Le Marche another Italy

We drove into the countryside somewhere between Cupramontana and Staffolo to Luigi’s summer family home. It was a beautiful place (just like every freakin place I encoutner out here) with plenty of olive trees. A cute little tent area was set up and many long tables awaited our arrival.
Of course there was plenty of wine, too much food, and great conversation. Most of the people in attendance were actually Dutch or Belgian transplants. It was so interesting to hear so many languages going on. And I was so impressed with the ease these northern euopeans had of switching from Italian to English keeping in mind they also have a native language of their own. In all the chaos of 50 europeans milling around drinking wine/champagne, I met a nice American man named Richard. Richard is probably in his late 40′s and originally from Philidelphia. His story of how he came to be here was quite unique, although sad in some parts. But he has been in Italy now for about nine years. Gave up a wonderful tenured position as a computer science professor (one of his students helped co-found Google apparently) to move out to the countryside of Italy. I think he appreciated the refreshingness of talking to an American, even though I’m half his age.
While the amount of food was overwhelming, it was really great to have more vegetables this feast. I had fresh fava beans which were DELISH. And there was multitude of fruity desserts. I counted six different desserts…I felt like I was still recovering from brunch on Sunday so I was a little less enthusiastic with the picture taking...