191:365 Indulgances

Anna: Today, before heading home from the library, the girls and I decided to swing by an Italian grocery store just a bit out of our way. It was well past noon and we hadn't had lunch yet, so I was thinking of little things we could eat quickly.

It's always dangerous for us to go to this particular grocery store. ;-) They've got stuff we've never seen anywhere else.

On today's lunch menu, then... we've got two types of Polish cream cheese - salmon and cucumber, and a jar of Polish pickles. There's some prosciutto and pancetta. The breads are olive and cheese on the right, black Russian rye. The beautiful bottle is extra virgin olive oil. I admit, I picked it for the bottle. I could justify it, though, as it cost less than what I got last time at our regular grocery store. I don't often indulge in olive oil because of the cost, but it's nice to have.

The canned olives actually had an English language ingredients list - it's got black and green stuffed olives (I'm not sure I understand the list, but I think it's saying the stuffing is pickles. And there's 6% of it), baby onions, caperberries, capsicum, vinegar, salt, etc.

The bowl on the far right has green figs in it, while the bowl in front has green, fresh olives. I've never seen fresh olives before, so I asked the cashier if he knew what to do with them. He had no idea! He asked another cashier, though, and she said they get put into fresh water. The water gets changed daily, until they are sweet. Everything I see online, however, says to use a brine. Hmm... not sure what to do with those. This site looks useful, though.

I would have preferred to play around a bit more with the photos, but I found I had to rush quite a bit to take them at all. The kitten was *very* determined to get at the meats. LOL My elder daughter did manage to distract her with a can of cat food for a while, which helped. It gave us time to eat out lunch in relative peace, anyhow. LOL

The combination of olive and cheese bread, prosciutto and those canned olives was incredible. The olives really brought alive the other flavours.

Deliscimo!