Today was the day of Santa Lucia, and so we don't eat grain. My friend told me something about ships, and grain, and something else, but when I looked up Santa Lucia on wikipedia, it told me something completely different, so I'm not exactly sure. I was feeling pretty down, as I was sure that I was going to die if I didn't get my daily pasta fix, until my family said we were having arancina, the typical food of this day. Arancina are balls of rice, stuffed with cheese, meat, or spinach, or a combination, and then fried. Well, if that isn't a good way to celebrate not eating wheat, I don't know what is. I ate two. Now considering running a good four hours.
Since I forgot to take photos (too busy eating), I pulled some from the internet:
Update everyone!! I just asked my host mom for clarification and apparently the not-eating-grain thing is a Palermo thing. Each region might have a different way of celebrating. I guess there was a great famine and then a ship came with grain, but the people had no yeast so they could only boil it. So people of Palermo celebrate by not eating grain and eating deep fried rice. (Hopefully I didn't butcher that story too much)
Woahh they have it in Italy too? Or maybe it is Italian, I don't know haha. Here kids go around dressed like angels singing and people eat yellow pastries :) Those things look good though! yummm
ReplyDelete