Here's a blog we forgot to post

Last Sunday we were invited to the house of two of our teachers for a pizza dinner. They own a house just up the mountain from a little town called Zafferana and had a new pizza oven built. Our asst. principal, Sonny, was also invited so we rode up with him. I am sure glad we weren't driving because we 1) never would have found it, and 2) would have driven white-knuckled if we had made it....the roads were more twisty-turny than any I had ever seen (though the ones we saw on the big bus yesterday outdid them).

The town of Zafferana was on the first week (of four) of their "Octoberfest" so Joyce said to come early and we'd go down to the town for awhile before starting the pizzas. There are booths all along the street at three levels (it's built on a mountain so there are different levels to the town) and they have crafts from everywhere--local to far away. I met a young man from Senegal (in northern Africa) who had come with some beautiful things.

There are booths of local produce and prepared foods. We got our first tastes of lemon honey, almond honey, and orange honey. Also, pistacchio pesto (yummmmm!) lemon olive oil (unbelievable) and other such tasty treats. There were many, many kinds of local wines we could have tasted, too. They sell all this from their little booths.

Another layer held more crafts and small, inflatable carnival rides and games. (One was the old game of ring the soda bottle but done with wine bottles). At the back of this area was a kind of food court like you see at any fall festival. Mostly local vendors cooking the most wonderful things made of all sorts of local meats and vegetables. Some were cooking fish and meat over an open fire in a kind of long v-shaped "thing" made of wood. Hmmm.

Bob had been looking all over for a sausage sandwich (not at all the kind of sausage we would imagine) and found about six vendors there selling them. He said it was worth the wait. I was waiting for the pizza and passed up all food except for the tasting.

Back at Joyce and Bob's house we fired up the oven the sat around and visited for awhile while it heated up. Each of us made our own favorite pizza then we all shared. I really didn't want to share my "fresh mozzarella, sundried tomato, basil" pizza but some of the others weren't so bad so .....okay.

On the trip back home Sonny drove through a beautiful little resort town called Aci Tressa (pronounced Achee Traytza) where we stopped and walked along the rock beach over to a marina with beautiful boats.

What a wonderful day.