THANKSGIVING IS BOOKED!

The Thanksgiving dinner we have planned for this Thursday at Baracca & Burittini is COMPLETELY BOOKED FOR THE FIRST TIME EVER! That's very exciting for us, as we weren't thrilled about having it at a restaurant in the first place, but now that the place will be filled with our friends, we think it will be lots of fun. We got all kinds of neat things donated for door prizes and quiz prizes including a free cruise, books on Trieste, jewelry, cloth shopping bags, coffee... Now we just have to make sure the games are good.

I'm going to go to the Association now to plan those, in fact. I am all about Trivia. Mauro says he has something up his sleeve too, and Nino, he'll be there, helping out. So my first priority (according to Mauro's wife) is to keep those two on track (ciacole non fa fritole, as they say!-- Chat does not make pancakes!!). I'll let you know how it goes.

Our friend Anna is going to keep the kids busy. I will be insisting on the hand turkey making station (as long as I can make one, too).

The menu for that night is going to be the kind of Thanksgiving my mom dreamed of but we kids never let her have. The Bon Appétit Thanksgiving complete with fancy recipes from the magazine. We just wanted the staples: Turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing, pumpkin pie. She would be delighted to know that our dinner will include Pumpkin Gnocchi (I can pretty much vouch for every American living in Trieste. We're okay with this one as we tend to love all things pumpkin). There will be turkey, of course, but I doubt we'll have to witness any arguments about who exactly will have to carve the dang thing. Of course this means that there will be no turkey sandwiches the next day, but no clean-up either.

For dessert there will be some kind of delicious specialty of the house. But, a few of us Americans are bringing American pumpkin-based desserts as well. John is making a pumpkin pie, Elizabeth is making some kind of pumpkin bar, and I am making pumpkin bread.

If you DO decide to get yourself a turkey to cook up over the weekend, however (just for the leftovers) may I suggest calling my friend, REMO? You should tell him for how many people and that you want to throw the entire thing in the oven. He'll understand. Tell him Karoline, the American, sent you. By the way, my turkey from Remo last year was the best turkey I have EVER HAD IN MY ENTIRE LIFE. I'm not kidding.

See you Thursday. I am already making my list of things to be thankful for.

Gobble gobble!

The American Film Series Starts tomorrow

It's at the Ariston theater (that's by Fincantieri, Allianz, and that wack-o looking building that houses the new pool). The times are 4pm, 6:30, and 9. The movie is The Informant with Matt Damon. Come to the only movie playing tomorrow NOT dubbed into Italian!!! I'll be there with bells on-- if not with bells on, at least with a hole puncher!

Monday Night American TV and Film Series

If you're looking for something to do tonight, come to the Cappella Underground at 8:30 and watch FORBIDDEN PLANET with us! This is the second of a 12-part series on American television and cinema presented by Prof. Leonardo Buonomo, who is on the board of the Italian American Association. He is a professor of American Literature at the University of Trieste. Last week we watched an old episode of Star Trek (who knew that Captain Kirk was so cute when he was young??) and it was really interesting. 


If you still haven't renewed or gotten your Association cards for this year, you can buy them at the Capella Underground, which is on via Economo 12/9 or at the Association (via Roma, 15) or at Uvec Travel Agency (Via Giusto Muratti, 4 just off Viale xx settembre). Membership is 20 euros for students, 30 euros for adults and includes the Monday night series as well as the American film series (9 films starting this Thursday with The Informant) at the Ariston theater in Trieste. 

Coloring Pumpkins at the Mall was Fun!

It was our first time celebrating Halloween the old fashioned way: at the shopping mall in Udine. Our good friend Stefano set us up with a special area just for us, right in front of the Carrefour grocery store for maximum traffic. (The thing that kills me in Italy is that their shopping malls are "anchored" by grocery stores rather than department stores as they would be in the States. Those, and places where they sell plasma tvs). This was day two of our Halloween pumpkin decorating for kids extravaganza. My friend Denise, her awesome daughter, Anastasia, and I, along with 18 (!!) student volunteers from Istituto Nordio (high school) spent Friday afternoon on the floor drawing on pumpkins at the mall in Trieste. That went well, especially since the students were so great with the kids. They worked in one-hour shifts drawing, complimenting, giving candy, picking up wrappers, and capping pens.

On Saturday, we had less help, and decided to split up. Denise and Elizabeth went to the mall in Trieste again, while our super responsible good friend and ex-volonteer at the Association, Anna, came with me and Sweetie to Udine. For those of you who don't know, Udine is a little over an hour from Trieste. We decided to do Halloween there because we are a regional association, and it's important to have a presence all over the place if we can.

That being said, in Trieste people have at least a vague idea that the Italian-American Association exists, so having us at the mall luring children into our space with candy and asking them to color scarey Halloween pictures and draw on pumpkins is sort of normal at the end of October. The kids there often come in costume, even though it's not really an Italian holiday (every year it gets more and more popular, though, especially with little kids and the going out crowd). Parents take advantage of the free distraction to get their grocery shopping done in peace.

In Udine, however, people looked at us funny and/or tried to avoid our gaze for about the first 15 minutes of our 3-hour stint. But then the kids started noticing the candy, and then they came, and we offered it to the parents, too, and they seemed to like that. Kids attract kids, so more of them came and colored. Besides candy, we gave the parents hand-outs explaining how to carve a pumpkin and how to bake the seeds.

I carved a pumpkin so they could see what a real Jack-o-Lantern looked like. The big surprise was that Sweetie, who has been with me for years, had never seen one up close. He was so excited about the process that we had to repeat it at home yesterday, and he got to do the drawing and carving. He then declared that he would be doing it much earlier next year, to take advantage of the Halloween season.

Here are some other things I noticed while hanging out at the mall on Halloween.

1. Italians love getting recipes for things.

2. Kids with glasses draw pumpkins with glasses.

3. The goop inside the pumpkin still feels like brains, even as an adult.

4. Kids love hanging up their artwork when they're done

5. Almost all of the girls dressed up as witches for Halloween (Anastasia was a native American).

My favorite quote from Saturday was from a man who was passing with his family. He seemed pretty intrigued by the whole pumpkin thing and said to me:

"We do not believe in these things, they are not our religion. We are from Marocco."

 Well, we don't really believe in it either... but it's fun to color on pumpkins!  And his kids did, so that worked out.

A BIG THANK YOU to everyone who came to visit us and to those who helped out! MWAH!

Ok. Halloween's over. Phyoo! Another holiday down!