Salame (not salami...!)

Today has been one of those days. After the long - mostly rainy - Easter weekend, this Tuesday morning could only start with a mailbox full of emails, many of which coming from the US and other EU continental countries, which meant urgency, pressure, stress, that I-wanna-be-elsewhere feeling that everybody knows.

The good news was that on Saturday I had been very early (...ok, 10:30 am... but it opens at 11 am and was a Saturday, so it WAS early!) to the Richmond farmers' market at Heron Square, where I bought an entire loaf of whole-grain bread. It does not really come cheap, costing some £7, but lasts for the full week and dries properly as real home-made bread (as opposed to the semi-plastic used-to-be-frozen-only-two-minutes-ago Sainsburys baguettes!) AND that I still had in my fridge some real, smelly, proper Salame from Greve in Chianti, which was brought to me by a good friend who came to see me some weeks ago from Tuscany (see pic above!).

Greve is a well-known little town in the heart of Chianti, in Tuscany, with many fattorie and osterie and an impressive production of high quality salumi, meat and pecorino cheese. To me it is just paradise, far better then Maldives! If you have not been there yet, just wait until late September or even October and try and spend a couple of weeks there: a 'fly and drive' would be the right fit. If you need further advise just drop me an email: happy to help! Dont' miss Nerbone, the osteria in the central square: a must!

Back to my de-stressing exercise, I still had some Chianti Gallo Nero left from the weekend, enough to fill a couple of decent glasses, which - maremma in qua e la' - was just the perfect match! (...don't even try to understand the maremma thing...: it can't be translated).

So, the simplest dinner: nice brown bread, a few slices of salame (...plz note: 1 salamE, 2 or more salamI and when we refer to many kinds of salami as a category, then we say salUmi.... difficult...?!? Not more than driving in Rome...), and two glasses of the simplest red Chianti wine! Please, remember: the best way to have salame from Tuscany is cutting thick slices using a sharp knife: never thin and never ever using a slicer... !!

As a first post, this seems more than enough..... time to go to bed! Good night everyone!!