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Published: March 19th 2007
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I Am Carnivore
Hear me roar! Sara used to be a vegetarian. She moved to Italy and came to her senses. Friday, 16 March was Eat An Animal for PETA Day. I kid you, not! I ran across that while I was scanning various blogs and news sites. I had a good laugh over that one since life in Italy is a daily celebration of that particular day. As I noted in my previous post, there aren’t many animals that aren’t considered food by the Italians. So at the risk of incurring the wrath of some local PETA-tites, we celebrated the day by bbq-ing some cavallo and asino. That would be horse and ass (donkey).
Our Italian teacher at the school told me that in the aftermath of WWII, beef was hard to come by and so the eating of horse served as an alternate meat source. He didn’t mention asino, so I suspect that it too served as a poor man’s meat. Nowadays, eating cavallo and asino isn’t particularly popular and you won’t find that meat on most ristorante menus. It is also not widely available at most butcher shops. However, one can find horse meat rather easily as it is still sold at supermarkets.
We have never seen asino on menus, but at one of our favorite places, they do
Stoking the Coals
Vincenzo getting the grill ready. serve horse. We like both meats. I think that the asino is far richer than the horse and in fact superior in taste to beef. The horse needs a lot of prep and cooking effort since it tends to be tougher and muscular. Does it bother me to eat my friend Flicka? Neigh!!
We had a very fine ’99 Barolo with the meats, fried red potatoes, grilled zucchini, fried black olives (new to me and I liked them!), finocchio, and afterwards some excellent chocolate (75% cocoa) washed down with a tasty shot of port.
Sunday 18 March - Vincenzo’s parents invited us to Sunday family lunch. We feel very much honored. The Sunday family lunch is the holy of holies in the Italian religion of eating. It was a grand lunch fit for a king. Vincenzo’s family made us feel right at home. His mom is a hoot and of course, a fabulous cook. After the 2 ½ hr extravaganza we went home for a nap to recuperate. We are hoping for a second invite. Next time, I will eat a smaller breakfast to make more room for that great food. Sara told us that this is the usual meal
Mind the flames!
My ass is getting burned... size on Sundays.
Next post will be our discovery of the perfect wine shop and the best pizza in Brindisi. After that, it will be a report on our spring break trip to La Thuile. This is a ski area on the border with France. Lots of pictures with that one, for sure.
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Dave
non-member comment
Deeply Disturbed, Niegh?
OK Izzy, now I wonder if you'll be ALLOWED to come back.