The last week in Tuscany

Last week we went to see the olives that we picked being turned into olive oil at the mill. The stages are: First they go through a fan to separate the olives from the leafs. Next the olives get a rinse then they go into a mulcher. Then the olive oil goes through pipes and ends up in a trough. Last but not least you pour the olive oil in to your containers. I don't like olive oil but my mum said it was great!

Last week it was SNOWING!!!!!!
It was so much fun. We went up the big mountains behind our house and we went tobogganing, had snow ball fights and made snow devils.

Well this is my last blog entry in Italy. I have enjoyed it a lot and I am looking forward to going to England.


Arrivederci

Auf Wiedersehen

Bye Bye

Ciao

Olive Picking

Yesterday we went to pick olives at our friend's dad's olive grove. They have 120 trees. Yesterday we picked 14 trees worth of olives and that's about 220 kilos. It's fun because you don't do it with your hands you do it with small rakes and you can climb up the center of the tree. I attached a stick to the end of my rake so I could reach olives that were above me. Some of the trees don't have a lot of olives but others have heaps. Before you start a tree you have to spread a net out underneath the tree for the olives to fall on and if the tree is on a slope you have to put sticks on one side so the olives don't roll off the net. We have some trees at our house. We harvested them then we gave our olives to our friends to bring to the mill. We only had 23 kilos so we got 5liters of olive oil. On Saturday we will go and see the olives we picked yesterday getting pressed at the mill.

Ferrari Cup and holiday

Last Sunday we went to the Ferrari world finals. It was so cool except for the beginning when there was, in the first 100 meters, a 5 car crash. There were tractors pulling the cars away and the safety car slowing all the others down to a stop. One of the drivers went off in an ambulance but I don't think it was bad. Apart from the crash it was cool and loud. Here are some pictures.

The day after we went to Florence and bought some chestnuts. In the evening we roasted them on the BBQ. I don't like them but everyone else does. It was fun because it was cold but we had the fire going so it kept us warm. I took some bread and stuck it on the end of a fork and toasted it. It was yummy because it tasted like it had been on a BBQ. Here are some more pictures.

Yesterday we came back from our trip to Carrara, Colonnata, Castelnuovo, La Spezia and the Cinque Terre. Colonnata is famous for lardo and we bought 2 packets of it, one big, one small. Lardo is cured back fat from a pig and it tastes very salty. It is cured in salt and left in marble boxes for a very long time. Carrara is famous for Carrara marble which the sculpture of The David is made out of. When we were there we saw the marble mountains where the marble gets mined from. We stayed in La Spezia for the night. In the morning we went to the Cinque Terre. The Cinque Terre is in translation The Five Villages which go along the coast at the Mediterranean sea. First we went to Manarola. The cool thing about Manarola is that to get the boats into the water they lower them with a crane. Then we went to Monterosso and had lunch. For lunch I had a french fries pizza it was yummy. Then we headed home and that was the end of our holiday. Here are some pictures.

The river at the bottom of our drive way has changed dramatically. From hardly any water to a raging torrent. It has even gone over my dam that I built with my friend. Here are some pictures of the torrent.

Pasta Making

This morning we made pasta dough. After kneading the dough we prepared the filling. The filling contains bacon, pecorino cheese, nutmeg, breadcrumbs and the yolk of a egg. Then we put the dough through the pasta machine. First we put a ball of dough through the biggest setting then we folded it twice and put it through the machine again. We repeated that step again. Then we put the dough through the machine 6 times changing the setting each time. Then we put the filling in between 2 sheets of pasta and cut it out in to triangel shapes and then its all done.Ready to be cooked. Here is a picture of the pasta.