Day Four: Pasta, Evil Tomatoes, so on

Day 4 - 6/4/2009




I decided I'd begin getting up real early in an effort to snag some time in town. The schedule for this course is jam-packed and I figured it'd be smart to hit town in the morning and see what was up. I put on my exercise shoes and headed out the door. The morning weather was perfect: nice and cool but warming up. I enjoyed galumphing down the hill into the square. I have not figured out the standard way Italians pass each other on the street: my usual shit-eating American grin just tends to garner eyebrow raises in return. Well whatever.

Italians are not an early rising people, and it was pretty much me, construction workers (who do begin early - what does that do to their social lives?!), produce sellers and the inevitable Italian Grandmas plying the cobblestone streets in the morning. It was really pretty delightful: I poked my head into alleyways, walked up curious little corridors, headed down people's back allies to listen to the sounds of their early-morning newscasts and early morning arguments - picturesque. Found out the local supermarket opens at 8:00 - I was just a smidgen too early.

As I am addicted entirely to fake sugar junk, this was a blow. There is no fake sugar in the convent and I am forced to drink my coffee with the real stuff - which is just bizarre to me at this point - or suffer with black unsweetened liquid, neither of which really gets my motor running. I suppose if I am to have some sort of heinous addiction, it is better that it be creepy fake sugar then heroin or meth or speedballs. Fake sugar rarely produces tooth loss, seizures, and creeping slippery AIDS, or at least that is what I am told.

Am very much enjoying eating cornflakes with yogurt and fresh chestnut honey in the morning. Fresh honey is always appreciated.

The morning was spent in lecture with Andrea Ferrante (not a chick!,) the president of the Associazione Italiana Agricoltura Biologica. You can read the lecture at this link. I now know a hell of a lot about Italian organic farming practices. Italians, by the way, like migrants even less then we do in California. And judging by comments on the Sacramento Bee's website, we really hate migrants. Which is ironic as their presence provides us with dirt-ass-cheap prices on the tomatos and plouts and potatoes we devour so much of yearly, but I suppose life is full of delicious little contradictions like that, no?


We had another excellent lunch from Enzo which is really becoming a theme. Bro claims he fought as a mercenary with the French Foreign Legion in Libya, worked in a cemetery, and presumably did other dodgy stuff before becoming our loveable local-foods cook. I speak no Italian so I can't ask him if he broke someone's neck with his kneecap or something during his war years. It's a shame because I would really like to know that.



We had pillowy-soft tomato gnocchi with a great tomato basil sauce: fresh with a little hit of red pepper.



Salami with some exceedingly funky cheese (but good) and an awesome mixed salad. Enzo used some fresh fennel in this and it was unusual and entirely delicious. Will experiment with this in the future.

After lunch, Chiara was kind enough to drive me and a couple other folks into town. We piled into the car and drove by the glittering shores of the lake - it is a total miracle to me that no one has built rows of adventure-agritourism-condo-emporums around here, or at least a Disney themed waterpark. I should probably invest in one of those here before I die. For the time being, Bolsena is almost ridiculously quaint.



We headed to the town square for gelato. It was the height of siesta time and no one was doing anything at all - people were hanging around the square in the shade and looking bored, mostly. A pack of British tourists camped out in the square, drinking beer and nursing their awe-inspiring beet red sunburns. I don't know what it is, but the British sunburn like no people on earth - do they not have SPF 60 on their mysterious pasty white little island? Do English doctors make buckets of money digging gooey skin cancers out of the backs of their fellow countrymen? Why don't the English understand the concept of shade? (English men also really love running around shirtless, allowing everyone in the whole world to view their fish white and flabby little bellies.)

To my English friends: I mock because I love. You have the most douche-baggy sense of humor in the world, a delightful sense of tragedy, irony, and pathos and for that you will always have a special, private little place in my ventricles. Also you summoned up Stephen Fry, Led Zeppelin and McVitie's Chocolate Digestives from your dark recesses and that is pretty awesome taken in tandem.

Amanda and I hiked up the hill to the castle. It was beautiful. I am not feeling up to writing florid pose about pretty stuff today and will just provide swell pictures. Again, I am astonished the English have not built acres of vacation condos up here yet (where they might perch to drink watery sangria and discuss the condition of their hedgerows).








Amanda and I walked up the hill. And sweated. I imagine I smelled vile enough to knock out a horse after that but no one made any comments. Such nice people.

After we returned, we had a pasta lesson with the nice folks from the Slow Food restaurant we visited previously. I took photos and didn't really make any pasta. This is because I have the hand dexterity of a retarded seal. I also really hate washing flour off my hands because it gets all pastey and I am a whiny little wuss-monkey.


Our ever-patient instructor.


Working the egg into the flour. This is harder then it looks: the ratio of egg to flour and water must be correct.


A rolled out and compete pasta sheet.


Working the pasta dough requires some serious bicep strength. Now you know why Italian women often have excellent arms. Great for throttling wandering husbands or disobedient sons with. Rolling pins also provide excellent utility when it comes to controlling poorly trained males.


The finished project - rather photogenic, don't you think?

After that was done with, we had a break and then gave presentations on commodities. I can now tell you about the true evil of winter tomatoes. Really. Them shit is pure red-hot evil. Promotes modern day slavery. Don't even think about eating them. (They do taste horrid so that is a humanitarian gesture my lazy butt is happy to make).

The weather began to cool down big time once our presentations was over - jacket weather, oh the horror, oh sweet jesus mother of mary, etc etc. I actually lived.

The evening's primi was the fettucini we had made earlier in the day, served with more of that great tomato-basil sauce. It was nice and chewy and you could definitely tell it was hand-made.

Confession: I don't love pasta. I'll eat it, I'll enjoy it, I know when it's good and I know when it's bad, but I don't love it and I don't seek it out. I never say this to anyone in Italy because I am afraid they will run me out with torches/throw boiling oil on me or do some other weird medieval Italian thing to me, but it's the horrible nightmare truth. Now, meaty Italian dishes, we can be friends, we can get all touchy-feely, but the pasta, the pasta has to sleep outside.



The secondi was composed of sausage, fresh salad, and a lovely rosti-like thing made from the potatoes and carrots from lunch. This was combined with fresh egg and cooked in a pan over a griddle - excellent, especially with a bit of mustard.

And now I am here writing this blog post. And now I am done with it. Good night.