List of things I love about Italia

1. The lunch we just scoffed down, from the (yes) truck stop at the bottom of this hill; it was one of the best meals I have had in a very long time, perhaps since I was last in Italy. The magnificent Simone, who catered the Giove wedding, threw it together for us at the last moment when we realized we didn't have the energy to go out. Creamy, hot polenta with drifts of grated Parmesan stirred into it, and crisp-fried prosciutto and wild mushrooms scattered over the top; sauteed red radicchio lettuce; little timbales of some sort of eggy custard with herbes and truffles; acqua minerale; and a little tiramisu for a dessert, which we are having with hot herbal tea. It's a grey, misty, cool day over the valley, but the fire is blazing in the hearth. Lily is cutting out samples of clothing she wants to buy, from a fashion magazine; Greg is consulting the BBC web for news of the California fires; John is reading 'What If' -- a wonderful compendium of historians' guesses about how things might have turned out differently in our world's past eons (I'd love to see a 'What if Al Gore had won the last presidential election along with a full Dem slate in Congress?') -- and Leenie is about to take a big, deep, hot bubble bath to cure her bad cold. And I am off to take a nap and dream about this village. Later, Lily is going to give me a guided tour of the food possibilities (sweet foods, that is) in Giove Alto.