Today I had the most wonderful experience of Italian family life. I spent the morning working in the B&B and Gavina kindly invited me to join them all for lunch. I was ecstatic! I felt so welcomed and so spoiled! They made me a traditional pasta dish with local pecorino cheese; pane fratau, which is a local dish where they soak the flat bread I've talked so much about in boiling water, cover it in tomato sauce and pecorino cheese, and you roll it into what Antonio described as the shape of a joint(!); then a cassole, a form of bruschetta topped with egg, tomatoes, onion and basil; fruit salad, coffee, wine and lastly a taste of Gavina's famous blueberry liqueur.
Among the many stories exchanged, Antonio told me about a group of rowdy Australian tourists who had stayed in the B&B a few years ago. They totally took over the place, left their things everywhere, drank a ton and generally made a huge racket. Antonio's solution was to offer them a taste of Gavina's liqueur. He offered them three (small) glasses of the stuff, in fact. Soon silence descended, as the entire group passed out! I thought this was ingenious! He offered me a second glass with a smile, which I naturally declined!
I also met "nonna", the kind and warm little grandmother who speaks little Italian. She understood me, for the most part, but Francesca had to translate many things into Sardinian for her. She found me fascinating, as I did her(!) and as she left for her afternoon nap, she told me quite fervently, that a beautiful girl like me simply had to come back to Nuoro soon! After that feast, I am certainly tempted!
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