The mist and olives

This was taken Saturday morning and shows Trevi and the valley below full of mist. As the sun warmed the air this lifted and the valley was eventually clear again.

Today Alveiro came up to view the grove below the house which he tends for a local Avocate. We now get on very well with him having earn't our stripes over the years. At first he was quite off but because I was keen to work the olive grove we have some common ground and he is happy to stop and chew the cud - about olives of course.

He did drop in the conversation that one of our neighbors was looking for help to pick her olives and, as is common, was wanting to 'pay' with olives. So you help pick and take an agreed percentage of olives picked as payment.

I am quite interested as we have enough olives for our olive tree adopters but no more and so I would like more olives so I have some oil to sell.

Mashing

The mills are already pressing. Olio nuovo is upon us. The first oils of the new season's harvest.

I tasted some olio nuovo last night which quite honestly was the colour of some awful mint cocktail and tasted of nothing but it was new which is the only thing that could be said in its favour.

I am still holding fire on picking and keeping a close eye on the trees.......

Il Palio di Trevi

Saturday night saw the 32nd running of the Palio which pitches teams from the three Terzieri against each other pulling a cart weighing some 430kg's over a course ending in the central Piazza of Trevi.

The three terzieri are Matiggia, Castello and Piano. This year it was Piano who triumphed with a time of 2' 23".

Ramblin' man

Been in the orto today tidying up some bits and pieces. The tomatoes still have a reasonable amount of fruit on them and the weather is still very warm. A lot warmer than the same time last year I believe.

At this point Rachel would say I should keep a weather diary, like someone she knew in New Zealand, so in a thrice I could refer back and discover what the weather conditions were exactly this time last year or even 5 years ago. Not my thing really.

Now, mutterings offstage that 'there is not much to do in New Zealand' will be ignored as being without foundation.

We are going to leave parts of the veg garden fallow over winter and bring in a load of compost and manure in a concerted effort to improve the structure of the soil.

On your bike

As Norman Tebbit famously inferred in 1981 to the Conservative party conference.

Fast forward to another recessionary period and the Italians are getting on their bikes. Sales of bicycles in 2011 outstripped cars for the first time since the second world war. Quite astonishing really given how much Italians like their cars.

The another thing that is noticeable is that we are in the hunting season and there are significantly fewer rounds being shot. I do not know how much a hunting licence costs but it will run into hundreds of Euros' easily I would thing so another possible saving in these straightened times.

More praise for Cuoco

I made the semifreddo last night for our guests. They were stunned. It was the perfect partner to a few glasses of Moscatel.

Rupert Kirby
Chef
Casa Rosada
http://www.casarosada-algarve.com


The Casa Margherita Cookbook - Cuoco - Recipes From Umbria's Larder is available to buy at 
www.casa-margherita.com

Conkers

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Seeing these horse chestnuts on the ground yesterday reminded me of when I was a small boy and of playing conkers at school.

The chestnuts were collected and then hardened by various methods (brine, baking or vinegar) and then a string was inserted through the middle and knotted and you were ready for competition.

Conkers were played at every single opportunity at school - between lessons, during lessons and at break times. You had one strike in turn with the object being to break the opposing players conker into pieces. If you were victorious then your conker was a oner. Victory a second time a twoer and so on.

If someone had a champion conker - say twelver then you would normally only expose it to similarly successful opponents.

Them were days.