45 21.652N 010 55.273E Isola di Giglio, Tuscan Islands, Italy

Pipedream
Thu 20 May 2010 20:55
We left this morning after a pretty bumpy night. I thought that maybe the weather report might be right for a change - hah! We started out on a high, actually sailing right out of the harbor but as soon as we rounded the Promontario Monte Argentario there was our old friend the 21 kt wind on our nose. After making only about 3 kts with the engine and main I decided to head for Giglio. So much for advance planning. The pilot warned us that in the summer months the harbor is usually full. I think the problem is that there is not much space here to start with. We ended up tying up to the quay for tonight and I am not sure we are going to be able to stay here tomorrow.

Nice little fishing town complete with a very old castle and city built around it for protection from the pirates. When we got in we found that Badger the boat we met in Amalfi from Boston was already here. They asked me aboard and it turns out they could not make any headway either. Looks like this is going to last at least another day so we will see. Getting ready to go to dinner. Lots of pizza places on shore - oh boy! This appears to be a big scuba diving center with lots of dive sites around. It is still a little cold for me and as we go further north each day it is getting colder so I am not getting into the water on purpose.

Italian food:
Pizza... I always thought Pizza was an American adaptation of an original Italian dish. Turns out every restaurant here serves pizza. It is all over the place. Usually made in a brick oven with a real wood fire i.e. burning logs right next to your pizza. Very little sauce or even cheese. You taste more crust than anything. No pepperoni as we know it. Lots of very thin ham. Lots of green stuff on top. Like uncooked endive, broccoli. You have to ask special to get garlic or oregano. The Italian sausage is very meaty and has almost chunks of meat in it. I had a roasted Italian sausage dish on one of the islands where the sausage was just opened up and fried like a scrapple. More meat taste than spices.

Spaghetti... very rich and always cooked just right not spongy or doughy like when it is over cooked. The special treat in most of the seaside places is fruit de mar or fruit of the sea which is code for a lot of unidentifiable crustations heaped on the plate and mixed in with the sauce. Very little of what we would call regular spaghetti with meat sauce. Cream and or cream sauces. Pena pasta is real big as well as cheese ravioli and lasagne.

Lasagne... is nothing like mother used to make. There is no or very little tomato sauce used. It is a collection of traditional lasagne noodles held together with cheeses. Both the reqota and the mozzarella are very light and the best I have had anywhere. Tonight I had a lasagne con rague - or meat. We usually lace ours with meat but this was the first in maybe 5 trys at it that it came with any meat at all. Not many spices either.

Cannolonie... we usually stuff a large pasta noodle with ground beef or cheese. The stuff I had here is made from a large flat piece of dough about the size of a slice of our bread and rolled round. The best I have had, had like a chopped meat filling ... maybe a Italian sausage as described above and was rolleed in a noodle shape and had a slight hint of a mild sauce on it. The best I ever ate!

Glad I already ate tonight ... more later.