At Least You're in Tuscany by Jennifer Criswell

Author:Jennifer Criswell
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Gemelli Press LLC
Published: 2012-07-14T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

BEWARE OF TUSCANS BEARING GIFTS

Summer had arrived. Sunflowers blanketed nearby fields and temperatures during the day climbed to a hundred degrees. Mercato stands overflowed with peppery arugula, cucumbers, tomatoes, and eggplant, as well as an abundance of peaches, plums, apricots, and watermelon. Daily deliveries of tomatoes and zucchini from Marinella’s orto inundated my kitchen. The only thing missing was corn, which I’d seen growing on the side of the road, but Marinella informed me it was only used for animal feed. No corn on the cob? That was just wrong.

I was slowly starting to get used to the fact that if it wasn’t in season—or like corn, wasn’t a staple of the Tuscan diet—I wouldn’t find it in grocery stores. If I wanted asparagus in October or a fresh peach in January, forget it. Unlike New York, where I could count on some part of the world cultivating the fruit I wanted whenever I wanted, here it was as the seasons dictated. Menus changed with the arrival of each new fruit or vegetable. Every now and again I’d find something at the mercato that was “out of season,” but it wasn’t embraced enthusiastically by the locals.

“Those cherries are from South Africa,” Marinella would inform me. Nose wrinkle.

Emphasis was placed on local products so much that fruit vendors were especially proud when they could claim their lettuce or arugula or peaches were nostra produzione. Our production.

Despite the hot days, the apartment was cool and pleasant, just as Luciana had predicted. Cinder usually hung out in the bathroom, not because the tiles there were any cooler, but because she liked to stalk the flies that occasionally buzzed in and out. Most people in town regularly closed their shutters in the afternoon, but I couldn’t bear for the apartment to be so dark. I was told that in addition to protection from the heat of the sun, this habit or tradition of closing the shutters evolved from the time when the shallow waters of the nearby Lago Trasimeno were considered to bring bad air in the summertime, which would make people sick. Closing the shutters ostensibly provided protection from this mal aria. The overpopulation of mosquitoes thriving in the lake is more likely what made people sick, though; “malaria” was a fairly serious problem for years. Today, of course, there is no such threat, but people still close their shutters against the midday heat of the sun in an effort to keep the cool air inside.

My normal warm weather morning routine had included some writing time on our porch, but after my laptop and I were pooped on for the umpteenth time by low flying birds, I’d shifted it to afternoons at Serena’s bar. I still hoped there was something to the superstition that getting pooped on was good luck.

I’d taken to having an afternoon shakerato, an iced espresso made in a shaker and served in a martini glass. It tasted exactly the same as a regular iced espresso but it looked more elegant.

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