Lasagne For New Year’s In Sicily

While sporting red underwear, enjoying lasagne for New Year’s is traditional in some parts of Sicily (NB there are many, many traditions according to your “church bell” zone, aka campanilismo.). Importantly, however, it isn’t the lasagne that you might think. This Sicilian-style lasagne is more like a broad tagliatelle cut how you like it… And…

Leave The Past In The Fire

Release today what you don’t want to bring into the new year! There isn’t a long history of celebrating New Year’s Eve or New Year’s Day in Sicily. Only over the past century has it become a milestone holiday. Therefore, modern Sicilians celebrate New Year’s Italian-style–eating sausage (cotechino), grapes, and lentils. (Lentils, with their coin-shape,…

Chase Away the Dark

Let the fantastic monsters from Villa Palagonia (replicated on a wall down the street from the villa in Bagheria) chase dark spirits into the ether of history in order to make space for the good spirits of the New Year.  For information about New Year’s traditions in Sicily, visit my 2013 post.