White truffles...

Oh, how I love the rain! It means I can sit and do nothing but think about my next post!

Lets talk about food. Again. Two days ago I ate something that I might not eat again in my life! White truffles in risoto. Fine smell, fine taste, a taste of something so delicate and pure... Lorenzo's family got given some pieces of white truffle and they were kind enough to share it with me. I am lucky! I make my own abundant reality...

Another special thing we ate some days ago was wild bore. A neighbor shot a young bore and he gave us some of it's meat. Jim, my favorite cook of all times cooked it on charcoals and it was so tender! There are a lot of bores around this area and they destroy gardens, so the farmers kill them and eat them. They are a special treat, because they are very difficult to catch...

Italy's tastes are special. Even if you are having simple pasta fr lunch, it is special because it tastes of proschiutto. Potatoes are roasted not with oregano, like the Greeks do, but with wild fennel flower buds. Even pumpkins are roastedlike potatoes in the oven. And they taste really good...

And of course the foccacia bread... Used plane instead of bread, or as a base for pizza... White, fluffy, salty, heavenly! Here it is:

4 cups of warm water
3 teaspoons of yeast
10 cups of flower
1 pinch of salt


You mix everything toghether in a dough and you leave in a bowl with a little bit of olive oil underneath to rise from one hour to seven hours, it depends when you want to cook it. You put in a tray and cook! It's that simple!

And then there are the sweets... Crustata is made with dough and jam, the greeks call it pasta flora. There is german apple strudel. There is greek rise pudding. There is cake made from egg-whites called angel cake. I cannot even recall all of them! Amazing deserts every night...

Three course dinners for one month. When you are working so hard, you are hungry all the time. And Jim never lets anyone down. Even when there were fifteen of us on the table, there would be enough food to feed an army... The army of the olive harvest! Lorenzo and Jim are spoiling us... How can you leave this place without a deep, loving memory of stomach fullfilling meals and great conversations around the table...


And last but not least, the gelato... Here in Tuscania they make the best ice-cream in the region. Another heavenly taste even on cold winter days... I'm dreaming of my next outing in town so I can have some more gelato...

Hope you're all having as much fun as I do!