It's Gene's turn to post something on the blog, but since he hasn't done it I will. Yesterday Dan, Annie, Doug and Lori emailed us saying they would be returning from Switzerland that evening and could we have some food available for them to prepare or eat. In other words have something ready for us to eat, Mom. I decided to prepare Lasagna. I had my regular recipe on my computer and since I was in Italy, it should be a snap. Gene and I went to the Pellicano supermarket in Bellano to get the ingredients. We took along the Italian dictionary just in case. The produce department is ruled by a woman who yells at you if you touch the produce. You have to tell her what you want and she selects it and weighs it and puts the tag on it. In another market you do this yourself so we did not know that we were breaking the rules. We needed parsley, so we looked up the word in the dictionary, asked for it and were met with a blank look. Luckily I saw the parsley and could just point. It was labeled with the word I said so I know she understood me. Oh well. I needed tomato paste which I found in a tube hoping it was what I wanted. Everything else we found without too much trouble although we did make 3 trips to the supermarket. We got home and found that we didn't have a pan so Gene went back again. We then went to the marcellina (meat store) and found some sausage. There are no measuring cups or spoons, spatulas or other kitchen necessities in this kitchen so I plan to buy a few items to make life easier. There are no sharp knives. So chopping was a pain. The lasagna turned out very well and dinner was waiting for the Swiss travelers.
We traveled to Como on the Rapido ferry on Friday. It took about an hour from Varenna. We passed George Clooney's house and Versace's mausoleum on the journey. A group of Americans on the return ferry were with their tour guide and he pointed out these places to our delight.
We have been enjoying the great weather and just walking around the small towns. We haven't done any hiking since last Monday when we all walked to Dervio via the trail near our house. This was about 5 miles round trip and not really difficult but with a lot of up and down. We are located about 400 feet above the lake, so there is always up and down on every hike.
Dan is going to post a link shortly so you can access some photos.
Ciao from Joan
