Storytime Tapestry Newsletter

The newsletter devoted to spreading love and cultural awareness around the world.

May 12, 2008

Happy Mothers Day one and all; I hope you are all having a greet day and being loved and pampered

Today’s Announcement

Call for submissions:  Storytime Tapestry is in need of more stories, please keep them coming in.

Help support the continued running of Storytime Tapestry join me on mylot and get paid while we talk to each other and others all over the world:  http://www.mylot.com/?ref=winterose  if the link doesn’t work just cut and paste

From my son Steven Roach:

I was thinking you should advertise the link regularly in your newsletter if the link doesn’t work just cut and paste

 
http://greenhorse.com/join_now.ghc?r=177952857
 
tell them it would help support the newsletter and they can earn money from it. They need to sign up and install it but they don't need to do anything else. They just do what they normally would anyways on the net and they earn money while it’s on. In other words they just keep it running while they are online. It’s small doesn't take up much system resources and they can earn more if they advertise their own link and get people under them as well. Let them know some people make 5-10$ a day on it and its been open since 2002. 

Don’t forget to order your copy of Angels Watching Over Me, the story of an ordinary woman facing less than ordinary challenges.  Angels Watching Over Me is a story of family love, sacrifices, poverty and an undying faith that makes heroes out of all of us. Here is the link in case you have forgotten it: http://www.lulu.com/content/964306

Important notice: Storytime Tapestry is a free e-zine, however donations are always needed to help with the operating expenses of running the newsletter and to keep Storytime Tapestry the quality newsletter you are so accustomed to.   You can make your donations to paypal at: winterose@videotron.ca, or if you would prefer to use the mail system contact the publisher at the same email address: winterose@videotron.ca

 ~**~**~

Scents of Belonging

Tanja Cilia follows her nose with a Maltese bouquet in her sights

It starts as a tingle in your nose the minute you step down from the plane.  

By the end of your holiday, it will have exploded into an invigorating backdrop of scents and aromas... savours and flavours...  sensations and emotions.

This is Malta, a melting pot of cultures – and consequently the foods, physiognomies and architectures that go with them.

Hotels, restaurants, and the local chippie offer a gamut of food from across the world.  But is not part of the magic of travel sampling the authentic food of your destination?

Some local delicacies are an acquired taste. Our produce might have a more intense flavour than what you are used to; this is partly due to the dearth of rain and the quality of the soil, as well as the labour-intensive farming methods that are still used on many farms.

     The Maltese touch makes for the ultimate fenkata.  Hand-reared rabbits – not yet past puberty – are simmered in gravy of white wine, garlic, and bay leaves and served with patata moqlija.  If the sauce contains peeled, pulped and saut?ed tomatoes, it will be served over spaghetti… no other pasta will do.

These being cold months, you may have to forgo the pleasure of tasting tangy, briny, freshly-caught rizzi.  You may, however, sample bebbux bl-arjoli.

Land snails, served in the shell, are cooked in a piquant concoction of basil, parsley, our local habanero cultivars (tiny yellow or red balls of fire), lemons, beefsteak tomatoes and a drizzle of oil and vinegar.  Eat along with piquant bigilla, and wash both down with scalding mugs of fragrant imbuljuta.

An impromptu picnic is a holiday-within-a-holiday. Pick a clear, crisp day, and squeeze some tangy local larinġ to quench your thirst. If you want, sweeten it with local għasel tas-sagħtar. Slather some bread with kunserva, spritz it with żejt taż-żebbuġa and dot it with kappar, add inċova to taste, and hie off to Buskett, as the locals do.  Revel in the earthy smell of sodden leaves and waterlogged soil, breathing in the scent of żahar. 

Dessert would be cheap and cheerful – karawett roasted in the shell, and mandolin.  As you crack the peanut shells, the faint musty smell will contrast sharply with the bitter-sweet kernels – and mingle with the zing of the citrus peel.

Alternatively, you can traipse down to the seaside with a scrumptious ħobża – the Maltese ploughman’s lunch – with the inside rubbed with tomatoes and oozing a filling of ġardinieira. The invigorating combination of smells of the sea, seaweed, and moored, recently-caulked boats will etch itself deep within your soul.

Car dealers have been known to spray cars with “leather” aroma; estate agents use “cake-baking” tang to rope in potential customers.  At Qormi, the village with the highest concentration of bakeries in Malta, you can experience the real thing… Nothing beats the warm, homely taste of a kisra hobż, straight from the oven, with so much butter slathered onto it that it dribbles down your chin as you relish it.

You may wash that down with a boiling-hot mug of kaf? laced with ġulepp tal-ħarrub  - at one of the many local bars… and while you’re there, make it a point to ask for a tot of fragrant aniżette.

George Gordon Byron is responsible for the malicious, yet not necessarily untrue, quote about Valletta being the City of Yells, bells and Smells. 

Walking down old Bakery Street, and turning left, you might attest for yourself whether this is so by visiting an old, quaint cobbler’s shop, rich with the scent of leather and time itself. Toni Barbara will always be ready with a smile – and a chat!

If it’s a Monday, further meanderings along these quarters of the Capital, or indeed any other town or village,  will provide you with the traditional washday aromas wafting in the air – whites boiling merrily away in a solution of sapun tac-cavetta, while the coloureds are washed in Surf, Dixan or Ariel (Tide is no longer available locally).

Cleanliness is next to nothing – so the chances are that the familiar niff of Dettol will assail your nostrils if you come across someone scrubbing the square of kerb in front of the house after washing the floors inside.

But the pungent smell of rabbit hutches (kept as ‘packed lunches’ in hutches on roofs and in gardens), according to the keepers, will only be neutralised by dousing the catches in a strong solution of creosote in warm water.

A walk in the country will take you away from the unpleasant pong of hot tarmac and tonsil-tickling pall of building-site dust… to the refreshing smell of wildflowers and late crops, and, if you let your imagination run riot, the smells of the wind and  the ground soaking up the rain.

If you visit a church after Sunday High Mass you may detect the last heady traces of musky inċens permeating the air, combined with the acrid smell of candles that would have just been snuffed out. In some villages and towns it’s the done thing to scoff half-a-dozen pastizzi and t? bil-lumi afterwards.

The sprinkling of ġulġlien on the crust of timpana or bużbież on patata ’l-forn; the sweet-and-sour tartness of tadam imqadded and the pungency of sliced pikless, fażola, and żebbuġ mimli and cubes of bakkaljaw served as meze or tapas, the smoky taste of bacon nestling inside braġjoli, are the nuances that make our food distinctively different from that of other lands.

You haven’t really eaten until you’ve been to one of those refurbished places where the fusty smell of wet rot clinging to the local globigerina limestone blocks still tries to impinge upon the senses. It's the perfect backdrop for a mound of ravjul tal-ġobon topped with thick garlic-laden tomato-sauce and parsley… washed down with a cool glassful of local inbid or birra.

Peeling bettiegħ tax-xitwa gives off a faintly caprylic smell of cat pee and acetone; yet it reveals luscious white flesh that surpasses all expectations.

That, too, is a typically Maltese smell, as are those produced by a perżuta  taking forever to cook on a kuċiniera in the yard,  and minestra and kawlata… and qubbajd and bajtar tax-xewk  and qaqoċċ and aljotta and zalzett and …….

Glossary

aljotta: fish soup

aniżette; authentic, local, superior pastis/ouzo

bajtar tax-xewk: prickly pears

bakkaljaw:  salt cod

bebbux bl-arjoli: land snails served in piquant sauce

bigilla: dried broad bean dip

birra:  beer

braġjoli: beef olives

bużbież: fennel [seeds]

fażola: boiled butter beans served with parsley and spring onions

fenkata: a dinner of rabbit

ġardiniera: vegetables in brine

għasel tas-sagħtar: wild thyme honey

ġulepp tal-ħarrub: carob syrup 

ġulġlien: sesame seeds

imbuljuta: dried chestnuts cooked in water, bitter chocolate, cloves, and orange juice

inbid:  wine

inċova:  anchovies

kappar: capers

karawett: peanuts

kawlata: vegetable soup with barley and pork

kisra: doorstop; traditionally, a crust of Maltese bread broken off by hand

kuċiniera:  kerosene-fired stove

kunserva: tomato paste

larinġ: oranges

minestra: thick vegetable soup

pastizzi: (Maltese) cheesecakes

patata ’l-forn:  oven-baked peeled, sliced potatoes

patata moqlija: pan-fried chipped potatoes

perżuta: ham hock

pikless: pickled onions

qaqoċċ: globe artichokes

qubbajd: [festa] nougat

ravjul tal-ġobon: ravioli stuffed with a ricotta and cheeslet mixture

rizzi: sea urchins

sapun taċ-ċavetta: Marseille soap

tadam imqadded: sun-dried tomatoes

t? bil-lumi: tea with a lemon wedge squeezed into and left in it

timpana: baked macaroni in pastry shell

żahar: citrus blossoms manoeuvering

zalzett: [Maltese] sausages

żebbug mimli: stuffed olives

żejt taż-żebbuġ: olive oil

Tanja Cilia

tanjachilja@hotmail.com

~**~**~

Poetry Corner

~**~**~

          Remembering

 Sharon Bryant

I only have my memories on Mother's Day

of my wonderful mother

What I would give

To have just one more

I hear people complain

About things their mom's do

I want to say to them

There's no complaining when our lives are through

    I look at photo albums

And touch many photo frames

Of happy times with my mom

What I would give to have her here again

To those who have lost their mom's

I truly understand

And for those who still have your mom

Tell her you love her as much as you can

For I would give anything

For just one more hug

One more time to say I love you mom

To the mother that I love

In memory of my mom, Helen

On this Mother's Day

Sharon Bryant

Choclite@bellsouth.net

~**~**~

  Mailbox

Here is our Storytime Tapestry Angels: Also, I would like to thank those of you who chose to be a silent angel and gave an anonymous donation to keep Storytime Tapestry up and running.

Clara Westerfer, Mark Crider, Rosanne Catalano, Paula Booher, Kay Seefeldt, Mariane Holbrook, Mary Ellen Grisham, Louise Nomani, Sharon Bryant, Angela Walker, Hart and Helen Dowd, Keith Ready, Ginger Morgenstern, Ellie Braun-Haley, Surinder Jandu, Bob Shaw, Carol Meeks, Charlotte Hilliard, Marilyn Sink, Victor Buhagiar, Clarice Hinson, Conrad