A Day of Extravagant Morsels

Day 7

I suppose it would be accurate to say that each of the days we have been in Italy has been about food — the flaky pastries we have found for breakfast at one of the cafes along the street (occasionally with marmalade), the sidewalk lunches and dinners. But today, this one week anniversary of our arrival in Spello, has truly been about eating. Yesterday we stopped at the market and purchased eggs (organic ones of course, unwashed and stacked on the shelf). This morning, after setting out the trash, we strolled to the tiny neighborhood bakery we have come to love and bought some bread — half a baguette we asked the proprietress to slice, along with a muffin that looked intriguing — and returned to our kitchen to whip up a breakfast.

As has become our fond practice since the experience of our last trip to Italy in 2008, we surveyed our options: onions, garlic and various dried pastas on the table; the eggs; and in the refrigerator the remnants of a yellow pepper and some spinach from a previous day’s pass through the vegetable market down the street below us. The solution was, of course, obvious: a frittata! We boiled the pasta, we chopped the vegetables and fork-beat the eggs and combined the happy assortment in a skillet. It wasn’t long before we were sitting at the table, smiling over the eggy morsels dancing on our taste buds, spreading chestnut marmalade over the morning’s fresh baguette. Bravissimo!

One meal, however, only anticipates and clears the way for the next. Since the vegetable market will be closed on Sunday, after the breakfast dishes were washed and put away we strolled down the street and browsed the options for our upcoming days, filling our hand basket as we went — potatoes, onions, another yellow pepper, tomatoes, a cucumber, a beautiful romanesco, and cannellini beans — for which we carefully counted out the change into the hands of the jovial shopkeeper, Patricia. Emptying the sack back at the apartment we discovered parsley and celery she had surreptitiously slipped in as an “extra.” Grazie mille!

After a quick walking circuit up the street and back, we freshened up and waited. Lunch was supposed to be a gift — a tangible gratitude for our host whose apartment we have rented, but whose graciousness has extended infinitely beyond the provision of four walls and a bed — but as with so many aspects of our time here the outing felt less like a gift given and moreso a gift received. Simona drove us — along with her dog, Gilda, who was joining us for lunch — to another mountain town perhaps 20 minutes away, Trevi. Outdoors, along the banks of a mountain stream, we ate freshly caught trout — 3 ways: cooked with pasta, marinated in a salad, and roasted whole with a sprig of rosemary surprisingly found in its belly. Three courses and four hours after departing, we returned to our apartment over-sated, with dear memories and a few dog hairs as souvenirs…

…only to anticipate dinner with two other couples at an iconic restaurant in Spello. Breads, pasta two ways, four grilled meats (sausage, pork, beef and lamb) mixed vegetables and a taste of dessert, but the best part was what tables do best: facilitate amiable and animated conversation, never mind that more than half of it was in a tongue that we do not speak.

It’s night now — past our bedtime — but we are full in ways too numerous to count.

And though it seems a shame to turn off the light, the smiles will keep on glowing.