Day 28 - Annual Get Together

I think I mentioned in one of my very first blogs that one of the reasons we were coming to Europe was to honor our vow to get together with my friends from high school and University days at least once a year for a barbecue. The other reason of course was to take my sister Bonnie and hubby Tom to Europe since they would never have gone on their own.

We choose yesterday as our annual barbecue day so I stayed behind at the Villa and prepared dinner while everyone else went to their tours. Lucy, Peter, Mike and Lynn and Blair went to Assisi to say a prayer for everyone to St. Francis and Lorenzo and Linda and Don and Trudy went to some place where the Monks do their chants. 

Not me. I started by driving about 40 minutes to a market to buy what we were having for dinner and then spent the late afternoon with help from Linda and Trudy ( back by then ) in preparing our food. Started with a huge chunk of Froie Gras which we had brought from Paris. Served it with some fresh fig jam.  Yummy.  Then went for a course of anti pasta. The choice of anti pasta over here as your would expect is quite wide but I picked up about ten different items and about 30 fresh scampi which I did up on a charcoal fire. Then we decided to skip the pasta course since everyone was getting full ( that's tonight ) and went straight for the fish course. I picked up 5 local fresh whole fish and a bunch of Tuscan spices which I liberally applied and added some Tuscan lemons and local olive oil and just barbecued them. Very delicious but everyone was full so we also saved the meat dish for tonight .... local lamb and sausages .... some veal and chicken with two handsome steaks. Can't wait to get home. 

Now since I shopped and prepared food all day I didn't take any pictures ( they did but I forgot to download their pictures ) so I'll download pictures with my next posting.

Only one behind now so hopefully I can now stay current. We move to a new Villa tomorrow and if it has dial up internet like this one then I will likely fall behind again but we'll see. 

Choi