Settesoli Inzolia

This was one of the wines Mr BFWT and I brought back with us from Sicily. After a long week on both our parts we decided to crack it open with Friday dinner.

Inzolia, also known as Ansonica, is a grape variety grown in the western areas of Sicily, not too far away from where we were staying in Palermo.

Limoncello Taste Test

I absolutely adore limoncello. It probably helps that lemon is one of my favourite flavours and that I like sugary cocktails. It feels quite classy drinking a few fingers worth neat from a glass tumbler (like whiskey, but for those of us who prefer fruit-based alcohol).

Like normal human beings, the checked luggage Mr BFWT and I had was empty going to Sicily and completely filled to the weight limit with food and alcohol on the way back. (Please tell me we are not the only ones who do this!)

We ended up buying a few bottles of limoncello when we were there, and I decided it was only fitting to do a taste test.

Review: The Orchardist by Amanda Coplin

The Orchardist follows the life of Talmadge, a man who moved to central Washington as a young boy and has built a life after the death of his mother and disappearance of his sister tending an apple orchard. He lives a solitary life isolated from most of society apart from a few close friends. However when Jane and Della, two pregnant young teenagers, arrive at the orchard, his quiet peaceful life is permanently altered.

Caponata

Caponata is a Sicilian aubergine dish in a sweet and sour sauce. The first time I cooked it, Mr BFWT and I were not entirely convinced we would like it. We soon discovered how delightfully wrong we were.

The finished product, served on toasted bread with a simple rocket salad

We saw caponata on the menu at nearly every restaurant we walked by in Palermo, and even saw it in tins in the grocery store. Since returning from holiday we've been on an Italian food binge and I couldn't resist the temptation to cook another Sicilian dish. We ate this caponata on thick toasted slices of olive sourdough bread from a local bakery as a starter before Friday dinner.

Review: Disgrace by JM Coetzee

I need to give credit where credit is due, because this book is generally very well written. However, while many seem to be able to move past their distaste for David Lurie, the main character, I found him endlessly tiring.

David Lurie is a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, pretentious, creepy, manipulative rapist. He is a white middle-aged man in post-Apartheid South Africa, a professor who considers himself better than nearly everyone around him, treats women with contempt, and uses his deluded perception of himself as a student of romantic poetry and "a servant of Eros" as an excuse for his behaviour. After two failed marriages he regularly manipulates attractive tourists or the occasional co-worker into sleeping with him between his weekly visits to a prostitute (that is, until he stalks her and her family, causing her to flee in fear).

Palermo, Sicily

It's been less than a week since Mr. BFWT and I returned from Sicily and I'm already pining to go back to Italy. This trip was just a few quick days that we managed to fit into both our hectic work schedules. While we would have loved to spend more time traveling around Sicily, timing and real life only permitted three days.

I absolutely adore Sicily. It is so distinct from other areas of Italy; the influence of the crucially important ocean, thousands of years of cross-cultural trade in the Mediterranean, and historic Arab rule is evident in the architecture, food, and culture found on the island.