Florence, Part II
I can’t write about Italy without writing about food. Honestly, I don’t even think about Italy without dreaming of the food. And if we weren’t here with two little kids, we might even plan most of our trip around eating and drinking wine. Nonetheless, our kids are more than acquainted with sitting for long meals, so we are getting a good sampling of everything we love.
When I think of any food with the term “Florentine” included, I expect spinach. The menus in Florence, when translated into English, don’t mention spinach, but everything comes with “black cabbage.” I tried to request replacing the black cabbage with broccoli as I was sure my kids would never eat black cabbage; not surprisingly, the waitress wouldn’t substitute anything. It turns out black cabbage is just a coarse, stalky spinach. Overall the Tuscan food has been delightful: hearty, fresh, and always with a very local olive oil (as in, we’ve seen most bottles are from the same town or village we happen to be dining in). The bread is made with no salt so that you can taste the other flavors that it’s meant to be eaten with. Since we were with our Florentine friends for Easter, we learned that they bake lamb for Easter. They also made entirely homemade eggplant parmesan, baked pumpkin, sea bass, and grilled artichokes.
On the day after Easter, also a national holiday, we followed the trend: Florentines leave the city for the countryside; those in the countryside come to the city. So we drove out and up to Fiesole, a village with a monastery in the hills. We arrived in the square to a street market. In Portugal the outdoor markets stalls are mostly fruits and vegetables, chorizos, ceramic dishes and linens; in Fiesole, the market had cashmere, furs, shoes, leather bags, bread, cheese, and sausage. After buying some 25-euro sweaters, we hiked up the hill to the monastery. When everyone was hungry, all 8 of us piled into the car and went another 10 minutes out of the village into the hills to the Casa de Prosciutto, a restaurant selling only sandwiches with huge slices of fresh bread and a meat of your choice: ham, salami, mortadella, or prosciutto. They were entirely out of cheese and there wasn’t a vegetable on the menu. So with our paper-wrapped sandwiches and plastic cups of beer, we joined the many other Florentines on a huge grassy hill looking out over the hills where the kids played soccer, ran around, fed horses, and made up games with sticks. Or slept, as Lucas did.
