Where I Come From: Part 2

This insert is dated Aug. 2011, I encourage anyone with Faeto roots to head over to Faeto.blogspot.com.
So I have blogged about my Croatian/Bosnian adventure and the maternal side of the family history, now for my paternal heritage. The last part of the great European adventure was spent in Faeto, Italy. Faeto is a small town in the Puglia region about an hour from Foggia, unless of course I am navigating the terribly marked roads, then it could take closer to 2 hours. Faeto clings to a rocky hillside, probably looking very much as it did when my grandfather left there at the age of 14. This was my second trip there, and it was as moving as the first. But the first must be revisited to bring perspective.

In 2003, my entire family, 23 of us went to Italy. We were celebrating my parent's 50th Anniversary and saw Italy in our own bus. We hit the highlights, David, the Leaning Tower, Ponte Vecchio, the Coliseum, the Vatican and Amalfi. But hands down the highlight was the culmination of the treacherous drive on the narrow roads to Faeto. The last few miles are canopied by trees that were in blazing color. The bus parked at the edge of town, and our new internet friends met us for the day, we had 3 guides to help us with the language. Faeto has a heavy French dialect and the Italian there is different than any other region.
We began at the small farmer's market where this cute old man walked up to me and and said "Who are you?" And I said, "We are Petittis." He smiled and said "So am I". And that's how it was. We were quite a sight as our mob walked the small cobblestone streets my grandparents walked. We made offerings in the church where they were baptized and walked Vico Valentino, the oldest street, dating to the 15th century and named for the women of my family, sisters or cousins Rose and Maria Valentino who married the Petitti men.

Six years later we took the same walk on a similar fall day. The air was heavy with the smell of fires in the small homes, and the cemetery was filled with Petittis, certainly we all share the same blood. The cemeteries are peculiar here, perhaps because of the rocky terrain or the wet winters, but they do not bury the dead. They have large walls like a mausoleum and a headstone, wired with electricity so they have a light on all the time. The addition of a photo is also very common, and a little eerie for sure, but a rarity in the U.S., although my great-grandfathers grave in Chicago bears his photo. Sitting alone in the cemetery on a small rock wall, was an old lady, wearing black and saying her rosary. The whole town has been burying their dead in this small cemetery, it is a moving place.
We have very little information on the lineage of the family. My great grandfather came here as a young man and was murdered in Cleveland, OH. My grandfather was just 14 when he made the trip from Naples, just a year after his father died. They were so willing to walk into the great unknown for a better life. My own dad says that there was very little information about Faeto from his parents. Like many immigrants, you were careful to only speak English and absorb the new culture. No one wanted to be labeled an immigrant, they wanted to be Americans. My grandfather served in WWI to become a citizen. The history of the Italian heritage was literally lost over the years. But there is something oddly familiar and comforting in Faeto. Maybe because it is so small and after two trips I know the town like the back of my hand. Maybe it is because although my grandfather came to America, he left many family members in Faeto, and the names in the cemetary and the faces in the windows are my cousins, many years removed.

On this trip my parents, my sister Lori and I arrived in Faeto at dusk and found our hotel in the small park in the woods outside of Faeto. The lights were aglow and we entered the modern building and found no one there. We laugh to think that this could never happen in the U.S. There on the counter was a note (in Italian of course) and 2 room keys, skeleton keys, no less. We brought in our luggage and hunted for the bar for a little wine to take the chill off. Our host arrived shortly thereafter and spoke NO English. Our old friend from the last trip, Pepino, came to have dinner with us at the hotel in the woods and we celebrated my dad's 80th birthday that night. Imagine, celebrating your birthday in the town where your own father lived 100 years ago? It was a poignant evening. The food was rustic and home made and delicious. I love a 3 hour meal, what a wonderful way to live!

We spent a few days exploring the area, eating the wonderful comfort food of Italy, and meeting the locals. One afternoon we walked into the bakery. We had been eating this wonderful bread everywhere in the area, and the small bakery where they bake it was warm and inviting. We sampled the day's offerings, my favorite being the bread stuffed with sweet cipollini onions. The funny thing was Anna the bakery owner was sitting with her laptop surfing facebook! I gave her my card and she friend requested Lori and I. Too bad my Italian is pitiful and we can't really chat, I am very dependent on Google translator. She especially loved the photos I posted of her, her family the bakery and some of the colorful locals. It was a short visit to Faeto, but we have accepted the fact that indeed, this is where we come from. Many of the little details are faded and lost, and that's okay. We embrace what is left, we hope the grand children and their children will someday drive under those canopied trees and walk Vico Valentino, pray for the Petittis buried in the quaint cemetery and feel the same connection to generations of family.

Daring Baker's French Macaroons

I am taking a quick break from the Great European Adventure blogs so I can fulfill my Daring Baker's Challenge. Let me begin by warning any would be macaroon bakers, this is a terrible recipe to attempt in Memphis during the "rainy season" which apparently is right now. I mean unending rain, it is miserable. Macaroons are supposed to be light and airy with an ethereal crunch to them. That is hard to achieve when the relative humidity hovers at 99.9%. I am going to crank up the heat in my house and see if I can dry out the air a bit.

The 2009 October Daring Bakers’ challenge was brought to us by Ami S. She chose macarons from Claudia Fleming’s The Last Course: The Desserts of Gramercy Tavern as the challenge recipe.

We were given free reign as far as flavoring the macaroons and filling them with whatever we cared to. I love almond and chocolate. So I opted for a little Halloween combo cookie. I used a little orange powdered food coloring in the cookie batter and sandwiched them with chocolate buttercream. Delicious and perfect for Halloween week.

It is crucial that your ingredients be at room temperature, and eggs whip up beautifully in a copper bowl if you happen to have one. Be watchful, over-beaten egg whites will lead to disaster. I upped the time on the first bake designed to dry them out a little from 5 to 8 minutes due to the humidity. The original recipe is supposed to make 10 dozen, the first tester's yield was 2 dozen filled, which is close to my yield, but I did try to make them a little on the small side. I baked them for a full 10 minutes, and after cooling on a rack, I put them back into the oven (turned off) to dry the bottoms a little. Normally these would rise into fluffy little pillows, but this is the result in high humidity. The taste is still great.

Macaroons are the rage in bakeries everywhere, so with just a few ingredients and a little patience you can recreate them right in your home. Fabulous!

Where I Come From

Dear Readers, I have taken a small break from the food blogs to blog about my European trip. It is really for the benefit of my family, a sort of diary of the experience. I will get to the great food, I promise, there is much to talk about!

Have you ever asked someone where they are from? I usually answer Iowa. I grew up there, went to high school there, eventually transferred back to college there and got married. But in the last 45 years, I have lived a lot of places and just this year I discovered where I really come from. No discredit to Iowa, but would I be that different if I was raised in the same family but lived in New Mexico? I think not. I believe where I come from is relative to where my family comes from. I went and saw the roads and alleyways my great grandparents and grandparents walked. I drank water from the village spring and walked around the ancient cemeteries. I heard the languages they spoke, ate the food they knew and gazed at the landscapes they called home.

My mom's family came from Yugoslavia. I know, it really doesn't exist anymore, but it's what I have always known. Her Grandfather, Steve Miskin was a Serbian from Trebinje, which is now in Bosnia. Confused? Yea, me too. But I went to Trebinje with my Mom and Dad to see where Steve Miskin was born and raised and where he would have probably died and been buried if he didn't dream of a better life. Trebinje is a charming town just 18 miles over the mountains from Dubrovnik and the Adriatic Sea. There is no love loss between the Croatians in Dubrovnik and the Bosnians in Trebinje. The "last" war as it is often referred to there was deadly and ugly and the scars are still present. We went with another couple my parents met in Florida with the surname Miskin. Richard did a lot of research on his family, and prior to the mid 1700's the trail runs cold in England. He was fairly convinced that his family originated in Yugoslavia, so he and his wife Becky came on the Bosnian journey.


Steve Miskin although many years passed on has a great-nephew in Bosnia, Savo and his wife Jadranka, daughter Mirjana, and son Vladomir (Vlado). None of them speak English. Thankfully, there was another Miskin (by marriage) Miljana who translated the entire day for us.


Our Croatian driver dropped us off at the Platani Hotel in Trebinje and we met up with Miljana and had coffee. My favorite European experience is sitting outside on a beautiful day sipping coffee. What a great idea, no paper cups and hot sleeves for you to mindlessly drink as you drive around. Sitting and visiting, sipping incredibly strong coffee and perhaps smoking if you live in Bosnia. Apparently they don't have a surgeon general to tell them how bad it is for them. We enjoyed sitting outside in the large square canopied by the Platani trees, which are like our Sycamore trees.

When the rest of the family arrived we sat down to lunch inside the hotel. Of course it began with wine, then Bosnian Antipasti, fresh bread, and platters of meats. Sausages, veal, pork chops and chicken accompanied by a platter of salads, lettuces, tomatoes, cucumbers and slaw like my Grandma made, cabbage, vinegar and oil, no mayo here. It was delicious. For dessert I ordered Baklava, which the Croatians were quick to tell me was a Muslim dessert. I always assumed it was Greek, we make a Serbian version called pita or burek, and whatever its origins, it was delicious! Now the real fun would begin!

We left the hotel on foot and across a large park where a farmer's market had been in the morning. The litter was unbelievable. There were trucks out cleaning up, but I know the Santa Monica Farmer's Market or Memphis Market doesn't look like that when it's over. But litter is very common all over Europe, very tragic. Miljana took us to her school where she teaches English. It was very inspiring and unfortunately the cost to send her books is high or I would empty my shelves of the kid's easy readers and send them on, as they are hungry to learn the language. Most of the signs in Bosnia are written in Cyrillic which is virtually impossible to decipher. I felt like an alien the entire day. We proceeded to the cars and I rode with Vlado and my parents. Typical post teenage boy, drives too fast with the music too loud (see previous post for video).

Our first stop was the monastery on top of the large hill in Trbinje. It has a new Orthodox church and a view that is spectacular (see the view at the beginning of this post). My great grandfather was Serbian Orthodox, as was my grandmother, but in DeKalb, IL there was not an Orthodox church and my Grandmother converted to Catholicism when she married. The church interior is gorgeous and the icons are very similar in every Orthodox church. There are many of St. Michael the Archangel (a personal favorite) and St. Stephen which is the patron of my family. I lit a candle for my own family thousands of miles away. We then went to Savo's store. It is a feed and construction type business and the small store has drinks, eggs ( not refrigerated) and food. We had a cold drink mingled with the locals and moved on. Vlado drove us to the family village along one lane roads in the thick brush of the country.


A hundred years ago, many families established their own "village", basically a cluster of homes with gardens, root cellars, vineyards, bee hives and crops. They could self sustain for the most part. Of course, those days are over, and our village has been bombed by missiles and is decaying. There is still an old gentleman living in the only standing structure with his lush garden and grapes rotting on the vine. It is amazing to think Steve Miskin was born and raised there, and that 20 years ago my mom visited relatives inside that home that the war destroyed.

The cemetery was down the road and was overgrown with 4 foot weeds, but the newer graves were covered with flowers and next to them were crosses that were hundreds of years old. We left this family village and Miljana took us to her village. Her husband was a Miskin and was very active in preserving the history of the family. He restored a small chapel in the cemetery where he was eventually buried and it is a tribute to him.



Miljana's village had an ominous warning tacked to a tree, a reminder of that war again, there are potentially land mines anywhere that hasn't been thoroughly swept. She lives in her country house on weekends and holidays from school. She also has a small house for her daughter in college, Anna and another small building is a replica of a home from the 1800's where she is putting in antiques to make it a museum. How nice to have this small compact neighborhood, but you had better like your only 4 neighbors!

By this time it is late and dark and we call our Croatian driver to meet us at the border. No one really wants to drive into the other's country after dark. Interesting dynamics. It was a great day. I learned so much about about the hardships and the drive it had to have taken to get on a boat and come to the U.S., leaving the comfortable surroundings your family had lived in for hundreds of years. I am grateful he came, but I am also grateful to know where I came from. Next, my dad's family story.