A lovely steak dinner, with a nice glass of Red wine (a Thai brand).

What a lovely experience you must have had, Tom, at that agriturismo place!

My husband has lately become infatuated with Pugliese recipes, and is very successful with them.

If ever we can afford to return to Italy, I shall recommend a southern itinerary, from the Bay of Naples down to Bari.  But who knows if that sort of thing will ever be possible again ...

On "sustainable seafood": As I have written often before, I do not believe that "sustainable" is appropriately applied to seafood.  No doubt the Monterey Bay Aquarium experts, and other marine conservationists who publish similar guides to seafood, give seafood-eaters excellent advice, by indicating which fish and invertebrates are threatened by their fisheries, and which seem plentiful, and are not caught in excessive numbers.  Nevertheless there is too much uncertainty, about too many things -- the life cycles of the marine animals themselves, the nature of their ecosystems, ever-changing practices of the fishing industry, ever-growing levels of pollution, and the complicated effects of global warming -- , to be able to apply "sustainable" to any fishery for more than a few years into the future.

Canis, Bari is over-crowded and dirty. Way over-rated. Now Milan - that's a pretty cool place. At least as Italy goes. Theft is a major problem there. As a Somali friend once told me "The Italians will steal from you while you're looking at them." My Italian friends also tell me the same thing.

When we drove into Rome in 2000, the taxi-driver who drive us from the airport to our hotel near the Roman Forum was very sweet, pointing out the sights, but knowing that we were zonked from the overnight flight.  When we got to the hotel, the fare (he told us) was, I don't remember what, 50,000 lire perhaps, as they did those things before the Euros, or maybe more.  So, I produced a 100,000 lire note, and gave it to him -- and he, by magic, made it vanish, and replaced it with a 10,000 lire note upwards in his hand, and said sweetly, "O Signore, you were mistaken, you gave me only this much."

At the time, we were too exhausted and confused to do anything.  But in retrospect, we are very very very miserable that we let that bastard get away with what he did.  With just an itsy-bit more of information, I would have learned that our hotel people would have set things very right with that bastard taxi-driver, if only I had the sense to appeal to them.

I.e., one of Michael's bags was lost in flight; it might regularly have taken a while to locate and correctly redirect; the hotel people got it to us with impressive promptness, like that evening.

Which just goes to show: When power, corruption, capitalism, and good-heartedness are all flowing in the same direction, why, take advantage of it, for at least a bit!

God knows where that thief of a taxi-driver is now.

Meanwhile, the pizza-restaurants outside our hotel, and outside the Roman Forum, have provided us with some of our happiest culinary memories from anywhere.