Cooking for 1 in a 2-Room Roman Airbnb

So far, I'm 0 for 2 in the Roman Airbnb scenario. 

In the last (and first) case, I booked a space that was perfectly adequate for my needs and had all the things I'd filtered for in my search: a place to cook, no shared conveniences (like a bathroom), a bed, air conditioning, proximity to where I'm working, and affordable. 

But when I arrived to get the key, I realized that there was no air conditioning. The host acted as if I had imagined it. Airbnb's site said otherwise. The host got an additional fan for me, so I had two. Every day I worked in 90-something degree heat, and came back to a studio apartment that was, admittedly, shielded from the hot sun at all times of day...With two fans after a cold shower, I could more or less handle the heat. Even when I contracted Covid. 

(and you know me: I fought like a tiger with Airbnb on the misrepresentation, secured a partial refund and a discount coupon. But let me say this: if you want progress in the area of customer service, take it up in the Twittersphere. That might work when nothing else seems to)

The kitchenette of that place was actually pretty optimal: a decent size fridge (with a freezer) for a European appliance, a small stove/oven, dishware, etc. 

I was also able to bring a few valuable tools and ingredients with me from our Rome apartment, since we were being packed up and moved. 

So I cooked and ate well, all things considered. 

This present Airbnb situation also has plusses and minuses. 

AC is present (believe me: I asked the host to be very sure). Also, a separate kitchen. Hot water refuses to reach the shower, however. In the September temperatures, this is not completely terrible, but it will become completely terrible if the host does not resolve it very soon. Airbnb has already had to engineer a refund and a discount code for the last disaster. I am sincerely hoping that I will not have to put up the same stupid fight again. (update: host reports that a part is ordered for the water heater...but supply chain disruptions abound, so who knows when it will get here? As a friend recently said to me: 100 years from now, we will still be blaming Covid for everything)

But in the meantime, I'm here in this place...this mostly quiet place, with mostly friendly neighbors, and a small swath of purveyors of the good things: the raw materials for cooking. 

So I am going to take you on this little ride. I will be cooking for one, in a 2 room Airbnb that has no oven, a dorm-sized fridge (the cubic type, so I also have no freezer) and an oddball set of pots and pans that have no properly fitting lids. 

I'm not going to get all fancy about this. This is, after all, still cooking for 1. I won't promise that I won't generate some leftovers sometimes. I'm used to cooking for 2 AND making leftovers of the good dishes. 

First up. A meal made of some gifted ingredients: porcini mushrooms and homemade fettucini.

This the most compact four burner cooktop I've ever seen...and the hood is additionally wee. But it all works. 

The porcinis from Umbria sauteeing in a little salt and olive oil. Salt draws out some of the moisture in the shrooms. Don't waste your EVOO on sauteeing, because that's not what its really for...use regular olive oil or some kind of flavorless vegetable-based oil.

Before they are ready, but they have begun to brown and have given up most of their moisture, I have also tossed in two chopped cloves of garlic. 

Don't hate me because I love garlic. 

Just ignore the garlic if you don't love garlic.

Happy to have found a box grater in the cabinet. Grated some 30 month old parmiggiano. About 1/3 cup.

The handmade fettucini needs only a little time to boil in heavily salted water (it should be so salted that it tastes like seawater). Also floating in there are a few slices of the mushroom stems, because I want the pasta to have some mushroomy flavor too. Note: with handmade pastas, you have to look out for boil-over. Keep an eye on the boil.

That's a lousy shot of a fetuccini noodle on the edge of a wooden spoon, backgrounded by dishes in the sink. I'm checking the noodle to see if it's al dente (with a firm center that is not yet mushy). It actually should be a little more chewy than al dente, because I'm going to put it into the pan with the sauteed mushrooms and it will cook a bit further. 

Sure, I drained the noodles. But before I did that, I ladled some pasta water and those cooked stem pieces into the saute pan with the cooked mushrooms. 

And with that water in there, I add some of the grated cheese. I want a salty/creamy sauce for my pasta, without using cream. This is the essential basis of cacio e pepe (cheese and pepper pasta), which also uses no cream. 

Everything cooks and further comes together, for just a couple of minutes.

ONE pat of butter in the watery sauce, which is starting to cohere. 

Sorry...there must be fat somewhere.

Just a minute or two more before tossing in the pasta, stirring very gently...more like folding...so as to not break up those delicate noodles. 

And once its tossed sufficiently, pour it onto a plate. Sprinkle on the rest of the cheese.

And eat.

You may not find this to be a heavily sauced pasta dish, if you tried it. Americans tend to drown their pastas. But the Italian point of view about this is that mushrooms are pungent enough without much help. Some rather pungent cheese is included, and that's all you really need. 

Stage 1 on a food journey in a small Italian apartment kitchen, which has plenty of limitations. 

Making do.

Or making the most of what can be done.

 

Roman Re-Entry

 

That's right, friends: I'm back. 

For a Fall term of teaching, that is. I'm staying in a different AirBnB (this one has AC, I'm thrilled to report, but no oven and for the first 5 days and counting, no hot water to speak of...no wait, I must be brutally honest. 4 minutes of hot water. Then it runs cold again). 

Re-entry into Rome is muggy and swampy and in glaring sun, almost too bright to take. There is the threat of thunderstorms, but generally, the threat expires with no action. So the barometric headache just lingers. 

Re-entry into Rome is a test of acquired but rusting language skills. So far, I've had to struggle to recall the word for 'bill' (for my sit-down lunch), but otherwise, I have surprised myself. And the bonus: my ear for listening and understanding is still pretty good. 

Simone is missing his unicorn. 

He will return to the store after finding it.

For all the information, call this number.

Re-entry into Rome is far more quiet than I expected, but I am in a different neighborhood, with a higher rate of Italian language-only, working class residents. I might hear English spoken on the street, but there is still a drastic reduction in tourists. Conversely, I cannot find a place to toss my recycling. Regular trash and 'organici' (compost), yes. Recycling, no. 

This is a main square in the neighborhood, highly populated on weekends by children with soccer balls and scooters, senior citizens killing time together, and political speeches. The fountain in the center is a more modern one, by Roman standards, meant to evoke the history of the neighborhood - Testaccio - which was built upon an ancient trash heap of pottery shards, the remains of broken oil and wine vessels. 

A better close-up of that fountain.

Re-entry into Rome means being ready to unload your groceries on the conveyor belt and scurrying to their collection at the end to bag them yourself while simultaneously, mentally translating that spoken Italian euro sum AND getting as much exact change as you can out of your wallet (because the cashier is going to ask you for it anyway, so you might as well get ahead). Now that I've seen what American baggers can do to my fragile groceries, I'm happy to do the bagging myself, but no, I don't like that pressure of doing so much at once, either. 

Re-entry into Rome means sore feet, stair climbing and wistfully looking at elevators you are not allowed to use...and accepting that the explanation you were given for the prohibition against elevator usage is nonsensical, and thus, more or less Italian. 

There it is. One of two elevators that you need a key to use, and the AirBnb host says she didn't obtain one because she was 'not around' when the elevators were installed. 

That's the best explanation I got. 

I asked if I could use one of them to just get my bags up to the second floor. 

She said she asked on my behalf. And the answer was 'no.' It is at once infuriating and Italian, this kind of thing. 

Re-entry into Rome means still wearing a face mask on public transit. Well, for about 60% of the riders. The rest are fine with risking Covid transmission and/or a fine. At present, the case rate is relatively low, but we shall see what the season brings. Italy is just now rolling out the second booster for people over the age of 60. 

Re-entry into Rome means food adventures. Within reason, I am here for it.

Is this not a sunny, bright kind of lunch? Risotto made with purple cabbage, a dollop of soft cheese and a sprinkling of pistachios, sliced oranges and fennel, and a sweet slice of cantaloupe draped in prosciutto. You need to go off the beaten path for lunches like this (translation: go outside the city center), which don't offer the standard tourist-driven array of pastas and sandwiches. But what a reward when you do it. And with the exchange rate being so favorable right now, I can easily tell you the cost: $12.

Once I found a small bottle of chili oil as well as ground chili flakes, I ordered a takeaway quattro formaggi (four cheeses) pizza...and it was fabulous. 

I also ordered puntarelle...the sliced, curling stalks of chicory, quickly sauteed in olive oil, anchovy and lemon. The point was to absolve some guilt over that pizza. 

But it's really, really good. 

Re-entry into Rome means a new group of students, who are also here for it. It is nice to see the energy and enthusiasm again. May it continue through the term. 

Here we are - all 18 of us - at the Villa Giulia, Etruscan Museum of Art.

Sweating, naturally. 

Re-entry into Rome also means renewing friendships. Here is my friends' view of the sunset from their terrace.  

And here is the harvest moon from their terrace.

And here is what they just 'whipped up' for dinner:

(and if you two are reading this, don't worry: the pasta comes in another entry)

Re-entry in September is tough because the calendar says autumn, but the temperatures do not. Even Italians are, I think, based on my casual observation in the last couple of years, overlooking their usual annual puffy coat day, which was September 15. 

It will be 84F on this September 15. 

We'll see what this one brings. After all, re-entry into Rome has already included seeing jackets and scarves on early mornings. 

Re-entry is a rhythm I'm still seeking out...I think I have time to find it. 

 

Re-Entry

Science fiction stories featuring that transition from inky, mute space and back onto sunny, tumultuous planet Earth usually make the passage through the atmosphere seem fiery and dangerous. It’s the tricky part. You need to somehow shield your craft - or at least, yourself - from being singed, scorched or worse. 

Re-entry into American life is nowhere near this abrupt. It’s full of a lot of queuing, form-filling, patience-draining and name-signing. It’s toggling between all of your usernames and passwords, which you misremember and have to change and hope you remember to document before having to use them all over again. It’s memorizing strings of numbers, repeating them, and explaining that you don’t yet have all the information that people behind counters and desks and in front of monitors require. It’s butting your head against the bureaucratic wall, over and over again, and wondering how, even though you voted by mail in every election and carried an American passport and driver’s license and received packages and mail at a (technically) American address, you also more or less disappeared for six years. 

And yet, to a tiny audience, you are mostly who they know, wherever they happen to be.

You learn that there are still a lot of entities who want a personal check instead of a card with sixteen numbers and a microchip. They don’t respond to emails. They make and take phone calls only. You thought the cash-only local economy of your European dream was pretty analog, and it turns out that you were kidding yourself. Now, you can’t find your checkbook because no one has wanted your checks in six years. Oh, and movers packed up all of your belongings 6 weeks ago, and you don't know when you'll see them. With the shipping nightmare that is the lingering pandemic-laced world, it's a toss-up.

So many things about this photo say 'Italian' to me, but in fact, it was shot in Atlanta, GA. 

You vaguely wonder how people who don’t have a physical address - by choice or by misfortune - manage to have bank accounts and credit cards, because those entities don’t want to cooperate with you until you do. Two-factor authentication for some reason rigidly insists on texts sent to phones (how do people who don’t have them literally FUNCTION IN THIS WORLD?), often gives no option for another means of conveying the damned code, and keeps a death grip on your old phone number. 

So, change the number, a reader might offer. 

That is a lot harder than you think. Oh, you can adopt a new number, but who will readily adopt it as yours? That’s the troublesome piece. 

American customer service has devolved into chirpy bots (designed to stall your progress while providing the illusion of caring about what you need or feel, more than anything else) and FAQs and ‘forgot-your-password-username-etc.?’ meandering loops with no success.  Go ahead, try to find means for communicating with a real person on that website. Hint: you’ll find it when you resort to using a plain old search engine, because other people have had enough with the fruitless search, and they’re freely sharing those toll-free numbers you can almost never locate on the company website. And when you do reach a human being in written form, it becomes quickly apparent that that person is a) also pre-programmed, potentially so well that they cannot effectively read the words you have written, and b) immensely obtuse. It is as if they have taken instruction on how to NOT answer your questions.  

Frustrated? Don’t tell anyone, most especially the person who faces the public, the one who is supposed to handle questions or problems or people who have needs. 

Why? Their new tactics for handling questions or problems or needs involve categorizing everything that the customer expresses in the way of dissatisfaction or frustration or even the repetition of a question (because they’ve thus far successfully dodged answering it) - however calmly, however seriously or honestly - as yelling or being rude or somehow inappropriate. Alongside those classes on how to not answer questions, there has been additional training in hyper-defensive posturing. 

Meowmy, that is your stern voice.

Re-entry into America reminds you that you spent six years NOT behind the steering wheel, and that even your thigh muscles enable you to repeatedly press the gas and brake pedals, through endless stoplights. 

When preparing to move this from my childhood home, my friend P struggled with starting it (as had everyone except its dearly departed owner), and she called upward: Dale, help me start this truck! 

Of course, it started. 

This '93 edition Ford has now gone into the capable hands of the across-the-street neighbor (with a newly licensed teenage daughter) who installs car batteries for a living. I guess that Dad can still keep an eye on his house now.

Re-entry into America comes with free refills, a lot of salt and sugar, and the frighteningly false end of a pandemic. 

Re-entry into America’s soundtrack includes incessant pharmaceutical commercials, extreme political partisanship at the expense of legitimate representative governing, and more Spanish, which I need to get busy learning. 

Re-entry into America looks and feels so very, very strange, as the family photograph now only features you. It is so reassuring to have a life estate holder lock you out of your family home less than 6 months after your last living parent died. She routinely asserted that she would never prevent his daughter’s access, until she changed her mind. When confronted by the idea that the true owner of the house didn’t cotton too highly to finding her family’s remaining possessions shuttled to the basement within mere weeks of the death, she changed the locks and played little passive aggressive games, refusing to communicate directly, but making sure her umbrage was communicated via others. 

But she’s in mourning, it could be explained.

I guess that she left his ashes on the basement floor because she misses him so much. 

Re-entry into America comes with the loss of two parents, two cats, a profession that has undergone an alarming amount of change, and affordable costs of living. 

Re-entry into America came with a couple of crazy moving days, when our household goods finally arrived after being adrift for 3 months. We locked the cats in the bathroom and dutifully, even cheerfully, tried to work with the movers who declared: we will bring furniture first, and then, the boxes. 

‘Cause y’all got a lotta boxes. 

OK, we brightly said. We knew we were going to have to compress the contents of the Rome apartment (far larger than we had a right to) into a smaller space and deaccession a number of things. At least *I* was braced for this reality. 

Anyone without an interior design degree do this? While waiting to move into our loft, I drew a not-to-scale floorplan from memory and then cut out little miniatures of our furniture to move around. I didn't feel like mastering software. I felt like manipulating things by hand. This will *not* be the outcome of our living space, however. Something The Spouse said about not placing wine racks without a wall behind them...

And then in came the stream of movers with…boxes. 

Boxes and boxes of….books, clothing, kitchen goods. Everything, it seemed, that could fit into a box was boxed...even the things that didn't necessarily require boxing.

Oh, plus the occasional piece of a bed frame, or a bookcase shelf, or some other item that had been wrapped like a Christo and rendered anonymous. 

Um, what happened to ‘we’ll bring all the furniture first’? We had no time to ask this in the 4 hour onslaught because we were supposed to be checking numbered boxes off on a list amidst one question after another, from one huffing mover after another: ‘where do you want this to go?’ 

And while we spent six years in Italy and knew some Italian, that did not prepare us for interpreting it from hastily scribbled labels on these packages. 

We had deflated the air mattress we were sleeping on - too eagerly, obviously - because we were told that the rule of thumb in moves like this involved bringing the bed in first. It was one of the last things to go from Rome, so it seemed…reasonable....to expect to see it first. Alas. No.  

As we re-inflated the mattress, the cats emerged from the bathroom with wide eyes. And The Spouse looked like he’d been terrorized for the last several hours. 

Day 1, before the onslaught began.

Day 1's near end...

We worked like fiends after the movers left on Day 1, unpacking and consolidating and making several donations...so this was the beginning of Day 2.

Also...why would the movers insist on placing a rug that everyone and their brother would walk over, thereby necessitating that it be vacuumed before arranging the furniture to go over and around it? 

And this was the end of Day 2.

We couldn’t assemble anything that had been expertly broken down into separate parts because nothing was completely present. That wouldn’t happen until Day 2. We would guess at the meaning of the Italian label for a box and repeatedly discover we were wrong. 

The Spouse called it Bad Christmas. 

In fact, by the end of Day 2 we had to ask the movers to accompany us to a storage space we’d secured because we reached over-capacity in our living space. It was only then that the guys produced a translated list of box labels, and they didn’t let us keep it. 

Our storage space, initially. Lest you think we bought all of Italy and shipped it to ourselves, I'll post another entry on Italian packing and packaging. But first, I need to sleep for a few days. 

Oh wait...I can't.

By the time I had to board a plane for Rome to teach for the Fall term, we had unloaded over 100 books, a dining table and 6 chairs, a side table and a mid-century cookie jar (hey, it was a big cookie jar!). We donated piles of clothing, shoes, small appliances and anything for which we had a duplicate. We moved the contents of my entire Roman studio (including a small printing press, easels, an old, metal, mid-century teacher’s desk, an equally old teacher’s wheeled audio/visual cart, a fireproof cabinet, etc, etc.) into a rented studio space. We’re still looking for a home for a coffee table and a partial barrister bookcase. I’ve left The Spouse to search in the storage unit for a stool, book shelves, an ottoman, a ceramic bread cloche (the box we’d saved for this undertaking came home, but the packers didn’t use it to pack the item for which it was intended...maybe, I think in retrospect, because it is French? We all know how the Italians feel about the French) and various and sundry other items. 

Coffee table, anyone? 

Just one of the many stacks of books to leave our library...

But the the most important piece of furniture is assembled and the cat TV is UH-mazing, so really, what is the problem? 

These guys are GLUED to the outside scene. Dogs and squirrels and little geckos. Just, WOW.

SUCH an improvement over the Roman pigeons and occasional seagull.

I'm including this because I mention (below) having to get another storage space, and on a day when I could sell a piece of my father's gardening equipment from said storage space, I got to meet the buyer's best buddy, Festus. In a previous life, Festus took a bullet during a domestic violence episode. His nightmares are dissipating, thanks to love and peace in a second life, riding around in an air conditioned truck with his new dad. 

Festus (and his dad) are my heroes.

Upon vaguely tallying (because a literal list would be horrifying) the costs of lodging in an extended stay hotel for almost three months (in part because the house we originally thought we were going to rent was quickly discovered to be unlivable), a rental car for several weeks (because our car was floating on a boat across the Atlantic), Camp Kitty lodging for the four-footed Italian immigrants, my flight and drives home to deal with my father’s estate matters (which entailed hiring a lawyer, an appraiser, movers and renting a storage unit too!), buying a car so we could hand in the rental, paying ‘cleaners’ to only pretend to clean our loft once the tenant moved out, buying a new air mattress when the borrowed one gave out after a faltering 5 day run, obtaining a storage unit and a studio rental, and slowly putting our lives into some semblance of order in our new/old place…here’s what I ultimately think about re-entry into America:

It’s expensive. I don't care what all my traveling American friends have to say about this, when they claim that traveling to Europe is expensive.

'Home' is damned expensive. Re-entry has indeed left our wallets in smoking ruins.

Want

Day 1, Rome, 2016

I want to go.

I don’t want to go.

Florence, 2017

I want to squeeze as much as I can out of this awkward time.

I don’t want to do anything, especially. 

I want to rest indefinitely. 

I want to be able to focus on one thing at a time.

I want to get that chattering, screeching monkey off my back. 

There’s more to do, more to pack, more to sort, more to mull over throwing away, more. 

I want to go.

I don’t want to go. 

I want to wear a coat in winter, again. 

I don't want to sweat profusely for 4 months out of a given year. 

I want to know what I meant to the people who touched my life while I was here, but to know is to confront.

I do not want to confront those people with the announcement:  I’m leaving this neighborhood, this version of my life. 

Rome, May 2022

I want to taste everything one more time before I go.

I do not want to find out that some of it will not ever taste as magical as it did the first time. 

Wedding Anniversary, Venice, 2017

Isle of Man, 2018

I want to tell you the fictional narrative of why we’re leaving – that far greater ambitions await us around the corner and we had to go after them, that something dramatic and cool has happened.

I don’t want to bore you with the real story, which is that six years is all we were ever allowed to be here in this way. This move is an ordinary unfolding of events. 

I want to tell you that having packers and movers handle your stuff is way less stressful than doing it all on your own. 

I don’t want to admit that it is still highly, highly stressful, even when you have remarkably professional Italians doing that work. 

Tramjazz stop outside the Colosseum, Rome, February 2020

I want to become an aesthete, living like St. Francis with only a garment or two, perhaps a pair of shoes, and a rock for a pillow. 

I don’t want to ever let go of this feeling that making art gives me (even if I had lost it for several years because w-o-r-k), and that means I’m going to make stuff. So, I can’t become an aesthete. 

Rome, Covid lockdown #1, 2020

I want to clarify that this place is now written into my cells. 

I don’t want to have to listen to a constant stream of day trippers and tourists walking below my windows, barely restraining their barking dogs, not-listening to their children, talking on speakerphone with a friend or momma, failing to quell or soothe their babies’ cries, and singing at the tops of their lungs…anymore. How will I unlearn that cacophony? 

I want to revisit pandemicized Rome, with its quietude, kindness, earnestness, spookily empty streets and excellent takeout. 

Colosseum Nighttime Tour, between Covid lockdowns, 2020-2021

I don’t want to watch another visitor heedlessly step out onto the street in front of a moving vehicle.

Horns blaring. 

I don’t want to give up the space of this apartment. 

I do want a place where I can sit outside, see trees and hear birds. 

Rome's Ghetto, between Covid lockdowns, 2020-2021

I want to live in a place where I can be more confident that my neighbor will not shoot me. 

I don’t want to face the brutality of capitalism again. 

I want to find America unchanged. 

I don’t want to face how unrecognizable she is. 

Castellano is king, Rome's Torre d'Argentina Cat Shelter, 2021.

I don’t want to take Jasper and Evander on a plane. 

I do want them to be happy with new versions of cat TV. 

I want to be ready to go.

I don't want to have to go. 

But our apartment is empty. 

Hollow, loud noise bouncing off of every hard surface and making Jasper jittery. 

Rome apartment, May 2022

I want to go.

I don’t want to go.

I want to like this state of limbo.

I want to just be settled (because we all do). 

I want to eulogize the 6 years (minus 2.5 taken by Covid) as a time of extreme learning curves, relationships, and gains and losses. 

I don’t want to do that yet. 

Amsterdam, 2021

I want to be as direct as possible about this:

I do not want to have regrets. 

I want Rome to want me to stay.

I don’t want Rome to jerk me around. But she’s inclined to do that to everyone, really.

Christmas, Rome, 2021

 I want to resist the urge to find other things, pieces, mementos to take away with me, as a collector would.

I don’t want to run out of room in my suitcase. 

Forum and Markets of Trajan, Rome, 2021

I want my heart to be easier to carry. Light. Weightless, even. 

I want my mind to be the best repository of all that happened. 

I want to replay this movie, starring as a smarter, kinder, happier ex-patriot. 

Villa Bibbiana, Tuscany, Fall 2020

All those coins in the fountain paid off, exponentially.

I got what I asked for.

I got what I asked for.

I (still can't quite believe) I got what I asked for.

So

I want to go.

And

I don’t want to go. 

Fountain of the Four Rivers, Rome, April 2022