I mean, take a look at the green beans here!
They are so long they are called “serpenti.”
Here are the serpents outside of their package. They are longer than my regular sized dishwasher is wide!
Yowza! I’ll report back about their taste.
Food
A sign of good things to come.
Pretty much every morning, on my way to language school, I pass my favorite pasticceria in Florence: Rivoire. When they are open (which is mostly every day, but not always), I stop in for a pasta da portare via, a pastry to go. You pay at the cassa, about 1.5 Euro, and then walk over and choose your poison. The cameriera wraps the pasta in a napkin and places it in a pretty little bag, as here:
My favorite pasta, or pastry, is a ciambella. A ciambella is a doughnut, but at Rivoire “a doughnut” hardly does justice to the confection. At Rivoire a ciambella is a yeasty circle of fried dough, covered in a granular sugar that covers your lips and cheeks when you’ve finished. Trust me, it’s worth the trouble of wiping your face! It is very much vale la pena.
Today Rivoire had no more ciambelle, so I got an apple strudel. OMG. This picture comes no where near how good it tasted!
Buon appetito!
Pretty windows, pretty sweets.
Summer candies at Mignone. Always a delight!
Gilli’s windows, glowing with summertime colors and treats!
A new red!
I’m barely literate when it comes to wine, so take this with a grain of…grapes. But last Sunday I had the great pleasure of taking an al fresco yoga class at an aguritismo in Chianti.
This being Italy, after yoga we shared a beautiful aperitivo (wine and snacks). I was drawn like a magnet to this beautiful young red wine, which is best served chilled!! Who knew!!
Which is nice, because I don’t know if you know this, but Italy is very warm. As in hot. Non mi piace! And a bracing, chilled red is mighty nice after a yoga session, after which one is molto relassato!
I managed to come home with a couple of bottles! Woo hoo!
I’m planning to return to this farm in the fall to help harvest grapes and olives to make wine and oil. I’m told they stomp grapes as in I Love Lucy!!
Dove c’e’ Barilla c’e’ casa.
Where there’s Barilla, there’s home.
C
Some favorites.
And I bet you didn’t know that Marilyn spoke Italian!
Random (but lovely) Roman shots
Foods of May
Above all, this month is about artichokes and fava beans.
Today I did my part by dining at Sabatini in Trastevere, where Carciofi alla giudia was divine.
Oranges come to the New World with…wait for it!
Columbus, under orders, carried with him the seeds of the first citrus trees to reach the New World, and he spread them through the Antilles, where they grew and multiplied so vigorously that within thirty years some Caribbean islands were covered with them. In all likelihood, Ponce de Leon introduced oranges to the North American mainland when he discovered Florida in 1513.
McPhee, John (2011-04-01). Oranges (p. 89). Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Kindle Edition.
get back, lauretta! 
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