Buona Pasqua tutti!

You know it's getting close to Easter when you see these huge chocolate eggs appear in the windows of the bakery shops all over Italy.  When I was little, I remember my mother would receive a huge chocolate egg in the mail from her relatives in Caserta, Italy every year. I thought they had to be the most wonderful thing in the world.   Wouldn't it be incredible to get one of these eggs ?

 Another of the signs Easter is just around the corner are the posters in all of the butcher shops reminding you to order your lamb for Easter dinner.

Just like Panettone is the traditional Christmas cake, at  Easter the cake you see sold in all the shops is called the Colombo,because it is shaped  like a bird (technically a dove), with candied orange pieces inside.  There isn't much difference between a Panettone and the Colombo, besides the shape. The Colombo I bought this year is a miniature, only about 4 inches in length. Unfortunately for me this year I am on a strict diet enforced by my doctor. If I had bought the regular Colombo, I would have had very little will power not to eat  the whole darned thing. At least with this tiny one, I have a shot at not blowing my diet too badly. (It is still safely wrapped in it's plastic, gone untouched the whole day. I'm doing my best to stick to the rules of this diet. I'm quite afraid of this doctor!)

                                        




We love to color eggs for our  Easter baskets, however, we have not done any egg dying since we've moved to Italy because the eggs sold in the markets here are brown.  Brown eggs don't dye quite the same as white ones.  This year we found eggs already colored at our local market on Via Garibaldi. We couldn't resist, these came home with us. Already hard boiled too.

                                           

Easter baskets are not typical here as they are in the United States.  In Italy the custom is to give a huge chocolate egg. Inside is a surprise of some kind.  We've not done the big eggs in previous years, but this was a year for some firsts.  Besides the colored eggs, this big egg found it's way home with us from the grocery store this Easter.  It's about a foot and a half tall.

                                            

We were curious what surprise we'd find inside!  Mike carefully unwrapped the colorful foil, to discover that the egg was sitting in a plastic cup. So the egg wasn't quite as big as we thought it was, but still, it was big enough!

                                            

 Eager to see what was hidden inside, Mike broke off a piece of the egg. Inside was a small plastic wrapped package.  It was a mini-bowling game, complete with 6 tiny bowling pins and a ball. "Made in China" was clearly stamped on the label.   This is making it's way into our trash bin in the morning. So much for surprises!

With this diet I'm on, I'm allowed 20 grams of dark chocolate for part of my mid-day snack one day a week. I think we're going to break our egg up into pieces and store them in a zip-lock bag so I can take out 20 grams each week. Our egg won't go to waste!

As you can see, some of our old Easter traditions have gone by the way side, traded for new ones. Living in a different place requires you to adapt to different things.

What are  some of your Easter traditions?

Hope you all had a wonderful day filled with family and friends.
Buona Pasqua!

Buona Pasqua!

Happy Easter and Buona Pasqua!

Of all the things I've had to get accustomed to living here on the other side of the Atlantic ocean, learning about new traditions and how the locals celebrate holidays is one of my favorites.  I have learned that  somewhere around 2 -3 weeks before Easter I must make a stop at Drogheria Moscari near the Rialto Bridge (on the San Polo side) to check out their huge chocolate egg. Once I see their window display of chocolate eggs, chocolate bunnies and their one enormous chocolate egg covered with elaborate decorations, I know Easter is just around the corner. It's probably my favorite thing about this holiday.

Another Easter time favorite of mine is seeing all of the grocery stores and bakeries display the "Colombo" , a cake like dessert in the shape of a bird, in their windows.  This tastes a lot like the Christmas time Panetone, it has candied citrus baked in it, and almonds on the top, and has a consistency that is a cross between a bread and a cake.  Even though I see it in shop windows for most of the month preceeding Easter Sunday, I wait until a day or two prior to the holiday before I buy mine. The anticipation makes it so much more enjoyable. It isn't Easter without at least one Colombo!

Coloring hard boiled eggs is not a tradition here. In fact, I scouted all over this side of Venice the other day in search of white eggs. No luck. All I could find were brown eggs. I don't think those would be very good to color. I'm thinking Italian children might really like doing this. Did not find any Paas boxes of dye for eggs either.

Easter baskets are not common here either. Instead, children receive one fairly large chocolate egg about a foot tall that is already packaged and wrapped in fancy paper by some chocolate maker. Inside the egg is some little toy for the child.

And the Easter egg hunt doesn't exist here either. I mentioned it to a friend of mine the other day, and she told me she had only ever seen it in a movie. Sant'Elena has a lovely grassy park right in front of our apartment which might just become the site of a big American style Easter egg hunt next year. I'm already plotting!!!  

Buona Pasqua - Belated

Happy Easter and Buona Pasqua, tutti!!

Each holiday season there is something new and glorious to experience here. Shop windows all over Venice have been filled with Easter eggs small and large, but none surpassed this one in the front window of Dogheria Moscari. This g-inormous chocolate egg stands about 2 1/2 feet tall and I feel like a kid again, wanting it for myself as I stand and admire it every time I pass by the shop. Life is good.

As a kid in New Jersey, I remember my mom getting an egg like this at Easter time, I don't remember if it was shipped over from her family still in the "old country", or if there was an Italian bakery in the neighborhood producing them. I have to remember to ask her, see if she recalls. I clearly remember seeing an egg like this in the house with "Auguri " written on it. We were the only kids on the block with an egg like that. Years have gone by. I haven't thought about those eggs for the entire duration, and here I am, drooling over those fantastic eggs again. I'm in a little bit of heaven.

I know, this post is about a week late - Easter was this past Sunday. I've been busy with the visit of my 82 yr old mother and two sisters from America!!! This is not their first visit to Italy, but it is their first visit to me since I've moved. I've been excited to share my new home with them, and my new city for a few days. After 4 days here in Venice, they all went on to La Spezia for a few days visit with old family members. I spent Easter Sunday on the train to Rome where we all met up to continue the next leg of the vacation. More about all that in upcoming posts.