MAN IN A PINAFORE

PART 1

A relaxing Sunday lunch, Sicilian style [ie., starting and ending late] for James and me at home today: after antipasti and pasta with pesto, I served up my Mediterranean roast chicken.

James is most chivalrous and, despite wishing to remain obscure, didn't mind donning a pinafore at all to help out.

Of course, James just had to take this pic of me getting aggressive with a chicken.

The chicken is ready for the oven and the pasta water is boiling beside it.

The chicken is done.

Oh, and now James knows that the water really is delivered by lorry here!

PART 2

I really must add here [James writing now] that you can't really fully appreciate just from blogpics how wonderful that roast was - the aroma, the flavour. Sigh ...

PART 3

Continued from Nourishing Obscurity – the ongoing saga, from the evening before, of Welshcakes, James and the struggle to climb the Modican mountain to partake of supper:

So there I was sitting at this arcade café table, salading al fresco and suddenly half the eight year olds in Modica flocked in up the arcade, filling the chairs at the long table beside me, shouting, laughing and ordering pizza and coke, followed by an influx of teenagers who decided, in their wisdom, to fill the places at the table to the left and making an equal din but at a higher register.

The owner poked his head outside, smiled sheepishly, I shrugged, “Bambini,” and he brought me a beer.

Time to negotiate the bloody hill which always makes me throw up from the fumes and did again, turned off at Tamoil, up another hill, past where Welshcakes works, round past the old church where they had outdoor youth dancing near the floodlit walls, thus back to Domain Welshcakes and a relaxing drink.

Villa Welshcakes

This would surprise. You'd perhaps imagine that it was a nice, chummy little unit - not a bit of it. Chummy, most certainly but hardly small, [I'm currently in the study] and tiled floors throughout, along with an enormous number of books in shelves and one most important Simi.

Each room has a throughway to a balcony, with a glass windowed wooden frame inner door and a wooden-slatted shutter door with the slats adjustable. This is a most important addition in that one can regulate the light, temperature and so on, as well as keeping the locusts from Africa out which come over on the Sirocco.

More later as we have to go out to see the procession make its noisy way up our street and then there are cannoli made from ricotta cream and pistacchio nuts on offer at the church.

My first week with Welshcakes

Tomorrow morning, I'm afraid, we sleep in on this Day of the Republic , plus what only the cognoscenti would know – the third anniversary of Welshcakes’ and Simi’s arrival in Sicily.