Shopping

The shopping here continues to delight me.  We went to our friend in the alimentari, and she helped James procure the items he needs for lasagne tomorrow night.  We were stumped on one item that she didn’t have but tried to explain.  I was pretty sure it was a bay leaf, but it wasn’t clear.  Her dad, the owner of the tabacchi next door, asked if we could wait a minute – he would run home and get some for us!  He came back with a huge bag of bay leaves – all for free!  Isn’t that sweet?  And he has the cutest smile.  He LOVES seeing us coming in and always comes to visit when we’re in that shop.

Next stop:  the butcher.  James needed some ground beef and bacon.  So he asked for the bacon.  Rather than being sold in slices, or rashers, they just have a big hunk of meat and whack some off.  Wow.  What a way to serve it!  While she was trimming some yummy-looking beef cubes (we assumed we’d misunderstood the directions, and that it wasn’t ground beef that we were requesting), the other butcher came in carrying…a chicken.  No feathers.  The funny thing was that he was casually swinging it by the ankles – it still had its feet!  Trying not to crack up, we watched him plop it on the scale and confer with the customer over the size.

Back to our butcher.  She’d finished the trimming (by the way, none of them wear gloves – they use the clean hands rule) and threw this beautiful bit of meat into a grinder that was behind her.  She grabbed it as it came out, weighed it, added a bit more, and voila!  Ground beef (silly us, we thought that ground beef came in plastic-wrapped packages).  And home again, home again, jiggety jig!

Love,

Alexandra