We eat seasonally and locally here, which makes me feel both very virtuous and a little bored. That is often the way with virtue, I find.

Right now, it is the season for artichokes. (And pears.) That's pretty much it. This wouldn't be so bad if we weren't shockingly bad at cooking them (the artichokes, not the pears.) I have no idea what the problem is. We cooked American artichokes with great success in America. Italians cook Italian artichokes with great success in Italy. But so far we are enormous failures at cooking Italian artichokes in our lovely rustic farmhouse kitchen. They end up watery and flavorless. 

I keep buying them anyway, mind you, both because they look so fabulous and also because eternal optimism is a hallmark of my character. 

We had the same problem back in October when the fabulous porcini mushrooms were everywhere tasting delicious in every recipe in every restaurant and we were incessantly disappointed with them at home. 

Now there are no porcini mushrooms in sight. Only artichokes. (And pears.) One of the nice things about eating seasonally and locally is that you can be a complete failure at cooking something new every month.

I guess there is still also lots of game meat around -- venison and game birds and wild boar. Daniele cooks it all down at the pub. He is a snout-to-tail kind of cook and it's a bit of a gamble to go down to the Workingman's Lunch on weekdays and possibly have some of the best slow-roasted venison in red wine sauce that you have ever put into your mouth, but also just as possibly get a big plate of organ meats. I am sure they are delicious to a person whose imagination is neither as vivid nor as visual as mine.

Our olives are ready to eat now and we've been tucking in. They are packed with flavor and ten or twelve of them in a little dish next to my plate at dinner makes a delightful treat for my palate. At the rate of ten or twelve olives a day, we will use up the olives and run out just in time for the olive harvest in the fall of 2037.