Sali-Scendi: Penne al Mottarone

This morning I drafted out a plan for how I'd prepare the remaining cheeses, vegetables, and various other pantry items over the next few days. I may have gotten a little carried away with the Mozzarella di Bufala sale. Besides finishing up some vegetables in salads, saving some fennel for Wednesday train ride, and so forth, I settled on cooking dinner from home tonight to use up the remaining half-pound of penne I had. While looking over some menus while roaming around town recently, I noticed that on pizza and pasta, the local toma cheese, Toma Piemontese was often paired with onions and arugula.
So, I had this idea: Penne al Mottarone (they make toma atop the mountain, which I cycled up the other day). Penne in a Toma Piemontese sauce with onions arugula and black pepper. Maybe the description in Italian would be Penne alla Toma Piemontese con Cipolla, Rucola e Pepe Nero. Either way, with a little bottle of cream, a dash of culinary ingenuity, and a whole lot of Pallanzan inspiration, I was on my way to the crowning achievement of my day. It was glorious! And I have a lot left over. Anyone who wants to fly to Italy right now can have some.... otherwise, I'll eat it when I get back from cycling tomorrow.
Speaking of cycling, I took the day off. I have two more weeks here, lots of riding to do, no sense killing myself after four days of mountains. Besides, I awoke to- you guessed it- more rain. As indicated, the temperature dropped from yesterday's 80 dF to somewhere in the high 50s this morning. Cold and rainy... not worth getting the bike dirty.
So, once it started to clear up (it never did, but it stopped raining), I decided the best course of recovery would be to do a lot of walking. I embarked on a touristic journey to Intra. On my way, I passed by Villa Taranto but decided today was not a great day for looking at flowers at the cost of 10 Euro. I pressed on towards Intra with the plan of eventually taking the ferry across to Laveno, the town that I was told about by a cycling friend who lived there for a few years. He is the reason I ended up at Lago Maggiore, I'm am sure glad I did. But, I digress.
I spend the early afternoon wandering around Intra, into the main church, which was the darkest church I've ever been in. Very cool but the walls were basically black. It was like being back at School of Rock, except there were statues of Jesus everywhere in place of Kurt Cobain posters. After realizing that none of the stores would reopen until 3pm, I decided it was best if I got over to Laveno.
Laveno is tiny, but really nice. I walked up the the main church- which was under restoration- walked towards the lift to the top of the little mountain that Laveno is at the foot of, but decided there was no sense in spending 12 Euro to ride up a bucket to the top of a hill. I can do that for free on my bike. I walked back to town, got the best licorice gelato I've ever had, then I went back to Intra.
The main event for me in Intra was this little kitchenwares shop. The old man, who presumably was the owner was very wary of everyone, I guess because there is a lot of expensive tiny stuff in his shop and there are way too many tourists for comfort in Intra. But once I proved that I wanted to buy something, he was very helpful. I picked up a new olive pitter, considering mine is broken and the selection at Fante's is surprisingly limited. Plus now I can buy olives here and I'll be able to pit them. And more excitingly I got this cool roller with little tines on it that is used to puncture holes in sticky focaccia dough. I'm really excited about that! I think Lambertville needs a focaceria! Maybe this is the start of something. Anyway, probably the most dangerous thing is that I realized that since I'm paying $200 to get my bike on the plane, there is no 50lb weight limit. Now I just have to watch the budget.
Basically that brings me back to where I started. On my way back to my apartment, I stopped in the bakery to see what was left at the end of the day. The woman, who I'll presume is the owner is going to visit her daughter who lives in Orlando next week so between the little bit of English she understands and the bit of Italian I know, we actually had a nice conversation about each of our vacations, about who each of us have different ideas of what each other's countries are really like, etc. It was a great way to end my wanderings.
Now, I'm doing the most glamorous thing possible. I'm sitting in a self service lavanderia waiting for my cloths to wash. Well, the washer says one minute so I have to go tend to that, but I hope for good weather tomorrow and a chance at one more great ride in the Alps around Lago Maggiore! Ciao!

Here's a virtual version of my day: