Truffles

May I present you, Roberto, one of our local truffle hunters. These days you can't find him home most of the times, because it's truffle season. For him, it's not only a way to make money, but it's his passion and that you can see because he love sharing his stories about truffles and he shows people how he finds them. That's rare in a profession like his, because we're talking about big money.


Did you know that in Alba they just sold a truffle of 750 gr. for 100 000 euro?

Well, knowing this, you can imagine that most truffle hunters aren't very willing to share their secrets. Villagers told us there was even a man who wore his boots in the wrong direction so that others wouldn't know where he went !

But Roberto is different. Ok, he will not show the most secret places but since we opened our agriturismo he took a lot of our guests on a truffle walk and showed them how his dogs find these expensive delicacies.

Bomba di riso

Today I made a bomba di riso, ... why they call it a bomb?

Well, I think I understand now after eating it: the amount of cheese in it make it, well, very very heavy.

But it's delicious, and that's what food is all about in my opinion. Sorry, no counting calories for me.

Una domenica in campagna

A nice initiative in our neighboorhood "Una domenica in campagna" at the Cantina La Maranzana.


Every sunday in november you can enjoy a free degustation of their wines and for those who want there's the possibility to eat a lunch with truffles in one of the agriturismo's in the neighboorhood.


There are a lot of events around wine in our region and we haven't seen a lot of tourists visiting them yet.

Our Lavender Farm

Since last week we can call ourselves an organic Lavender Farm, 25 000 plants we have now !
First we had to plant the rows of lavender with a tractor, now we're controlling every plant and putting in the ones we have forgotten + some extra.

I look forward to see them grow in the spring, our own lavenderfields !

Twitter and Facebook

Now summer is over and guests are gone, I take the time to familiarize myself with new things, like twitter. Joined today and not sure if it's something interesting or just a waste of time. We'll see, I'm a bit of a computernerd so love to find new internet-things to do.
If you want to follow me on twitter: http://twitter.com/AgriVerdita

We also have a group on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/search/?q=agriturismo+verdita&init=quick#/group.php?gid=66232584198&ref=search&sid=1347408835.1456215010..1
Thanks to Facebook I have more contact with people in Belgium (where I come from) than when I lived there. Strange, isn't it?

Something completely different: tomorrow we start planting our lavender, then we will really be a lavenderfarm. Very excited about this !

Mushrooms

At the moment there's an obsession for mushroom-hunting here in the village. The woods are ful of the most delicious porcini and other mushrooms that I don't know the name of, but they sure taste good !

Of course we have done our part of searching. The first times we walked miles and miles without seeing or recognising anything. After a while I think the people here got a little tired of seeing us like this and one day we got visit from someone who wanted to show me which mushrooms are edible. And since then I fill my basket with the most delicious species.

Of course after the walk I have to prepare them. This means we eate a lot of them during the last days and I have a full freezer.

Really love this ! Walking around, collecting food and preparing the most wonderful dishes with it.

Interesting articles

Surfing around on the web I found some interesting articles about places you can easily visit while staying at Agriturismo Verdita:

Alba & Asti in 48 hours: http://www.italia-magazine.com/alba-and-asti-in-48-hours
Both cities are ca. 1 hour from our place.

Genova in 48 hours: http://www.italia-magazine.com/holidays/liguria/genova-in-48-hours
Genova is about 1 hour and 15 minutes from our agriturismo.

Truffle Fairs in the Province of Asti (Piedmont) 2009

National Truffle Fairs



18 and 25 october in Moncalvo

8 november in Montiglio Monferrato



Regional Truffle Fairs



4 and 11 october in Montiglio Monferrato

8 november in Canelli

14 and 15 november in Asti

Medieval festivities in Cassine

http://www.festamedioevale.it/

Guardian article

A Guardian article about walking holidays in autumn that also mentions Piemonte as interesting destination: http://www.guardian.co.uk/travel/2009/sep/05/walking-holidays-autumn

The hills of Italy's Piedmont region are thankfully on the gentle, rolling side
- conquerable for even the wooziest of ramblers, who have over-indulged on
the area's delicious barolo and barbera wines.