Valle d'Aosta and the cow

Teteun

The cow is almost a symbol of the mountain region Valle d'Aosta. Over there, in fact, cow breeding is a good business, and bovine products are particularily valuable. Cow milk, cheeses, bovine meat are very good.
In that region we tasted for the first time a particular product obtained by bovine udder: the "Teteun" [pronounced teh-TEHN, where the 'eh' sounds like the vowels in the english word "bird" or the french "beuf" or the german "Köln"].
During the past August holidays we attended a festival of that product in the little town of Gignod, "la Fëta di Teteun" and we ate it in three different recipes: plain boiled, stewed with tomato sauce and sliced thin as a cooked ham. I expected to taste something tough. Instead the meat is very tender, a little spongey, very similar to cooked ham. As it often happens with Italian traditional cooking, this kind of food was originated by the need not to waste any edible part of the animal.

Bataille des Reines

Speaking of cows, we also attended to another traditional event. The "Batailles de Reines" [the battles of the queens]. As the host of our bed and breakfast explained to us, the cows of a herd, lacking a dominant bull, naturally fight each other to establish a hierarchy, at the top of which there is the Queen. Those fight usually are symbolic and don't involve any blood. They terminate when one of the two contenders submits to the other, escaping from the push of her head.
The "Batailles de Reines" event is the fights between queens of different herds and they are organized like a knockout competition. We went to one of the preliminary where about 100 cows of different producers were divided in pairs. Three fights taking place contemporarily in a big rounded space. A lot of spectators were intensely involved. The strange thing was the language spoken by the speaker: the local dialect, which sounds like a mixture of italian and french. Obviously the show is played for the locals.
Unfortunately we couldn't attend to the final match that was going to be fought October 11th in Aosta. We were told that this annual appointment is usually a big event that is faithfully attended to by Aosta citizens.

More informations about these events on Rubbah Slippahs in Italy, here and here.

La Maison du Fromage

Fontina

Bleu d'Aoste

Capriolo

Grotta

When one enters in a cheese chop what is the most striking thing is the smell.
I love cheese, and i will never understand those people that define "stink" as that wonderful aroma from cheese.
It can be said that from smell, even before sight, one can distinguish a french cheese shop from an italian one. In fact, the french prefer smooth goat cheese, while Italians prefer those hard or half-hard ones made out of sheep or cow milk. In France the fragrance is more sweet and hints more of milk. In Italy a scent of a cellar, mold and hay prevails.

But here at La Maison du Fromage at La Thuile (Ao) there is a different perfume. Most part of proposed cheeses is locally produced, but they also have something coming from France and other parts of Italy. Also some longer-aged cheeses are displayed. The final result, therefore, is a right mixture of scents from different cultures.

Obviously Fontina cheese from this area lords over it.
The fontina cheese i used to know before was the product that usually is commonly sold in stores, and i judged it a cheese a little "banal". Elastic, a little spicy but without a remarkable personality.
Here at La Maison, instead, they proposed an aged Fontina that didn't look at all like the one i used to know, neither for the color (yellowish to browinsh, with irregular crust covered with dark molds), nor for the texture (half-hard, buttery and not elastic at all), or for the smell (bitter, strong and pungent), and for the taste (direct, bitter and spicy hot, with a note of almonds). After a small taste i was convinced to get a good slice.
We also bought a slice of Bleu d'Aoste (with wonderful veins of blue molds, consistent, buttery and spicey), and a couple of cheeses that i didn't know: the Grotta (harder and more aged, crumbly, strong taste), and the Capriolo (fresh smooth cheese made out of goat and cow milk, intense and spicey flavor).

At La Maison there are also other food products. We bought some Arnad lard and some fresh milk. A free white chocolate bar was offered.

La Maison du Fromage
via Collomb, 10
11016 - La Thuile (Ao)

Trattoria Lamarta

Map of the drive made (click here to enlarge)

I have a deep enough knowledge of Lake Como, especially, since i live there, on the side of Lecco (the setting of the famous novel by Alessandro Manzoni).
In my childhood i spent a lot of summers at Lake Maggiore, and so, somehow, i know that too.
Lake Garda, instead, was still partially unknown. Yes, i had been near to there, i visited some villages in the southern coast like Sirmione, Desenzano, Peschiera. But, although partially in my region, i have never done a thorough visit.
And so, during the weekend 24th to 26th july, R, myself, Maddie and Mr. Bentley begun to remedy this serious gap with a short holiday at Gargnano.
Of course, two days is not enough to explore the subject, but enough to have an idea about how to plan a longer holiday, not only at the lake, but also in the surrounding mountains.
During those days that area was really hot, so, in order to escape from the heat, and also for the curiosity of exploring the surrounding mountains and finding destinations for any interesting hiking paths for future excursions, on saturday evening we decided to drive into an internal road we found on the map.
We were pleasantly surprised by the truly spectacular scenery on a deserted road (looks so far from the busy tourist destinations of lake Garda!). We drove on hairpin bends rolled around canyons and gorges, coasting also the beautiful little artificial lake Valvestino and crossing it on breathtaking bridges.

The road reaches Lake Idro. To avoid also the touristic crowd of this last one, we went a little over, at Treviso Bresciano. That day we decided not to have dinner because a few hours earlier we had a very big lunch. But at that late hour in the night we were beginning to feel the need of a snack. Then the talented fingers of R began to thumb through the pages of the SlowFood guide, finding a good restaurant just right there, in the hamlet Vico. Trattoria Lamarta.
Here we were warmly welcomed, even though they were almost closing (after nine in the evening, there was no longer anybody). We ordered half a liter of red wine and a plate of cured meat of their production, really delicious. Particularly good were their lardo and prosciutto. The latter, then, I was informed that that was not prosciutto, but cured pork rib.
We chatted for a long time with the nice lady. In particular I was amazed how such a nice restaurant could survive in a place so isolated that it was empty already at nine on Saturday night.
The lady told us how, after three generations, the restaurant is still run. Nothing much has changed. Meals are all prepared from their own produced ingredients (and if they are all like those cured meats, it's worth another visit!). In particular they grow pigs and vegetables, but they also have other animals. The menu can differ from day to day but goes according to season, with no choice allowed. One can eat what is cooked that day, which in fact depends upon the butchered animals and the harvested seasonal vegetables. The lady suggests to call before if one wants to know what will be served for dinner or lunch.

We paid 15 euros. Obviously without any receipt. Given the familiar welcome we received from the lady and her kindness keeping open only for us, i didn't feel like demanding it, so it's disappointing to include also this business in my list of tax evaders.

Trattoria Lamarta
via Tito Speri, 56
Localita' Vico
25070, Treviso Bresciano (BS)
Small pets welcome only in the porch outside.

This blog is against tax dodging

I am a subordinate employee.
And so, regarding income taxes, i pay them.
I have a headache to fill out the modello 730 (the italian tax form) because I want the deductions allowed for having a home loan, and not lose them by having my taxes automatically computed. This operation is not that difficult but, as usual clumsy in bureaucratic stuff, i end up making some errors, that are regularly corrected by the kind girls at the CAAF office (the syndacate section charged to check validity of official documents).
I swear that any error is absolutely unintentional. It wouldn't make any sense in fact to try to be sneaky: the document to attach as a proof of its accuracy is the CUD (a document issued by the employer), and the numbers written on the two forms must be the same.

To tell the truth the accuracy of the data written on the 730 is immediately verifiable only for the incomes for subordinate employment. For instance, i could give private lessons of ancient Greek language, arrange small electricity works, canary petsitting, or teach hang gliding, with regular remuneration, and then i could avoid to declare it as an income. But i don't do any of those activities, believe me.

For sure i don't have the same solidarity feeling as Artemisia, who would like to pay more taxes. Instead i would prefer to pay less. But i am proud to be able to say that i never evade taxes and i am happy to pay till the last penny what is owed, to give my contribution to the community.
I'd only like that also the other members of the same community do the same.
First of all for a social reason. Since the social services are financed by the State through tax revenue, tax evasion means that services are not paid enough (and so performed with worse quality) or, otherwise, that the pressure of taxation increases (obviously for non-evaders).
Moreover, I cannot find a valid reason why, for the same income, whoever is honest will have less money, since he must provide for a part to be paid in taxes.

Italian tax system doesn't allow subordinate employees to evade taxes, while it makes it easy and lightly punished for self-employers and enterpreneurs, for the simple reason that for this last ones it's more difficult to evaluate the income.
Which, of course, doesn't mean that subordinate employees are more honest than the self employers. In fact i know some enterpreneurs that pay till the last cent, while a lot of subordinate employees do not evade only because they don't have the opportunity to, which it's far from a moral acquittal.

The ricevuta fiscale.

The taxation for a commercial business is computed on the base of the sales proceeds, or, in other words, the sum of the money coming from the sale of the products or services commercialized, in the period of one year.
The ricevuta fiscale [receipt for fiscal purposes] is an official document that is issued by the business that contains the total amount paid by the customer, the detail of all the products or services bought, the particulars of the business itself along with a progressive number and the date that unequivocally identify that receipt.
It is double-copied and written (by hand or automatically, in the form of a scontrino fiscale, by the registratore di cassa [a particular calculator/printer]). One copy is given to the customer and the other is kept by the dealer. The set of all the ricevute fiscali issued in one year is so a good enough documentation for computing the sales proceeds.

The most obvious way to evade the taxes, so, is not to issue the receipt at all, after a sale.

I don't believe that the customer should play the role of the inspector. But the receipt, that is a proof of the purchase, is the warranty that the taxes due for that good are paid, and it is a right of the consumer to control that it actually happens.
It's obvious that when a dealer does not give the receipt, in that moment he is evading his taxes. And that is a crime.
After a sale, it's normal that a dealer actually gives the good that was paid by the customer ("I'm not a cheater!"). On the other side, the customer for sure pays the good he bought ("I'm not a thief!"). I cannot understand why they feel it is allowed to pass over the receipt.

I don't know about you, but so often it happens to me that the shopkeeper "forgets" to issue the receipt.
Being that i pay my taxes, this "forgetting" irritates me so much, and when it happens, i expressly ask for a receipt. At that point they issue it, some times with an arrogant reaction. Rarely it happened that they kept refusing.
I believe that, unfortunately, the main part of consumers do not have the same "ball-breaking" nature, and at the end, for each demanded receipt, a lot of others are lost in the guilty oblivion.

I don't believe that there is a particular category of business to point the finger towards. As Maurice in his post notices, if the statistics say that the restaurants are the most impudent tax evaders, that doesn't mean that one can accuse each restaurateur to evade taxes. For example, the only one time we had dinner at Maurice's, the receipt was regularily issued. To say that the restaurant dealers are dishonest is injust towards the honest ones.

And it's just for this reason that, in my opinion, the dishonest ones should be identified. As Maurice says, "Tirate fuori i nomi e non sparate a casaccio sul mucchio" ["Quote the names and don't shoot on the mass"]. No sooner said than done. Today i start a new survey on this blog that reports the commercial business that evade the taxes. Or, atleast, that try to, when it's my turn to pay the bill. The list will appear on a proper section in the right column.

Disclaimer: I'd like to make clear that this report has nothing to do with the quality of the products.

One has to start from somewhere, and so, incidentally, it happens that the first tax evader of the list is the famous Pasticceria Vassalli, Via S. Carlo 84/86 - 25087 Salò (Brescia). R. and i entered last friday morning in the shop. We had a slice of ricotta pie, a "fruit basket" (almond-chocolate wafer filled with fruit and custard), two shakerati, two glasses of mineral water and a small pack of lemon cookies. The lady (i think she's the owner), using the registratore di cassa as a support to write on the notepad, performed the sum by hand and accepted our payment of the bill with credit card. Only after the transaction, when she was already greeting us, i demanded and obtained the receipt.

Pea festival

Sunday, May 31st, Casalborgone (TO).

Pea omelette, Voul-au-vent with pea sauce, Lasagne with peas, Gogu (pea-stuffed ravioli) with butter and sage, meat stew with peas.

I, Maddie and Mr. Bentley at Casalborgone

"Madam, has it been a long time since they make this festival?" I ask to the nice elderly woman that is having lunch with another lady friend right in front of us. "Uhm... it could be atleast thirty years" she says thoughtfully. It looks like in these little villages they all know each other, in fact, sitting next to us, an old man that wants to tell us his opinion at any rate intervenes: "No way! it is atleast fifty years!". After that they say something in Piemontese dialect that i cannot understand. Then the lady, facing me again, adds "Here, for this event, in the past they also used to sell a lot of peas. Then the Lancia factory [car industry nereby] came and the young people preferred a reliable job to the pea plantations. They sold up to two-three hundreds quintals [1 quintal = 100kg = 220lb], you know?" and the elderly man "Two-three hundred? They passed also one thousand quintals!". I love chatting with these people! "I heard there are also guided tours in the historical center town. Is it nice to see?". "It's wonderful" she says, "...it's worth to go to see, although, in only 20 minutes by foot you can see everything there is to see" - "20 minutes? - It will take at least one hour and a half if one wants to see really everything!"... and so on, tit for tat for the whole duration of the lunch.

The festival organization is really good, you pay before at the cashier, choosing from the displayed menu, they give you some tickets with the names of the dishes. When you sit at the table, the efficient volunteers for the local tourist board collect those tickets, and soon they come back soon with the chosen plates and drinks.

For the guided tours at the center town, there is an electric tourist train with three or four wagons ("in the past there were 20 wagons" the elderly man ensures). We preferred to go by car to avoid waiting for the next run. The center is actually very small but it looks carved in History. Every garden is full of colored flowers, every lane opens on a new landscape in the Monferrato hills.

At the typical products market we bought a couple of kilos of peas and some other products.

A lovely day passed in a place of peace and harmony.

website

La Formaggeria

Pagliettina

The word "tourism" recalls, besides a rest at the seaside or in the mountain, visits to museums.
Everywhere one happens to be one can find a museum about a particular subject, with the purpose to atone in a display of cultural engagement, every possible concession to laziness and enjoyment, almost it was about a guilt.
Naturally one cannot generalize, but sometimes really really think a museum is only an excuse to give oneself airs of intellectuality, while it's not really needed.
And maybe it's almost as if one justifies some museums, like for example the

Goat tomino

torture instruments in San Gimignano, just to mention one.
Torture instruments!
Shouldn't one be a kind of maniac to visit such a museum?
And what about some fetishism for the visitor of the museum of Umbrella at Gignese?

It obviously depends on the location of the holiday. I am not saying for sure that the Uffizi wouldn't deserve to be visited if one is in Florence, or the same for the Vatican Museums in Rome, or the Louvre in Paris. But to me, in general, museum is kind of boring, i have to admit in a guilty tone.
In general when we are in holiday we prefer to spend our energies in the methodical research of an authentic osteria, a genuine trattoria, an artisan cheese farm. And so, during our holiday in the Cuneo area some times ago (here the excursions), we ended up shopping at La Formaggeria, in Torre Pellice.
Visiting a shop like that one must conclude that, from the cultural point of view, it's not something really different from a museum. Philosophy of Bruna Magnano, that runs the shop, is to refuse commercial mass products and to offer instead niche quality, linked to the territory, trying to divulge the tradition, preserving it from the homologation imposed by the outside world.

Pecorino in must

Ricotta in hay

I believe that this is the right goal of a museum. The only difference is that a museum reminds me of a "moldy" smell, while La Formaggeria, instead, it welcomes the visitor with an attractive scent.

The counter exposes dozens of cheeses from that area, besides other products: fresh pasta, olive oils, various type of preserves... Among our purchases there are the cheese shown in these photos:
- Pagliettina, smooth cheese of mixed cow, goat and sheep milk, strong and acidulous taste
- Aged Goat Tomino, demi-strong, intense and resolute savour
- Pecorino aged in grape must, demi-strong, resolute notes of flavor coming from the must that colors the surface of the crust
- Ricotta aged in hay, demi-strong, salted, taste and smell of hay

La Formaggeria Di Magnano Bruna
Via Arnaud, 6, 10066 Torre Pellice (TO)

Une Gourmandise

A chef, to be a real a chef, must mobilize all the five senses.

Muriel Barbery

A course must be a joy for the sight, for the smell, for the taste, of course, but also for the touch, that so often drive the choices of the chef and has its role in the gastronomic celebration. The hearing doesn't seem to carry a lot of weight, but it's true that the act of eating is not marked of silence nor of row, because any sound that interefere with the tasting favours or hampers it: in this way the meal reveal itself definitely synaesthetic.

Uncooked tomato, eaten when just picked up from the garden, is the horn of plenty of the simple sensations, a cascade that swarms in one's mouth gathering every pleasure. The resistance of the tight skin just as much as it's enough, the tissues that melt in mouth, the liquid rich of seeds that pours at the corners of our lips and that we wipe out with no fear to make dirty our fingers, that little succulent sphere that pour in us rivers of nature: here is tomato, here is the adventure.

The real sashimi is crisp, yet it melts on one's tongue. It invites to a slow and flexuous mastication that doesn't have the purpose to change the nature of the aliment, but only to savour the aerial "soft-flabby-ness". Yes, soft-flabby-ness: Not softness, nor flabbyness, because sashimi, velvet powder similar to silk, brings in itself a few of both and, in the extraordinary alchemy of its gauzy essence, keeps a milky density that clouds don't have.

The point is not to eat nor to live, it is to know why. In the name of the father, of the son and of the cream puff, amen. I die.

(Extracts from Muriel Barbery, "Estasi Culinarie", the Italian translation of "Une Gourmandise", translation to English by me - here the Italian version)

Uhm... "crisp"?

Eros Buratti and the art of preservation of milk

Upon exit from the shop and checking the receipt, R and i commented that the bill, after all, was less than what we expected, given the amount and quality of the purchases.
"Over here, it's well-spent!" whispered a girl with Indian or Pakistani features just moments before, with the knowing tone of one who probably

La Casera cheese shelf

is a regular customer of La Casera herself. She was responding to my witty jest that emphasized worry for an expensive bill, humor that i thought appropriate to the friendly climate of the shop.

Besides cheese and cured meats, the shop also has a little section for salt. While Eros, the storekeeper, passionately described to us the experience of tasting salt from various origins, i was thinking to the contradiction between the criteria of ecologic shopping and the purchase of a can of salt coming from Himalaya, rather than South Africa. But, come on! When will it ever happen again to be able to compare salt from Ibiza with the Hawaiian one? And so we added those two containers to our shopping bag.
I am quite ignorant in this matter. Up until now, to me salt was just salt. NaCl. It's not that sodium chloride could ever have different organoleptic peculiarities if it comes from South American mines instead of Sicilian saltworks. Eros told me that the differences in taste are not given by the chemical substance itself, but by its impurities that every kind of salt has.

Could be...
Anyway i was already fully satisfied by the more interesting subject of cheese. "Taste this last, please" goes Eros, handing me a teaspoon with some fresh goat cheese.
Delicious! so much that i asked him to add some of it to the basket. In the mean time R was involved by a woman (Eros' mother?) in buying an exquisite slice of Matera bread, displayed on a counter at the end of the shop.
Fortunately these last two purchases were made at the end, after a list of items that were already carefully prepared before, selecting from the products listed on La Casera's website. It's really difficult, in fact, to choose real-time among hundreds of available cheeses (mainly from Piedmont, but also from other Italian regions, and some foreign ones).

Cheese!

The fresh goat cheese, together with a slice of pecorino siciliano ai pistacchi di Bronte (a token gift for the large purchase) were the worthy completion of our shopping list that included three cow milk cheeses (Toma del Maccagn, Raschera semistagionata, Tella Alto Adige), one sheep (Canestrato di Castel del Monte) and one goat (Ubriaco al Traminer). Any choice we inquired about was followed by a qualified comment from Eros.
As a choice criterium we took into account the difficulty of being able to find those cheeses (a more famous pecorino di Pienza, for example, is easy to find also in the regular shopping centers).

"You're in the right place" answered Eros, amused, showing up from the back-shop when, to break the ice, right in front of the display shelves, i said "Goodmorning, by chance do you have cheese over here?"
A moment before, in front of the shop window, i dwelt upon the thought of the many surprising forms developed in the centuries of the need to preserve the milk nutritive properties.

Indeed we were really in the right place.

---

In the picture of the cheese plate, starting from the yellow one on the top, clockwise: Bagoss (cow milk, Lombardy), Ubriaco al Traminer (goat, Veneto), Canestrato di Castel del Monte - presidio SlowFood (sheep, Abruzzo), Pecorino siciliano DOP ai pistacchi di Bronte (sheep, Sicily), Toma del Maccagn - presidio SlowFood (cow, Piedmont), goat fresh cheese (Piedmont), Graukase (cow, Alto Adige), Vezzena - presidio SlowFood (cow, Trentino), Raschera semistagionata DOP (cow, Piedmont). In the center, Tella Alto Adige (cow).
Bagoss was bought in a grocery shop, Graukase and Vezzena at the Christmas markets in Merano (Trentino Alto Adige), the others are all from Eros' shop.

La Casera
Piazza Ranzoni, 19
28921 Verbania Intra
http://www.formaggidieros.it

Hybrids? No, thanks!

Here some of our tomato plants growing in the garden

Last spring we planted some vegetables. It's my wife that mostly takes care of the little plants, but both of us put all our enthusiasm into this enterprise and finally, after much success with zucchini, in this period we are beginning to harvest our beloved tomatoes, maybe a little late, due to our mountain climate. We are very proud.

Our tomatoes taste much better than the ones you can buy at the store, because the fruits ripen while still on the plants. If only a tomato could be put in the telephone cable i would let you taste it yourself.

The prize for our devotion was being able to see the whole growth, from the seeds to the resulting fruits. But it's not only for this that i like the idea of gardening vegetables. I believe that producing our own vegetables shows that, atleast in part, one can exit from the logic of consumerism that fattens our society despite the poor countries.

Self-production of vegetables, moreover, reduces to the minimum any waste, especially in a subsistence system upon which the plants grow from the seeds saved from the previous year's harvest (we are planning to try this method). This past year experience delighted us so much that we have already begun to buy seeds for next year, and in this research i discovered a disconcerting thing.

At the store the tomatoes we like most are the "Mini San-Marzano". So we tried to look for informations about seeds of this variety, and we discovered that they are hybrids. In flower shops and nurseries we noticed also on packaging of other vegetables seeds the lablel "F1 hybrid" well shown.

As an ignorant that i am, i tried to give a meaning to this expression, as an analogy to the animal world. An hybrid is an individual born crossing parents of two different races. But what about it in botany?

Tomatoes "Rouge d'Iraq" variety

Surfing the Internet it opened to me a new world. A hybrid (i was looking in particular for tomatoes, but it applies also for a big number of other vegetables that are at the base of entire continents alimentation, like corn) is a plant born from a seed obtained from a fruit produced with a particular technique of artificial impollination.

The first step lies in reproducing plants by mean of autotrophic breeding, for a number of six to ten generations. Since tomatoes are hermaphrodites (that is that every flower contains both the masculine and femimine element), it is possible that they self-fecundate (autotrophic pollination).

This type of breeding obtains children-plants weaker than their parents, because (if i well understood) also the recessive genes reply. In genetics, between two alternatives, the dominante (stronger) gene tends to win, and this gene usually brings the best peculiarities, for example the vigor of the plant (infact a gene that carry a looser peculiarity would be already extinct in the history for natural selection). In an autotrophic pollination, instead, the genetic patrimony of the style (feminine part) is identical to the one of the pollen (masculine part), and so also the recessive genes can reply undisturbed.

Once obtained plants like that, weak but pure, the second step is to cross, by mean of artificial pollination, the styles of one genetical line with the pollen of another one (the artificial pollination is mandatory to be sure that the flower don't self-pollinate again). This process produces plants much more vigorous and fructiferous than the ancestors that started the lines. The seeds produced from the fruits of these plants are labeled as "F1 (= first generation) hybrids". So, buying seeds of "hybrid F1" varieties one can expect a better production, and this, if it is already stimulating for a little garden of one's family, it is fundamental for productive farmhouses.

Tomatoes "Cherokee purple" variety

The problem of hybrids obtained like that is that those plants produce fruits that contain seeds which genetic patrimony is very poor, so the next generations tend to be always weaker and weaker. So much that it proves inconvenient to use the seeds of the previous harvest to grow the next year plants.

The consequence of this is that the farmers must buy every year the seeds for their plantations. And who gets the benefits are the companies that produce hybrid seeds. Their strategy is to find commercially valid varieties, push them on the market and create a demand, so that the farmers must convert to those varieties and buy the seeds year by year.

Few multinational companies, which names are already known for production of genetically modified organisms (Monsanto, Pioneer,...) control also the market of these seeds, and so they are progressively becoming owner of the entire agricultural and food market, manipulating economy of poor countries that lived with subsistency farming till now.

For the farmers themselves it's impossible to learn to produce their own seeds by mean of ibridation, because, above the special skill required, this technique also needs a big effort in labor. Easier, for them, to buy the seeds from those multinational companies that brilliantly solve this detail of overworking cheap labor of the poor countries.

I am kind of ignorant about this matter, and till few days ago i didn't even know the existence of hybrid seeds. I wonder if there exist a movement that opposes to these techniques similar to what it is happening for GM products. I wonder if there is a regulation in Italy (i doubt there is any in the USA, being that there is none for GMO either) that imposes atleast to label the seeds obtained in this way.

I wonder, at last, how could it be possible to make an ethical shopping when buying vegetables in the stores: for what i know not even organic agriculture refuses hybrids.

References:

• "Hybrid Seed Production in Tomato" (AVRDC - The World Vegetable Center)
• Abstract from "Seminario sull'alimentazione" (Associazione Consumattori)
• "Ibridi F1" - Forum topic (Collettivamente.com)
• "Recuperare il seme dei pomodori" (AAM Terra Nuova)

Our tomatoes in these pictures are - i hope - all non-hybrids.

Good morning!

A new working day is gonna start. Still not completely awake, i go to open the door to the terrace/garden and i let the dogs out for any kind of answer to the call of Nature, and i put the coffeepot on. I go back to the bathroom and i finally get awake with some cold water on my face. When i go back in the kitchen the coffee is ready.

Today's breakfast

Some of my blogger friends know that i am under a diet, but the breakfast, it's known, is the most important meal of the day, so, there i am to set a healty plate to start the day in the best way.

Here it is my breakfast for today: one peach, a kiwi, some corn flakes, some yogurt, a cup of coffee (i like it black with no sugar) and a couple of toasted bread. Sometimes i add also a glass of fruit juice, a few of milk, a slice of cake or a couple of cookies.
Obviously the type of fruit depends upon the availability of the fridge and the season: cantaloup, plums, apricots are common variations. It will be more difficult to find some alternative during the winter.

Considering that since few times ago i couldn't swallow anything else than the cup of coffee, this is a big qualitative leap, isn't it?

What do you like to eat for breakfast?

Grandpa Gino's apricots

I read some place that visual memory, in human beings, is more persistent than the one coming from the other senses.
The colors of summer in my grandparents' garden, for example, are still alive in my mind, after more than thirty years.

One detail, in that garden, almost summarizes my childhood: the apricot tree.
An ancient, huge tree, that matched in similar size a fig tree at the opposite end.
Grandpa's apricot tree used to produce tons of fruits that matured all contemporarily in few days, and in those days incredible amounts of fruit were shared with relatives, friends and neighbors because in those times, nothing was to be wasted. The excess that still remained after the distribution was transformed by my mother and the other women in the family into so much jam that one could swim in it, and came into good use for the rest of the year.
The picture of that fruit is really evocative to me, but i thought i had forgotten its taste. It's been awhile that i've eaten apricots that taste like apricots. Possibly around thirty years since the ones i eat now are bought only at the supermarket. They don't taste like anything because, for commercial reasons, they had been picked still green and matured on the shelves.
The other day i bit into an apricot bought at the GAS i was speaking about in the previous post. All of a sudden my memory flew to grandparents' garden with myself, knees all dirty and greasy, playing with my brother as if it happened yesterday.

Here, our second shopping list at the GAS:

• 1kg [2lb and 3.27oz] homemade bread loaf with walnuts - 3.95€
• 1kg bread loaf with spelt, pumpkin seeds and oats - 3.95€
• 1kg "Pugliese" bread loaf, with flour 0 and wheat bran - 3.10€
• 1kg "Tranvai" bread loaf, with flour 0, rasins and apricot - 2.50€
• 500g [1lb and 1.63oz] organic apricots - 2.10€
• 1kg organic nectarines - 3.40€
• 1kg five grain cereal - 3.55€
• 1l [2.11pt] dish detergent - 1.50€
• 1.470kg [3lb and 3.85oz] cantaloupe - 4.70€

Total: 28.75€

In particular, beneath the apricots, the cantaloupe and the loaves are very good.
This time the shopping was ordered in advance, and i collected it in another place, convenient because of the close proximity to our home (even if still reachable only by car). Unfortunately this is only a pick-up location, and dry and surplus products are not available to buy with no reservation.
The waste of packaging was almost nothing: one (parcially broken) carton box, saved from some product supply, two used paper bags for the bread, one used plastic bag for the apricots and one for the cereals, one used plastic bottle for the detergent, to be returned. Peaches and cantaloupe with no packaging.

Ten perfect matches

Maurice's and Laura's blogs made my mouth water. So, even if i was not explicitly invited, i go on participating to the meme titled "Ten perfect matches", that is the list of ten perfect gastronomical pairing.

I decided to choose pairings that do not require any cooking preparation, but are served in their simplicity, so that the tastiness is not hidden by the skill of the chef. No offense so to my favorite cheff (my wife), if i don't include in this list any plate she made.
The theory wants that pairing foods one promotes the choice within the same territory, and i think that this is a good way. Nevertheless in this list there are matches of products coming from far apart... they look anyway to me perfect.

There are my ten choices.

1. Spicey gorgonzola with grapes ambrosia (a kind of syrup) and Passito from Pantelleria Salvatore Murana.
2. Tuscan bread with some extra virgin olive oil and some grain of coarse salt with Chianti Classico.
3. Walnut bread with Chevre and a glass of Alsacian Gewürztraminer.
4. 99% fondant Lindt chocolate with Barolo Chinato.
5. A slice of toasted wholemeal bread with parcially melted Brie, a slice of Speck Alto Adige and a Chimay White Cap.
6. Slice of Munster with cumin seeds and Bonne Esperance beer.
7. Raw breton oyster with Guinness just tapped off (with also the clover drawn on the foam).
8. Pienza Pecorino aged in walnut leaves with Montepulciano d'Abruzzo Marina Cvetic.
9. Bruschetta (toasted bread) with melted Bagoss and a slice of Colonnata Lard with Masi Campofiorin.
10. Tuna sashimi with soy sauce and wasabi and a glass of Greco di Tufo Feudi di San Gregorio.
11. Epoisses spread on still warmish baguette with Chateauneuf du Pape.

Oops... i listed eleven. I should delete one, but i cannot decide which one... well... i'd better stop thinking, otherwise i will end up adding some more.

There we are. Now i should "pass" the meme to other people. I virtually pass to anyone stop by reading this blog. If you accept it, please link this blog and put a comment, so i link yours back and we don't break the chain.

Here the friends that cought the ball:
Mistral

Where to go?

View of Costa Smeralda, Sardinia

Everybody i meet in the blog universe, that is not from Italy or doesn't know very well this country, asks me for suggestions about where to travel, if one comes here for tourism.
That, to me, is a difficult question, first of all because i am not a tourist, so i see this country with different eyes. I have all the time to spend over here so i don't have necessarily to choose the very best all of the sudden as it happens to tourists (unless they're so rich to be able to spend ages over here). Moreover, being that i am an Italian in Italy, i have more chance to appreciate the very deep inside it, because i don't have the barreer of language and cultural difference.

Autumn in Monferrato, Piedmont
by Mario Spalla

An american tourist in Italy would probably end up to eat at the touristic expensive restaurant in the center town, with the menu translated in English (where "Prosciutto di Parma D.O.P." is "ham"), which, undoubtedly, may serve good food. But Italy is also made of the little winebar in that hole of a wall, in an unknown village where they serve a good wine with a plate of salumi e formaggi locali (local cured meat and cheeses), where the owner will spend some time chatting with you (a good example of it is Il Covo).

Secondly the answer of such a question strictly depends upon what one is interested to. To make some exapmples, if somebody is interested in art i would suggest Florence and Rome. Who wants to have fun till early morning spending time (and money) in the discos, they should go to Riviera Romagnola. If you are interested in nice tans, sandy beaches next to a beautiful sea, Sardinia is your final destination.

Greve in Chianti centre village, Tuscany

But you may also be interested in skiing and in mountain landscapes. In these cases i would suggest the Alps...
About food... uhm... I think wherever you can find excellent McDonald's.
Ahaha... ehm... just joking!

So, not being able to be objective enough, i'll try an answer according to my tastes.

As a first suggestion i would say that, for who can choose, it's not a wonderful idea to travel in August. One problem is that it can be really very hot. Especially in the south, the termometer can easily reach 40 Celsius (104 F). I have been in Palermo with 50 C (122 F) and it was terrible. That problem is, obviously, less felt in the north and up in the mountains, where temperatures are more human-bearable.

Serra San Quirico, Marche
from www.comune.serrasanquirico.an.it

Besides the warmth, the main problem of August, anyway, is that Italians have the bad habit to take off for holidays in this month all together. This means that the typical holiday destinations are packed of people, while the non-typical ones are empty. Personally i don't like crowd, so i prefer, atleast in that month, the unusual destinations (there are nice ones too). Plus, if you go to some crowded place, it is also expensive (for an easy supply-demand rule), while if you go to an unusual one, being that there's not a big lot of people, also the shops tend to close for holiday. Last, in August, being that big herds of people moving, if you travel by car you can find a really busy traffic, especially on the main highways from north to south.

If there's no other choice than August, i would suggest the north, which is cooler and better served. But the best period to visit Italy, in my opinion, is the spring, untill the half of july. Infact winter is cold, and daylights are shorter, autumn can really give wonderfully colored days, but sometimes it can be very rainy.

I don't like strict programs that don't allow me to really enjoy one place because there's no time. Instead, i think that the best Italy one can appreciate is the one that is not visible on the surface. To meet people, having dinners in a little informal trattorias, shopping at the local artisan's, learn the local customs... no way you can do it, if you just pass by for a couple of days.
Which means that if you really want to have a wide experience of Italian culture you have to spend ages in this country, because the local cultures are so various that they are really different region by region, or also town by town. So, better to choose one or two areas and deeply explore only them. Just to make a gastronomical example, the typical dish of Piedmont is called bagna caoda.

Assisi, Umbria

It's a kind of big pot with a sauce made out of olive oil, garlic and anchovees, to be eaten hot wih raw vegetables.
In the next region of Lumbardy common people almost do not even know what bagna caoda is. Vice versa, the typical dish of this last region is casseula, stewed pork meat with cabbage. Nobody knows it in Piedmont. Moreover you'll never find casseula or bagna caoda nor in Piedmont nor in Lumbardy if you go to a common tourist restaurant.

Orvieto, Umbria

Those dishes can be found only in the old fashioned country trattorias, and only during winter.

So, planning to stay... let's say... one month in Italy i would choose no more than two places to stay, and rent a car to drive around those two places and visit the typical old little villages.

My favorite area in Italy is the center. In the center I would avoid Tuscany, because it's packed of foreign people, tourists or immigrants, especially from UK and USA. I have nothing racist against British or American people, but for sure, if you want to experience the real Italy, their invadent presence is a big limit. I remember, for example, walking in the center of Greve in Chianti (a little village in the famous wine area), where one can think there's the most authentic and uncontaminated italian culture, the most widely spoken language that i could hear was English.
My favorite regions are infact Umbria, Marche and Abruzzo, considered much less as a target by those "colonizers". That's why those regions are much less expensive although the territory is very similar to the Tuscan one (i hope this won't be considered a suggestion to rich American and British people to colonize also those lands!).

Dolomiti view, Trentino Alto Adige
from www.dolomitinetwork.com

Saint Rhemy en Bosses, Valle d'Aosta
from www.regione.vda.it

Those regions are my favorite for the food, the landscapes made of sweet hills, the wines (although Tuscany is still the best to that respect), the little medioeval villages, the courtesy and hospitality of people, and in general the culture strictly linked to the roots in their territory. The Parco Enogastronomico della Marca Centrale (Oenological and Gastronomical Park of Central Marche) is a good example of research of our root in the territory, through food, and preservation of our culture.

One of my favorite activities is also hiking in the mountains. With that purpose i suggest the spring on the Alps. Hiking paths are well kept and pretty much each one of them has atleast one refuge on the top, which makes the walk even more interesting for the food and the rest that can be enjoyed after the hard ascent.

View from Monte Tesoro, Lumbardy
from Rubber Slippers in Italy

The dolomites in the Alto Adige area are one of the most beautiful scenic view i have ever seen in my entire life, and the variety of mountain landscapes in Valle d'Aosta worth some days spent on hiking. Also the area (Como lake) where I live is enjoyable for hiking, and it offers also dramatic views of the lake.

Coliseum, Rome

Besides my tastes, i think that the ultimate thing that is missing wherever in the westerner world and we have in Italy, is the History, mother of our culture and customs. That's a fact that most of European (and, by extension, also South and North American) cultures were somehow originated in this country, so any foreign tourist coming to Italy can find atleast a little stone of his own History.

If i was a tourist, then, i wouldn't miss to visit Rome for its monuments, buildings and ruins that designed all the westerner cultures of the last three millennia, although nowadays it's a so busy and messy town that can be really tiring.

A good guide for Italian restaurants is Slow Food's Osterie d'Italia.
A good help to choose hiking paths in Lumbardy is Diska's Photos and PassoLento

(click on the photos to enlarge)

Trattoria Da Giusy

Climbing from Ponte di Legno towards Tonale Pass, there is soon the turn into the road to Gavia Pass, and after few kilometers the turn to Localita' Pezzo, and here, after some hairpin bends uphill, you arrive to the center of the village, where the restaurant Da Giusy is well signaled.
The environment is very familiar, a young man and a girl wait at the table, children of Mrs. Giusy, who works in the kitchen. The place looks more like an alpine refuge than a restaurant, infact they serve really simple traditional courses, with full and sincere tastes. The typical cooking exalts the flavors of this area, the portions are very generous.
My wife and I were satisfied by a plate of gnocchetti "Buongustaio" (kind of pasta) with vegetables and pancetta, an orzotto (risotto made out of barleycorn instead of rice) with porcini mashrooms: not bad indeed, a wonderful horse steak, huge and very tasty, with spinach, and a simple fresh salad. Water and half a liter of Valtellina Superiore loose red wine washed down the meal, ending up with a good expresso coffee. All this for 40.75 euros. It was not possible to go out without honoring the offer to taste the digestive, choosen among a large set of bottles of homemade liqueurs (excellent the Genepy), "And if the police stops you..." says the waiter at my concern about the alcoholic rate in my breath, "...tell them that you had dinner at Giusy's, and they won't give you any ticket!"

Trattoria Da Giusy
Via Ercavallo, 39
Localita' Pezzo
25056, Ponte di Legno (Bs).
Dogs not allowed.
Suggested by SlowFood.