Cauliflowers from the kitchen garden do not arrive in the pristine condition that they do from Waitrose. But I had washed them and inspected them, and washed them again with such care. So it seemed unfortunate in more than one way that there was a caterpillar lying, reasonably discreetly, among the florets dressed in tomato (wouldn't you guess?) and gratinee'd in parmesan and breadcrumbs, on Mr HG's plate. He hadn't noticed. Although he is also capable of eating a caterpillar out of sheer politeness (or hunger, the diet continues) and might have been planning to down it before I noticed.
I had blanched the cauliflowers first, plunged into boiling salted water to seal their colour and crispness before later cooking. Surely the same sealing effect would have been undergone by the caterpillar? So it wouldn't have leaked anything from caterpillar insides into the dish.
And then the full horror dawned. What is inside caterpillars? Butterflies. I had boiled a butterfly. Sob.
Monday, 21 September 2009
Saturday, 12 September 2009
Oppression
A dead, vacuum-packed duck in one hand and the latest vampire book in the other I walked through the village feeling put upon, and driven from my ecohouse retreat.
It's very startling to be summoned back from the American undead by a sepulchral voice saying,
"Signora."
Particularly when you have done your laps (still 21 degrees but it's getting close to being too cold) had a hot shower and are lying down in a deck chair with a glass of Campari and tonic. (I don't LIKE it with soda; I'd drink my lager with lime if I dared). At least I'd got out of my towel and into some clothes. My visitor had come to tell me 'per correttezza' (see fn) that at crack of dawn tomorrow the hunters would be opening the second front and killing everything that moved but mostly the boar. Watch it. It would all be over by 8.30 am, apart from removing the corpses.
Assured that Mr HG and I would be down in the village till lunchtime, I was left in peace to vampire gore, until.
"Signora."
Not again. What was this one planning to kill? Mistake. He was coming to tell me he was going to cut wood. All I needed. A woodcutter, on a Sunday, in the middle of a boar hunt. Despite the recession there can be no refusal of skilled working men. Would he need Mr HG? No the trees for the chop had been singled out. Did he know about the hunters? Sneer. By this time I had had enough, shut the house and stamped on the clutch all the way to the village, then stamped through with the dead duck. When I got to the house I found cloth of gold banners had been left to hang out of all the windows for the 'baroque masked figures' who had every intention of walking through this 'delightful medieoval and ancient centre', naturally accompanied by the very latest in Italian swimming pool music, until 2 o'clock in the morning - when they will all go straight up hill for the boar massacre, pausing only to arm themselves, and possibly remove their splendid clothes to be replaced by equally splendid war get up.
Mr HG had nipped out for a couple of fillet steaks, some oven chips, and a bowl of fruit. The salad will be tomato, naturally. How did he guess that duck a l'orange might lead to a hissy fit?
FN. Correttezza is right up there among impossible Italian words: go on, try. Every consonant should be clearly enunciated and that includes each one of the sounds in the doubles.
It's very startling to be summoned back from the American undead by a sepulchral voice saying,
"Signora."
Particularly when you have done your laps (still 21 degrees but it's getting close to being too cold) had a hot shower and are lying down in a deck chair with a glass of Campari and tonic. (I don't LIKE it with soda; I'd drink my lager with lime if I dared). At least I'd got out of my towel and into some clothes. My visitor had come to tell me 'per correttezza' (see fn) that at crack of dawn tomorrow the hunters would be opening the second front and killing everything that moved but mostly the boar. Watch it. It would all be over by 8.30 am, apart from removing the corpses.
Assured that Mr HG and I would be down in the village till lunchtime, I was left in peace to vampire gore, until.
"Signora."
Not again. What was this one planning to kill? Mistake. He was coming to tell me he was going to cut wood. All I needed. A woodcutter, on a Sunday, in the middle of a boar hunt. Despite the recession there can be no refusal of skilled working men. Would he need Mr HG? No the trees for the chop had been singled out. Did he know about the hunters? Sneer. By this time I had had enough, shut the house and stamped on the clutch all the way to the village, then stamped through with the dead duck. When I got to the house I found cloth of gold banners had been left to hang out of all the windows for the 'baroque masked figures' who had every intention of walking through this 'delightful medieoval and ancient centre', naturally accompanied by the very latest in Italian swimming pool music, until 2 o'clock in the morning - when they will all go straight up hill for the boar massacre, pausing only to arm themselves, and possibly remove their splendid clothes to be replaced by equally splendid war get up.
Mr HG had nipped out for a couple of fillet steaks, some oven chips, and a bowl of fruit. The salad will be tomato, naturally. How did he guess that duck a l'orange might lead to a hissy fit?
FN. Correttezza is right up there among impossible Italian words: go on, try. Every consonant should be clearly enunciated and that includes each one of the sounds in the doubles.
Sunday, 6 September 2009
Over Fulfilment of the Plan
The tomato wars are over; the last red tide flowed to the door on Saturday. Fortunately Mr HG had hidden some of the crates still waiting consumption or bottling, as we were all out and failure to keep up with the flow would have been discovered. It was still a shocking sight to see them glowing with the promise of yet more work, (rather than glowing with promise of winter pastas cheered by summer plenty) but this lot really are it. Production norms have been over-fulfilled; there's going to have to be some better planning next year - like NO TOMATO OUTPUT.
The attempt to dry them - sun dried tomatoes so expensive in Waitrose should have been a free lunch - came to a sticky end. After all we had sun burning the skin off our backs and we had the beastly tomatoes. Admittedly just leaving them in the sun was more in hope and exhaustion than the application of scientific method, but I don't think the wasps were deserved for failure to find out how it's done. I can state how it's not done, anyway, now. Don't leave them in serried ranks in the sun and hope for the best. Nothing agricultural ever is that obvious. I expect they have to be dropped in boiling oil, fished out with the bare hands, skinned with a special skinning knife (the tomatoes not the hands) only available at feast day markets, threaded on a special, unidentifieable piece of vegetation like the inner stalk of the corn on the cob, blessed, and hung up somewhere inaccessible with special linen cloths to catch any drips.
The next inundation will be rape. Not the Sabine women variety, the nasty green and yellow cattle food that is regarded as fit for humans here. I've taken an executive decision to cart it down to the village garden and put it straight into the compost without the intervening stages of washing it, boiling it, and freezing it.
The attempt to dry them - sun dried tomatoes so expensive in Waitrose should have been a free lunch - came to a sticky end. After all we had sun burning the skin off our backs and we had the beastly tomatoes. Admittedly just leaving them in the sun was more in hope and exhaustion than the application of scientific method, but I don't think the wasps were deserved for failure to find out how it's done. I can state how it's not done, anyway, now. Don't leave them in serried ranks in the sun and hope for the best. Nothing agricultural ever is that obvious. I expect they have to be dropped in boiling oil, fished out with the bare hands, skinned with a special skinning knife (the tomatoes not the hands) only available at feast day markets, threaded on a special, unidentifieable piece of vegetation like the inner stalk of the corn on the cob, blessed, and hung up somewhere inaccessible with special linen cloths to catch any drips.
The next inundation will be rape. Not the Sabine women variety, the nasty green and yellow cattle food that is regarded as fit for humans here. I've taken an executive decision to cart it down to the village garden and put it straight into the compost without the intervening stages of washing it, boiling it, and freezing it.
Friday, 3 July 2009
Thursday, 11 June 2009
Sauce for the Goose
People are determined to live in this landscape. Readers will know that piles of paperwork were needed to meet the requirements of the planning regulations under five separate headings to permit the reconstruction of the ecohouse and the recultivation of its land. And that was where there was a house and buildings and fields designated for the various local crops. Had been since 1629 - or whatever stood in 'planning regulations' place over all those centuries.
So everyone knows how beautiful it all is, but all of us want just our bit allowed. I opened the windows on the very top floor, turned to gaze at the untouched fields and hills and found that someone has built an open-sided barn. We all know what that means. It's like my tractor shed. Yes, there is a piano agricolo agreed with the local agricultural authorities. Yes it needed years of established cultivation, accounts, a real agricultural need for the agricultural building. No, of course it is to house equipment, store produce, shelter animals.
Shelter animals. Humans are animals. They need shelter even in the midst of such rural tranquility. So within five years the sheep will have all been eaten, the pigs ditto, the machines will be on a subterranean floor, and there will be a house.
And I haven't got a leg to stand on. Even as I type we are reinforcing the roof of the tractor shed to meet antiseismic regulation and, conveniently, rendering it strong enough to bear the weight of studio and terrace, looking across the glorious Arno plain to the mountains beyond Trasimeno. Oh well. There will be another building, tucked into the rebuilt vineyards (too low for decent olives there), and more people saying 'Gruss Gott' to us while hiking through our woods.
So everyone knows how beautiful it all is, but all of us want just our bit allowed. I opened the windows on the very top floor, turned to gaze at the untouched fields and hills and found that someone has built an open-sided barn. We all know what that means. It's like my tractor shed. Yes, there is a piano agricolo agreed with the local agricultural authorities. Yes it needed years of established cultivation, accounts, a real agricultural need for the agricultural building. No, of course it is to house equipment, store produce, shelter animals.
Shelter animals. Humans are animals. They need shelter even in the midst of such rural tranquility. So within five years the sheep will have all been eaten, the pigs ditto, the machines will be on a subterranean floor, and there will be a house.
And I haven't got a leg to stand on. Even as I type we are reinforcing the roof of the tractor shed to meet antiseismic regulation and, conveniently, rendering it strong enough to bear the weight of studio and terrace, looking across the glorious Arno plain to the mountains beyond Trasimeno. Oh well. There will be another building, tucked into the rebuilt vineyards (too low for decent olives there), and more people saying 'Gruss Gott' to us while hiking through our woods.
Wednesday, 10 June 2009
Cherry Ripe
Cherries are the local product. Every region (well, perhaps zone would be more accurate) has its speciality. Some ghastly, poverty-stricken disaster zones go on about acqua cotta - cooked water, gives a complete description - others go OTT with giant platters of boiled dead animals, but here we do cherries. We start out with pale gold and white cherries, small, slightly tart but infinitely Spring-like after the winter, move on to the red cherries that go into clafoutis as well as straight down your throat, and end gloriously with plump, black, juicy almost apple-sized mouthfuls.
Every cherry comes with its own in-built missile, ready for spitting at real and virtual foes. So I sit on the big terrace and spit cherry stones at passing Fascists. By the time they arrive two floors down to street level they have lost much of their force and go unnoticed, which probably is best as Fascists are not cowards, they are perfectly, indeed reliably, capable of swarming up the downpipes and making me drink oil where I sit.
Every cherry comes with its own in-built missile, ready for spitting at real and virtual foes. So I sit on the big terrace and spit cherry stones at passing Fascists. By the time they arrive two floors down to street level they have lost much of their force and go unnoticed, which probably is best as Fascists are not cowards, they are perfectly, indeed reliably, capable of swarming up the downpipes and making me drink oil where I sit.
Tuesday, 9 June 2009
The Rewards of Eco-Propriety
The solar panels excess hot water cooling device is up and running again. Andrea came yesterday, stripped off the cover, cleaned it all out thoroughly, topped up the levels, emptied the traps of unspeakable contents, set the pumps running, dumped in the chemicals, and said:
"Giovedi. With a bit of sun, 27 degrees."
Then he directed all the hot water being generated from the panels through the body of coolant and wished us a lovely summer. Tomorrow I shall be washing down the loungers and the umbrellas, looking out the bath sheets in bright colours, and trying on my cozzie.
"Giovedi. With a bit of sun, 27 degrees."
Then he directed all the hot water being generated from the panels through the body of coolant and wished us a lovely summer. Tomorrow I shall be washing down the loungers and the umbrellas, looking out the bath sheets in bright colours, and trying on my cozzie.
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