Day Three

The weather was just perfect today: nice and warm, a good change from the pissing down rain misery of the first day. I woke up earlier then I ought have and found that breakfast was very far from being ready - Enzo, like most Italians, maintains a flexible view of when meals should be served. As my metabolism operates at whiplash speed and I wake up and am immediately devour-a-giraffe HUNGRY, this filled me with sadness and tears. I pulled myself together and walked down the hill towards town, enjoying the cool air, the quaint and tiny houses, and the excitement Italy's banzai drivers brought to my day. I would look up the traffic fatality rates for Italy for you but it might make you never want to visit. Thankfully a stint in India and the third world has turned me into a master at the fine art of "diving off the side of the road" at opportune times.

I returned to the house and was very pleased to see breakfast was ready: set up outside and indisputably picturesque. A view of the lake to go with my yogurt and cornflakes: not a bad job. The resident cat enjoys trying to get up in your lap and get hair/fleas in your food when you're eating - I actually don't mind it much but some of the other program participants find it more offputting, which I honestly think is much more normal. If I contract fleas I will know why.

The morning featured a lecture from Sabrina about the world's change from Extensive to Intensive agriculture- details on the NCCROW blog. We had to research a commodity and my group picked tomatoes: I learned considerably more about tomato companies then I had ever expected to. Hint: don't buy tomatoes in winter - they promote horrific modern day wage slavery in Florida! Aren't you glad you know that? (Whole Foods tomatoes and hydroponics are fine). Admittedly they taste like three week old ass anyway so it won't really be much of a stretch to eliminate them from my diet in the chilly months.



Next up was the most anticipated part of the afternoon: lunch. We ate this meal outside as well. I am really beginning to dig wine with every meal. In fact, I have consumed no liquid other then wine in about three days. It is working just fine for me. I think the secret to Italian's relaxed state and general pleasant demeanor lies in their constant buzz.



We began with risotto with wild mushrooms, which Enzo had gathered in the woods yesterday. Talk about local food. This was great: nice, slightly chewy rice with a pungent fungi flavor and a bit of cheese and milk. He paraded his locally-found mushrooms in front of us at breakfast which was pretty adorable. I would like to learn how to gather mushrooms, although I do fear that may begin a slippery slope at the bottom of which is bark wig-wams in the woods, moss under one's fingernails, and really hairy armpits.



Next was the classic dish of prosciutto and melon: really nice on a hot day. The melons were divine - I had forgotten how superior Italian melons are to the crappy bland monsters we eat in the states. This was especially nice with the additional tang of some nice white balsamic vinegar. Very nice, wold eat again!


After lunch, we met with Saviana, a biologist, geneticist, and expert in permaculture. Permaculture is a system of agriculture that attempts to mimic systems found in the natural world. Begun by Australians Bill Mollison and David Holmgren, permaculture seeks to develop methods of growing food that are sustainable and permanant, decreasing humanities reliance on industrial methods of food production and distribution. She was definitely a hell of a character: her lecture jumped from the hippie lifestyle of the Etruscan people to the evils of tomatoes (good god tomatoes keep coming up today) to the benefits of free-range child rearing. I was certainly entertained.

She also led us through the garden on a magical Eating Wild Junk adventure which I actually really enjoyed. You can chow down on almost everything in a standard garden, she said - the trick is learning the stuff that will kill you. Once you're up on that, you can assume everything else is fair game. (Hint: wild carrots look a whole lot like hemlock, which as you may recall killed Socrates. Be careful). A lot of those weird garden greens would taste pretty awesome sauteed in garlic and oil. The chicory from last night got me thinking.

After the walk, we headed toward her friend's permaculture garden, conveniently located extremely close to the restaurant we visited last night. (Same guy we saw eating in the restaurant last night owns the place: seems there's a clique of food nuts in town. I can dig it.) We were also subjected to the curious Italian method of driving on really narrow roads. You are both driving at around 50 miles an hour up a steep and gravelly road when you encounter holy crap another driver: you both screech to a halt. You stare one another down in a really subtle way until one person gives to their essentially wussy nature and decides to back up - this can be into another road, into the bushes, whatever. You drive past them assuming they will not make any sudden feints or attempts at dominance, and let's be honest, they probably will. You will probably repeat this process about four or five times until you reach your destination because Italians seem to love living at the end of fiendishly tiny roads. Explains why their cars are often the size of my big toenail. With great gas mileage, mind you.

The garden certainly looked wild: apparently a mature permaculture garden is a self-sustaining system, and once it gets going, the owners and gardeners don't need to do much to keep it active. In other words, it is the ideal garden for those of us in the lazy bastard category, which would include me. Perhaps I will start one and pretend like I'm doing tons of maintenance when actually I did diddly squat. I was particularly taken with a patch of wild daikon: I'd never seen it before.

Here's a bunch of photos of the permaculture garden:


The view from the house was great!


There were lots of lovely olive trees leading down to the water. Olives are less lovely when they are ripe and rotting everywhere but look real nice in June.


Wild daikon.


We had some nice Japanese green tea. Apparently Saviana's friend in town owns a bookstore that dishes out the good stuff....

The academic day done, some of us headed into town for a stroll. I had not actually been to town yet, having no time, and enjoyed having a chance to meander around. Around 7:00 in Italian towns, everyone congregates around coffee houses and gelato parlors to catch up, eat snacks, and talk shit about their fellow villagers: I like it. Grandmas and old folks hang out in doorways, young kids with adorably out of fashion hair discuss whatever the hell Italian kids in leather pants talk about, young professionals smoke cigarette after cigarette and yap on their cell phones - you get the picture. Bolsena is a tiny town and fulfills the classic Italian stereotype of what a small town should be with great skill: lots of twisting alleyways, adorable fruit vendor men, gelato shops and pizzerias, tacky-t-shirt emporiums and ceramics producers and so on and so on. There's lots of lovely greenery all over town and a pleasant vacation-village vibe - I'd advise spending a day or two here to relax on a busy trip to Italy. I thought I was lost for about two minutes but it turned out not to be true: it is very hard for me to get lost. My ritual of sniffing around my new setting done, I decided to head back to the convent and moon around hoping Enzo would feed me in a timely fashion. I am a simple person.



For dinner, Enzo started us off with a nice garbanzo bean soup, with parmesan and rosemary harvested from the garden. Another great rustic dish - I liked the earthy flavor of the garbanzos in conjunction with the pleasant flavor of the rosemary. Would make this at home.



The main course was a weinerschnitzel like filet of ground veal with spinach (I think he called it "milanesa") lightly fried and served with lemon and a salad. Real nice, as most deep fried meaty things are. Great salad as well: he actually cuts it up instead of buying it in those neat plastic bags like we do at home. Inspiring but I think I will stick with my eminently convenient little plastic bags.

And I'm here writing this post and listening to Al Green. Life is pretty okay.

Dinner at La Tana Deli' Orso

Long day today.



I managed to sleep the sleep of the dead and awoke at 7:30, realizing that it was too early for breakfast. Blogger was working very erratically which was causing me to break out in cold sweats - I LIVE on Blogger - so I whiled away the morning feverishly attempting to make it work. It's still working extremely poorly. I will remember this in the future.

It was a bit chilly and raining still in the morning, but I poked my head outside: the garden was lovely and we could finally see the lake, a huge volcanic caldera and apparently the biggest volcanic lake in Europe. See, you didn't know that yesterday. After being jumped on by Enzo, the chef's, humongous dog, we had breakfast: yogurt and corn flakes with lots of interesting home-made jams. Forgot that panettone tastes rather like anise. I am learning to tolerate anise.



The first lecture of the day was conducted by Sabrina and concerned historical contexts and changes in food production in Europe. Among other things, I learned that Greeks and Romans shunned the forests for food - so coarse - wherein barbarians decided the forest was all right after all. Barbarians also considered the consumption of delicious bloody meat a sign of power and virility, whereas the Romans and Greeks preferred a nice bit of olive oil and perhaps some bread. Bloody meat as a symbol of power has apparently gone on totally unchanged to the modern day judging by the popularity of steak houses.

The second lecture regarded a psychoanalysis of women's role in the food system. Topics included how women are often drivers of environmental change, women's natural tendency towards local behaviors, and the major agricultural complexes tendency to ignore women and their contributions. I transcribed everything on the NCCROW post so head over there if you'd like to know more.

Then we had lunch. First was pasta with seasonal herbs and parmesan - I especially enjoyed the sage, one of my favorite seasonings. Enzo cooked the pasta to a perfectly chewy texture. Next was roasted chicken with potatoes: simple and good. Roasted chicken is one of my favorite foods in the world.

The final lecture of the day regarded Food Sovereignty, a rather complex concept centered around native people's preservation of and incorporation of native foods and crops versus the predominance of GMO's, which are controlled almost exclusively by giant corporations. This is also transcribed on the NCCROW blog.

The rest of the afternoon was spent in a laboratory - Nathan Morrow told us about very interesting uses of the web for geographical purposes. I'll have to check out Yahoo Pipes - I'd like to incorporate a live map into my food blog. Yelp does similar technology and I think it's very cool. I told everyone about Blogger, food blogging, and how one goes about making an effective blog post. Then everyone made blog posts and I offered some modicum of assistance.

http://cheberet.com/bolsenaapertifs1.jpg







After a wander around the garden and an apertif of some bubbly wine (you may note intensive liquor consumption is a key component of the Italian lifestyle and thus this course,) we adjourned to the restaurant for dinner.





We went for dinner at La Tana Delli' Orso, a Slow Food restaurant located rather close to the convent. The drive up through town was a treat in itself: I learned the small garages hacked into the rocks were actually ancient Etruscan caves, converted into carports for vactationers. Stuff that old in the USA - a country without much old stuff - would be behind glass with an interpretative sign and perhaps a docent. Here, it's where you park your Fiat for the night. Well.



The tiny and homey osteria was positioned at the very top of the hill, with a commanding view of Bolsena's volcanic lake. We took copious quantities of touristy photos as soon as we arrived - the sunset was going down in various shades of pink and purple.

We entered the restaurant and met Bruno, the owner, who proceeded to serve us some extra-virgin olive oil. Apparantly the olive oil is produced in house in the tradition of Italian osterias, which originally provided only wine for pilgrims in route to their holy locale of choice. As the years went by, osterias began to produce more and more of their own goods - including this olive oil. Bruno's olive oil was made from two types of olive: the Cantino and Frantoio. As Extra Virgin by definition means less then 10% acidity, their olive oil, at 0.3% percent, was especially high in quality - it certainly tasted nice to me. The small production olives are picked at the peak of ripeness at the end of November - and 100 kilos of olives are required for a mere 30 kilos of oil! By the end of February, the containers are changed to get rid of natural deposits.

Although a lot of olives go into a little bit of high quality olive oil, there are other uses for the detritus. What is left of the crushed olives is turned into oil for lamps, what the Romans called "lamparte".



The first course was gnocchi with tomatoes and porcini mushrooms - a very local dish, as all ingredients but the porcinis were of local origin and produced in house. This was a fine rustic dish, with a soulful flavor from the fresh tomatoes and pungent porcinis. The gnocchis were also perfect: pillow like and very light.



Next was pork with rosemary, garlic, and olive oil, accompanied by sauteed chicory from the garden. Another classic combination, similar to the classic Tuscan pork dish of arista - I was especially taken with the bitter but excellent flavor of the chicory, a vegetable that is definitely uncommon in the USA. We're usually only familar with chicory in coffee, an adaptation produced during the World War's when coffee was in short supply. We should saute it more often!



Dessert was panna cotta with chestnut honey: another rustic and simple dish with an excellent flavor. I liked it it: it tasted rather like a molded, tart yogurt. A far cry from the mega fancy panna cotta's common in San Francisco's luxurious Italian restaurants, and a nice way to get at the origins of a classic dish.

After dinner, Bruno told us about the restaurant and the general concept of Slow Food, which his restaurant is certified under. He noted that locally functioned osterias like his own promoted local economies by employing locals and using predominantly local products - this saves local trade and traditions. He uses as little refrigerated food as possible - the ancient Etruscans didn't have that! - and tries to stick with what he can get in season.

Bruno said joining Slow Food is no easy task, and is in fact more difficult then obtaining a Michelin star! Slow Food decides who gets to join in a process somewhat akin to that of the Spanish Inquisition - restaurants must be inspected every single year to retain their accreditation. He noted that his choice of a Slow Food mode of cooking means a conscious preference for quality food over quantity food - although great quantities are cheaper, greater quality is preferable and more amenable to local traditions and local ways.

Bruno then told us about raw milk cheeses, which the area around Bolsena is rather famous for. Raw cheeses are made with milk heated no higher then 38 degrees celsius, keeping the bacteria colonies alive within the dairy. Pasteurized cheeses, meanwhile, are made with milk heated to 75 degrees celsius - which kills the bacteria and produces shelf stability but also (in the opinion of many gourmets) kills the flavor as well. As it is much easier to sell pasteurized cheese due to its shelf stability, raw milk cheeses can only be sold profitably in areas with a large local market for such products.

Bruno noted that "slow food" is not just a lifestyle but a large discourse on economics and politics - I refer you to Carlo Petrini's Slow Food manifesto if you want the whole spiel. Slow Food also centers around the negative aspects of globalization, making it a political and economical choice to stay local and stay "slow."

He then told us about the most common types of fruit and vegetables found around the lake - many with colorful local names. There are Beans of the Straight Plowing Trace, Bi g Box Tomatoes, and Beans from Purgatory - which describe, respectively, peas, tomatoes, and garbanzos. The local names indicate a preference for tiny crops instead of huge monocultural plantations, as has become the general world norm.

In the past 10 or 15 years, Italy has seen a resurgence of small harvests and small output crops. It is important to carry on these traditions or people will drop them for other, more lucrative, professions. As he noted, "Gnocchi are easy to make if you know how to make them!" But how will you learn how if no one is around to teach you?



Finally, we tried Italy's notorious apertifs - those herbal "digestifs" that in my opinion prompt illness more then health. (I was scared for life at a young age by Fernet Branca). This stuff - Liquore D' Erbe del Monte Amiata if you want to be exact - was mostly drinkable, which is really all I ask. I have no idea what ancient Italians were thinking.

So I'm allowed to make one post before Blogger decides I am shut out. Goodie.

Some pictures from this morning...


Outside the Convento S. Maria del Giglio. Weather is a bit chilly and rainy, but supposed to be looking up tomorrow...


You can see the lake from here - gorgeous!


One of the resident dogs.

And now it is magically working. Okayyy. 

first day in italy

Air travel is medieval torture.

My flight on American Airlines began innocently enough. I woke up at 4:30 AM to be at SFO by 5:00, so more the merrier. My flight to Chicago O' Hare was early but decent enough, and I slept almost the entire way there. As my flight out to Rome was at 5:00, I did a few laps of the airport (typical for me,) ate a not-half-bad shrimp and strawberry salad, and waited. We boarded the plane and so we were on our way.

Except.

Apparantly, there was a tear in the plane's landing gear, which was discovered upon push back from the gate. The pilot had us wait about twenty minutes for the mechanics to assess the issue, whereupon they decided it was un-tenable and that we would all have to get off. General moans and sighs of discontent ensue. Especially from me. For someone who so very enjoys travel, I turn into a frothing monster when flight Complications occur (and yes, I should seek professional help). Ever since my flight out of New Delhi literally caught on fire, I have been a willing proponent of the worst-case-scenario method of air travel. I was *not handling it well*. However, since I am not an aeronautical engineer, there was jack all I could do about it, other then park myself by the airplane desk and glower a lot. (I am a grade A glower-er).

Success: they had another plane for us. It was coming really soon. Any minute now. We all got really excited and huddled around the window, me and the high school girls and the increasingly pissy Italian natives and the middle aged tourists, noses smudged to the window. When will it come? When will our romantic Italian vacation begin?

We ended up waiting like that for about five hours. Constant "announcements" that told us the exact same thing came every thirty minutes - theT plane was en route, the plane was coming, the plane was being serviced but they were pretty much done - reassuring sentence after reassuring sentence, as the rabble got angrier and angrier. I placated myself by doing roughly 20 laps up and down the terminal - I can't sit still when I'm extremely angry - and eating a surprisingly okay Wolfgang Puck chinese chicken salad.

Finally. At roughly 8:00, we boarded the plane. After filling out our swine flu forms and eying our seat mates with great distaste, we were ready to begin. I puffed out my (amazing) TravelRest pillow, mentally snubbed the Jim Carrey movie that was playing, popped an Ambien, and was dead to the world. I woke up over Corsica: my professor says she hates reading accounts of air travel more then anything else in the world and I guess she has a point, but it was still rather nice to see the orange coast of Corsica, the boats and yachts parked at the docks, and the heights of the mountains beyond that. It was a nice sight and almost compelled me to keep my bone-tired eyes open.

We arrived in Rome. The door malfunctioned. A collective roar of hatred and fatigue went up among the cabin and I wondered if we would have a mutiny on our hands. Not to be: the crew seemed to realize the danger they were in and got the door open in a jiffy. We poured through and into the fairly unobjectionable Rome airport. I was pleasantly surprised to find my bag had actually made it. Pulling the huge thing behind me, I headed to the train station and caught the Leonardo Express to Rome.

Getting on Italian trains very much reminds me of getting on Chinese and Indian trains -the same third world scrum, the same pushing and shoving, the same matching of sharp ass elbows against squishy bodies. I happen to be pretty good at the ancient art of the Third World scrum (and in a hellaciously bad mood to boot), and I maneuvered my way to a window seat, where I tried to doze during the 40 minutes long journey to Rome's Central Termini. The trip involved huge amounts of graffiti doubtless incredibly offensive to Italian sensibilities and a VIP view of some of the most unattractive apartment blocks known to man. Were these designed by Mussolini himself to sap the people's will to resist? I would draw offensive graffiti on them too.

I got into the Central Termini and then was forced into the dilemma of catching my train to Orvieto. I had been all responsible and bought my ticket online for 2:00 - not happening, as it was already 4:00. Completely confused, I wandered from departure sign to departure sign, unable to figure out which, exactly, was the Orvieto train. I asked a travel agent and recieved an almost Gallic brush off, and managed to stumble through a combination toy and book shop to an epic, epic line. (And this was 4:00 on Monday). It moved glacially slowly, and as I muttered expletives under my breath, I managed to befriend a lovely Australian-Italian girl, who let me use her phone to call my Italian contacts. She also told me something important: if they won't let you change your ticket, just get on the train anyway. This would prove important.

In any case, I made it to the exhausted looking ticketing officer, who glanced at my sheet and told me I could indeed catch the 4:44 train to Milan, with a stop in Orvieto. Duly noted. I took off for the Platform 8 for Milan as fast as I could. Nice Italian-Australian girl, if somehow and in some fashion you read this, know that you were extremely helpful.

I hopped on the train and found myself a seat. Then some middle-aged Americans booted me out of it. Found another seat and was booted out by middle-aged English people. Found another seat, wondered if a pack of middle aged Swedes would boot me out of that, and was pleasantly surprised when they did not. The girl next to me was an art history major from NYU - specialist in Russian modernist art of the early 20's. She was cordial enough but had no sense of humor. These things are probably interrelated.

The scenery to Orvieto was very pleasant - think rolling green hills and foggy mountains and a pernicious, atmospheric rain - and I enjoyed looking out the window. Italy reminds me of a perverse cross between California Wine Country and North Carolina's Smokies.

Finally to Orvieto. I meet the cab driver, Luigi, who was I supposed to be late for but apparently stayed on. We drive up the hill in the pouring rain, past various provincial burgs, agri-tourism sites, Authentic Etruscan Restaurants, stands of waving wheat, and so on. We stop at where I am right now, a renovated convent with a considerable statuesque presence. I signed in and went to meet Sabrina, and then went to meet the rest of the class. They were participating in a symbolic reading of Ratatouille, the Pixar movie. Well.

Dinner was lentil soup, sausage with fava beans, and blackberry tart and very tasty. Especially since I had subsisted on little but Luna Bars for the past 30 hours or so.

After meeting the local dogs and blowing a fuse in the bathroom with my blow drier, I am here, blogging this, and very ready to go to bed. Will be back tomorrow...