casa dolce domestica

Today, a rainy drippy day, I made roast chook (stuffed under the skin with butter and basil leaves, rubbed with a a little olive oil and salted) cooked in the pan with long, skinny organic carrots left unpeeled and uncut, basting themselves in the chickeny goodness, and bread salad.

Panzanella, made with italian bread and olive oil,wine vinegar and fresh tomatoes and black olives and basil, thin cut strips of fresh basil, so green among all the bright red and bread chunks, and garlic smooshed to a paste and tiny-cut red onions. Probably not an authentic recipe, but one that filled the house with the scents of my dreams of Italy.

I've always wanted to go to Italy.

It started out being interested in their cookery and multiplied a thousand times when I read (and saw!) A Year in Provence (yes, I do know that's set in France) and the books of Frances Mayes and Ferenc Mate.

So I stood at my oven and dreamed, the sounds of my children squabbling fading away, trying to pretend the flat gray day was the golden light of Italy. That there were Mediterranean breezes blowing through my house, that I was soon to set lunch on the table for my family, where we'd sit and eat the good peasant food, happy just to be with each other.

(There's a subset to this, where I would be basking in the joy of my family's appreciation for the food and not a single person would say 'Yick! Tomatoes!' or 'Oh, Mama. You know I don't like green stuff.')

I was almost there, the children's quarrel sifting into background noise, the smell of the roast chicken and the good wine vinegar whisking me away, when a crash! and a 'He broke my pony!' came through, jarring me back to reality.

Because in my daydreams, Paolo and Francesca don't fight over the demise of a pink My Little Pony. Ever.