truffles and the moon

I finally made it to my first italian food festival, yesterday i went with graham to the mountains to a truffle festival, it was lovely, and for the first time, i should have a photoup. The mealwe had there was as graham put it, easily the best meal ever off plastic plates! We started with white truffle pasta, white truffles are the expensive ones, but they were delicious, i've never really understood the italian obsession about truffles, but yesterday it started for me too... then we had alpine steak, (the photo) with whole porcini mushrooms, chips (obviously) ~you can take the boy out of the wirral, but you cant take the wirral out of the boy, and more mushrooms on the side, it was incredible, the porcini literally melt in your mouth, and the steak was yummo, achingly so.. i am still salivating today, the next morning! the other incredible thing about truffles, is that although theyhave a slight smell of diesel, you soon get used to this, and start to love it, and its the meal that keeps on giving... so to be crude, but for the whole of the day afterwards, you burp the most aromatic truffle burps, that are simply delightful!
that has definitely been my high light, although coming a close second is my new hobby i have taken up, swing dancing! oh i love it! i go to two classes a week! i have to say, it is a lot of fun, and remarkably easy..
maybe i'll post a video of it one day...
oh, i nearly forgot, on the way home from the festival, grahamwanted me to drive the scenic route home, so off we went into the cloud forest, there was nothing scenic about it, we could see 4 metres infront of the car, and altough we saw some really spooky enchanting pine forests with the mist drifting through like a ninja, we somehow ended up on the moon. driving around ona dirt path, we tried a tunnel, it was still under construction, and had a sand floor, after a mile we decided to turn around, we didn't want to get stuck, but i'm pretty sure it went to narnia...
two hours later we found the tarmac again, we still dont know where we were..
all is going well here, i am quite excited about christmas already, i've made a list, i'm checking it twice...
is it still too early for decorations...?

carwriaeth in firenze

so i have had a lovely couple of weeks, especially my last week, when my beautiful friend sharon came over, we had lots of fun, eating all we could, and seeing all the sights, i got most of the week off work, so we had plenty of time to do lots of wonderous things... we went to fiesole, a beautiful hill top a few miles north of florence, spent the day walking around, and enjoying the fresh air.. we ate pizza, twice, had tiramisu, which was pretty moving... we went swing dancing, which was ace fun, but hot hot hot, we ate the best chocolate cake i have ever known, drank tea, and slipped into day dreams in comfy leather armchairs in a place called hemingways, with the good man watching down over us...
the sun shone all week long which was lovely, i was in a t shirt on friday, as we went to piazza michelangelo, which is just a big car park, but with lovely views over the city the arno and the mountains beyond.. we ate numerous cakes, rolls, croissants and the like. on friday we cooked for graham and his mum, we had soprasatta on bread for starters, the like of which we dont have in england, its like slices of pate, really thick, but like a ham, it was lovely, then we had pan fried duck - i forgot the name and had to quack, but we got it.. on a bed of goats cheese risotto, lovingly stirred by S, with rocket and a red wine sauce. It was pretty fantastic...
oooh i had my first bifstecca fiorentina the other day, this is a speciality of florence, a two inch thick, t bone steak, apologies to the veggies out there, but this was something special, i have never in my life eaten something so delicious, from a plavce called perseus, it was outstanding, along with tempura veg and roast potatoes, it wasalso tooo much!
i think its time for some lentils, and lots of fruit and veg..