the food!!!!

I can't believe I don't have any photos of the actual food we ate on our trip, but it was heavenly gorgeous. Mostly because it was home cooked from fresh, organic local produce.

Millo and Nadia make their own bread, jam, and the most gorgeous elderflower cordial. They also have an allotment where they grow their own veg, and we were treated to quite a few courgettes while we were there!! Oh, and did I mention the chives, rosemary and rocket that they grow in their garden? Nadia has sent me some of the rocket seeds which we hope to grow here, the leaves were so sharp and tasty, not like the ones that come out of the overpriced salad bags you find in supermarkets here!

The meals we had were simple, but so tasty! It reminded us what good food, proper eating is all about.

On our last night there, they took us to a restaurant a friend of theirs owns which is part of an agrotourist farm. It's called Pieve del Colle, I will upload photos later when blogger is behaving! Again, all the produce is fresh and organic, and the food was out of this world. Thankfully, in contrast to other places we visited (eg. Spain - boo!), being vegan wasn't a problem at all here.

This is what we had for dinner that night:

To start - farfalle pasta with potato, green beans, garlic, basil, salt & pepper, olive oil.

Then, green lentils, courgette with wild fennel, spelt with tomatoes and black olives, and green beans with mint. Accompanied with home made bread, home made wine and I had green tea with mint to finish. While we ate, puppies nestled at our feet and licked our toes! We also watched the sun go down over one of the most beautiful spots I've ever been to, and gazed up at the stars and milky way before heading home. It couldn't have been more perfect.

If you ever fancy a stay there yourself, have a look at their website,
www.pievedelcolle.com You will need a car to get around.

countryside idyll, san marino di urbino

These are photos from a place we visited, friends of Nadia & Millo's are biodynamic farmers and live in a converted church in the countryside of san marino di urbino. There is a chapel connected to the house which is still a chapel, and when we visited was decked out with sunflowers and lavender.

What you don't see here are pictures of the evening we spent with them and their friends, sharing good food, and later on, playing music. First Nadia got out her recorder and started playing, then Rickard got out his violin, then Roberto got out his guitar and Millo played along on various drums and home made percussion instruments. They played gorgeous traditional European folk music for hours while the sun set and the stars came out. Beautiful!!

The bottom three photos are from a walk we took in the surrounding countryside.

wandering around in gubbio town

Paul at our picnic in Gubbio (above), taken by Nadia.

The colour, oh the colour!

Found in Gubbio

Found in the park in Gubbio

Urbino

the sunflowers

So we kept driving by fields and fields of happy, yellow sunflowers. I asked Millo & Nadia (see the last photo at the bottom of this post) if we could stop by one and take a picture. On our way to the beach on our last day, we drove up into this one, and asked the owner if we could take pictures.

"My friends are from England and they don't have this where they come from," Nadia explained. The lovely man happily obliged and even asked if we wanted to take one away with us. He spent ages talking to us (that's him below in the blue shirt, talking to Nadia), and when we drove away, Millo said to Nadia, "We must come back one day with a bottle of wine."
This is why I love Italy.

Welcome!

I just got back from Italy and had such a fantastic time that I decided to start a journey blog that would encompass a travel blog and also be a journal of sorts. As I've gotten out of the habit of keeping a journal, having this blog will encourage me to get back into the swing of it and record those memories for posterity.

I'll be posting soon!