Last week Kevin and I took advantage of a cheap fare from Marseille to Sardinia, and spent 5 days touring the island. In preparation for the trip, I looked up Sardinia on-line and came across this little bit of folklore: Sardinian Legend has it that after completing Her creation of the World [a little editing par moi], God dropped some leftover rocks into the Mediterranean. Then She looked over what She had already created, removed a little of the best from each place, and sprinkled it liberally over one of those dropped rocks which, of course, became the island of Sardinia. It is really really rocky there – a lot like the south of France – and the rock is beautiful, especially set against lots of pines and ink blue or turquoise water. See some of our photos here.

One of the highlights for us was a hike up to a huge cave – Tiscali – a place high up in a limestone mountain range where one of the mountaintops caved in forming a huge hole protected from the elements. Ancient peoples – the Nuragic – settled in the cave to hide from foreign invaders around 1500 B.C., and the remains of their stone structures are still visible. I had found a website for a hiking cooperative – www.ghivane.com – located in Dorgali (near the east coast) who arranged the hike. They lead lots of different tours to incredible beaches, caves accessible only by boat, and remote mountain hikes,  and going with them turned out to be a great thing to do. Our guide, Geon Paulo, explained lots about the trees and flowers, as well as the anthropology of the area, and fed us a great picnic of Sardinia cheeses, sausages, breads, and red wine. (BTW, the photo at right shows a little “window” that was created by a falling rock, not the top of the mountaintop that fell in. You can see remnants of the house people made in the rock in the photo.)

Then we moved on to the walled-city of Alghero where we stayed in a lovely B & B, its plain exterior concealing a little urban paradise. It’s run by an extremely genial couple, Gemma and Giovanni, who appear just to want to sit down with you and chat – all the while pouring local wine, setting out little gourmet treats, and telling us about their favorite restaurants and sights. (They can be found at www.llocdor.com At 50€ a night, the Lloc D’Or was definitely a Bonne Adresse.) One place they told us to visit was Neptune’s Grotto, a beautiful cave along the coast where you have to walk down 600 steps just to get to its mouth.

Sardinian food was fabulous and very reasonable, especially compared to mainland Europe prices; the scenery was rugged but beautiful and filled with wildflowers this time of year; and where we were was authentic and unspoiled by tourism. Plus, you get to hear people chattering away in Italian! Dr. Ruth highly recommends.

Ruth

Categories: Hiking, Memories, Travel
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Alain called us yesterday to say he had a barquette of strawberries for us – the first of the season. I took a picture of what was left of them after breakfast today.

My son, Jake, gave me a book for Christmas last year – Bringing It to the Table, a compilation of essays by Wendall Berry. Berry has been writing fiction, poetry, and essays – as well as farming a hillside in his native Kentucky with his wife – for over forty years. I had never read his work before, but his ideas about food, its production, and its consumption seem to encapsulate everything I’ve been thinking and learning about food, especially since moving to France nearly five years ago. As I ate the delicious utterly fresh little strawberries this morning in a dish of yoghurt that Kevin had made, I thought of these words by Berry, “A significant part of the pleasure of eating is in one’s accurate consciousness of the lives and the world from which food comes.”

It is so true. With each bite of these strawberries, we are fully conscious that they were planted by Anna and Alain in their nearby field, were grown with no pesticides, and that we even had the chance to help them along ourselves by weeding and cleaning up the row of little plants. And that consciousness has definitely deepened our appreciation, enjoyment, and confidence in this bounty.

Ruth

Categories: Farming, Friends, Provence, Uncategorized
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