forestry and french onion soup

Todays work was really a field trip.

We went to a friend of nicla (my host) about 40 minutes away from her farm. we took a nice drive and we stopped off at the butcher to get some chicken for dinner...We of course baught the whole chicken head and feet attached!! IT was so cool. I absolutely love it. Anyways we worked in the forrest cutting down some trees for firewood as well as to get the leaves from certain trees that they use for broom making. Col because its all natural stuff that literally grown in their back yard.

So we worked for about 4 hours or so and then went back for lunch and lunch was delicious. We had fresh Lasagna, then a tuscan fish dish (really good) adn polenta. Then we had for dessert some cakes, adn then afterwards fruits and nuts. \

Lunch took about 2 hours which was good lots of conversation...none of which I understood at all.

We came back and I started making dinner. French onion soup. By the way I took pictures of the chicken and all but my camera was kinda enough to delete all the pictures I took today..kinda pissed off about it since they were cool pictures. Anyways as the onions were browning Nicla took me on a tour of her property which is massive....she showed me some projects shes in middle of doing but cant do it all at once. So I will try to help out as best as I can, not just with food but with carpentry as well. Use whatever knowledge I have to help out.

Anyways I had my best day as chef today. And its not the food Im cooking. Its the fact that I got to pick herbs and stuff as fresh as possible. Right from the tree. For example, bay leaves are very expensive and nearly impossible to get in Canada, however they grow naturally and wildly here but the Italians dont use them! So I picked them right from the tree for my cooking! I dont think I have ever smiled so much as a chef as when I was picking bay leaves...YES IM A GEEK..I know.

It was awesome and now I got to go finish dinner as I will hopefully go to sleep early tonight since I am getting over a cold...which jessica thinks is my body really just clearing itself out from all teh smoke I inhaled in France..And I kinda agree with her..but one more day and I should be back to normal.

Tomorrow morning is fresh market time, so I have to be up early for that which will be fun...
ciao!!