I just had the best lunch ever.

While this normally wouldn’t be anything to comment on, the Italian diet that we’ve been placed on here in Cortona is so starch-laden and carb-heavy that after even one week (and it’s been two) I was craving something green and leafy….I probably would have eaten an entire head of lettuce or stem of broccoli if you’d given it to me. But today, I finally got up the nerve to confront the mean produce lady… — This requires background: Over here, it’s considered completely inappropriate to pick up or touch your own produce when you’re shopping, especially since most fresh fruits and veggies are sold separately from little stands rather than at a larger supermercado (grocery store). That being said, when you have the desire to buy produce, you must find a suitable stand, try to flag down one of the “attendants” (usually a grumpy older man/woman who doesn’t like Americans) and then stumble over your crummy Italian in an effort to buy one gosh-darn banana. This can be rather difficult and intimidating. Especially with this particular woman — dubbed “mean produce lady” — it is not uncommon for one to stand there for 15 or 20 minutes while she attends to every other customer in the street…stopping strangers to see if they want to buy anything and offering carrots to the mangy cats that roam the streets (Cortona is truly a City of Cats…more on that later)….BEFORE noticing the poor, meager art student yearning for a single tomato. Fortunately for me, today was different. By the sheer grace of God, I was able to catch mean produce lady at a time when there were no other possible customers and not only did I manage to buy one tomato, but two! AND a peach! This was truly thrilling.

Not only that, but I really hit the jackpot in the foreign cheese lottery — the supermarket (or what passes as one…it’s certainly no Walmart) offers a large variety of cheeses and other white, pink or brown triangle shaped things and most of them have strange names that I’ve never heard of. I bought something last time that said it was asiago, but it certainly didn’t taste like the asiago I know. And heaven forbid they start importing cheddar….. Anyway, today I got something that was possibly the best cheese I’ve had to date. I don’t remember the name and I don’t want to run all the way downstairs to grab it out of the fridge just for the name, but it did start with an “F” and it was perfect on my tomato-cheese-on-a-roll sandwhich. AND, as if things couldn’t get any better, one of the gals in the program decided to fix homemade soup and was generous enough to offer it to any passerby who happened to be nutritionally malnourished (which at this point, we all are…you can only take so much pasta) and that was some wonderful soup.

I know that there are probably at least one or two people who will appreciate this post (Karen and my mother) but for all the rest of you, I just want to make it clear that I am not saying that Italian food isn’t great. All I’m saying is that the only person making sure I get my greens ‘n’ veggies is myself and up until this point I’m not sure I was fully cognizent (sp?) of the detrimental impact of eating solely coffee, pasta and/or meat products with the occasional fruit and yogurt thrown in there. After a while, the idea of eating becomes rather unappealing. THAT being said…thank God for fresh vegetables and, despite her taciturn nature, for the mean produce lady and her thriving garden. 🙂