Day 10: Lazy Day, Olive Oil Factory!

Day 10

Today was a mercifully slow day: we needed time to work on our assignments and regroup from our rewarding but hectic visit to Bra and Parma. We woke up pleasantly late and began the morning with an overview of our visits to Slow Food, EFSA, and food producers. Some concerns about EFSA's actual activities in relation to what it says it does were raised, as well as Slow Food's occasional tendency to use gendered terms in relation to food. (It wasn't hard to miss the high incidence of men at Terra Madre in relation to women, at least judging from the documentary).

We also discussed our impending assignment, a gender analysis of a movie or book. We were provided with some tools for analyzing movies for gender. We also identified Key Industrial Locations, such as state, market, community, family and kinship.

We were to look for these elements:

Rules - how things get done, what is done, how it is done, by whom it will be done.

Activities - what is done? Who does what? Who gets what? Who can claim what?

Resources: What is used? Who has what? What is produced?

Power- Who decides? What interests are served?

Results will be posted on the blog as soon as they are graded.

As I had missed a visit to Enzo's olive-oil factory earlier in the week, Enzo decided he would have to take me and Gerarada down for a visit that morning. We jumped into his dog-hair covered car (Oliver!) and headed to the factory. Enzo works there when he's not cooking for us at the convento.



Some of the olive-oil and traditional Italian delicacies on offer. The factory is Slow Food certified and justifiably proud of their products.



Enzo posing with the goods.



A machine used for smushing olives. At least that was what I could figure out. (Attempting to communicate the notion of smushing through broken Italian and English is really, really amusing).


The factories sign. Stop in if you're in the Bolsena region!

I picked up some strawberry jam (good around here) and some of the delightful local honey. No oil, I'm afraid - I don't think it will last another month in my bag and the results will be dire if it does explode all over my clothes. Boo.


For lunch, Enzo made us some penne with cheese and peporonata - really delicious and piquant.

Most of us spent the afternoon hanging out in the poppy-strewn garden and catching up on our assignments - a nice change from the all-prosciutto all the time adventure of the day before. We did decide to head into town to seek out some good wine for Ellie and indulge in a bit of gelato.



This gelateria on Bolsena's main square serves the gelato we sampled at the factory.



Some of the excellent flavors on offer. The Santa Cristina was particularly interesting: a crunchy and tart combination of orange, lemon, and carrot. The ricotta with cinnamon and the mascarpone were also delightful. Santa Cristina is committed to using real ingredients and the benefits to the gelato's flavor are obvious.



I had some incredibly intensely flavored and rich blackberry gelato with Santa Cristina (carrot) on the bottom. This was excellent. And the photo is not excellent.

We enjoyed a walk through town - Bolsena really is an attractive place, and mercifully low on tourists.


Enzo served us some bean soup with bread. It tasted rather like an Italian riff on bean soup - I really liked this.



Our secondi was a simple summer plate of bruschetta. We had chicken and pepper pate, arugula-pesto type stuff (slightly bitter and good), and something composed of liver. There was also some fresh-made pepper caponata, some white bean salad with olive oil and pepper, and some fresh local cheese.


Finally: another nice local tart with apricot jam.

We spent the evening working, and some of us decided to watch Fast Food Nation. It got the point across, I suppose, though I wouldn't suggest watching it if you are interested in consuming fast food hamburgers ever again. (But if you could eat real food why would you want to?