Second Farm-La Rocchetta

I really am going to have to write WWOOF a letter about this farm.

It is ridiculous. Not only are our hosts at La Rocchetta feeding us ALL the time but they are feeding us incredible food!

Claudio, one of our hosts, cooks every meal. This is what we usually find on our plates...

Oh, what a monstrous act.

Michelle, Claudio's wife, gives us chore after chore. And all the while she is either making decadent chocolate mousse or apple and pear tarts, or out buying things for us like Ryan's flax seeds or the muesli we like.

It all is truly horrific. And I haven't even mentioned our accommodation!

Our tower like room, perched atop the house, sits all on it's own three levels up. With a full size cast iron bed for Ryan and I to share. They expect us to SHARE! AND to look out our window and see the rolling hills of Tuscany and the town of Mugnano sitting on a hill across the valley.

And even more disturbing is the leering four tier bookshelf. This is no ordinary bookshelf, but an antique bookshelf Claudio used in a movie he did with Lucchino Visconti starring Burt Lancaster.

When we entered the room Michelle told us that we have all the books you could possibly need. The horror! They make us read EVERYTHING! Everyday Michelle comes in with a new book of something we had been discussing the night before. Gardening, dieting, nutrition, and cooking. It is like a bombardment of health! AH!

One last terrible thing that Ryan and I have noticed is that it seems as if Michelle knows the art of Legilimency. For those of you who are not familiar with that term it means the ability to read one's mind.

Whenever Ryan or I think of something we want to do or see Michelle always seems to know. For example, I was thinking about how I wanted to do a little window shopping. So, Michelle offers to take us to Viterbo (a small town where the Popes lived for a while). She drops us off in the middle of the town and makes a time for us to meet. In Viterbo, there were hundreds of wonderful little shops! However, after finding a study that many Italians loose an extra 500 hundred calories a week from window shopping, it led me to believe that Michelle did it for our HEALTH!

I hope that all this is obviously sarcastic because it is. Michelle and Claudio are the most gracious people I've ever met. We have been having such a wonderful time here. We've built a wall for a new garden area, carried and chopped wood for the fire, leveled the bricks around the bar-b-que pit, built steps, and are in the process of weeding the garden. It has been a real joy to see the result of our work. There are pictures here of all those jobs.

Claudio is one of the most amazing chefs I've ever met. Ryan mentioned once that he loves octopus. So, Claudio went out today and got a VERY large octopus and squid that he is cooking for dinner tonight.

Some of his delightful dishes have been baked chicken, veal with a piccata sauce, brocoletti soup, many delicious pastas, and well every meal is wonderful!

Michelle is a news journalist, so although we are somewhat isolated, we are able to watch all the great newscasters like Bill Moyer, Rachel Maddow, and Keith Olbermann. It is very fun and interesting to talk with Michelle about Italian and American politics. We hear something new everyday.

It really has been a great pleasure getting to know this family. We are planning to stay for another couple of weeks because we love the Cesarettis and we are so grateful to be a part of their home.

New pictures on the Picasa site! Link is to the right --->