Tours of Umbria Italy

Photos of Truffle Hunting in Umbria

I came across (thanks to the blog of Gareth Renowden, author of the excellent "The Truffle Book") some nice photos of truffle hunting in Umbria near Spoleto in the Australian "Regional Food" magazine:

http://www.regionalfood.com.au/RF2/mmedia/truffles/default.asp

Pressing our Umbrian Olive Oil

After the picking it was off to the olive oil press... The olive oil is cold pressed (you can see it trickling down through the pressing mats in one part) and has a delicious peppery taste. After we got the olive oil it was was straight back home to toast some bruschette over the wood fire with the freshly pressed olive oil drizzled on top. Delicious!

Olive Picking in Umbria

Last week we finally got round to doing some olive picking. It was fairly late in the season but it was a beautiful crisp sunny day which helped (along with the steady stream of espressos and treats that got passed up the tree during the course of the day). Although by no means an expert I managed (half way up the olive tree) to juggle the video camera and the little rake to get these shots which is about as close as you can get to olive picking in Umbria without actually being there! The sound like marbles dropping is actually the olives falling into the basket I had around my neck -the rest fell on the net below and were gathered from there.