Our strategy this week, as alert readers may have noticed, has been to alternate a “day trip” day with a “down time” day at the villa.  Today was downtime, and so we were all there in the morning when Silvio the dog mysteriously reappeared in his pen, where he hadn’t been first thing in the morning.  There was much speculation as to how he achieved this feat until we noticed that Stefano had also returned.  He doesn’t speak much English and wasn’t able to clearly convey where he found Silvio, but we were all glad to see him again.

Today we decided to enjoy a little adult time, and took turns going into Greve in Chianti.  There’s a huge wine cellar there, where you can put money on a card and then choose to taste any of 140+ wines from the area.  All the bottles are in glass cases with electronic prices above them, and you insert your card then start pressing buttons for what you want to try.  Bob and I enjoyed trying the least and most expensive wines in various categories to see if we could tell the difference.  (Verdict: Usually yes, but we didn’t always prefer the expensive one.  Those who have had wine at our house know we have cheap tastes.)

One thing you notice here is that almost everything is more expensive, with one notable exception – wine.  Most restaurants, even those in the most touristy areas of Rome, were selling table wine for around 8 euros per liter (~$10 for more than a bottle’s worth).  For our dinners at home at the villa, we bought three bottles of a blended Tuscan red for 10 euros.  Granted, it’s also possible to spend much, much more on wine.  But even the cheap stuff here is usually pretty good.

Tonight we finally tried the wood-fired grill on the terrace, and ate overlooking the Tuscan hills.  (It’s finally warmed up enough that late evenings outside are comfortable.)  And then Chris, in a burst of nostalgia for some old fashioned American food, make chocolate chip cookies.  Given that we didn’t have any measuring cups or spoons, and apparently baking soda doesn’t exist in Italy, they came out quite good.

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From Bob:

What I want to say about tonight’s dinner is that when Jen and I were at the super-modern, very Western grocery story in Figline yesterday we fully intended to be buying chicken.  We picked out several different packages that had different cuts of meat, but we thought it was all chicken meat, I swear.  It was all from the same cooler bank.  It all looked somewhat like chicken, though it wasn’t cut up quite like we Americans would expect it to be.  Some parts were clearly half-chickens with a leg and a wing and some white meat apiece.  Others looked like bone in breasts, but they were cut parallel to the ribs, if you can imagine that, so every piece had some ribs and spine in it. 

                I know we’re getting out of our comfort zone talking about this, but attitude toward meat is another one of those cultural differences it’s fun to pick up on – as long as you’re not the one eating the mystery meat.  A good portion of the butcher section of the Coop grocery store – and it was a big butcher section, bigger than our bedroom at the villa, and that’s saying something – was dedicated to cuts that we have never seen on a table in New Hampshire.  The yellow looking things, like haggis, or the bulbous looking things like tongue, or the kidney shaped things like kidney. 

                And we say good for the Italians for wasting less of what’s available to them, even though I won’t go so far afield as to eat any one of those things I just mentioned.  I won’t even veal, or liver, or a whole bunch of other things that my father’s generation loved.  I only use a select part of my meal animals, or as they are sometimes referred to here, “adulto bovino.” 

                But as Chris was grilling the fine, specially marinated pieces of meat over the wood fire that Jen and Stefano built this evening, something wasn’t right.  The bones in some of the pieces were just too skinny and the shapes were a little off.  Oh, I’m sure they tasted like chicken, but if I Google translated “conio,” which is what I think I now may  remember was written on at least one of the packages, I bet I would get something other than chicken as a translation.  Who knows, maybe adulto bovino doesn’t mean what it seems, either, but last night’s chili sure went quickly.

                And nobody complained tonight, either.  Grampa Gene’s special marinade was very tasty, as were the roasted potatoes and asparagus.  We’ve been good at estimating our quantities, and rarely have any leftovers.  We got to eat on the veranda with the sun setting over Lucolena and the smoke of the grill fire still in the air.

                Even big ol’ Silvio, back in his pen since Stefano brought him home this morning, must have contently crunched his kibble and sniffed the air as we sat down to dinner.  He probably knew what we were eating, even if we didn’t.  And as long as we never enter ”conio” into Google translate, we’ll all be able to look back on this evening fondly.