Camille Cusumano

Fun Under the Sicilian Sun

By Camille Cusumano

A family reunion in the old country—it had such a nice ring to it. But when I read my brother Tom’s email suggesting our clan meet in Sicily come summer, I had misgivings. He doesn’t remember what it was like, I thought, the 12 of us—10 siblings and two parents—under one small roof, sharing one-and-a-half bathrooms all those years ago.

These days, a family gathering means more than 50 people when you include Mom, spouses, and 39 kids and grandkids. And then there would be a few dozen relatives on the other side of the Atlantic, three generations of our late father’s first cousins. That’s a lot of pressure on the plumbing, not to mention the nerves.

A fowl obsession in Mexico

By Camille Cusumano

Armando Santiago Navarrette is impressively quick on the draw. Where I see only the dense canopy of the Mexican cloud forest’s coffee bushes, palms, gumbo limbo, and soft-shell fig trees, he sees a rufous-bellied chachalaca, a citreoline trogon, a red-headed tanager, or a golden-cheeked woodpecker. Upon each sighting, he positions and focuses his high-powered spotting scope. As I look through the lens, he flips open to a colorful line drawing of the scoped bird in A Guide to the Birds of Mexico by Steven Howell. All this takes place in under 30 seconds.

Patagonia

By Camille Cusumano

“I wonder when the last rock slide occurred,” I say to Holger, my German hiking companion, as we scramble, occasionally on all fours, to scale this steep rubble. Our target point, atop a nearly vertical incline, is the lookout for the three towers.

It’s another wet and windy day in Torres del Paine, Chile’s national park where these Patagonian treasures have grown up over the eons. Holger seems unconcerned with geological instability here at the stem end of the earth, where tectonic plates meet. He powers up ahead of me, no poster boy for the dangers of smoking on which I have given up lecturing him.

A love apple a day keeps the doctor away
One tomato supplies 35 calories and almost half of your daily vitamin C requirement. Tomatoes are a source of vitamin A and the minerals iron and potassium. In 1995, Harvard researchers found a tomato-rich diet to be associated with decreased risk of prostate cancer-due, they believe, to lycopene, the substance that lends the fruit its color. The American Institute for Cancer Research says antioxidants like lycopene protect the body’s cells from aging damage.

By Camille Cusumano

Original article in Via Magazine.

Jacques Cousteau, it’s said, put Belize’s coastline on the diver’s map. But beyond the reef and coral lies another side of paradise and you don’t have to be a marine explorer to get there.

By Camille Cusumano

Belize’s unspoiled Caribbean shores teem with brilliant sea life. With its 180-mile-long barrier reef and 200-isle archipelago, the Central American country was bound to be a haven for pleasure-seekers.

Original article in Via Magazine.

The Trinity Alps are one of the most divided landscapes in California, thanks to three major rivers. In spring, the rivers and their mighty tributaries swell and seethe with the melting snows. If you know someone who’s never witnessed this, here’s the place to take her.

Sister Act appeared in Islands Magazine, 2001.

I have connected deeply with my Sicilian roots through many visits to the old country over the past 24 years and it remains one of my abiding spiritual quests. For one trip to the island, I considered the novelty of sleeping in monasteries and convents—Italy’s monastic bed-and-board tradition harking back to medieval times. As a devoutly lapsed Catholic, I still relish pealing bells, glowing candles, and incense. In fact, perverse as it sounds, I was, for the year, living in a monastery—the San Francisco Zen Center.

The Big Night in Sicily appeared in Women Who Eat, ed. Leslie Miller; 2003, Seal Press

THE BIG NIGHT—IN SICILY

Wound a Sicilian, pay through the mouth

By Camille Cusumano

My sister Grace—who is my junior by a year and four days—and I were once each other’s shadow. We answered to each other’s name, covered for each other’s “crimes,” and generally practiced omertà—before we could even pronounce this Sicilian word for the code of silence. Then things changed. Grace took a husband, a big house, and had kids. I took to the road in search of myself.

Southwestern staples include beans, corn, and . . . .chiles.

Winter is Dungeness crab season; it’s time to get cracking.

By Camille Cusumano

Original article published in Via Magazine.

Consider a mollusk such as the escargot. It would be nothing but a garden pest without a megadose of garlic and butter. On the other hand, Dungeness, the crustacean indigenous to the West Coast, needs absolutely nothing—not even a pretty French name—to elevate it. The sweet, briny meat can actually improve your garlic and butter.

I have found no evidence that you could say the same for other types of crabs—blue, for instance.

Las Garzas de San Blas (from Mexico, a Love Story, Seal Press, 2005)