Life goes on........

Wild mushrooms risotto

NO BUONO. At the end, we had to cancel the olive harvest!

After spending days and days with our ears pinned to the radio listening to the scary weather forecasts for the olive picking weekend, it seemed we only had two sensible options (1) would be to build a Noah’s ark  or (2) lay back on the sofa , barricaded in, ready for the promised  rain, lightning and even snow! What was for sure was that there would be nothing picked that week-end, so I had to put a message on FB and tell all the lovely people, who were ready to participate in the olive picking, that the harvest date has had to be moved and a new date NOVEMBER THE 10TH has been decided. Fingers crossed the sky will be  blue and the sun will be shining.

Now you probably want to know what was the outcome of this expected dire situation, are we bobbing up and down with Hilda (the goat) Lui (the dog) three cats  and variety of chickens in a boat Nick managed to hammer together or are we still holed up on the sofa, surrounded by the said animals and a few wine bottles, with 10 foot of snow outside. No, of course not, by Friday evening , the rain in Umbria was still ok,  what can I say……enough to water my geraniums! A few drops here and there, but to be fair , we did have strong winds and cold temperatures. So in the evening we had a good  excuse to light ,for the first time, the fireplace in the kitchen and drink a good Brunello di Montalcino given to us by our friends Dylan and Alice, fantastico!

When we opened the door on Saturday morning, the smell of fresh grass and earth was everywhere. The first thing I thought to do was to go and check our very old Poplar tree.  Every Autumn this beautiful old trunk plays host to some very tasty Pioppini mushrooms ,and on Saturday there  they were, just ready to be picked. The day had  started well! After a nice walk and a good coffee in Orvieto my only thought was how to cook the mushrooms. After giving it lots of consideration on the way home a decision was made  EASY PEASY, a good Risotto will highlight the top quality of these wild Pioppini. So after setting up the fire place (once you start you can’t stop!),we  opened a bottle of Pinot Nero to let it breathe, set the online radio to the “24 hours of Johnny Cash”  station and the evening flew by even with the strong rain banging outside our windows.

On Sunday morning unfortunately no one had bothered to inform our noisy rooster that the clocks had been put back an hour, so there he was, proud and happy singing his heart out at some ungodly hour to let us know that the day was windy but bright and sunny. After eating 3 portions of Risotto each the night before we decided the only right thing to do to take advantage of this early start would be to go for an hour run before we GO OUT IN TORRE ALFINA FOR A NICE SUNDAY LUNCH!

So really all this story is about is just to let you know that the olives are still on the trees, and that all in all we haven’t done to badly and survived well , and that despite the weather life goes on here in Umbria!