Back to work!

First of all to all those who have been worrying about my arm being amputated, it's still attached, complete with bit of bamboo inside! I don't know what they were thinking. Maybe they thought they only had to pull out a wee splinter or something! The conversation with the surgeon went something like this:
"Well what have we got here then?"
"A bit of bamboo inside my arm."
"Are you sure?"
"Yep, pretty sure."
"But how did it get in there?"
"Entered from the other side, when I hit a bamboo stick supporting some tomatoes."
"But that's impossible! How deep did it go in?"
"Dunno, but evidently deep enough. I pulled 1 1/2 cm of if back out and your A&E department couldn't find anything else at the time."
"How long has it been in there?"
"Oh about 6 weeks."
"Madonna!"

At that stage the assistant puts in: "Shall I put 'urgent' on the form?"

So he had evidently not sharpened his skalpels yet, also he wanted to know how big the actual thing is. So after filling in various forms and signing my life away to the responsibility of those medicals, I now have to return, stick in me arm and all, on the 8th, to have it all scanned and than have it removed in the hopefully not too distant future.

This is my arm now. Note the wee blob just to the right of the scar (old war wound still giving me the gipes occasionally), it's not an insect bite!

Sorry about that, hope I didn't upset you all too much. Here's a nicer picture for you to look at




Anyway, I can't hang around waiting for those doctors to fix my arm, there's work to be done, and I'm already behind, because of this episode. Today it was time to lift the rest of the spuds. It wasn't a good year for potatoes, with the dry summer again. But it'll keep us going for a wee bit.

We also sowed out our some broad beans and peas for spring harvesting on the terrace where we had just dug up the potatoes. Having been delayed we have also bought some ready plants, leeks and broccoli, to plant out. We had to prepare the beds for them too, so it's been a pretty busy day, and the arm was quite sore by the end.

Yesterday I made some elderberry chutney. I know it's not exactly elderberry time any more, at least not around here, but as matter of routine, whenever I pick elderberries I stick them straight into the freezer, because they are so much easier to strip off their stalks when frozen. But it also means I can use them as and when I feel like it and have a spare half hour or two.

I've already made elderberry jam and liqueur, now I've made a chutney with the rest. Would you like to know the recipe? Well here it goes. Too late if you said 'no'.

ELDERBERRY CHUTNEY

Ingredients:

for pickling spice:

• 2 Cinnamon sticks
• 1 tbsp mustard seeds
• 1 tsp black peppercorns
• 1 tsp cloves
• 1 tsp juniper berries
• 1 tsp mace
• 1 tsp dill seeds
• 4 dried bay leaves
• 1 tsp dried ginger
• 1 tsp whole coriander seeds

for the chutney:

• 2 kg elderberries
• 500g onions, chopped
• 200g raisins, chopped
• 1 l white wine vinegar
• 2 tsp salt
• 2 tsp ground ginger
• 3 tsp of above pickling spice tied into a muslin bag
• 1/2 tsp chilli
• 1 tsp mustard powder

Method

1. Simmer onions in half the vinegar until soft.
2. Strip elderberries off the stalks & add to the onions together with the raisins, salt, ginger, chilli, mustard & pickling spice.
3. Simmer until the mixture has softened. Add the sugar, stir well & boil until the chutney is thick.
4. Remove the pickling spice, leave to cool and pot into clean jars.
5. Serve with meats such as venison, turkey or rabbit or spicy mature cheeses.

Put the rest of the pickling spice into a jar and use for you next chutney or pickle. I shall use mine for some green tomato chutney as soon as I have gathered enough jars together again.

The ongoing saga of my arm

It's vendemmia time, the grape harvest. The air everywhere is pregnant with the smell of fermenting wine. With the hot and dry summer and spring the grapes have ripened early this year. Some growers picked before the arrival of last weeks rain, others, like our friends Graham and Anna of Il Bardine in Cesarano in the Lunigiana have used the warm period after the rains. We went out on Tuesday to give them a hand harvesting their 1/2 hectar or so of Vermentino and a mixture of red varieties. The whites already showed sign of botrytis and a drop in acidity, but the red grapes came in nice and healthy. Here is Susan in action.

There were a whole group of us and became hot during the day. It took us most of the day to pick and we finished off with a jolly BBQ. If you ever fancy staying on a vineyard / fruit orchard for your holidays, Graham and Anna let out a couple of flats: www.ilbardine.com.

This was the first major physical test for my arm after my injury. However in the morning before I started I found a strange and slightly painful hard lump on the opposite side of where I skewered my arm some 5 weeks ago. And shortly before the end of our work I had to capitulate again. Thursday I went to see my doctor about it and it turns out that I still have a piece of bamboo inside my arm which is now trying to get out on the other side!

Next Friday I will be operated on that arm in Sarzana hospital to have it removed, which no doubt is going to result in me being out of action for a further couple of weeks. Porca miseria!Susan has been in Belfast this week, so I've been keeping myself busy not straining my arm too much.

Of accidents, flowers and wine tastings

It’s been a while since my last post, and I think I abandon the series of “Our Terraces” The last 4 terraces didn’t look all that exciting on the 25th April, so I hope you won’t be too disappointed. If you are you are just going to bloody well come here and have a look at it yourself!

It’s been an eventful couple of weeks since the last post. The weather cooled down at the very end of May, beginning of May, with a couple of days of badly needed rain. This was followed by slightly changeable weather with odd sprinklings of rain showers, which meant we didn’t have to water the land until yesterday. Now the hot weather has returned. Cherries are finished and plums keep falling on our heads, loquats are finished and we’re eating our courgettes. The sunflowers have burst into flower too as you can see.

So much about the land.

Last Monday we had cycled to the seaside to see our Swiss friend Irene, who works there at the moment. On the way back we had to negotiate the busy Sarzana by-pass road during rush-hour. Just as Susan, feeling quite chuffed with herself about surviving so far, had got around a particularly busy roundabout, a car pulled out of private property right in front of us. This left us with no alternative, but move over to the extreme right of the road to avoid a collision with said car. As it happened the father of the lady-driver was busy cutting some major branches off his hedge bordering the road, and one of those branches came down precisely in front of Susan who was cycling behind me. She didn’t even see what was happening, before the branch had wrapped itself around the front wheel of her bike, sending Susan onto the tarmac. I only noticed after I had gone on a bit and found her bleeding from her face, left shoulder and right knee.

The driver stopped and the owner of the property still with saw in hand came rushing out of his garden. He did kindly offer to drive her to hospital, but a brief examination revealed she hadn’t broken anything and her injuries seemed to be superficial. He then offered the use of his wife’s bike, because Susan’s was not rideable. The front mudguard was broken, and the front fork was badly bent. So we took up his offer of the bike, leaving Susan’s wreck with him and exchanging phone numbers before we left.

It turned out that the proprietor was a senior officer in the Guardia di Finanza. I was a little worried about that fact, because I did not want to pursue a confrontational stance in demanding compensation, as he no doubt would be in a position to cause us more problems than we could him (I don’t want to go into any details in case the Guardia di Finanza read this blog…). However, il Capitano rang us the next morning to ask how Susan was. He sounded relieved, when I said to her that she wasn’t too bad. So I asked him: “what about the bike?” He said he’d take it to his local bike shop to be repaired. Later he rang us again, confirming what I had suspected, namely that it was beyond repair. So he bought Susan a brand new pink bike, with the same specs as the old one, but with everything in full working order. I had been thinking that both our bikes needed a general service anyway, so I now won’t need to do that one anyway. Picked it up on Friday and Susan was very happy with it.

Today though, Susan was obviously still a little nervous after her fall, we were riding down to Santo Stefano, where there was the annual Festa di Corpus Cristi, where the streets of the historical centre are decorated with flower petals. At the first hairpin bend, Susan applied the well functioning brakes of her new bike a little too hard and hit the tarmac again, resulting in another bang on the same knee and a couple of cuts and bruises on both elbows. The bike sustained only a few scuffs this time though, which is just as well as this time she didn’t have anyone else to blame. Now I’m on the look out for some falling branches myself, because I could also do with a new bike.

So much about Susan’s accidents (she says, she is going to stay off her bike for as long as it takes for her wounds to heal). Despite Susan’s fall, we did make it down to Santo Stefano to the floral display. Those who have followed this blog for long may remember the pics from last year. This year the folk of Santo Stefano excelled themselves again at some spectacular floral pictures along all the streets of the old town. My favourite this year was the representation of the church of Santo Stefano.

The original looks like this:

The final bit of news, I have now got an official website on line for my wine tasting events. It’s http://users3.jabry.com/tuscanytipple. Sorry, it’s a bit of a long and awkward site name, but it’s free. Once business starts flowing I will register an easier to remember name. In the meantime if you or any of your posh friends are planning on a holyday and would like to learn more about Italian wines, please have a look at the site and recommend it to anyone you know. The link is permanently displayed at the top right of this blog. It’s still a bit of a building site at the moment (some photos missing, only in English so far etc.) so wear your hard hats. I’d be interested how you find it as well, so do leave your thoughts on the comment function of the blog. What this business is essentially about is that I will hold fun and informative wine tastings at your accommodation while you are having a holiday in Tuscany, Liguria or our end of Emilia Romagna (Parma way).