Eating

It is truly hard not to emulate Frances Whatsis of Under the Tuscan Sun infamy and write up my food experiences since the food thing here is major. Outside the front windows in the pizza, there is one old woman (who am I to call anyone old these days?) who runs a little truck stand every day and she is usually joined by at least two others. She has mostly indifferent and tired veggies but occasionally there’s a prize winner. Then on the weekends there are often wine tastings (30 wineries last weekend Fri/Sat/Sun) plus some kind of organic fest or food party showing off slow or at least medium fast products. I can buy honey and jam and marmalade from adorable hippy dudes or smart cuties from farms within a hundred mile radius, and need to stagger only a few steps with my bundles to be home. Yesterday I got a loaf of lovely sweet smelling whole grain bread that went beautifully with the pumpkin (not your average JackOLantern kind) soup I’d made the day before. Spread with ricotta (which is not the grainy, tasteless US version) the bread was great, hard to say about most Tuscan bread. I was told that the reason they make the bread here with no salt is that one of the Lorenzo’s or Cosimo’s put a tax on the salt so the bakers said “Phooey, no more salt for you!” And so to this day the bread here is blahx2 and usually stale. Hence the need for various forms of schmutz to spread on this stuff. So finding a lovely soft FRESH loaf even one made of some unknown and unpronounceable mystery grain seemed like a real eureka moment. Today I ate more with risotto made with some of the soup, diluted , red wine and parsley. Now where are those hundreds of threatened visits or was that the gin?

Sunday in the Piazza

There was an organic food fair in the piazza yesterday. Thirty or forty vendors selling homemade organic wine, vinegar, oil, cheese, passato (tomato base for sauce), homegrown veggies, organic wool naturally dyed; a lovely collection of country products. The sellers were just the same beads and sandals, back to the land folks you’d find in Northern California except for the occasional German or French interloper. I bought some goodies including a ceramic plate for cheese. I need to be careful however. I still haven’t learned how to make just enough food for one person and typically throw too much away. The standard plan here is to buy for tonight only unless one is going to make their own soup or broth or sauce. The same old ladies appear every morning to buy their veggies from the same old vendor in the same old place as last week (or last year or last century probably). This is just the place to buy Christmas presents as long as you understand the shipping and weight issues. Almost everything I have bought to bring back to the states cost as much to send as the original price.