Sorry, appears blogger will only post so many words so here is Page 2.
We can both feel heat when its on, and I have checked several times for flame, and its there, so we decide to put the chops on and try cooking them by holding the knob down. They'll cook sooner or later, we're sure. I take back over and chops are getting brown but no sizzle lean, what the crap is going on, am I going to have to pan sear? Finally, after holding down for a good 15-20 minutes with no let up to check, we get what appears to be ignition. Smoke tendrils start coming off the lava rock and this time when I remove my hand from the knob, the grill keeps burning. It's a miracle and it's about darn time. Maggi wants to give the grill the benefit of the doubt...its not been used since last year so needed to be "primed.". I think its just broken, hold down the knob until it gets hot my a##! Anyway, alls well that ends well. We cooked the chops to a perfect medium, devoured them with all the caprese salad we made, smeared our toasted bread with roasted garlic, finished off a wonderful bottle of a Nobile Red and concluded the meal with a slice of lemon torte and a little dessert wine...Yummy.
Today was Maggi's turn to drive and we headed out towards the wilds- The Garfagnana. Mountains, quaint villages, winding roads...ahhh Italy. We started out mid-morning, honking our way down the hill and turned towards Lucca. Wouldn't you know it, we ended up right back down one of those same city streets we had explored several times yesterday. Thank goodness we finally found a way to turn left and on to an unfamiliar but "taking us out of the city" road. What a surprise when we realized we had turned around on it yesterday too, trying to find that darn parking area. This time staying on it took us north out of Lucca and into the less traveled areas, at least we thought. I can tell you that based on the cars, trucks and motorcycles always making us feel we were going too slow, it's not that less traveled. We drove along the Serchio River to Bagne di Lucca, an older spa town, moving over for tailgating drivers, but sometimes just ignoring them and making them stay behind us on those narrow, curvy, ascending roads. After a brief stop we pointed ourselves, we hoped, towards Barga. Neither of us realized it was a hilltop(mountain) town reached by switchbacks with those nasty outside curves and what looked like alleyway roads, but reach it we did. We were never lost, but we "explored" quite a bit, many times off the wider, straighter roads. Does it sound like the roads are my big focus, well, maybe they are. Driving here is a challenge and the drivers are only part of it. I will never be comfortable that you can run into someone coming around a blind curve on what to me is more like a one lane road, at any time. Maybe I should only drive the Autostrada. Naaw, just grin and bear it. We have 100% insurance coverage.
Obviously, since I am writing this, we made it home fine, as we have each time. We honked our way back up the hill, decided on a light dinner and made plans for tomorrow's road trip to Carrara. I think it's my turn to drive......
Last night we honored National Garlic Day with light dinner of wine, roasted garlic, toasted bread of course and the rest of our lemon torte. We reworked our itinerary for rest of stay, deciding to leave here a day early, Monday, to drive through the Chianti area. Since it's on the way back to Orvieto and car drop, it just made sense to not return back up the hill. Ciao until tomorrow, maybe.
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