Me And Katie Again

I finished up my work at noon and strolled down the hill just in time to greet Katie whom Marco picked up from San Miniato. We hugged and couldn't believe we'd meet each other again so soon! It was great fun catching up on our adventures during the past week and reminiscing our stay at Casa Lanzarotti. Over dish-washing, we also hatched a retirement plan to buy a plot of land near Gotra and imagined running an Asian health spa retreat with the help of Wwoofers.

To celebrate our reunion, we braved a second attempt at making gnocchi for dinner since Marco's friends were coming over that evening. Gianlucca came with his family, Guiddo and Filippo with his bubbly girlfriend. It was a riot in the piccola cucina as we yakked excitedly over vino and our gnocchi. Despite looking beautiful, they sadly turned into pulp after we scooped them out from the boiling pot and into the hot sage butter sauce. We had taken a chance with the tiny round patate and it proved to be unsuitable. I joked that we had planned the mushy polenta in the first place and they were very kind, especially Valentina who praised us for the lovely effort and finished every mouthful. Luckily there were lots of good bread, cheese, insalata and a huge mushroom which Guiddo had picked from the woods. He said he wasn't sure if it was edible and there was only one way to find out. We didn't foam at the mouth after a bite so I guess we survived.

Filippo (who was soft-spoken and yoga instructor) had arrived with a 'Dolce Pane' - a delizioso crumbly sweet specialty bread from Elba, the holiday isola off Toscana. Katie and I had also earlier nibbled at the Panforte, a dense dark and sweet cake spiced with cloves and cinnamon, that she bought from Siena. Hmm, I couldn't wait for my day off to the medieval ancient towns of Siena and San Gimignano to indulge in their specialty sweets, white wine Vernaccia and wild boar ham!