Saints and Sinners

Italy has "Name Days."  It's the day that you get to celebrate the saint that you were either named after or who is your protector.  St. Lynne doesn't exisit (yet) but I assume she'd be the Patron Saint of Awkward Souls.  For those Italians who have Name Day, you get to have a party (in addition to your birthday), to celebrate your Saint's Day.  If you don't have a saint, you get lumped together with the masses on All Saint's Day in November (after Halloween for those heathens in the audience.  You don't have to raise your hand, we all know who you are).



That said, St. Patrick's Day is pretty well known in America.  Celebrated by Irishmen everywhere and those of us who wish that we understood what it is to be Irish.  I'm like 0% Irish by genetics but luckily married an Irish fellow and stole his last name.  With a name like Keenan, I feel like I can get a little more legit on this holiday.  But in Italy, they don't really care about St. Patrick because he's an Irish saint.  He's not really big here.  We went out anyway, the only fools in green.  One of our friends even rocking a green wig.  To say we stood out is probably an understatement. 

Undeterred, a pack of probably 40 Americans met up at Blackwood Pub in Vomero and threw back some burgers and beers, sitting in Piazza Vanvitelli.  One guy even brought his own food coloring so he could enjoy green beer.  I mean, that's dedication!  Our group crawled through pubs in Vomero, with limited success of entry at some (and comments including: "Just like Mary and Joseph.  No room at the inn."  See?  Our collective Vacation Bible School knowledge proved somewhat helpful for biblical allusions).  We ended up getting pints at a German biergarten.  What can I say, we're in Italy.  Our selection of Irish pubs wasn't that great to begin with!

Monday, March 19th was St. Joseph's Day or San Giuseppe in Italy.  St. Joseph/Giuseppe is legit pretty much everywhere.  In Italy, he even has his own namesake cake: zeppola di san giuseppe.  It's pretty much sweet dough that is either baked or fried (never one to let dessert go untested, I bought one of each), topped with custard and cherries.  It's only sold around San Giuseppe's name day.  They were pretty hard when I bought them at 6:30pm on Monday night so we popped them in the oven for a few minutes, sure that somewhere an Italian momma was shrieking at what we were doing to destroy this pastry.  Despite what may or may not be appropriate, with some minimal heating, they softened up and were fairly good.  The consensus of the group was thus: which one was fried?  Our pallets appear to not be sophisticated enough to dicern the difference.  Va bene!