Day 6
Saturday was intended to be a slow day: a nice departure from the breakneck pace of the rest of the schedule. We woke up relatively late. I slept until nine, which, if you know me, is FREAKISH. I am one of those losers who wakes up at six thirty to achieve things. This is a good development.
The morning was spent in a gnocchi making class with our friends from La Tana Della' Orso. We produced potatoes, flour, and the relevant implements, and got down to business. I took photos. Making pasta is not my strong suit, dawg.
Boiled potatoes were peeled and riced, using this tool.
The riced potato was then combined with flour.
The resulting dough was worked until it attained a fairly smooth texture.
Everyone got in on the act!
The finished product.
Unfortunately, the gnocchi were prepared with the wrong kind of flour - a fact we discovered at lunch, when they became doughy and too chewy to eat. Darnit. Will remember to use the proper flour in the future. Be careful out there. You might die in a gnocchi incident.
Sabrina and I had aminor incident with the car. I had driven down with her to Orvieto to drop off Nathan and sort out my train tickets to Lucerne. All was good, until we were coming up the hill and smelt burning plastic. Suspecting the brakes, we got out real quick and realized the mechanics were all closed, it being Saturday. We ended up walking a mile or so down the hill to a couple different mechanics before finding a dude who was open. He drove us back to the place where we had ditched the car and proclaimed that just the light was messed up, and we had probably lodged some plastic in the car which produced the nasty smell. Hem. On the other hand, it was one of the more scenic walks of my life and it had not even been intentional, so it was really all gravey all around.
Lunch came late due to the gnocchi crisis, but it was still quite tasty. We had gnocchi and pasta in a delicious fresh pesto sauce, that Enzo had prepared himself. Fresh pesto is way better then canned stuff!
We also had a fresh fennel-riffic salad, as well as some tomato-based beef stew. Sorta burny as I suspect Enzo may have been vaguely lit (and we all helped him cook), but who knows really.
After lunch, it was time for a lecture regarding Pangea Onlus, a microfinance and micocredit group based out of Italy. Their lecture is posted on the blog.
After the lecture, it was relaxation time - very nice, considering that the weather had cleared up and the hammock was calling our names. I headed into town to check out the election going-ons - rather entertaining, as the whole town turned out to stand in line and argue about politics. I finally found the supermarket open. I think supermarkets indicate so much about the national character and what people eat on a daily basis. Italian supermarkets feature huge quantities of cookies, gorily whole rabbits (eyeballs included) and incredibly tasty looking frozen seafood. I was down with it.
Dinner was extremely simple, and extremely good. We had a soup of chicken broth with sausage tortellini, and some buffalo mozarella, pictured above. Buffalo mozarella, by the by, is produced from water buffalo imported from Asia, and not from bison as you may have previously believed. I am sorry if I disabused you of any fantasies of eating cheese derived from shaggy high plains beasts or something.
Tired and lazy, we went to bed early - too chilly outside to hit the purported discoteques on Bolsena's shores. Another good day in Italy.
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