Shopping the fruits of Puglia
September 15th, 2007
I have lived here for just short of seven years. For all those years I have shopped for vegetables and fruits in the street markets, on Thursday and Saturday, and the covered market everyday but Monday. Local stuff abounds in growing season, but although we’re warmer, we are at about the same latitude as Maine, which means the days shorten and things stop producing very well if at all.
I was kicking myself because for one reason or another, I’d missed a lot of the season’s produce. Tomatoes are just about over, even though we’re still far from frost. But a couple of weeks ago when there was a market displacement due to a feast for St. Bartolomeo, I found that the trucks that sell outside the walls are from Puglia. They may be bragging, but Puglia says they have a seven month summer. I dropped by today and goodness gracious, great balls of fire! What incredible produce!
I dragged home three different kinds of plums, a small sack of hot cherry peppers and three kilos of tomatoes. Everything is being washed now in preparation for various preserving techniques. I was also given a beautiful bunch of the most honey-like grapes I’ve ever tasted. I tried to buy them, but the boy shrugged me off with a smiling, “Enjoy.”
Just yesterday an old man at the parking in Pienza let me out without payment. Was it just the joking about why he wasn’t there when I drove in? Or am I becoming a cute little old lady who is given things as she moves through life? I’m really not sure what to wish for.
Entry Filed under: Food, Italy, kitchen stuff, plums, fruit, economical, Italian food
4 Comments Add your own
1. Jeff Gromen | September 17th, 2007 at 10:07 am
What?! What are we doing sending our fruits up that far north? We should be saving them for ourselves. :)
They never give anything to me for free so it must be true.
2. admin | September 17th, 2007 at 11:32 am
Maybe you look too rich? I really prefer not to become a cute little old lady merely for free grapes and parking.
Are we supposed to starve while all the Puglian cherry tomatoes dry up hanging in the farmers’ fondos? Anyway, today’s new post is all Puglia but the penne, which is from Gragnano and the Pecorino Sardo. The oil is colle di Brindisi and the veg all from the Pugliese trucks at the market.
Go eat a mela Annurca before they go out of season!
3. Kit | September 18th, 2007 at 6:03 pm
It’s great to read about honey flavoured grapes from Puglia. I’m in South Africa now and we have loads of grapes but never the gorgeous moscadello ones that I remember from my years in Italy. And you have to pay for parking in Pienza now? I’ve been away too long. I just used to park outside the gate and walk to the fruttaverdura to shop! Makes me feel like an old lady saying “I remember….!” in quavering tones!
4. admin | September 19th, 2007 at 8:14 am
Come winter and almost all the fruit and veg in the Coop with be from South Africa. Summer lemons already are. Can’t be too bad down there.
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