Bill and I began thinking of buying a house in the Phoenix area as far back as 2007. But it was my sister Jen who convinced us that the time to act was upon us in 2010. She called me up one day and said, “We are crazy if we don’t take advantage of the housing market in Phoenix and buy something. Let’s go in together.”

Hmmmm. The idea had some merit. In fact, after talking about it some more, we all decided it was a heck of a good idea. And so here we are.

While Bill and I are retired and therefore are able to spend the winter here, Jen has one of those inconvenient things called a job and, while she visits as often as she can, mostly she makes her share of the house payment and wishes she were here. It won’t always be this way.

I will admit that in the back of my mind, I have wondered how it would work if we all lived here. We tease Bill about his sister wives, but we don’t want to actually face that scenario! The answer to the question, of course, is that we don’t really know. But one thing I have witnessed is that when we have been together in this house, we get along just fine. The house, though small, is divided. If you go down one hallway, you are in the McLain wing. If you go down the other hallway, you are in the Sanchez wing. Doesn’t that sound like Downton Abbey? Never mind that the house is a mere 1,300 square feet or so. And there is no downstairs for the ladies’ maids and/or Bill’s valet. Rats. I will simply have to continue to dress myself.

Jen and I are no strangers to sharing space. That is true of all of the Gloor siblings. There are four of us, and the boy didn’t come until the end. We grew up in a house that probably wasn’t as large as our Arizona house – maybe 1,100 square feet or so. We had three bedrooms, and one bathroom. Yes, it’s true. We had a solitary bathroom in which we all had to get ready each day. And you know what? I never remember there being a problem. But it’s probably why you don’t see any of us spending a lot of time in a bathroom primping even today.

This is the kitchen area. The little table which seated six was in that small area by the window.

A few years ago, Jen was visiting Columbus with a couple of her friends. They pulled up in front of our old house to see how it looked, and the current homeowner noticed she had a stalker. Since it was Columbus, instead of calling the police, she came out and asked if she could help them. Jen explained that she had grown up in that house and was just looking. The woman invited Jennie into the house.

Well, it was a blast from the past, that’s for sure. Jen’s take: “How in the world did the six of us ever live in such a small house? And how did Mom make

Here is the living room in which every important photo was taken.

dinner in that tiny little kitchen? And most of all, how come I remember it being so much bigger?”

For many of my formative years, there was a double bed (not a queen-sized), and a single bed in one bedroom, in which three of us slept. The second bedroom had one bed and the inhabitant of that room changed. For a bit it was my baby brother’s nursery. When he was old enough to get out of his crib, I recall that he slept in the same room with Jen and I for a short time while Bec enjoyed her own bedroom as a teenager. I don’t think that lasted long. Once Bec left for college, Dave got his own bedroom.

So do you see the common denominator? Jen and I shared a bedroom for much of our lives, and for the bulk of the time we shared one bed. I, in fact, shared a bedroom with someone until I finally had my own apartment in Leadville when I was 22. Never spent a night without someone in a bed next to mine. I had a roommate in the dorm and again in the sorority house. Funny. I never gave it a second thought.

While all of our grandkids live in homes considerably larger than the one in which I grew up, it’s strange in this day and age that each of the three households with kids involves bedroom sharing. But the reality is if you ask the kids if they mind sharing a bedroom, they will all enthusiastically proclaim they don’t mind a bit. In fact, it makes them happy. That might change when they’re teenagers but for the time being, they are content with the arrangements.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not considering sharing a bedroom again with Jen. I’m perfectly content with my current roommate. We’re used to hearing each other snore. It’s just fun to reminisce about sharing space.

And, of course, since Easter is upon us, I’m also thinking about sharing food. Generally, whether we eat breakfast, brunch or an afternoon dinner, there is ham involved. It’s springtime after all. Ham is not my favorite food, but I enjoy it once or so a year at Easter. I buy a spiral-cut ham at Costco or the grocery store and make my own glaze.

Orange Glazed Ham

Ingredients

1/2 c. frozen orange juice concentrate, thawed

1/4 c. bourbon

3 T. Dijon mustard

6 lb. ham

whole cloves

Process

Preheat oven to 350. In medium bowl, combine orange juice concentrate, brown sugar, bourbon and mustard. Mix well and set aside. Push cloves into the ham and then pour orange juice mixture over the meat. Cover with aluminum foil, tenting it in the center so it doesn’t touch the ham. Bake at 350 for two hours, basting with the pan juices every 30 minutes. Let stand, covered, 10 minutes before serving.

Nana’s Notes: The cloves aren’t mandatory of course. I like to use them because I think they pretty it up and because my mother used them. If I’m serving the ham at a brunch, I put it out with small rolls and condiments. Yum.

We’ve been to Rome more than any other European city. Whenever I visit, it’s impossible for me not to think about the glorious movie Roman Holiday starring Audrey Hepburn and Gregory Peck. In that movie, Hepburn, playing a visiting princess, escapes her handlers, disguises herself as a civilian, meets up with Peck (with whom she of course falls in love), and sees the real Rome. Afterwards, Princess Ann (Hepburn) is asked which of the European cities that she visited was her favorite. She begins to answer in a politically correct way, and then, catching the eyes of Gregory Peck (who is as dreamy as they come), she says, “Rome….my favorite city was Rome.” Mine too, Audrey.

Rome is as different from Paris as Sonny was from Cher. Where Paris is quiet and romantic and people walk slow and hold hands and leisurely drink coffee at streetside cafes, the energy in Rome is practically tangible. The people walk with quick determination. The underground and buses are ridiculously crowded. Romans order espresso at stand-up bars and drink them down in one gulp, quickly, so they can get to their next destination. Scooters fly by noisily. People talk loudly and their hands are in constant motion. The atmosphere is vibrant. I loved Rome from the very first time I visited it.

Perhaps it’s the history. Maybe the amazing art intrigues me. The food, of course, is delicious. Maybe the multitude of churches appeals to my very Catholic self. I don’t know. I just know that I will never get tired of visiting Rome.

The first time we were there was during the trip about which I spoke yesterday. Remember I told you we were taking a train from Milan to Rome? The whole sleeping car fiasco? Well, here’s the continuation of the story, starring Bill McLain.

Neither of us slept too well once we got into our bunks on the sleeping car. It was somewhere around 750 degrees F. and we couldn’t get the air conditioner to work. We managed to get the tiny window open, well, a tiny bit. We slept fitfully until the train steward brought us coffee and brioche. I remember that because I had never had brioche before.

We got off the train around 9 o’clock in the morning in Rome, on a Wednesday. We were to attend an audience with the pope later that day, and Bill informed me we had to quickly pick up our tickets at a rectory somewhere near the American Catholic Church in Rome, St. Susanna. We had our luggage, which he planned on dropping off at our hotel prior to picking up our tickets. He, of course, had no clue where our hotel or the rectory or St. Susanna was located. But Bill McLain DOESN’T DO TAXIS. If God had meant us to take cabs, he wouldn’t have given us two perfectly good legs with which to walk. He had his handy dandy map, and off we went, on foot. Pulling suitcases over cobblestones. After a restless night on a train. In a strange city.

I will say this for Bill. He’s a very smart man with a very good sense of direction. And he’s lucky as hell. I won’t go into details, but we were able to find our hotel fairly easily, and then made our way with little trouble to the rectory, then on to the Vatican. All on foot. With the temperature easily in the 90s.

One more memory about that day. Before we left Milan, Heather had given me a picture of the Black Madonna of Poland she had gotten for her Bushia (her Catholic Polish grandmother) and asked me to have it blessed by Pope John Paul II when we attended the audience with him on Wednesday. I promised I would. Little did I know that the pope didn’t do his blessing until the end of the audience, nor that the day was going to be blistering and that we had no shade, nor that the audience went on literally for hours. After three hours of sitting in the burning hot sun, Bill pled with me to leave. “I promised Heather,” I said. I fulfilled my promise. Pope JPII said, “amen,” and Bill and I flew out of there like two jackrabbits.

When we visited Rome during our Big Adventure in 2008, we spent two full weeks. Heavenly. Using the wonderful website Home Away, Bill found an apartment on the edge of Rome but very near a metro line. The best part is that it was located in a neighborhood. As a result, while we weren’t walking distance to the Spanish Steps, we were able to get a feel for the real Rome. We could hear children playing in the courtyard in the evening and listen to the sound of television from open windows. We got to know our neighbors. While we couldn’t speak to them, they would smile and nod to us when we passed them on the way to their mailbox. I loved it.

Right across the street there was a restaurant where we ate nearly every breakfast and many of our dinners. The patrons lived where we lived. The same person, probably the owner, was there in the morning and at night, every single day.

Italians don’t go in big for breakfast. They will have their espresso or cappuccino and a donut or something else sweet. Save the appetite for a big afternoon meal. We had learned from our guidebook that donuts were called bomboloni. So the first morning Bill confidently ordered, “Uno macchiato, uno cappuccino, e due bomboloni.” We pointed to the sugar donuts sitting on the tray on top of a thick layer of sugar. Well, our friendly neighborhood proprietor laughed so hard you would have thought Bill was Don Rickles.  Once he stopped laughing, he said, “No bomboloni – CIAMBELLI.”

Bomboloni

Ciambella

Well no matter what you call them, they were delicious. The donuts – er, I mean ciambelli – were coated with a layer of sugar so thick that you needed to lick it off your fingers. (Well, I did; Bill went to the bathroom and washed his hands. Meh.) But here’s what I finally figured out. Ciambelli are donuts, you know, with a hole. Bomboloni are filled donuts, you know, like bismarcks. So it would be like going into Dunkin Donuts, pointing to the glazed donut and saying you want one of those bismarcks. Not that funny, huh? But it certainly was for our friendly neighborhood proprietor. He eventually became our friend.

Bill’s nephew Father David, who at the time was studying in Rome, was our tour guide. Since he speaks English, Italian, and Latin, and was incredibly knowledgeable about all of the churches and all of the art in the churches, we couldn’t have been luckier. If you would like to read about our experiences in Rome, here’s a link. Go to June 2008. We were in Rome the last two weeks.

Spaghetti Carbonara is a typical Roman pasta dish. It’s believed to have been developed during World War II, perhaps as an answer to American troops’ nostalgia for bacon and eggs. There are many theories about its origin, but no questions at all about how delicious it is. My favorite recipe comes from Chef Marcella Hazen.

Spaghetti alla Carbonara, from Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking, by Marcella Hazan

Ingredients

1/4 lb. pancetta
2 garlic cloves
1-1.2 T. extra-virgin olive oil
2 T. dry white wine
1 large egg
2 T. freshly grated Romano cheese
1/4 c. freshly grated Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese
fresh ground black pepper
1 T. chopped flat-leaf parsley
1 lb. spaghetti

Process

Start by boiling a pot of water and then cooking your pasta according to the package. Time it so that everything else is prepared by the time the pasta is cooked.

Cut the pancetta into strips not quite 1/4 inch wide. Lightly crush the garlic with a knife handle, enough to split it and loosen the skin, which you will discard. Put the garlic and olive oil into a small sauté pan and turn on the heat to medium high. Sauté until the garlic becomes colored a deep gold and remove. Fry the pancetta until it starts to crisp at the edges. Add the wine and let it bubble for a minute or two and then turn off the heat.

Break the egg into big enough bowl to toss the pasta in. Beat it lightly with a fork, then add the two grated cheeses, a liberal grinding of pepper, and the chopped parsley. Mix thoroughly. Add cooked drained spaghetti to the bowl, and toss rapidly, coating the strands well. Add the entire contents of the bacon pan into the bowl, toss thoroughly again, and enjoy at once.

Nana’s Notes: I recently posted a blog about Bill’s inability to cook, or at least his lack of interest in cooking. In the blog I pointed out that he had surprised me by making onion rings. My niece Maggie reminded me via a comment that Bill does, indeed, make one meal. He makes a helluva Spaghetti alla Carbonara. I don’t know why he became the one who makes this meal, but it is so. And it is delicious. Last night we cut the recipe in half and it worked fine. Also, I didn’t have quite enough pancetta (I used what I had left over from the Bucatini Amatriciana), so we threw in a little bit of American bacon. The difference is that American bacon is smoked and pancetta is not. It tasted delicious. Spaghetti Carbonara is the only pasta dish, however, that I won’t eat left over. When it is reheated, the egg scrambles and the dish becomes nasty. My opinion, at least. No problem. We always eat it all.

Last week I wrote about Lent, and posted a photo of a piece of art depicting Christ’s crucifixion located at a church in Rome. To find the photo, it was necessary for me to peruse the blog I posted about our European travels that I started in 2008 during our three-month adventure. I got sucked in, and before I knew it, I had spent a couple of hours reading about our travels. I decided it might be fun to reminisce with you all a bit about some of our trips, and include food typical of the area about which I’m speaking. I know, I know…..I’m indulging myself.

The first time Bill and I visited Italy was around 1999. (I’m not dead certain of the year because in those days I kept a paper travel journal which is back in Denver. No help here in Arizona.) We had never traveled abroad without the crutch of our children with us. Our son Allen lived and traveled in Europe for about four years and our son Dave spent a semester studying in Edinburgh, Scotland, so they had given us a hand previously. This time we were mostly on our own.

We did, however, meet our daughter Heather in Milan, and spent a few days with her. I recall happily greeting her at the train station and then telling her that I needed to use the bathroom.  She got a funny look on her face and asked me if I had tissues with me. “I think so,” I said, wondering why she wanted to know. It didn’t take long before I realized the cause of her concern. When I opened the bathroom stall, not only was there no toilet paper, there was no toilet. There was a hole in the ground and a place to put my feet. We’re not in Kansas anymore, I thought.

After our visit with Heather, we headed for Rome and she moved on to Paris, where she was going to meet her Uncle Bruce. Bill had learned in his travel book that one option if you were moving from one point to another was to take an overnight train instead of renting a hotel room. He couldn’t get that notion out of his mind and was determined to take an overnight train and get a sleeping berth. Unfortunately, the earliest we could get a sleeping berth on the train from Milan to Rome was in Bologna.

Now, here’s the thing. We were total and complete neophytes. We didn’t know the customs. We didn’t speak the language. We didn’t know just how we were going to find out how to find our sleeping car in Milan, didn’t understand one thing about it. We pulled into the station, waited a few moments hoping against hope that a conductor would come get us. It was Italy folks. That was not going to happen, though we didn’t understand that yet. Newbies, donchaknow.

Finally Bill said he was going to find out what was happening. He DISEMBARKED the train, hoping to be able to locate someone to help him. He was gone for quite some time. Suddenly the train began to move. Within a minute, the train was heading south at full speed.

Oh My God. I was all alone. My husband was missing in action. I didn’t know details about our plans. I knew absolutely no Italian. I had no cell phone. Last I had seen of Bill, he had been on the platform looking for a helpful Italian. I’m not sure I have ever been so distraught.

Just as I was about to become quite hysterical (and wouldn’t a hysterical American woman have made the Italians happy?) I saw Bill coming down the aisle of the train. He had gotten the details about our sleeping berth and gotten back onto the train on a different car.

Since that time, we have visited Italy a number of times and are much more sophisticated travelers. I have learned that as long as you understand that you CAN’T UNDERSTAND Italian logic you’ll be fine. The Italians are generally eager to help.

When we spent over three months traveling in Europe in 2008, two of those months were spent in Italy. That time we arrived in the country by car, driving in from Austria. Our first stop was Padua, near Venice, in northern Italy. Padua is the location of the Basilica dedicated to my very favorite saint, Anthony of Padua. St. Anthony is the patron saint of lost items and Catholics ask his prayers to help them locate items they can’t find. I call upon him often, I’m afraid.

We bunked in Padua, but in addition, visited Verona, Trieste, and Venice, all by car. We had a Peugeot convertible that Bill (God bless him) drove 6,600 total miles in three months. Without a single scratch on the car. Driving in Italy. Just sayin….

Anyhoo, we had spent the past month or so in France, Germany, and Austria, but were eager to get to Italy because it is our favorite European country. Can’t help it. I love the scenery. I love the people. I love the churches. I love the art. I love the food. Mostly, I LOVE THE FOOD.

The first night in Padua, we went out to a local restaurant near our hotel. We were dining earlier than most (7 o’clock is unseemingly early in France and Italy) so we were nearly by ourselves in the restaurant. The waiter took us under his wing and began bringing us food, as so often happens in Italy. I mean food we haven’t ordered. They just want us to try things and they can’t help being hospitable and generous, especially when it comes to their food. He brought us risi e bisi as a first course, a specialty of the region — rice and fresh green peas. Bill had bucatini with duck and asparagus and I had tagliatelli with tomato, garlic and pecorino cheese. Bucatini is typical in the region. It is a long pasta with a hole running through it. Because of its hollow shape, the pasta is difficult to wrap neatly around your fork, and it sort of slaps you in the face as you eat it.

The most surprising thing to me was that prominent on the menu was horse meat – as an appetizer, as a sauce for pasta, as a main course. I didn’t realize horse was eaten anywhere. I passed, thank you very much, but to this day I regret that choice. I might not have liked it, but dang, I wish I knew what it tasted like.

The recipe I’m posting is Bucatini all’ Amatriciana. The sauce might be a bit more typical of Rome, but the bucatini pasta is very definitely typical of northern Italy. I am giving you Lidia Bastianich’s version, and it doesn’t contain horse.

Bucatini all’ Amatriciana (Bucatini with Pancetta, Tomato, and Onion), from Lidia’s Italian-American Kitchen cookbook

Ingredients

One 35-oz. can Italian plum tomatoes (preferably San Marzano)

Salt

5 T. extra-virgin olive oil, or to taste

1 medium onion, sliced thin (about 2 cups)

Four ¼ in. slices pancetta (about 6 oz.), cut into 1-1/2 in julienne strips (about 1-1/2 c.)

½ t. crushed hot red pepper flakes

1 lb. bucatini or perciatelli pasta

1 c. grated Pecorino Romano cheese, plus more for passing

Process

Pass the tomatoes and their liquid through a food mill fitted with the fine disc. Set aside. Bring 6 qts. of salted water to a boil in an 8-qt. pot.

In a large skillet, heat 2 T of the olive oil over medium heat. Add the onion and cook, stirring, until wilted, about 4 min. Stir in the pancetta and cook 2 min. Add the red pepper flakes and the strained tomatoes and bring to a boil. Adjust the heat to a simmer, and season lightly with salt. Cook, stirring occasionally, until the sauce is thickened, about 20 minutes.

Meanwhile, stir the pasta into the boiling water and cook, stirring occasionally, until done, about 12 minutes.

Check the seasoning of the sauce adding salt if necessary (remember, the Pecorino is mildly salty).

Reserve about 1 c. of the pasta cooking water. Drain the pasta, return it to the pot, and pour in half the sauce. Bring the sauce and pasta to a boil and drizzle in the remaining 3 T. olive oil. Add some of the pasta cooking water if necessary to make enough of the sauce to coat the pasta lightly. Check the seasoning, adding salt if necessary. Remove the pan from the heat, stir in 1 c. grated cheese, and transfer to a large, heated serving platter or bowl. Spoon the remaining sauce over the top and pass additional grated cheese separately if you like.

Nana’s Notes: God bless Lidia. Seriously, she’s my favorite chef. I love her cooking. But not everyone lives in New York City with access to many ingredients. I didn’t find San Marzano tomatoes in my neighborhood grocery store here in Mesa. Also, I have no interest in passing anything through a food mill. I mean, really? So I bought canned crushed tomatoes. Also, the only pancetta I could find was thinly sliced, so that’s what I used. You know what? It was delicious even if Lidia would be horrified.

Furthermore, since I was only cooking for Bill and me, I cut the recipe in half. Worked fine.

I used bucatini, but you could also use spaghetti or linguine. Any long pasta.

It was scrumptious.