Hey, it’s Pille, coming to you with an amazing Italian adventure! Perfect Sunday.. It is an indescribable feeling when something planned turns out to be such an unexpected, perfect, idyllic Italian day. Unplanned visit to Bed & Breakfast Masseria Ospitale left unforgettable feelings and memories in my heart. Anaïs, Ilenia and I planned to have a beach day, which already sounded too unbelievable for October! In the middle of our bike tour Ilenia offered to have a break somewhere, because it is a pretty and interesting place. As soon as we biked towards the Ospitale I was already amazed by the beauty of it. When we got off the bikes I saw a tree with fruits. I had no idea what the fruit was or if it was edible. Ilenia said it was a quince (Cydonia oblonga). I was surprised that the fruits were so big and growing on a tree. This moment took me back to my childhood when we had quince growing in my grandmother’s garden. But the fruits there were much smaller and the “tree” itself looked more like a bush. I immediately tasted my mother’s syrup in my mouth from when I was a kid and got inspired to make my own. We went inside the Masseria Ospidale and Ilenia was talking with the people there, one of them turned out to be the owner, Oronzo . After their talk, Ilenia said that they have a garden with vegetables there and that we are allowed to pick the quince and whatever else we find! In that conversation in Italian Anaïs heard a familiar word - melanzana (eggplant) - and we headed to look for those purple treasures. When I heard that there were eggplants growing out back, my excitement shot up another level. I have never ever seen eggplants growing, let alone picked them myself! When we got to the garden I was so surprised by the amount of quince trees and all the other vegetables growing directly under the sun. We have to use greenhouses in Estonia to grow all these peppers and beautiful vegetables. We picked them all! I was like a little kid in a candy store!! We were exploring around and during that we found a blackberry bush. I have never seen them growing like this. How good they were! We saw fig and olive trees as well. I tried a fresh fig for the first time under that tree. After my bags were full of all the goodies, already very happy, we met with Bronwyn, who is currently living there. She explained to us more about the Masseria Ospitale. As the main harvest of tomatoes, peppers and eggplants is over, everyone can pick those three things, as what is left will just go to waste. So we ended up there at the perfect time. She also mentioned that they are making the famous Italian tomato sauce "passata" there. By the way she is organizing yoga lessons there every Wednesday at 08:30 and also different events with another yoga teacher. It looks like the perfect place for yoga and mindfulness. Bronwyn asked us if we’d picked any of the arugula yet and we walked towards them. It looked just like grass growing there before, I didn’t even recognize the arugula. And the taste of that arugula was much stronger, better than the ones we grow in our greenhouse in Estonia or what you can buy from a grocery store. I found out that the fruits growing on cactuses are the same fruits I have bought from the grocery stores here for the first time in my life, they are called prickly pears. The whole day made me so overwhelmed, it was filled with so many positive emotions. I was so happy to see that Ilenia and Anaïs felt exactly the same way as I did. We biked back home in golden hour and saw an old man picking something on our way back. It turned out that there was arugula growing just there on the fields. This perfect day taught me so much about Italian hospitality, cuisine, culture and agriculture. Letting people pick the leftover harvest is a good example of sustainability in using local produce rather than buying things from big stores. P.S. I actually used the quinces to make the jam. Even though it was my first time making the jam, it turned out really good and got a lot of positive feedback. Anaïs and I also used the eggplants and tomatoes to make parmigiana. Since it was cooked by two foreigners - a Belgian and an Estonian - it didn’t look as good, but the taste was still amazing!! ~Pille
2 Comments
Filomena Lok
10/17/2020 08:00:29 am
Great work Pille 😀
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Anais
10/22/2020 09:59:03 am
Amazing wooork!! Wow
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