“This all started” with me coming home from a business trip to Italy, going to the farmers market looking for arugula…and low and behold Lonnie of Hoot Owl Holler Farm was growing it here in Kentucky!

I had a stash of olive oil from one of my Italian collegues, 10 pounds of canned Italian tuna in olive oil (that would be tonno in Italian.) and ate arugula salad and tuna for the next month!  It would have been TWO months for not my leetle friend Marta feeding the neighborhood cat that same Italian tuna…

And I am right back at it now and you can be too.  Lonnie brought me a bag of the most perfect baby arugula a few weeks ago and I’ve tasted nothing like it except in Italy.  Check him out this week at the farmers market.  Actually ANY of the baby greens would substitute nicely.

Add paper thin slices of onion, olives, capers (cured in salt if you can get them), tons of lemon juice, our olive oil of course as well as a few dribbles of our balsamico.  A few chunks of our great bread to soak up the juices and you will eat this daily if you can!

Dress up a pizza or better yet, buy a pizza crust, pile it with arugula or baby greens,  carmelized onions, drizzle it with our balsamico and olive oil and you will never see pizza the same way again.

Wilt those greens into a plate of our hot Benedetto Cavalieri pasta, grate fresh romano cheese into it, pour on the olive oil and add a few sprinkles of crushed red pepper… deener is ready!

The spectacular photos are Lonnie’s baby greens sprouting in his greenhouse, THOSE even make me hungry.  We started our farmers market career with Lonnie and Sharon at their booth oh so long ago, this photo is when I used to actually get up in time to start the farmers market.

Come pick up your weekend stash at the Tasting Room, stop by to see us at the market Saturday morning.  Ask Barbara why she now carries a sandwich in HER bag!…or maybe a ball of mozzarella.

Buona Pasqua!

Thanks to everyone who joined us on Saturday, it was an absolute blast!

The weather was great, for the first two hours one could barely squeeze into the Tasting Room for the crowd….which was okay because there was great live music in the parking lot.  The Big Maracas played all afternoon, there was dancing, there were meatballs (you have GOT to try out MEATBALLS!), tons of great food but mostly tons of great people!

Check out the photos!  And come in and see for yourself if you missed us Saturday (and try those MEATBALLS!).

This Saturday starts the Lexington Farmers Market at Cheapside Park.  We (Andrew and Elizabeth) will be in our usual space close to Main Street.

It’s going to be a DELICIOUS summer!

it’s obviously TIME FOR A PARTY!

Join us this Saturday from 1 to 5 pm to celebrate our new space, take a kitchen tour, and to celebrate the arrival of the new oil.

We’ll have tons of Italian food and drinks, the olive oil and Cuban coffee will be flowing freely, and THE BIG MARACAS will be playing live music in the parking lot.  Enrique, one of the founders of the band, is also an artist and painted our olive oil mural on our old building.  This band is an absolute BLAST!

Remember, this is plenty of parking also located on the streets surrounding the shop AND in the empty lots across the street on Saturdays.

THIS WEEK WE HAVE MEATBALLS!!

In the meantime, come in to try the newest addition to our line up….MEATBALLS.

And not just ANY Meatballs.  Ours are tender, full of flavor from high quality meat,  fresh vegetables, herbs and cheese.   We make each by hand and they are bold enough to stand on their own or try them simmered in our chunky Robusto Sauce.

Absolutely NOTHING appeals to the belly more than a plate of Meatballs and spaghetti (we suggest our Bucatini pasta.).

Meatballs are Italian though most people don’t realize they didn’t originate in Italy.  In the “Old World”, many people could only afford to season their pasta and sauce with meat.  Once Italian immigrants arrived in America, their situation improved and meat became more plentiful in their diet.  Thus the meatball.

Marta discovered this on her  first trip to Italy … “I’ve been in Italy 10 days and still haven’t seen a $%#!! Meatball”!

Come by today to try the Meatballs and sauce, to have a shot of Cuban coffee, to tell your meatball story.

Then come back SATURDAY for the festivities.

Buon Giorno from Mexico!

I hit town Monday too late to go to the plant and took out immediately on foot across the city.

Talk about vibrant life!  It’s 78 degrees, brilliant blue sky, and the city has been taken over by millions of tropical flowers.

You can see them, you can smell them, it feels like the Spring Break in Cancun I never had!

But- as usual – it’s all about the food.

Everywhere.   You smell and see and hear the food! 

There are the Mammacita and Poppo food stands on virtually every corner offering tacos (made from everyting imaginable…and some things not!), big cups of fresh jicama and papaya squirted with fresh lime juice then sprinkled with cayenne (My kind of people!), “churros (Mexico’s answer to Krispy Kreme)” deep frying right in front of you.  

Amazingly enough, ALL of these food stands are mobile.   Half are fashioned by strapping a small platform to the front of a bicycle (to hold that deep fryer!), others open up shop each day by opening up the trunk of their car.  The proprietor makes your taco, then you head to the “condiment bar” in the trunk:  the dozen or so plastic containers (brought from his kitchen at home) holding the vegetables and chiles and crema!

And there is ALWAYS  music (typically from the owner’s car radio) and there is ALWAYS at least a small crowd around the trunk, and I mean a HAPPY crowd.  There are business men in suits, college students, shop workers, and no one is a stranger, whether they know one another or not!  It’s a fiesta on every corner and one can’t help but be swayed by this mood.

But the one thing that says Mexico to me is the smell of corn tortillas frying.  It’s my version of ole factory HEAVEN.  I must eat 10 a day while I’m here.

With the warm weather comes another ritual that I love:   everyone’s windows are open.  

You hear the dishes clinking, you smell the food cooking, you hear the families talking and laughing.  You FEEL like you’re a part of their experience.  This is one of my favorite sounds in the world and it always reminds me of Italy or my childhood.  

I will never forget coming in the back door as a kid, the windows in the kitchen are flung wide open, GREAT smells have already hit me from two houses away, and Betty (Mom)wailing away (singing) at the top of her lungs to some country or love song on WHAS channel 84!  Usually in concert with the pressure cooker blasting on the stove.

I wish I could sign off with an audio of Betty singing that song.

Come see us in the new space, it’s absolutely delicious in there!

The 2010 harvest from Sicily arrived last Friday.

A “million” empty bottles arrived yesterday (…it felt like a million off loading them!).

Our Kitchen is (finally) up and running, which means CUBAN COFFEE SATURDAY!!

It’s March and it’s Spring!  And the Outdoor Saturday Farmers Market opens one month from yesterday, April 9.

Olive Oil

The First shipment of Rustico arrived by air last Friday, literally a BOATLOAD more will arrive end of next week.  It’s fresh, spicy, unfiltered and absolutley delicious.

This harvest’s acidity is .12% (remember, we have it lab tested in Italy and again here to insure it’s Extra Virgin.) and as usual it’s also Certified Organic.  To earn the Extra Virgin label, olive oil has to be from a single harvest, from the first press, and have a free acidity level of at least .80 of 1% .  Ours hover around the .10 of 1% which means HUGE levels of antioxidants and healthful properties.  Plus it just tastes so great!

We’ve included some photos from our family’s harvest in Sicily end October.  You can see they are actually IN the trees harvesting by hand (this is Barbara’s favorite photo…”oh my, it’s raining men”!) and stopping to enjoy their dinner and wine in the groves during the harvest.  I love these guys and I love their oil!

You’ve got to come in and taste this.

Kitchen

After much ado, alot of colorful language on my part, and aLOT longer than we anticipated, our kitchen is up, gorgeous and running.  I’m so proud of it I may give kitchen tours next week!  The cooking starts tomorrow and the Cuban Coffee will be out for drinking and selling on Saturday.

A note before we sign off:  please be aware that our next newsletter will boast a new look.  We are using a new tool that will still come from Oliva Bella, we just want to make sure you won’t think it’s spam.

Finally, Happy Birthday greetings to Marta Miranda (today) and Jeff Fuller (Saturday), they are two of my favorite girlfriends.

and a slice of cheese in your wallet!

…and a set of cutlery in your inside vest pocket.

For those of you who know me, you know that I am serious about them all.  That slice of “cheese” has saved me more than once, the sandwich – even days old – is aLWAYS in my briefcase ( I’ve had people offer to BUY it from me multiple times! and I will usually share a bite.), and though I’ve had to discard the fork for reasons of my physical health (it pokes me when I bend over…), that spoon is with me every where I go.  There is ALWAYS something I need or want to taste around every corner!

Update on the Tasting Room and Kitchen:  the new paint is finally on the walls of the Tasting Room, the construction is nearly finished in our kitchen, and olive oil is en route from Italy.  From the liquid gold that our families produce, to the sauces made in our kitchen, to the people that work with us on many levels(employees, vendors, etc…), there is a common theme of connection.

Case in point:    After obtaining a number of quotes to paint,  our sharp-as-a-tack G.M. Barbara chose Kevin.  Not only has Kevin been an absolute delight, and a really nice guy, and gave a great quote, AND done a great job…Kevin and I grew up blocks from each other.  Our families belonged (and still do) to the same church and community.   And I’ve not seen Kevin in 40 plus years but I have a feeling Kevin is going to be around alot.

Next up, Barnwood.  We all know that the tobacco barns are fast disappearing from the Kentucky rolling hills and vistas.  Mary,  part of the abbondanza family, and her husband have gifted us with enough barnwood to put up a rustic and beautiful “wainscot” in our shop.  The gift is generous, but what is equally meaningful to me is the fact that this wood had a previous rich life and history, and now it’s part of ours.

Yet one more case in point: our  kitchen work tables and cabinets… ones they do not make anymore:  14 feet long and weigh a ton.  For those who have sneaked a peak into our kitchen, you may remember these pieces.  They came from the rennovation of the Nazareth Convent kitchen and cafeteria in Bardstown Kentucky.  So what?  Growing up I had an aunt that I adored, Sister Margaret Mary, a nun who belonged to the Sisters of Charity order.  She also lived many years at Nazareth Convent and I spent weekends visiting Sister at the convent and washed dishes in that same kitchen.

Bear with me…just another one or two more.

The tasting and coffee bars?  Came from our good friends Drew and Paris of the late Harvest restaurant in Chevy Chase, he even brought them over to us!

We are a business but one that is so rich because of our community, our family, our customers, our suppliers, our investors, and the “pieces and bits” that have come to us from  other lives.

None of this escapes me.

And finally on the subject of suppliers…As alot of our customers have become good friends, Roy Stout of Stout Printing did exactly that.  Roy has been with us since day one, when he helped me design our first label.  Of course he forgot to tell me to order the labels WITH adhesive!  Roy felt badly about it then, but he giggled for years after.  Roy has been an integral part of the abbondanza family from the beginning, and developed into a very good friend for whom I cared deeply.

I share with huge sadness that we lost Roy last week.  I share with equally huge emotion that it was a privelege to have him in our lives at abbondanza.  In this vein of connectivity, his talent and big spirit will always be part of us through the labels and designs he created for us.

Come in to visit, share your own stories of connections, and remember that we are now open 5 days a week (Tuesday through Saturday), come check out the new digs.

It’s snowing, it’s cold, we’re trying to paint, we’re waiting on our internet, I’m driving Barbara crazy (though she would like to note that THAT is not due to the move!), the house is a MESS …. but we are open for business!

 It’s been fun visiting with all of you who have come by this week to shop or visit and to show you the space.  It’s also been great to hear how excited you guys are about the new digs.

On Saturday our abbondanza family will be coming through, we’ll have Prosecco flowing (we now live next to a wine store for gosh sakes!), parmigiano reggiano dribbled with our balsamico, and our products out for tasting. 

Come in, have a nibble and a dribble, a shot of bubbly, pick up some oil, bread and sauce for your Saturday night supper or your Sunday afternoon football.  Oh yeah, and pick up your own bottle of bubbly next door!

We will be here Saturday from 10 am to 4 pm.

MOVING in the blizzard last Saturday did NOT dampen our enthusiasm for our new location at 400 Old Vine Street, Suite 104. 

We are ESCTATIC to be located AT 400 OLD VINE STREET between Wines on Vine and Olde World Interiors. 

Once you see it you’ll say…”oh yeaaahhh”, I know where that is”. (once we get our wits back about us, we’ll make sure we get maps and directions out to all.)

We are working feverishly to decorate, set up the kitchen and get our e-mail, phone and credit card connection in place so we can fully serve you, our customers.  (Barbara said she will put out a sign and set up a coffee can…she is VERY worried about you guys not knowing where to find us…and being WITHOUT!).

We are softly opening Tuesday, January18th . 

BUT,  in the meantime – like all day today, Saturday – we want to encourage everyone to stop by while we are getting settled.    We will be open all day, come check out the new digs, say hello, and pick up anything you need or want, we have ALL of our wonderful olive oil, balsamic, pomodori, cipollini, bread, and rustic tomato bread soup available.  

 Remember…it’s all about the food and it’s all about the people, YOU!

Each day that Barbara and I met at the shop over the holidays (once we closed), we had numerous customers coming in to shop.  The lights were out, the tasting room was shut down, but folks kept coming in, and shopping even in the DARK!

We thought we had better do something…like open back up quick!

So here is the news and it’s all good:

1.  Our lease at 406 South Broadway has not been renewed.  We are viewing this as opportunity to find a new location that will enable us to provide even greater hospitality to our wonderful customers (you!).

2.  While we pack this week, we are WIDE open for shopping.  Chef Stacy is in the back making tons of sauces and coffee, Barbara is packing like a maniac, but the doors are open and shopping is WELCOME.  Come in and pick up all your “vitals” and stop for a Cuban coffee.  We will be open Tuesday through Friday this week. 

Look for our newsletter in the next week with details and updates in regards to our move.

Here is to 2011, we cannot wait!