After a lunch with friends, a bit of shopping

This is the view from our window. We woke up to glorious sunshine this morning and spent the rest of the day sitting in the sun.

Yesterday we stopped by to visit friends and ended up having a wonderful lunch of pasta e fagioli, salad, mini mincemeat pieces with yogurt and, of course, wine, wine ,wine. The fagioli sauce was made from small white beans cooked to a puree. The beans, Zolfino beans, are an old variety that have been cultivated and prized since antiquity. Just after lunch, I happened to pick up a brochure, ciboviaggiando, and this is what it had to say about the bean: The zolfino bean is from the slopes of Pratomagno where you can find age'old chestnuts [sic] trees and pore [sic] mushrooms in large quantities, if the season is favourable you can find another well known Slow food Presidio: the Zolfino bean. After the Discovery of the Americas (the New World), Charles V seems to have introduced beans in Tuscany giving them as a present to the Pope Clemente VII (in the world Giulio De' Medici.

Pasta e Fagioli
Pasta with Beans

The recipe is simple: Cook small white beans until very soft, add some pesto, mix with hot, cooked pasta, top with green onions and plenty of parmesan cheese. The salad had gorgonzola cheese, walnuts, pears, and green lettuce. Like everything from the cucina here, simple but very delicious and satisfying.

The translations in the booklet were so funny that it kept me laughing for hours. But this little promo piece for a new website, www.ciboviaggiando.it, gives you an idea: The first portal for food and wine tourism fans is the centre of italy: itineraries, styas, offeres, events, widenings about specialties and gluttonies available for professionists, collectgors, lovers or simple testers.

We then went shopping at the Filson of the Maremma and Tom looked right at home in their hunting jacket, so we bought it. Check it out at www.confeszionibrema.it/collezione 2008/2209 and its on the first page. (The man with the golden retrievers is modeling the jacket.) We then headed to Scansano, the Medieval town that was once the summer residence of the Grosseto government at a time when officials sought to escape the malaria bearing mosquitos that afflicted this area in Medieval Maremma during summer. We walked around, purchased some rye flour at the small health food store, and checked out the old city streets, steps, doors, and the glorious view from the uppermost section of the town.