7 Ultra-Last-Minute Gifts and a Revolutionary Donkey🗣️🍷

Seven mostly instant gift ideas from the musicians, writers, bakers and teachers of the Modo di Bere podcast. Rose Thomas spills the wine on her gifting style. You’ll never guess what gift she asked for this year! A supplementary piece about Sicilian donkey songs will drop for Newsletter Drinker subscribers on Patreon, but not before your sneak peek (below).

My gifting style: last minute, domestic

At my house, we are champs of the last-minute holiday. This Sunday, my mom surprised me with a visit on a few days notice. She arrived bearing two loaves of her olive-and-walnut sourdough bread she’d baked that morning out in Chicagoland. I found a goose real quick and roasted it; we opened some beautiful Italian wine. Her partner gave us perhaps the greatest gift of all: installing the bidet toilet seat attachment that had been gathering dust in our closet due to fear of wrenches. My dad is celebrating all the way out in Montana, but we owe each other a fishing adventure.

In our immediate household, last-minute trips to Lush for blue soap took shopping priority: kid gifts will account for most of the packages under the tree. Every winter, my sweetheart sends me a spreadsheet of the remaining titles on the list of 1,001 Great Books he’s been working on reading for at least a decade. I send it to A Novel Idea, my favorite bookstore from my University of Nebraska days, and they mail us a box of used books. He has 258 titles to go, so I’ve got a few more holidays before I need to get creative. I still need to order a gift for Carlos Garcia y Maduro. It will probably be the toy I get shown ten times a day on instagram—unless you’ve got a better naughty cat gift idea!

2024 took me traveling around the world learning about local drinks and local sayings. This has been so fulfilling, I’m having trouble thinking of anything I want. In the end, I asked for a vegetable peeler that isn’t rusty. That’s really all I wanted! Okay, that and ingredients for a batch of Tom & Jerry batter, a classic winter cocktail I remember from my days tending bar in the upper Midwest. If you’re following on Instagram, I’ll post drink updates.

One of our best friends and neighbors usually joins us for a late-announced feast on Christmas. Instead, she’s mourning her partner’s untimely death from cancer. He was so young, and they were so in love. Considering how hard the holidays are when someone is missing, I’m sad to think how much harder it is when a loss occurs in this section of the calendar. If your late December is less cozy than it ought to be for any number of difficult reasons, I hope this minute is not too terrible, and that you at least find something nice to eat and drink.

Modo di Bere is about regional culture

Here are some ultimate-minute gift ideas—most instantly delivered—from some of the artists, teachers and bakers who are doing their part to keep local traditions alive.

1 Michela Musolino’s Christmas Album

Michela Musolino came on the Modo di Bere podcast for conversations about Sicilian language, wine and folk music: twice! Revisit her interviews below, which include clips of her songs, and download her holiday album from her online store for $12.24.

Listen: S1E7 Wine Makes Blood: Sicilian-American Folksinger Michela Musolino

Listen: S3E4 The Revolutionary Donkey: Sicilian Folk Music History with Michela Musolino

2 Michaele Weissman’s Book About Rye Bread

The Rye Bread Marriage by Michaele Weissman is the memoir of a love story. It’s also an informal history of rye bread across the Jewish world, and a personal history of how Michaele’s husband, John, escaped as a young child from the early 20th century, fleeing his native Latvia and finding refuge in a village, and a mindset, outside of time.

Until someone makes a film out of this incredible book, you can listen to my interview with Michaele on the Modo di Bere podcast: S2E9 Michaele Weissman on the Meaning of Bread

Order the book, including the instant digital version, through the links on Michaele’s website. I read it by devouring the audio narration by Barrie Kreinkik, but the hardcover makes a beautiful gift.

3 Actual Rye Bread from Black Rooster Food

For those who can make it to select eastern seaboard shops on their way to a holiday gathering, let’s see, right now, I can’t fail to mention the rye bread that was brought to life by Michaele’s husband John, as described by Avery Robinson, biodiversity advocate, rye fanatic, and my delightful podcast guest for Season 2, Episode 7.

Listen: Rye Revolution: Whiskey and Bread with Avery Robinson

Black Rooster also ships—and I just noticed they’re offering the hardcover of Michaele’s book on sale for $20! (So if you want the hardcover, order it from Black Rooster.) I could write paragraphs about each of these breads, but the hazelnut fruit bread is particularly festive.

Order rye bread (and books) from Black Rooster Food

4 Music by Ou, the band who wrote the Modo di Bere theme

I’ll tell you something: in nearly two years of editing the Modo di Bere podcast, I never get tired of hearing the Modo di Bere theme song. The first time I heard it, I knew it was perfect for the show. I’m so grateful to Ersilia Prosperi and the multi-lingual band Ou for letting me use clips from the song “Palle di Natale” for the show’s theme. Guess what, the name translates to Christmas balls, like the ones you might hang on your tree!

The incidental music during Modo di Bere podcast episodes is from the same Ou album, Scrambled. That song is called “La Stanzetta.” You can hear several other clips from Scrambled on the podcast interview with Ersilia and her producer and bandmate, Amy Denio (another genius whom you should also google.)

Listen: S1E11 Glass on the Table: the Multi-Instru-Lingualism of Ou

Buy Ou’s album Scrambled: oumusic.bandcamp.com

Buy Ou’s latest album, Uranio: folderol.it/ou/

A second interview with Ersilia and Amy where we discuss and play clips from Ou’s latest album, Uranio, will air on the Modo di Bere podcast in 2025.

5 An affordable online English class (or multi-lingual meetup)

I had only met linguist and educator Lindsay Szper once when she agreed to come to my studio and record an episode for the Modo di Bere podcast. This is how we met: I was her waitress. I’m no longer working in restaurants, but Lindsay and I are still friends, and we’ve now worked together on multiple wine and language events.

My conversation with Lindsay became a two-part interview that changed my perspective on language learning. Lindsay helped me put shame to the side and focus on building relationships.

Listen: S1E8 ”What I Need is a Friend”: Lindsay Szper of Culture Without Borders

Listen: S1E9 Language is a Door: Lindsay Szper of Culture Without Borders

If you know someone who needs to learn English, Lindsay offers affordable classes through the Culture Without Borders Language Collective, where they believe the best way to learn language is through friendship.

If you’re studying English or Spanish, or are generally interested in being around fun language learners, make sure you get on Lindsay’s mailing list for her series of friendly New York City events.

6 Calabrese music by Peppe Voltarelli

I must confess that Peppe Voltarelli’s podcast episode was possibly the most fun episode to record. For one thing, he played several of his incredible songs live. He inspired me to play a live song, too. And he made the hair on my arms stand up when I asked him to talk like an angry Calabrian.

Listen to the episode to hear Peppe play his songs and discuss his belief that dialect is a luxury:

S1E4 The Full Belly Sings, Not the Fancy Shirt: Calabrian Dialect with Peppe Voltarelli

I met Peppe while he was living his dream of recording an album in New York City. You can order or download that album on bandcamp.

7 Give the gift of Modo di Bere

Modo di Bere is now offering gift memberships through Patreon. You can choose any membership level and select the number of months you would like to give. I suggest the Newsletter Drinker option, currently priced at $14 a month. This level unlocks all paywalls across the Modo-verse, giving your loved one access to exclusive, educational content about drinks and dialect—while sustaining the Modo di Bere project for the whole world to enjoy.

The Revolutionary Donkey

Finally, I’d like to share a preview of Friday’s exclusive deep dive about donkeys in the folk music of Sicily.

Interviewing farmers and folk singers, as I do, often leads to conversations about animals. Sometimes I’m hearing from Roberto di Filippo about how he insisted on bringing back traditional horse-plowed farming in Umbria, even after breaking his leg (twice!). And sometimes I get a request from a previous podcast guest to come back on the show to do a whole episode about donkeys as the symbol of the contadino, the working farmer, in Sicilian folklore.

The song that Michela shares in the recent podcast episode is about a greedy man whose donkey talks back, but in the episode—available on video!—she encourages us to think about what might have happened instead, and how little it takes to change someone’s life for the better.

Watch or listen to the whole conversation, featuring Michela’s recording of the song “U Sceccu,” in case you missed it—

—but Friday’s Patreon exclusive will go into greater detail about the second, more famous, donkey song, “Lu Sciccareddu.”

In the episode above, we only played a short clip of my friend Carmen singing that song (at 28:40), since Michela was a little too shy to make the donkey sound effect herself. On Friday, I’ll share Michela’s iphone recording of her singing “Lu Sciccareddu,” along with several other examples of the song’s interpretations throughout history. Become a paid supporter at the Newsletter drinker level today to receive this content through Patreon.

Wherever you go and whatever you like to drink, I’m wishing you a happy holiday.

-Rose Thomas

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