Barefoot in the park (on worker’s day)

On May 1st Walter, Costanza and I joined our musician friends for a pic-nic at Parco Miralfiore in Pesaro.

Pesaro, Miralfiore Park, May 1st open air concert

I have already written on this beautiful large, well-kept, historic park in the heart of Pesaro (Miralfiore Park in Pesaro).

Basically:

The Parco Miralfiore is a 23-hectare public park in the heart of the town of Pesaro, with a high naturalistic value, characterized be several kinds of settings among which: the naturalistic area (4.5 ha) with a little lake of 8.000 sqm; the amphitheatre for open-air shows;  a central square with fountain and a restaurant/bar; children playground; a path for bikes and pedestrians with a sequence of thematic gardens; hood.

Inside the park, a villa: a country house once owned by the Sforza Family, which later belonged to Guidubaldo II Della Rovere in 1599. Today it belongs to a local entrepreneur.

However, on May 1st I had the opportunity not to simply enjoy it – as I usually do when I take our daughter to Miralfiore playground – but to actually experience it (the Germans would use, I reckon, the verb ‘erleben’).

Costanza’s pink bike parked in front of the playground

First of all it was a real popular feast and you could feel that – even if unemployment in Italy is becoming a severe problem – people was there to celebrate a community feast. What I liked most of all was the heterogeneus participation: young people, grandparents, adults, children and… dogs!

Children playing and dancing, the adults and the elderly ‘setting the table’ for lunch (yes, some people did take portable tables with them, whereas most of us just sat on blankets on the ground) and all of us having fun and experience a real popular feast.

As far as our group of friends were concerned, each of us cooked something for the ‘community’ (‘cold’ pasta salad with tuna fish, cherry tomatoes, black olives and arugola; ‘margherita’ pizza, i.e. pizza with mozzarella cheese and tomato sauce; salami, ham and pecorino sandwiches; a salad with mozzarella cheese, black olives, cherry tomatoes, onion and oregano; and – to top it all! – my ciambellone with chocolate drops).

My home-made ‘ciambellone’

Ciambellone is our traditional cake (Where Lemons Blossom will soon devote a post to this must-to-eat cake!).

Like all good things, it is simple and yet you can bake it with so many variations that you could go on forever baking it and you would never get tired of eating it.

The ‘base’ is simple (flour, sugar, eggs, butter, milk) but you can use whole wheat flour, corn flour, double O flour, O flour (in Italy we classify flour according to how finely ground it is, I guess the rest of the world does it too, doesn’t it?); and then you can add chocolate drops, jam – best if home-made! – and in the cold seasons (Autumn and Winter) walnuts, fennel or anise seeds and, my favourite, you can add cocoa powder and bake it half ‘white’ and half ‘black’.

We brought no instruments along this time (as we did for our pic-nic at Mount Petrano).We just relaxed and had a good time, and – for a change – this time we listened to music played by others!

To all the workers and to all who are looking for a job, to ex-workers now retired, to all future generations of workers, I wish a (late) worker’s day.

Still, as far as I am concerned, I stick to Oscar Wilde’s words:

I put all my genius into my life; I put only my talent into my works

Costanza and I with the inevitable ‘palloncini’ (balloons)