Not all that’s Italian is simple, certainly, nor vice versa.

Saturday’s “Simple Chicken,” for example.  A wonderful dish, wonderfully simple to make.  Thanks, Karen, for the recipe’s touch of home.

Repeating it again tonight makes supper a breeze, leaving Rebecca more time to paint up a storm with her new brushes.  Broad and urgent, the strokes.

With me, blog calls for a change of pace. Then 3-ring circus of new Nightstand awaits.  A good thing, since the rains seem to be springing up from nowhere.

I always take my meds each day as directed.

Plus a healthy dose of frutta e verdura.

But Umbria’s also known for porchetta.

And now and again, no doc’s objected.

Il pane, l’olio d’oliva, l’aglio, il sale.  E il panne, l’olio d’oliva, i pomodori.

La zuppa di lenticchie, il farro, i porri

La pasta, il sugo di pomodori.

E il formaggio.  

So simple: bread, butter, garlic, SALT, tomato; lentils, faro, leeks; pasta, sauce. CHEESE.

So good!

With the door shut tight and without any light or movement inside, the sign required little translation:

Once the shopkeeper arrived, however, there was just no slowing her down.  Fluttering around the il piccolo alimentari (a small deli), words flew faster than any hands or ears could catch them.  We, of course, simply had to come away with most of them in our bag.  A good thing, too.  I mean, a very good thing:

Now, if we only knew the name.  Not for a lack of trying: Il nome?, we ask.  Something something something something, she replies.  A quizzical look, we provide.  Something crema something something, she offers again.  Another quizzical look follows.  La dolche crema di something something, the words are starting finally to get through.  In the end, maybe,  something like this: La dolche crema di mozzarella di bufafa.  Yes, that’s right: we definitely like this.

Kitchen, cuisine.  And other good stuff.

With these words, I begin the slow food movement that has given my blog its subtitle. Cooking, for us, surely will move at a snail’s pace in our cucinino.

On our first night in Spoleto, fat chance of that, even with a steady rain warning us to stay home. 

The menu at Nove Cento (Nine Hundred), casual fare, looked just right on the website: nice and light.

So of course the corner windows were dark as pitch. Turn back to the left, toward a more familial-looking haunt, brightly lit.

No way I can put dinner into words (way too much pasta in my mouth for that to work!).

And no chance of posting Reb’s photos (at best every other course gets snapped, on average, in a doomed epic contest to remember).

In their stead, a great link. Story and pics are both on the blogpost menu–as tough a choice between them as the one we faced over dessert.