Monday Market

After a quick breakfast in our cottage, we headed off for the town of Foiano Della Chiana, about 20km away, for their Monday market.  It's a small town with beautiful Tuscan architecture and we were able to park within about 200 metres of the market piazza.  We bought the normal tomatoes and grapes, plus salad vegies, pears and a huge bag of clementine oranges, and then wondered around the lovely old town centre, stopping for a bit of food shopping and coffee in a small bar/cafe in the main piazza.

The drive back home, through olive groves, corn fields and tiny villages was beautiful - and we could see Cortona in the distance much of the time.  The silhouette of Santa Margherita (where we walked yesterday) was clearly visible and it didn't seem to be all that high up really!

As soon as we entered our garden, I went looking for the tortoise (I had read about him on the internet and found him yesterday) and he must have realised that we had been to the market because he started walking towards me and my bag of goodies.  I offered him some pieces of lettuce but he just walked over them and kept heading closer, so I tried a little piece of tomato - and he went crazy - absolutely loved it.  Then a piece of Sicilian grape - loved that too.  He is a gorgeous little thing - about the size of a rockmelon.

Brian made some coffee with a platter of fruit, cheese and mortadella and and we sat in the garden, in lovely sunshine, for a couple of hours.  Brian brought his diary up to date while I read and entertained a beautiful black cat who visited for a short time, and then I heard rustling in the garden next to me.  At first I couldn't see what was making the noise, and then there it was - a much smaller version of the tortoise I'd fed earlier (who by now was fast asleep in the sun with a tummy full of tomatoes and grapes).  Anyway the little tortoise is very sweet and loves tomatoes and grapes too - not keen on clementines though.  

Later in the afternoon, we strolled around our beautiful town, discovering more shops, restaurants and bars, and bought some bread and a fabulous nocciola (hazelnut) gelato - the best I've had so far on this trip. 

Today when we were at Foiano Della Chiana, I bought, from the deli section of an alimentari (little supermarket), a container of "anchovies with pesto" which I thought would be perfect with some fresh pasta tonight.  It looked fabulous.  Brian made a big bowl of salad, we had some reasonably good bread and lovely Italian butter, I cooked the pasta and gently heated the anchovies (they looked and smelt delicious) and tossed them in the drained pasta - and it was awful!!!  

The anchovies weren't like the gentle Spanish and Portuguese ones we buy at home - they had a very strong, fishy taste and contained a lot of little bones  - such a disappointment - and such a waste of beautiful pasta.  Definitely going to be a restaurant dinner tomorrow night.