You know it’s hard to keep up with the pace of life, even here in slow paced Italy. So it is Tuesday afternoon and we are busily preparing for Round I of the Perugia-Terni Throwdown and I haven’t yet posted about our Sunday at Simone’s.

Sunday, Sunday. Mangia, mangia. Throw in another mangia for good measure and you’ve pretty much summed up our Sunday. Once again we assemble our group, which has grown to 15 and caravan the short 10 minute drive from Cannara to Bevagna and take over Simone’s le Delizie del Borgo restaurant.  We are an odd assortment of Americans and Italian friends and neighbors.  Regardless of the composition of the group, Simone’s never fails to please.

It is always nice to see our uninitiated guests’ reactions as the plates keep coming.  We never order at Simone’s.  Instead, he simply starts sending plates out to the table.  Those plates change with the season and with the availability of certain fresh produce and other ingredients.  Our first are the sliced meats – capocollo, prosciutto, salami.  Then cheeses – pecorino and others.  Sliced raw artichoke salad.  Toasted bruschetta with fresh local olive oil.  Toasted bruschetta with lardo, a thin layer of pork fat, warmed by the bread and looking like grilled cheese.  More than one of the kids falls for this one.

Then an array of “grown up” foods – bruschetta with liver pate.  Fresh anchovies under oil, salty and exploding with flavor.  Snails, piles of them, lightly sautéed.  And a heaping pile of  tripe.  Not recognizing what it is, someone asks if it is cabbage, to which I respond, “could be, if cabbage comes from the stomach lining of a cow.”  It is then that I unveil my secret weapon in the day’s battle to dominate the conversation – the downloaded rimshot.

Play rimshot here!

Throughout the meal the rimshot is unveiled at strategic moments.  If by strategic moments you mean every two minutes or so.  In fact, I hit the rimshot more often than Simone delivers plates to the table.

And that is saying a lot.

Not that any technology is needed to encourage the laughter.  After a few hours together, American and Italian are completely at ease with each other, sharing stories, laughing, drinking.  It’s as though they have been friends all of their lives.

So after lunch we said goodbye to four of our friends, our buddies from the mountains of Western North Carolina.  We will see them again later in the week in Florence.  And the following day we would be losing our friends from Washington, DC.  But they, too, will share in our reunion in Florence.

Until then, we’ll at least have Simone’s, the extra inches around our waists that he is responsible for and a few photos to remind us of another Sunday, Sunday.

Ci vediamo!
Bill and Suzy