Rainy days

Anna-Maria and Guy

Rain today. It started out as a sunny morning and we decided to walk down to Antonio Betti’s caffe for well, caffe and dolci of course! We strolled back and about two hours later the grey clouds rolled in followed by the cold rain. Not quite the snow and freezing temps they are getting farther north here in Italy and of course Europe but still, it’s supposed to be sunny Italy! Anyway it’s a good day to relax and just hang out doing laundry and contemplating the future.

We’ve had a good week since our return to Siena Monday. We spent the first couple of days getting ourselves back to some state of normalcy; it just seemed we had lost our rhythm somewhere along the line. Thursday we met up with Anna Maria and Guy, both from New Jersey and who were traveling together in Italy. Some time back we had arranged to meet them for Thanksgiving and here we were the four of us together at last!

We met them at their hotel on Via Banchi di Sopra and strolled to Nannini’s for aperitivi. We then headed over to Cantina in Piazza for dinner at 8 where Aimone had prepared a wonderful dinner of antipasti of zucchini slices with balsamic vinegar, marinated onions, crostini, zuppa di ceci (chickpea soup), tripe in tomato sauce (very tasty but with an odd, off-putting texture for us), ossobucco and for dessert a selection of tortas. We also left it to Aimone to pair the food with wines and began with prosecco when we arrived, followed by sauvignon-chardonnay from Tuscany and a blended red also from Tuscany with the tripe and ossobucco. A wonderful meal and great company!

We walked Anna Maria and Guy back to their hotel and then strolled back to our apartment – something very spoiling about living inside the walls where everything is just a 15 minute walk from everything else.

Originally we had planned to see our niece Christina and her husband Glen on Friday and they were going to spend the night with us before heading back to Germany where he is stationed. But Friday morning Christina called and said some goofy thing had happened at the base where Glen is stationed – some missing equipment needed to be accounted for or something – and so they were all in lockdown on the base. As a result they had missed their flight so the trip was a wash. We hope to see them at some point before we leave here for Christmas and we might just make the trip north ourselves.

Friday morning turned rather nasty and it rained off and on all day so I suppose from that standpoint it was just as well our guests called and said they couldn’t make it. It also turns out that Frankfurt had some nasty weather and flights were cancelled there, as well as in other parts of Northern Europe.

Saturday morning we got up and began our prep work for the Thanksgiving Feast with the Bechis and their friends out in Asciano. Susan made a (gluten-free) pumpkin pie and I followed her in the kitchen by making a fennel-tomato dish roasted in the oven.

Patti had arranged for us to get a ride to Asciano with another couple living in Siena. Kate and Val, from New Orleans by way of California, met Patti online (like everyone else probably) and she had helped the two of them plan their trip to Italy for their 20th wedding anniversary. Anyway they were just finishing up a week staying in an apartment in Siena owned by a friend of Patti’s and so we would all ride together. Yeah! Val called and gave us directions to their apartment and so we met them at noon and the four of us headed off to Asciano.

It turned out we were going back to Bartolo’s farm – we had interviewed him this past spring, he raises chianina beef – and by luck we happened to remember the way since, well we had no directions! But Italy being great and the Italians even greater this tiny adventure was worth every minute of the drive through the spectacular “clay hills” south of Siena. Even the drab, overcast day could not dim their uniqueness one iota.

So we got to Bartolo’s farm and discovered no one else had arrived yet. At first we thought, naturally, that we were in the wrong place. But no we had been here before and a quick call to Patti confirmed this. Soon afterwards Roberto drove up with the turkey, wine, his daughter and various implements for the table and we were off and inside the huge old barn beneath the house which Bartolo and his wife had turned into a wonderful dining space. And there was a roaring fire in the huge fireplace, which determined where the tables were going to be for sure.

Not long afterwards Patti arrived and so did everyone else: Stephanie and Daniele and their kids, Ruth and her husband and their children, and eventually Donald and his two kids came from Florence.

Thanksgiving group

We worked on getting the food out onto the serving table and everyone went at it – eating standing up, sitting, crouching or anyway that seemed appropriate for the moment. It was just like the many family reunion dinners I recall from my childhood. People talking about everything, kids running around and playing, all intermingled with eating. And the food was very good indeed. Patti’s turkey was roughly the size of a VW beetle and was obviously genetically modified to feed a platoon of marines for a week. We had beans, salads, potatoes (2 kinds), and even gravy! The one thing that made it unique to this place was the wine and the fact that half of the language used was in Italian.

We watched a video of Roberto and some of his friends from Asciano who had been on Italian TV recently – a program called Weekend in Italia, and afterward we cleaned up and headed home.

Naturally we had leftover turkey for dinner later. It’s a tradition after all.