from people. Until they bought out home made Panettone, in a traditional style that is much flatter than what we traditionally associate with Panettone. I stole a bit of Sara's and it was absolutely delicious. I decided that it's only Christmas once a year, and if there's one thing I eat that's wrong it may as well be home made Panettone. It was super delicious. As I commented to Sara, there is only one smell I have in my smell memory that smells like Panettone. That smell means Panettone and Christmas and it's great.
+10 photos
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