Convertibles, Canepina, and Corriere

A few days ago we enjoyed a really fun day, with some American friends visiting Soriano — in fact, they're the people who told us about Soriano in the first place years ago, a crucial step in our move to Italy.

(Shameless plug: You can read all about them in our memoir!!! :)

So the four of us crammed ourselves in to our little Fiat 500 convertible and put the top down, to head over to the nearby town of Canepina on a beautifully overcast day. The weather was cool and breezy, no direct sun, with a droplet of rain falling on you every 5 minutes… Perfect convertible weather, as far as these two “pazzi americani” (crazy Americans) are concerned.

Our friends had not been to Canepina before, so we were excited to take them. Canepina is famous for its fieno pasta, (fieno means “hay”), a very thin handmade pasta, similar to angel hair. We walked around town for a while before lunch.

As we worked our way down a small street, we noticed a corriere van (delivery van) driving away, and a package fell out the back of the truck, landing in the middle of the street. Matt yelled for the delivery man, but he didn’t hear him, so Matt brought the package to the nearest open business and asked if they could deal with it.

We walked down the street, and in a small alley, we saw a man sitting there, who called out to us.

“Don’t I know you?”, he said. “Yes… I remember… I fixed your stufa last winter! You are Matt Walker!”

And then we had a 10 minute discussion about the use of stufe (pellet stoves) and the weather in general; and I made him blush because I explained that I was still using a fan at night (and not the stufa) since I am a middle-aged woman and I am hot all the time.

When we got to the restaurant and sat down at the table, we noticed that all of our fellow diners had plates of “ovoli” - a local mushroom that is only available for a limited time in the fall, and in limited growing zones. Our friends had never had ovoli, so we were thrilled to share a plate with them - dressed with olive oil, lemon, and salt. We also had an antipasto plate of the house, which was a plate of salumi, and bruschette. (I was too greedy when the plate came, and forgot to snap a picture of the plate of frittata, red cabbage salad, and cannellini bean salad that came with the antipasti as well.)

Then came the parade of fieno:
Fieno alla gricia
Fieno tradizionale
Fieno con ovoli
Fieno con ragu bianco e porcini

After this, we had a dish of chestnuts soaked in liqueur, and a round of espressos. Then we had some grappa that they made in house. We also had two bottles of sparkling water, and 1.5 liters of local red wine. For four people, €110 total!

After lunch, we saw the delivery man again.

“Hey, you dropped a package up the street before”, Matt told him (in Italian). “It’s up the street, this way”, he said, gesturing.

“OK Thanks, I’ll go get it now”, the delivery guy said — and we knew it would still be there, sitting on a bench outside the store we found it at 3 hours before.

We love it here.