Posted by on Jul 21, 2016 | 14 comments

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ARGGGG…why won’t they ever just stay here in the house and watch me SLEEP?

Well, there they went again, on some pretext of visiting a bakery in a little town nearby, Genzano, where they had spent the night learning how to make Genzano’s famous loaves.  The old baker (in shorts and smoking his cigarette –this was 20 years ago–from which the ash dropped into the dough!) was long gone, but his granddaughter was there, lively and fun and telling little tales about their famous Antichi Sapori.

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Mama brought home some whole wheat focaccia that was REALLY good, but the trip out was trying because of traffic.  The foliage along a certain road to Genzano had spontaneously ignited (!) because of the summer heat and so all the cars from that road came to the one mama and papa were on.  And the brush is not cut because no one has organized to cut it and so along all the roads near here, the oleander and other flowering bushes are really, really thick and overhanging the roads a bit too far.

Still, a nice day with plates of porchetta–a huge pork roast stuffed with rosemary, garlic, salt and pepper–and a salad of fennel, oranges and olives, cool and delicious for summer heat.

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Porchetta–stuffed with lovely herbs and slow-roasted for hours

Wish I had been there for THAT!  But they brought home a little piece for me, so I won’t complain.

And they did come back, with no traffic because if you travel in Italy around 2, everyone is having lunch, haha!  Likewise in France.  Travel from noon to 1 and you won’t have troubles.

It’s sort of nice knowing that everyone is doing the same thing at the same time.  Stabilizing, somehow.  As if you all shared a really nice thing in common.  I like that.

But then they went off again last night just to get out in the pretty evening and there I was, sleeping alone.

But at the place they go, something sort of special happened.  That’s tomorrow’s post..

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Plus, mama gave me a very good brushing, which made up for everything.