Photo a day - October. Olives and pumpkins.

Published on 5th of November 2023
   


We have a joke in our family that it's still August. In fact, today it would be August 97th. We are still in flip flops, shorts and t-shirts. Air conditioning is finally off, there's that, at least. You can enjoy outdoors and walk outside without feeling cooked. 

These past weeks have been about pumpkins, and olives. Pumpkins because of Halloween, olives because we've been harvesting and making oil. Halloween first - we started celebrating it while living in Scotland, and grew to love this colorful and fun autumn festivity. Tiny pumpkins were Maya's favourite seasonal toy, and now Mara is picking up this habit. They are very versatile - can be packed in a basket, then unpacked. Some can be rolled as a ball. They are handy when playing with the little mice. They can be used as construction block too. Then come the big ones - we got some to eat, and some to carve. The best pumpkin patch in Palermo turned out to be ... Lidl supermarket! We got both our small pumpkins there, as well as the big ones to carve. Carving is postponed till Halloween, because once carved, the pumpkin won't last long in this warm weather. 

Then there are pumpkins to eat. We made soup, pesto and cheesecake. You start any of there recipes with roasting the pumpkin with some olive oil and a sprinkle of nutmeg, and the whole house smells delicious. Reminds me of autumn, but we're having 97th of August, so maybe by the time Christmas rolls in, it will finally come. One can hope at least, for autumn is my favourite season. 


Olives. We gathered some in nonna's garden, there are not many this year, so we are going to brine them. The big olive production happened later when we were making oil. It took us 3 days to gather 355 kilograms, everyone helped including grandparents and uncle, and Mara was quality control officer. 

Randoms bits: Matteo cut his hair, Mara still fits in my knitting basket - barely, Day of the Dead makeup remains our favourite for Halloween along with monster burgers, and The Whitches was good spooky fun to watch with kids in the dark! 



























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