60 second idea 'Learning to lose'.

 Click here for a link to the listening from Amy's Level 11 class.

An Old Key, A New Life (A story by Maria Grazia Neglia)

An Old Key, A New Life

           He slowly turned the key, he has been waiting for this moment for ages.

            John Flee was just four years old when he lost his parents. He didn't know how they disappeared, he didn't know what happened, he couldn't remember anything about that day.

            The only thing he knew was that suddenly his life changed.

            Now he wasn't the happy child he had been. He lived in a big horrible house with other young children, all of them were alone like him.

            Nobody looked after them, nobody delighted them, they had only to obey Mr. and  Mrs. Callaghan who ran the house with strict rules.

             John couldn't stand them and everyday he wondered: How would my life be if I had my parents? Would I be happy? Where would I live? And expecially, did my parents die or did they leave me alone?

            These questions were always in his mind, so when he came of age and left the house, he started searching for answers to his questions.

            He was looking for some relatives of him, when he met an old woman who told him she had a friend, Mrs Emma Flee, to whom something terrible had happened: her brother's family had disappeared. Everybody looked for them, until the police found their car hidden into the wood, inside there were Mr. and Mrs. Flee's bodies, but no trace of John their son.

            Since then Mrs. Emma has been looking for John and trying to discover his brother and sister in law's killer. Now she was living in an old age hospice.

            John was shocked about that story. He couldn't believe he still had an aunt. Now he needed to meet her and know something more.

            His aunt was an old thin lady, she was left speechless when John told her who he was, then she hugged him and started crying. - I have always dreamed of this moment! she  said.

            They needed time to talk about their past, so they spent many hours together.

            Finally John's aunt gave him a key she kept on her chest. It was his home key.

            Some hours later John was in front of an old green wooden door … now  he could fill a fifteen years void. He could finally find out what his parents were like, he could imagine his past life, he understood that once somebody loved him, he could start out a new life.

            To do that he had just to open that door, so he held his breath and slowly turned the key.

           

Maria Grazia Neglia

Level 4 with Andrei

The non-conventional food of my childhood by Antonella (Amy's Level 9)

   When my mother and I talk about my childhood the first thing she usually says is that I’ve always been interested in food. The second one is that I used to like trying different types of food, but:  What kind of food exactly?

About this topic I have to tell you that I’ve my own funny memories that have been also confirmed by my mother’s.

A hungry child: chubby and dangerous

   The fourth of five children, I was the only one with a constant appetite, my brothers and sisters, in fact, used to be quite fussy about food.

I remember they would rarely leave their plates empty and it was hard for my mum make them try new recipes or fish. My elder brother Giuseppe, for example, ate only frozen fish sticks, instead of fresh fish until he became an adult. Nevertheless I was there to help them and so I would finish their portions even though I had just finished my huge one two minutes earlier. 

  With such a hunger it’s not hard to believe that I grew very well and also that I was a little bit chubby at that age. But it wasn’t my figure my mum was worried about but rather the anxiety that I could have choked myself during one of my “eating experiments”.

Those experiments, in fact, were made with a particular kind of food which was completely tasteless, very hard to bite and of course impossible to digest: objects!

My poor mum, indeed, had to hide from my view not only the appetizing titbits like candies, chocolate bars, but also some objects in the house which could resemble things to eat. This is because she had found me sometimes eating this kind of “food”.

Eating or playing?

 My earliest memory concerning my “eating habits” is when I was just two years old. Even though I was so young, I still clearly see that scene: I was sitting on the big couch in the living-room and watching the soles of my new pair of shoes when I suddenly took one of the shoes straight into my mouth. The soles, in fact, looked exactly like my favourite types of biscuits “Plasmon” and my thought in that moment was probably like:  Why did mum put my biscuits under my shoes?!

Unfortunately I also have the vivid memory that the taste wasn’t as good as Plasmon biscuits!

    Another time I almost ate a broken necklace. I remember it was made of many little, white, round pearls and my mother had put it into a drawer in her bedroom.  She hoped she could repair it sooner or later, but when I found it I must have thought it was very similar to rice grains!

I don’t know how my mother didn’t panic when she found me next to her bedside table eating piece by piece one of her favourite necklace.

Fast-cook vs. fast-food

    In spite of my dangerous eating experiments, I must say my mother is a very talented cook and she was also when I was a child.

I really love eating her dishes and to me every single recipe made by her represents an important piece of my childhood. But there’s one thing that I’ve never understood about her way of cooking, and it still surprises me today: how can she cook so well by spending a very short time at the cooker? (Being a working-mother of five children is probably the right answer to this question). 

I can safely say, in fact, that my mother is a real fast-cook who doesn’t cook

fast-food, but the most amazing traditional Sicilian dishes, like my favourite one: Caponata!

Antonella Grippi

Irresistable Lasagne by Arianna (Amy's Level 9)

     And here we are, in a quaint tiny town among the mountains, at my grandmother’s house, where my family and I spend every summer holiday. As usual, I’ve just had my breakfast and run out to play with a gang of rowdy children.

The alley is our land, where cars and adults aren’t allowed; it has the taste of freedom, for a long time desired during those boring and grey days among the desks at school.
     It’s midday, from the windows many smells of tasty and mouthwatering dishes reach our noses. Most of my playmates are coming back home, I remain (playing isn’t ever enough) with Renato. Some minutes later his mum, a short smiling chubby woman in her apron, invites us to come up for lunch.
     As in the tale “The Pied Piper”, I follow that incredibly appetizing heady scent. Lasagne, she’s made lasagne, I can’t believe it. On an ordinary Wednesday she’s made lasagne, a dish that at my home is made only for special occasions. In a moment I unbelievably forget my family. I’m delighted. Morsel after morsel I’m brought to paradise, by this creamy, smooth dish.
     Only in the afternoon, with my mouth still smeared with lasagne, I come back home, where my mother has been waiting for me in tears. Her happiness lasts only a moment, only the time to be aware of my safety. Suddenly it turns to fury, but it doesn’t matter, the pleasure of eating lasagne is still in my mouth.

Honey Candy by Stefano (Amy's Level 9)

 Honey Candy

“Let's go to the grandparents!” says my dad after our Sunday lunch.

Actually, Grandpa Vincenzo and Grandma Ester are not my relatives, they were neighbours when Mum was a child and are still friends.

 Vincenzo and Ester are fantastic elders, kind and affectionate, like grandparents. Vincenzo was an engineer and a perfect Sicilian man who took us in stunning places around the island. For that reason, twice a month, at least, we spend our Sunday in a different place eating local food in a restaurant and walking in these towns or in the countryside.

 Today is different. The weather isn't good and we stayed at home in the morning. Now we are going to the “grandparents”' house. My parents will talk together and have tea, instead my sister and I will play LEGO and, above all, eat honey candy, only one because Grandma Ester tell us that it's unhealthy eating too many sweets and also because special things can't last too long, otherwise they would become normal. Each time we go there, I can eat only one of those incredible candies, little candies full of liquid honey. Once in your mouth you have to wait it melts and then a wave of sweetness will invade you exciting your tongue.

Some years later Grandpa Vincenzo and Grandma Ester passed away, but each time I eat a honey candy I still remember the fantastic days spent all around Sicily with them.

Artichokes by Lorenzo (Amy's Level 9)

My childhood memory about food is as tasty and prickly as an artichoke. And just on artichokes it’s based. It’s not exactly a memory of mine, my mother has been repeating the story in which I risked my life for food since I was a child.

I am about one or two years old and, for Easter holidays, my family and I have decided to spend a day in a old farm house in the countryside around Trapani. This rural building is very traditional and it looks like a cloister with a central courtyard and low rooms all around. Very close to an ancient Roman house.

Not unexpectedly, but unfortunately for me, today, by the Sicilian tradition, our host – a very old fashioned farmer with his tanned, rugged face and coppola-hat– has decided to light a bonfire. After a few hours, a fiery bed of embers, large as a blanket, lies in the centre of the courtyard. The farmer, staring at it and thinking it’s time, thrusts two or three dozen artichokes straight in the embers. A primeval, maybe unusual, but extraordinarily smelly way to cook them.

That wonderful smoky smell of artichokes catches my interest. In those times I was just an urban chubby child, mostly used to crawling, than walking. Before my parents can realize it, I’m walking on embers, trying to get that exciting, thorny, but inviting object that was fixed in the coal.

I can still remember the strong hand of the old farmer, who saved me from burning like an artichoke (nonetheless, it was too late for my shoes) and gave me back safe and sound to my parents.

Looking back at it, everybody pulled my legs, telling I would have been able to face a burning fire (exactly as Saint Lawrence, a martyr dead on ardent embers in the catholic tradition, whose name I bear). But only for good food.

Lorenzo J.

A childhood memory: The notorious “T-Day” (or “Tomato’s Day”) by Silvia (Amy's Level 9)

Since I can remember, there has always been a T-Day during my summer holidays, a day that alters our quiet routine and the peace of Castronovo’s countryside. Usually, T-Day takes place on a dry August day, and lasts from the early morning to the late afternoon. You could object: “Why is T-Day so notorious? If you do it every year by immemorial time (in fact, it’s a tradition dated back to the XVIII century), what could go wrong?”  Well, nothing, in theory. But, believe me, as surely as the sun rises in the morning, something unexpected would always happen.

Actually, T-Day’s first stage begins the day before the one chosen; it consists on washing 13 or 15 crates of tomatoes (that means 168 kilos of dirty vegetables), operation that will leave your hands wrinkled after having held them in the water for more than three hours. Now, T-Day can begin!

Auntie Nunzia, my grandmother’s sister and coordinator of operations (a true general), and my grandmother get up at half past four (a.m., of course!) and start cutting tomatoes, while my father drives to the nearby village of Castronovo to pick up our housekeeper, a sprightly ninety year old lady, Auntie Nunzia's second in command and employed to cooking tomatoes. She knows the precise quantity of sugar and salt that tomatoes need, and mixes them in a huge centenarian copper pot, using a long wooden pallet as tall as she. In the meantime, my mother is arranging about one hundred bottles on a table; my Uncle Ciccio (Auntie Nunzia’s brother) and my grandfather are assembling an antediluvian machine to squeeze tomatoes and an equally elderly bottler, tools probably invented by homo sapiens at the dawn of his history. Telling the whole process would take too long, so I summarize it in the following scheme:

Auntie Nunzia and Grandma cut tomatoes ... the Housekeeper cooks them ... Uncle Ciccio squeezes them ... I fill bottles with basil ... Mum pours tomato sauce in the bottles ... Grandpa seals them ... Dad sterilizes them.

Year after year, our tomato sauce "DIY" production, which probably violates all national and EU hygiene and food safety, occupational safety, workers’ and environment’s protection, etc. etc.,  has undergone little changes: Auntie Nunzia is dead, so I help Grandma cutting tomatoes; Grandpa has no more strength in his arms to seal bottles and my Dad has taken also this commitment; my sister, that before was too young to help us, now fills bottles with basil; as regards me, I have a part in quite every stage of the process: I wash tomatoes, cut them, squeeze them, fill the bottles with tomato sauce and carry them to the cauldron where they’ll be sterilized.

My family, except my mother and I, is tired of this tradition, so every year they say that it will be the last time we celebrate T-Day, but, regularly, we still do it. Who knows, T-Day may still live for tens of years, or last only a few more. In any case, I’ll never forget that trepidation and excitement before that day, the delicious smell of tomato sauce in the air, that sticks to your skin, so you need a long bath and shampoo at last to wash it away, the little burns on your arms caused by scalding sauce, and red tomato stains upon your clothes, so they appear to have measles… How could I!

Silvia L.

An Unforgettable Lunch by Mario (Amy's Level 9)

An unforgettable lunch

I’m very tiny because I don’t eat as much as a child has to eat. I’m nine years old and I’m an only child but I don’t think that this is the problem. My parents –my mother, especially – have a lot of problems with me: every lunch or dinner is a tragedy because I start to eat so quickly but after few minutes I feel as full as an egg and I stop immediately.

A week ago a good friend of my parents called us and invited me for a lunch in the best restaurant in Palermo, called Gourmants. I dreamt all my life of going there: some friend of mine went there with their parents and they talked with me about some delicious dishes they have eaten there.

Today is the day and I’m so excited because I’m going there. We come into the restaurant and I just smell every smell from the kitchen. Everything is magic for me. A waiter helps me to sit and another one pours me some water. When I read the menu, I have a terrible headache because I don’t know what to choose. My mother’s friend smiles because she understands very well that I’m excited.

After a some doubt, I take a dish of tortellini with meat sauce and when the first mouthful hits my tongue I think I’m going to heaven. Then I decide to take a slice of swordfish with french fries. I just feel so full but I think I won’t ever come here again and I decide to have a dessert. The waiter says that I have to try the strawberries with ice cream: I think about all the pros and cons and then I take them.

Unfortunately, after the last strawberry I feel all the food that I’ve eaten in my mouth again and I go so quickly to the bathroom where I vomit all I’ve eaten. Then I come back to the table, smiling to my friend: I vomited all the food but I’m living in a dream and I don’t want to wake up !

                                                               Mario Conte