Saturday, May 30, 2009

Reason #4,567 why I love Italy:

At the market today I was shopping for our arugula, insalata, pinoli, etc, as well as all the FRESH (Oh Happy Days!) ingredients to make guacamole for the poor Italians who, while they do so very many things well, fail miserably when they serve some vaguely green goop that they call "guacamole".

So I had the most lovely exchange in Italian with the lady choosing all my greens for me:

"Tell me, Amore, what can I get for you?"

I listed the goods.

She DELICATELY puts the lettuce in a bag for me and instructs:

"Be VERY careful with this lettuce - it is extremely delicato!"

I smiled just realizing that in many other cities one rarely finds this kind of pride and attention dedicated to a head of lettuce, and it shows so much of why I love Italy! She wanted to be SURE that my lettuce arrived unbruised in my salad bowl, as truly, it really IS the only way to enjoy your salad!

Then she followed up with,

"Amore - let me give you a melone (i.e. cantelope). It is perfect and you will die of ecstasy when you eat it. Eat it tonight, or tomorrow - you can eat it a few days from now, but if you eat it tonight, you will never be the same."

Time for me to sign off and crack open that melon!

UPDATE: It was heavenly!!!!

7 comments:

Beach Bum said...

Orgasmic food. I laughed out loud when I read that last quote. Thanks for this story!

Gi said...

Oooohh... Was it as good as she said? :-)

Mei said...

Yes, maybe is not my reason #4,567 but that is in my list somewhere, specially if you are in Toscana... ;-)

Anonymous said...

Now if you would also tell us what you're recording in Italy... we would feel kinda special, kinda let in on ;)


Hey Mei! Are you planning to come to Paris for "La Donna del Lago"? We could arrange a meeting of the Yankediva bloggers on that occasion.

Mei said...

Yes, Dolcevita, going to Paris next year is on my mind... If, lucky me, I get tickets I'll let you know...

I'll try to make arrangements in order to get the tickets as soon as possible...

You know getting tickets for this title will be very hard... I'm crossing my fingers...

David said...

And I love the way you get a free bunch of erbe with your purchase. As for my local street market here in London, I won't go there: if you try to choose, the vendor will snap 'Ere! You gets what we gives you'. That's to say, two rotten fruit or veg to every six.

Loving Furore, by the way - and made a friend's birthday by getting her a copy last week.

Hariclea said...

Ohh..soo good to have you back! Glad you had fun in Wien! it's special in a beautiful, old and grand style kind of way ... Love your pictures of ti by the way, ahhh the Goldregen!

And they absolutely loved you there, excitingly short rehearsal times and all:

http://www.wienerzeitung.at/DesktopDefault.aspx?TabID=3895&Alias=Wzo&cob=408813&Page11867=2

:-)