Sunday, September 11, 2005

Are you home from Tuscany yet?

This is for A.Non, who's been cooking in Italy for two weeks, and who says she now knows what I can do with my Olive Oil Legacy from R....

This page is Japanese, but I know you'll enjoy the pictures, A!


and THIS is American, but every bit as....(cough, choke!)....charming.

Welcome home!
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1 comment:

  1. Anonymous6:13 AM

    Thank you for that lovely welcome back. I never did see the pictures on the Japanese page but I loved the bee dogs.

    Now for the olive oil. In my not real humble opinion, the best thing that olive oil can do with its life is to be part of pesto. Take a bunch of basil, add a handful of pecorino cheese and blend it up with a little salt and some pine nuts. Scoop it into a bowl and cover with olive oil. To die for on pasta. What? No basil you say? OK - try bruchetta. Take all those leftover knubbles of dry bread (or toast some good firm white bread if you're knubbleless), dribble with olive oil and rub with a clove of garlic. Chop up some tomatoes, add a little of the basil you don't have and a little salt. Pile on top of the bread. Sprinkle with grated pecorino cheese. Eat until you can hardly stand up straight.

    Or a feller could use olive oil for browning stuff instead of whatever oil you now use.

    I got two bottles of olive oil and I don't even have a kitchen (at this point) to use it in. But I'm ready whenever I do have a kitchen. Want to come down here and see my newly remodeled house? I make awesome gnocchi and other stuff.

    The cooking school in Tuscany was indescribably wonderful. The scenery was just luscious and the food we produced was like nothing I've ever had before. My room opened out onto a patio that was under a grape arbor. The grapes were hanging in huge bunches and were there for the taking. I got really into siestas and would sit out on the patio reading and eating grapes still warm from the sun. It doesn't hardly get better than that.

    We went to a cooking school in Umbria also. It was at a 5 star hotel and was very, very serious gourmet cooking. I didn't like the whole thing as much probably due to the fact that I found a scorpion in my room two out of the three nights we were there. The response from the management was that these were Italian scorpions and not dangerous. Let me tell you, if I was at a Motel 6 and found multiple 2" bugs in my room, I KNOW I'd get a different response. The food we cooked was good but when large bugs come at you with arched tails with a stinger at the end, it kind of puts a whole different spin on the cooking school experience.

    So I'm back to work today and sort of glad to be back to normal. Two weeks is a long time to be gone. Thanks for not posting one single interesting thing while I was gone. Internet access was spotty and I'm glad I didn't miss anything :^)

    Love - A. Non

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