Cooking with capers

The pace of life is quickening here since my last post.  I went up to the architecture seminar and found that the presenter was the same as the short story writer - Oliver Friggieri - but sadly for me he was speaking in Malti so I had to leave.  I must learn some language!  

I have started learning lace-making and went to my first class at the local council office on Wednesday.  I now have my pillow, bobbins, pins, thread and the basic pattern set up on the lounge so that I can do my practice of the base stitch before next Wednesday's lesson.  I have also got my laptop set up at home now after a lot of phone calls and visits to the Valletta office of the service provider so when I called a friend in Australia on my Skype this morning and told him I was learning lace-making, he suggested I should learn a musical instrument so I can play when I go back to Australia!  So another distraction from my writing which needs to become my central focus!

I've also learnt one of the secrets of Maltese cooking is the use of capers.  My brother first observed how people collect capers along the sides of the roads here when the season is right and I noticed jars of capers in the Marsaxlokk market and bought a coffee jar full.  Now I throw a spoonful into everything - spaghetti sauce, fried rice, zuchini stuffing - and it gives everything an interesting flavour.

Apart from my regular trip to Valletta on Thursday for the Chamber Music concert at St Catherine of Italy - German baroque for flute and harpsichord - I also went up again on Friday to a conference organised by SKOP, a local NGO, about the Millenium development goals.  The focus was on the eradication of poverty worldwide, but a major issue for Malta is responding to the many refugees from sub-Saharan Africa who make the perilous journey through the desert to Libya, where they often stay for several years, and then by leaky boat to Malta.  I began to think about how I might best use my energy and resources in this last phase of my life to enable some continuity in building a world where children no longer die in poverty.

Today I'm going back up to Valletta and will go across to one of the three cities that surround Grand Harbour, Vittoriosa.  The picture that heads this post is a view across the harbor from Valletta.  This evening they are holding Birgu by candlelight when everyone puts candles in their houses and on the streets and there are various historic re-enactments.  I have booked into a hotel in Valletta for the night because I'm not sure how the buses will be running and then tomorrow morning I'm going on a tour of the Cottonera fortifications organised by Heritage Malta.  So that will be my next post