senza sale

We have the most wonderful bread here. Cooked in a wood-fired oven, crunchy crusts and a strong flour that holds moisture like a sponge. You can wring our bread out and it bounces back into shape again. I miss it when I am away.

But, just occasionally, I accidently get a loaf with no salt in it. They look the same in their round crustiness but the taste... the disappointment is huge!

In years gone by there was a tax on salt, and like cigarettes and matches it could be bought only at the tabacchi, not at the grocery shop. Up north the people rebelled, and began making bread senza sale, without salt (sale = saah lay). In some places that is all you can get. Don't try it. I prefer to eat cracker biscuits if I have to eat in those towns.

When my morning's Legato chores were done I headed to the market... just as it closed. Instead of choosing my own mouth-watering fruit - with free-stone peaches so juicy and flavoursome that I can smell them and am salivating just writing about them - I had to make do with a bland mix of pale, barely ripe stone fruit that had been selected then left behind. I missed out on vegetables completely as the truck was packed.

A good friend who doesn't drive has been wanting to go to the beach for a while. She even put a "pleaseeeee" on Facebook. Ok, I thought, I've done enough this morning, we'll go. It feels like the perfect day for the beach. I phoned her. "Guess where I am" she said in excited Italian before I could get a word in. Right. Someone else had read her plea and taken her to the beach for the day.

For lunch (thinking of the beach) I had bought bread and ham. Remind me that cooked ham here is not like it is in NZ. Each time I buy it I resolve never to buy it again... and then I see how good it looks, forget how flavourless it is, and have to make that resolve all over again.

Aah well, I thought, I'll enjoy the bread. Fail. How did I come to buy a piece with no salt?

Zacchi and Piccolina are being very good in their reduced yard (you can't bark at what you can't see, right?) But they'd rather be somewhere else. I know how they feel. I was actually looking forward to that walk along the beach, waves lapping at my ankles, sea breeze calming my soul.

So, so far, apart from a friendly interview for a newspaper, today has been one big tasteless day. A day senza sale. I guess that happens. You need the plain days to appreciate the spicy ones.

Now to have a siesta, and see if the second half of the day will liven up a little!

Today I am grateful for new horizons.