Speaking of olive oil I was discussing with an Italian about how we couldn't find margarine in the supermarket. There is some sort of whiteish butterish margarine in a tub, and there is a selection of I think 2 in the supermarket we tend to use. Contrast that with almost an entire aisle of olive oils. Whilst discussing this with the aforementioned Italian I mentioned how there would be just a couple of olive oils in the supermarkets in the UK and he shook his head and a grave look of sadness came over his face, as though he could not imagine a land where there were only a couple of types of olive oil.
As snow rampages through the UK, leaving people like special T using their car boots and back garden as refrigerators, we are back in the rain. Torrential rain again, every day. Lisa was definitely right, even if she's too lazy to squeeze out a couple of babbies. It was cold yesterday but not cold enough to snow unfortunately, a few degrees above 0C, whilst UK was getting to below 0F.
Food. Lunch. So yes, every day I go to the Villa for lunch. It's called Villa Borghi and everytime I go there I think of the Blur song - "Villa Rosie"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mvzRmi6KqzE
"When work is done, go to Villa Rosie every night - so tasty"
It really has got locked into my head that every time I walk over singing that tune and laugh to myself like a proper mental. Eccelente.
Pears. The Tuscans seem to think that pudding consists of pears. I don't really understand this, pears being one of the foods that I do dislike. Boiled pear, poached pear, drizzled with some sort of whallop. Who knows? Who cares? The Tuscans - that's who!
Speaking of fruit, yesterday evening I went to dinner with my boss who was over from the US, and a couple of consultants who were over helping us prepare for an impending audit. We went to a lovely restaurant in the old town called "Guidos" which according to Dawn is a rude slang term for Italians in the US.
http://www.ristoranteguido.com/
Don't try to click on the English section - it doesn' t seem to work. Mind you, this is one of the few shops, restaurants, anythings, in Siena that seems to have a website - complete opposite of the UK where everything has a website, pets, lamposts, everything.
So, in the restaurant as we walked in there were a couple of old codgers, well past retirement age sat there at a table eating a huge bowl of satsumas. Odd. And the restaurant was quite a clash of opposites, incredibly attentive and knowledgeable waiters, contrasted with a front room kind of atmosphere. Photos adorned the walls of people who had visited - including Pavarotti, loads of random Italians, Mel Gibson, Daniel Craig aka the new James Bond - the latest James Bond film opening sequence was in Siena, Claudio Ranieri etc etc. Oh and a lot of footballers, signed football shirts, and some signed basketball shirts. Siena's football team may be in trouble, hanging out the bottom of Serie A at the moment, last weekend losing 1-5 at home to local rivals Fiorentina, but the they do have the best basketball team in the land, and somewhat bizarrely, basketball is a really big sport here. The basketball stadium is near the office and the evenings when the games are on the place gets incredibly busy. Anyway, the food was excellent. I had a sort of linguine with cinghiale - wild boar (they, whoever they are, do seem to spend a lot of time shooting them around our place, hear a lot of gunshots) for primo and then for secondi I had something that was quite exquisite - guinea fowl with pistachio, grape and pomegranate. Delicious. Fantastic wine too. Broccoli was something else too - I had never seen broccoli of the same shape, but it was absolutely delicious.
Speaking of the audit - we had a 6 hour meeting today preparing for the forthcoming fun and frolics, and one of the Italians said "mama mia!" at one point - and I had to work extremely hard just to keep it together!
During the same meeting, my boss requested that we have a "working lunch". This contravenes all rules in Italy apparently - it was lucky she got out alive! Working lunches are NOT possible, food in the rooms is not allowed, and we had to get special dispensation from the ancient gods of Italy to have tea (I'll come back to that) and coffee in the room. No biscuits or pastries, naturally. The tea was VERY strange. Looked like normal teabags, but they produced a strange tasting, caffeine-free bright yellow liquid when brewed. Maybe lemongrass or something. Odd. Mind you, as I've mentioned before, it is against the law to not drink very small extremely powerful coffees.
Avanti!!
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