Meat Shop in Umbertide

As a vegetarian, I missed out when pre-tiring in Italy on visiting too many of the local meat-eries, or the local meat shops. The Italians love their meats, and most towns and cities have at least one shop devoted to meats, and usually two. And when walking by them, even though I didn’t partake, I always thought of how my meat-loving friends would have been salivating--which meant I was fond of the meat shops even though I don’t eat meat, if that makes any sense. The below shop in Umbertide was one of my favorites to walk by, just because of how bold it was about covering all the bases: ovine, bovine, suine. Pals like Jeremy and Shane would live at this place I have to imagine:

And, I love the little side sign next to it, just a little reminder in case you’re parking in front of it:

Next time I’m in Umbertide hopefully those fellas will be with me, so we can stop on in and view the carnage.

*Note: We were on pre-tirement, and now we’re back. Want the full story? Start the pre-tirement journey here. Want to go backwards? Read the last pre-tired post here and scroll back. Or, just keep coming back for pretty Italy pictures.

Maccarones de Punzu at Calaluna

This was a delicious Sardinian gnocchetti (or small round pasta) topped with tomato sauce and spices. Yummy (though sadly, we never stopped by this welcoming Umbertide restaurant, Calaluna, again—maybe seven months wasn’t long enough?):

*See all Italian restaurants

*Note: We were on pre-tirement, and now we’re back. Want the full story? Start the pre-tirement journey here. Want to go backwards? Read the last pre-tired post here and scroll back. Or, just keep coming back for pretty Italy pictures.

5D5M #4, Our Regular Savior: Kentia Pizzeria

I feel somewhat bad about putting Kentia pizzeria into the Five Days, Five Meals schedule. Not because it isn’t a worthy meal-getting-place, but because we go there so often I don’t want to be shorting it by putting it in the midst of other eats. Maybe I’ll just need to do another Kentia post (my pics aren’t the finest). We first tried Kentia, which is in Umbertide, somewhat reluctantly, way back when pals Keith and Tasha were visiting and we all needed a quick bite. See, Kentia is (mainly) a takeout place, with just a few barstools. And when there are so many good sit-down pizza spots, why would we try a takeout place unless we were desperate for a snack on the run? That first trip was a revelation under a green awning (Kentia has a big green awning viewable for blocks). A different style of pizza (sometimes called "pizza al taglio"), Kentia brings out big square sheets of pizza, and then you point out how much you want, and then it’s sold by weight. The pizzas tend to be crisp, without a sloppy mess of toppings, but with quality, fresh ingredients. That would be enough to have us stopping in here and there, but what brings us back even more then “here and there,” is the combination of the pizza and the welcoming, friendly atmosphere and staff. It’s just a friendly place, with pictures of pizza and family on the wall:

Even the spices are smiling:

Especially when the pizza comes  out hot from the oven—so hot that it quickly steams up the glass-topped counter:

This trip, we both had “slices” (by this I mean: big squares of pizza) of mushroom with a white sauce. We took them to go (as we usually do—there’s something incredibly fun to me of taking them in the car) after telling the always-charming counterman (and owner from what I gather) we wanted them cut, which means he folds them up to make a pizza sandwich:

Genius. Another dandy aspect of Kentia? Two slices (about four inches by seven or thereabouts) and a Fanta orange soda for 4 euros. Unbelievable. I wish I could somehow convince him to open a Kentia in Seattle, cause there’s nothing like it--and I’m sure gonna miss it.

*See more Italian restaurants: Capponi, Nestor's,Nonna Gelsa, Le Capannine di Sommavilla, Calagrana, Trattoria Il Saraceno, L Enoteca Wine Club, Mastro Dante, Bar Fizz, Da Cesari, al Frantoio, La Balestra, Lo Strattoio, Mencuccio, La Fortezza

*See all Italian restaurants

A Trip Over the Hills to Preggio and Beyond

We usually, when leaving the house to go farther than our local towns (being the twin cities, Lisciano Niccone and Mercatale), heading into Umbria (or Le Marche), go along an East-rolling-and-curving-road (the SS something or other) that’s a small highway, taking us through towns and fields to Niccone, where we either turn left to Verna (where Nestor’s is) and such or right to Umbertide and bigger highways. There’s another road from Umbertide that heads to Cielo Chiaro, but it’s mountainous and via a small hill town we’d never visited before called Preggio. We’d driven past the Umbertide exit for this route, I dunno, hundreds of times, but finally recently decided to take it. It was a fairly swell day, and it ended up being a wonderful drive. Firstly, because there were tons of vistas on each side as we drove:

and then all-of-sudden we went around a corner and saw this stately-but-homey castle:

Someone lives there (lots of “privato strada” signs), and what I say is: “lucky them.” Dang. Who gets to live in a castle like this up in a remote part of the Umbrian hills? George Clooney’s second Italian home perhaps? We passed many attractive smaller houses, too, a couple eating spots tucked into the hills, and one handsome horse who decided he was going to try and open the gate to visit us:

After about, oh, fifteen or twenty minutes we came upon Preggio (which is about say 14 kilometers from our house after driving a “U”), which was a lovely little hill town:

Mostly famous for its chestnut (or “castagna”) festival when loads of folks descend (enough that there’s a whole parking lot outside the town for folks coming to it), Preggio is another picturesque example of a hill town tourists rarely even drive by. Which is shame, because we spent oh, twenty minutes walking around its attractive stone streets, looking at the church, which has an super intriguing, pagan-y-folk-art-y cross on the side:

and at the views into and off the edge of the town:

There’s also a snug restaurant (La Castagna) that wasn’t open for lunch (when we were there), but which we can’t wait to go back to for an evening meal. Now, sometimes, isn’t it better to go the backroads?

Holiday Lights and Lighting

All right, cut the complaints--I know that Natalie already did a holiday lights post over at Bella Cinghiale, but I figure you can’t have too much holiday cheer. And trust me, I know about these things. With that in mind, here are some of my favorite holiday lights and lighting seen recently, starting with street light from Umbertide, first from a street off the main square:

and then down another bustling Umbertide street:

Not Christmas lights per se, but we saw some absolutely amazing lighting in the center of Citta di Castello, too, where the Piazza Comunale had giant projections going on on every side of the square (it’s a large square by the way, and often used for markets and festivals). On one side was projected a huge blue ornament (as an aside: in front of it was a big hollow “tree.” Kids, or adults I suppose, could make a small charity donation, then get a balloon with their “wish” inside. Then, they could put the balloons into a tube into this giant “tree”—the tube had a sign that said “Insert Here Your Wish”—and then the balloons would float around and to the top):

and on the other, a replication of a Madonna and child (not sure who it’s by, but isn’t this fairly breath-taking):

Finally, a little star seen in the country on the way home:

Here’s to a happy and bright holiday season!

Lunch at Capponi in Umbertide

Umbertide is the closest small city of note, about 15 to 20 minutes away, depending on how fast we take the curves, and where we’ve spent a lot of time as we settle into our new home. We’ve visited all three supermarkets (now that we live here, as opposed to just being tourists, we have to find where the bargains are instead of just la-di-da-ing our way through) in Umbertide, been to the Wednesday market (which I’m sure will be posted about at some point), and spent lots of time searching for free wifi we can tap into without looking too suspicious. We’ve also visited Bar Pina a number of times, which is on the Umbertidean outskirts, and I’m sure will visit it much more. Yesterday though, we left the house on a mission to go to this garden/pet store on the outskirts on a village called Verna, which is itself on the outskirts of a town called Trestina, which to get to we turn left at Niccone, instead of the right we’d take to go into Umbertide. Anywho, we’d driven by said store a couple times, and Nat always wanted to stop but it had been closed every time so far (mostly cause we keep forgetting about the three or four hour Italian break after lunch, when most stores are closed). The store currently has big containers of pumpkins outside, and with Halloween close we wanted to stock up. After picking up our pumpkins, and some garden gloves for Nat, and some treats for the pups, we were driving back, and decided to head toward straight to Umbertide instead of going home. Our route had us traveling past Bar Pina, where we saw Andrew (our friendly British landlord, if you didn’t get that in an earlier post). It would have been un-friendly to drive on by, so we stopped and had a bierra with him (and Marianne, who soon showed up), and then went into town to have lunch. Before leaving Pina though, Andrew and Marianne pointed us in the direction of a ristorante called Capponi for lunch (they hadn’t been in a bit, but said it used to be reliable), and we took their advice. Capponi was in a square off the main square in Umbertide, and has a handy parking lot (it’s also a hotel). It was pretty tasty, but the coolest thing was that they had a dumb waiter that brought the food up from the basement kitchen. The waitress would send the order down, and then, using a series of lights (which we never quite figured out—it was like different colored lights combined with some Morse code functions perhaps), the cooks would let her know when food was ready and she’d hit a button and up food would come. Here it is closed:

and here it is opened:

Genius. It reminded me of being in a restaurant that wanted to be thought of as posh 75 years ago (or, I suppose, made me imagine what it would have been like, cause I wasn’t around that long ago). In the states, the dumb waiter from the past probably would have been disabled long ago, but here, it’s still being used, and the cooks are still in the basement. Oh, if you wondered, the food was by and large tasty. We skipped the provided tourist menus (which enforces you to have a “secondi” or meat course, which we can’t take advantage of unless we bring the dogs along, or doggy bags), but had pastas and sides. I had a ravioli with asparagus and truffle. The ravioli was homemade, and the pasta itself was nicely done, with a slight chew. The filling was also nice, a puréed asparagus and mushroom mix that was texture-y and with good subtle flavor. The only downside was the “fresh” truffles shaved on top. Don’t get me wrong, I adore fresh truffle to exhaustion, but these shavings had no flavor, and were the texture of tree bark. Not so fresh--mostly added to add a euro to the price it seemed. But still a worthy dish:

Nat had tagliatelle with porcinis and her pasta was also homemade and delicious. And the big chunks of porcini were scrumptious, meaty (hah!) and juicy (side note: Nat had had a cold the day before, and says I need to say that when posting the below photo--though I think she looks cute):

I had some potato arrosto (or roasted potatoes) for my side, and they were done just right: steaming and soft on the inside and crisp on the outside. But they were outshined by Nat’s side dish, which was a carrot sformato--a carrot pudding more or less. Sformato (and its variants) is a molded (but not moldy--ba’dump’bump) dish, usually of cooked veggies mixed with egg or cream and cooked in a water bath. We (in this case, me and chef Jeremy Holt, that is) have a great recipe for a spinach-based one in Double Take (go on, go get yourself a copy). This carrot version Nat had was fantastic, slightly creamy and yet not runny at all, very formed, with cooked and possibly pureed carrots mixed with egg and spices:

Then, cause it was Saturday at the time, we shared a big icy lemon/chocolate gelato combo. And that, friends, was lunch: