Our first glimpse of the structure in the car there really made an impact. It sits out in the middle of nothing, and the forest surrounding it acts as shelter and camouflage both.

The octagon shape is what really sets it apart from other castles I’ve seen, and the smooth exterior which is unfortunately no longer the original.

Pssst…While you’re here, why not follow me on Twitter @rosso, become a fan of Ms. Adventures on Facebook, and sign up for my monthly newsletter with exclusive content?

You can’t help but walk all the way around the castle to view all of its eight towers. I confirm they’re exactly alike :)

I really enjoyed reading about the castle’s history, which is long and convoluted – it’s been vandalized and ransacked repeatedly and was only restored in the last century. Here’s what it looked like before the restoration:

Though there is some ornamentation in the few castle windows there are, the spartan exterior doesn’t hide any real signs of life inside.

The history helped me understand more about the structure, but very little remained with regards to the actual lives that it once fostered and protected.

There was so little life to the structure that the placement of a single statue in the immense inner courtyard had that much more impact. Two people, a soldier and his lady, locked in an embrace. They are Hector and Andromache, L’Abbraccio di Ettore e Andromaca. I thought it was quite beautiful, but one of my favorite paintings is Il Bacio (The Kiss) by Francesco Hayez, so it’s not that far off. The Greek mythology doesn’t have much to do with the structure, but I appreciated a bit of a human touch.

I was mesmerized by the narrow arrow slits and couldn’t help thinking that you should be able to see outside. To many, the structure is mysterious and the lack of human presence adds to this. To me, it just makes it a little sad.

It didn’t take us very long to visit, and on the way out, I couldn’t help but go for the (literal) “money shot” here. If you’re in the area, schedule an hour or two to check the castle out.

• Castel del Monte’s official site
• Castel del Monte’s World Heritage Site page

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Related Articles at Ms. Adventures in Italy:

• A Day Trip from Milan to Monte Barro, Regional Park near Lecco
• Another behind the scenes look in Puglia
• New Additions to the Artigianale Basket for a Menu for Hope

Quinoa granola. Yum. House smells awesome!

— Sara Rosso (@rosso) February 18, 2012

I find that granola is more personal than asking people how they take their coffee – everyone has a different answer. So make sure you tweak my recipe and any other you find until it’s your perfect blend. On the first try of this quinoa granola, I quickly discovered I do not like the taste of crunchy fruit, so I left them out until after the main toasting in the oven on future batches.

So what does granola have to do with a road trip? Just a few short days after getting back from a long work trip, I was on the road again, this time to France and to enjoy some wine country and visit a good friend. I thought bringing some quinoa would be a different kind of gift, and I found a pretty jar which I put it in. So the quinoa granola made the road trip with us.

We headed straight towards the Alps…

…we went through the Frejus tunnel, 12.8km / 8 miles of driving through mountains….

…and made our road trip’s first stop in Lyon for lunch, coffee, and a walk around before continuing. (a few more Lyon pics on my mobile photo site)

The road trip continued, but I want you to get straight to making the quinoa granola!

Quinoa Granola Recipe

These measurements aren’t rocket science, so you’ll want to play with the ratios and insert the fruit and nut mixtures you like best. Some others to try for next time: dried cherries, walnuts, cashews. And for spices, add some nutmeg and/or pumpkin pie spices, or even some ginger!

This granola is also not your classic “big chunks of clusters” version but that’s fine with me, at least this time around. It is still quite crunchy, and I use it to give a little extra crunch to yogurt, oatmeal, ice cream and other desserts. If you’d prefer a more cluster-y granola, try increasing the amount of honey used and/or experimenting with maple syrup and/or brown sugar as the sweeteners. I wanted to keep the added sugar low on this version.

1 c. raw/uncooked quinoa (red/white)
1 c. finely shredded coconut (unsweetened)
1/2 c. rolled oats (larger flakes, the better)
1/4 c. ground flax meal
2 T. chia seeds
1 T. cinnamon
3 T. Honey
1/4 c. sunflower seeds (raw)
1/2 c. almonds (raw, chopped)
1/4 c. pistachios (raw, chopped)
1/4 c. raisins
1/4 c. dried cranberries

1. Preheat oven to 300F / 150C.
2. Mix quinoa, coconut, oats, flax meal, cinnamon and chia seeds together.
3. Add honey, mixing well with a wooden spoon or spatula. Add chopped nuts and mix to evenly distribute the mixture.
4. Spread out the mixture onto a cookie sheet (with a lip) lined with parchment paper.
5. Cook for 30-45 minutes. After 15 minutes and occasionally after if needed, take out the pan and stir the mixture so it gets browned evenly. Keep a close eye on the mixture and don’t let it burn! You may not need the entire 45 minutes.
6. Let the quinoa cool for 10 minutes, then add in dried fruit and toss to coat evenly. Let cool completely, and you can store it in a glass jar or plastic container/bag in the cupboard.

How would you make this quinoa granola recipe your own?

Want more? Follow me on Twitter @rosso, Become a fan of Ms. Adventures on Facebook, and sign up for my monthly newsletter with exclusive content.

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Related Articles at Ms. Adventures in Italy:

• Recipes
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But the life of an expat is far from romantic, far from perfect, and far from lucky.

It’s uncomfortable, it’s humbling, and it’s a lot of hard work.

Don’t believe me? Then play for me, if you will, a tiny violin which accompanies this explanation of living abroad (in any country) and why it’s not all cappuccinos and pasta. Note: This post is not specific to Italy nor Italians, nor is it US vs. THEM in any way. Rather, it’s a look at being immersed in any culture and language, from the point of view of an expat. 

Are you sure you want to be an expat?

Because here, you’re not smart. Not at the beginning.

Unless you were born speaking the language of your adopted country, you are an infant when you arrive. At first you can’t communicate at all. Then as you get a small vocabulary, you don’t really understand the particulars of each phrase you hear, but only the general sense of it if you’re lucky.  You consider it a victory if you follow a normal conversation without having to interrupt the natural flow to ask someone what a particular word means. Every time conversation stops and heads turn your way, waiting for your answer, you realize you weren’t really understanding at all. You try a smile as the default answer for questions you didn’t know were being asked to you, but it only gets you so far. You feel dumb. And frustrated.

Sometimes you feel paranoid about speaking and that you’ll have to stop in the middle of explaining something or will have to ask for help because the word you lack you know so well in your native language and is continually banging at your frontal lobes to be let out, yet the equivalent in the foreign language eludes you completely.

You hope the smiles on others’ faces are because they are interested in you, and not because your accent, no matter how faint it becomes over the years, is a novelty for them. On bad days you decide spacing out is better than trying to follow a conversation whose content you are following akin to a tennis match: she’s speaking, now he is, now she is. If you can’t space out, you must move your head accordingly and match your facial expressions to the others’ lest they find out you’re not really following.

You’re not funny, either.

Most of the jokes in your new country have years of cultural meaning behind them that you haven’t been able to glean from reading Mickey Mouse and the occasional newspaper article in that language when you first arrive. You horde the free newspapers with a plan to read them from cover-to-cover and improve your vocabulary, but you give up halfway through and rely on the pictures and their sub-captions to appease your study drive which has now rolled to a halt. And what you wouldn’t give for a slang dictionary which would just add another step in your comprehension from slang to proper foreign language to your own language. You pat yourself on the back if you learn one new slang word a week.

You want all conversations to slow down, just for once, and perhaps allow you to participate instead of analyzing them as a concerned spectator. The one time you manage to think of a witty reply with the limited vocabulary you have available, the conversation has since continued on without you and your interjection minutes later will just highlight and reinforce your first suspicion about yourself: here, you’re not smart.

The times when you are funny are usually when you don’t want to be: you make people smile at your pronunciation, you accidentally invert vowels or consonants and turn a polite word into a vulgar or inappropriate one, you refer to yourself in third person or address a question to the dog, or you treat a government worker like a teenage girlfriend because slang and colloquial speak seems to be the strongest and most accessible part of your foreign vocabulary. You find out people always have time to teach the foreigner these types of phrases, yet perhaps not the phrases that help you defeat bureaucracy.

That funny, witty person who is able to charm the pants off friends and strangers at home did not make it through customs with you into this new country.

You don’t know who anyone is.

A native friend nudges you after you pass an important politician on the street. The name means nothing to you, the party name even less. Perhaps you’ve heard of it or seen a poster, but you’ve had difficulty distinguishing which posters are political and which are product advertisements. Most of the political parties have similar names dealing with “democratic” or “liberty” or “people” so you aren’t sure how the natives can tell them apart. You start thinking about how many other famous or semi-famous people you’ve been near and haven’t realized it. It’s probably a very large number.

You’re eager to make new friends, but only if they stick around.

At first, you want to meet anyone and everyone, and you’re drawn to those who are in a similar situation as you. You meet friends of friends coming for a short visit, desperate for a slice of your native language and hopefully some smuggled treats or magazines.

Then, later you find that emotionally you do have a limit, and that limit now excludes people passing through for a few months and will probably leave by the time you get to know them. Playing the tourist guide for your neighbor’s husband’s cousin wanes in appeal and you start planning new itineraries which will allow you to drop them off at attractions and come back later.

You see a lot of other expats come and go. At the beginning, it’s easier, because you’re still learning about the country and how to fit in, and haven’t had time to think about the future, leaving, or staying. Each day brings new challenges: bureaucracy, new vocabulary words, new foods you haven’t tried and people you haven’t met.

In time the milestones grow further apart, the newness begins to wane and now the really ugly part starts: some of your friends, including the natives you thought would always live here, will pick up and move. Now it’s they who will start their brand-new lives elsewhere. Soon you start to count the number of those who are remaining and it is far outweighed by those who have left.

You are an oddity and attraction for the natives.

You answer the question “Why did you come here?” so many times that over time, you craft the answer and it morphs into something completely different from the first time you said it. Now you choose the answer based on how much you really want to continue talking about it with the person, and how much they are asking because they want to get to know you or because they just can’t understand you.

Years later, you don’t even remember what that first answer was, and very few people ask you now why you’re here. They’ve accepted the fact you’re here.

Another question you often get asked is “Do you like it here?” At first you permit yourself to express any doubts or concerns about being happy here, as it’s new to you and you’re still adjusting. Years later you realize if you don’t say you’re happy, you’ll have to face the fact you’ve been living here for years, unhappy.

You are your country, you are your countrymen.

Every bad thing that happens in your native country or that your country does will inevitably be brought up in conversations with you. Usually the person’s opinion is clearly expressed well before asking yours, if they ask at all. You may be asked to defend, explain, or criticize a subject or person which you might’ve never talked about had you not moved.

You’ll have to get used to the fact that the people in your current country may know more about your home country and its current news than you do.

You have a new form of kryptonite: bureaucracy.

But it’s not all growing pains, awkwardness, or feeling out of place.

You can be an example.

You are your country, you are your countrymen, and that means you have a unique opportunity: to enrich people’s perspectives and (hopefully) combat stereotypes by being yourself and adding to their experiences with someone from your country.

You’ll be bi-cultural, and hopefully bi-lingual. 

Do I really need to explain the awesomeness of this? Being able to flow from one culture to the other, from one conversation to another, and from one perspective to another is very powerful.

You’ll be more sensitive to others in difficult situations, too. 

Nothing heightens awareness to others’ plights than being in a difficult situation yourself. How could you not be sensitive to other difficulty, injustice, or cultural clashes when you’ve gone through a similar situation?

You are different. You are changed by your surroundings.

Your new country will change you whether you like it or not. You will never be the same person that you were before you moved. You’ll spend time trying to figure out if it’s just you getting older or if it’s your surroundings that have impacted you the most.

You’ll unfortunately be unable to separate the two but you know, deep down, that the new country was to be the stage where these changes would occur.

You’re an expat.

If you want to keep reading more about finding your own path in life, I suggest fellow expats Diana Baur’s A Certain Simplicity, and Michelle Fabio’s Bleeding Espresso for some thought-provoking posts.

If you’re looking for information specifically about moving to Italy, my series of posts on this are a great place to start.

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Related Articles at Ms. Adventures in Italy:

• Calling all Expats in Italy
• Happy Blog Day 2006
• Expat GTG in Italy

On a side note: thanks for all the sign-ups for my newsletter- I’m overwhelmed by your reponse – first issue out soon!

Peanut butter was pretty difficult to find when I first moved to Italy; even in Rome where there are a few “international food stores” (like Castroni), portions were small, expensive, and often brands I didn’t recognize.

Now it’s easier to find peanut butter, and even some bigger / normal grocery stores will carry a jar. I find that Skippy peanut butter is most common; I think that’s because the brand, while an American brand, is very popular in the Philippines and so it gets imported for them. But there are ingredients on the label I don’t recognize, so I don’t buy it.

I often stick jars of all-natural peanut butter, sunflower seed butter, or almond butter in my luggage when I come back to Italy from a trip to the US or UK. But as my trip schedule can be unpredictable, more recently I decided to take matters into my own hands and make my own.

My cupboard is full of nuts and seeds – they make great toppings for yogurt, oatmeal, and salads; they make a great go-to snack while traveling or just in the afternoon. I started stocking up on raw, unsalted nuts when I realized some of my (used-to-be-favorite) nut brands include flavor enhancers like yeast extract to flavor them (read about why I think flavor enhancers should be avoided in my How to Make Chicken Stock & avoid MSG post). If you buy nuts, make sure the label says, NUTS and nothing else. A little salt is ok, but you might even enjoy it more if you salt them yourself – at least you can control the amount that way.

Raw, unsalted nuts mean I have a great raw material to cook with, to make into something else, and for normal snacking. Now when I snack on almonds, I don’t eat the whole bag. :)

So when my beloved almond butter was running low and there was no stocking-up trip on the near horizon, I decided to just do it myself. It’s so easy, it’s almost ridiculous to write up a recipe. The most important thing you need is patience – they will turn into butter! Try it yourself and let me know any variations you take on the recipe.

Homemade Almond Butter

Note: I think almonds with the skin on make the best butter, but it’s up to you. 

Unsalted almonds (if already toasted, skip step 1)
A food processor
Pinch salt, if desired

1. Preheat the oven to 350F / 180C. Spread the almonds in a single layer on a cookie sheet and roast for 10-15 minutes. Check halfway through and give them a shake / mix them up so they are toasted on both sides. Make sure they don’t burn, so keep an eye on them! Let the almonds cool for 30-60 minutes, until they are cool to the touch.
2. In your food processor, put the almonds in, set it to a medium or high setting, and let it do its magic! It will take time (even 10-15 minutes of continuous blending) so if you need to stop it every so often to let it cool down or to scrape the sides of the processor, do so. The almonds will go from powdery dry chunks to chunky clumps, and finally you’ll start to see a sheen as the oil in them starts breaking down. Depending on how chunky or smooth you want your almond butter (I like mine extra chunky) you’ll want to be extra patient.
   Here’s mine closer to the end – this is when I added just a bit of salt and tasted it after blending:

And when it was ready, I poured it into a jar that was almost empty and put it in the fridge! I suggest putting it in the fridge unless you’re planning to consume it quickly (within a week). I’ve had mine for about 2 months now and it’s still good; many sites suggest 3 months is max. You can also freeze almond butter, but I never have; so if you have let others know in the comments!

Will you try to make your own almond butter? Do you prefer another nut instead? 

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Related Articles at Ms. Adventures in Italy:

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• I have a newsletter – won’t you sign up?