Don’t Truffle With Me!

You paid WHAT for that lump of dirt?                                         What’s that smell???

Wow, this house is pretty smelly.

Papa went bananas and found a really good source of truffles in Alba (where I’m told the really good ones pop up) and he just went for it since it’s been several years, he says, that he and mama had a little bowl of fresh tagliatelle with truffles shaved over the top using that funny metal thing with a screw on it to open or close the size of the cutter.

So this was their mutual holiday gift to one another.

Personally, I don’t really get the pull of these things, but I do have to admit that the gestalt around the whole activity of finding truffles is really hilarious—they use doggies now because they don’t scarf up the truffles the way the pigs do—but can you just imagine a reallly big, snuffling piggy with his snout to the ground pulling his master along on a leash as he searches for these magic fungi?

I’m rolling in my catnip over this picture! But what’s really funny is that mama sneaked a truffle in her purse years and years ago and landed in the airport in Duluth, Minnesota where no one had seen or heard of a truffle and when she was going through customs, everyone backed away from her because she was giving off the odor of …say…dirty socks or a locker room—something along those lines, in my opinion.  And the customs guy said, “Hey, what’s that?” And mama said, “Oh it’s nothing, just a root I use for my vitamin intake.” And so they let her go through with her smuggled tartufo.

When she got back to California, her brand new Italian purse had to be recycled, she said.  She did consider putting it in a pot with water and making a bouillon out of it, the truffle smell was so strong.

Well, they gave me a little taste of that cream sauce flavored with a tiny piece of truffle and frankly, I don’t know what all the fuss is about.

Wait a minute. They say truffles are an acquired taste

So maybe, just maybe there’s a little left in the pot on the stove for when they’re asleep…hmmmm.

I’m a cinghiale, you nutcake, NOT a truffle pig!