Travel Day to Taromina

We have loved our time in Ortigia! Across the bridge in Syracuse, there is a famous basilica that displays a picture and napkin with the tears of Mary. We drove past it but did not go inside. It is called the
We drove about an hour north along the east coast to a small town called Ragnala. It’s at the base of the Etna volcano. I was introduced to a very nice Sicilian tour guide who has helped us arrange several of our tours. She set up a private cooking class with some local Nonna’s. When we arrived we were given an almond cookie called a Paste di Mandorla. It translates to almond paste. They were delicious. Something we have never had before. The class is being held in a very old mill house that was used to make wine and crush grains. They have added a kitchen and turned it into a private space to host things like cooking classes. We began by preparing the tomatoes for the tomato sauce. Their method is very different that the one taught to us by our Nani. They also have beautiful looking tomatoes. We are going to prepare pasta alla Norma. It’s named after an opera. A famous Italian actor tasted the dish and created the name. It’s typically made with a short pasta, tomato sauce, fried eggplant and salted ricotta. We worked really hard on the making the pasta dough. Then we let it rest and fried the eggplants. The hardest part was making the dough into long macaroni. We were not very good. The ladies had to finish the pasta so we could eat. We (the 4 of us) don’t really like this type of pasta. We have had it other restaurants. It’s typical of the area. But the sauce and eggplants were very very good. We had so much leftover. The ladies of course didn’t understand why we didn’t eat very much. We got to take most everything with us. Then we made cannolis. My grandmothers cannoli filling was always my favorite. I prefer plain with maybe a few chocolate chips. Sicilians prefer pistachios on everything!
After we said goodbye to the ladies we drove to Taormina. It’s the last city on our tour of Sicily. The city of Taormina is high up on a hill side. The water and beach are far below. We are unsure of how this will affect our apartment. It was very hard to choose a location. Once we found the parking garage for our apartment, we lugged all our staircases up 2 different elevators and into the apartment. I was not feeling well and immediately went to sleep. When I woke up Gabe said he was also not feeling well. We didn’t eat dinner and went to bed early. Gabe did some research and he thinks the eggplants possibly didn’t agree with us. I hope we are better tomorrow.Read more