Day 25

Today we had another group outing. Our first stop for our tour was a local butcher shop. This was very fascinating. We walked in to a large sized warehouse, we got some cloth white coats to wear over our clothes and we guided in to see a whole pig just hanging in the hallway. It had just been gutted and then hung up and was just sitting there. We watched one of the butchers working on some ribs, his skill was amazing, we knew that none of us could accomplish the same task with the precision and speed that he had. The hanging pig turned out to be a demo for us. A customer had ordered a porchetta which is a popular Umbrian dish. It can be a piece of pork belly with pork liver and fennel, but traditionally you will find all over Orvieto places that will roast the pig whole. That is what we say prepared. The butcher removed the spine, the leg bones, the remaining organs, and the ribs then took it to a separate room where he put in a ton of wild fennel, garlic, rosemary, pork liver, salt and pepper. Then he sewed up the entire thing with a metal pole inside and we watched him put it in a very large oven to be slow roasted for the customer. It was pretty cool to watch the process, I got most of it on video so see Facebook soon. We also got to see them make sausage, at least part of the process, they had already grinded the meat and mixed it with the herbs and were now putting it into casings. The machine they used was extremely fast. They easily put out a literal ton of sausage in one day. We walked through the entire plant, it was extremely well kept for, very clean and well organized. They even did a lot of cured meats. We finished the tour with a tasting of some of the cured meats they had and of course some porchetta. The group left and our next stop was an olive oil mill. The mill also produced wine. The olive oil production was cool to learn about though. They say in the fall when its harvest time, they basically work 24 hours a day. They pick olives in the daylight and by night they are in the mill pressing olive oil but of course it will be fun because they always will be able to sample a little of the very first batch. We got offers to help them during harvest time if we are ever in Italy at the time. We got to sample the olive oil ourselves along with some of their other creations like roasted artichokes in olive oil and a black truffle spread. We all of course bought souveniers and then we were off to lunch. We didn't have to drive very far, I believe Chef has been to this restaurant before, he actually had his wife and son meet us there for lunch. It was an excellent meal, one of my favorites this entire trip. They started us out with several kinds of pizza. Then we got some fresh made pasta with an excellent ragu that you just couldn't stop eating, and you didnt have to either, they kept on coming around with platters of it if you wanted seconds. I didn't although I was tempted. It's a good thing I didnt because the third course was fire grilled chicken, ribs and sausage. The chicken was extremely good with the skin extra crispy and the sausages were probably the best I've ever had. After lunch we were off to our final destination, the park of monsters. Legend goes that a single man spent his life carving all of the statues that are in the park. There are tons of them. Huge monstrosities that i dont know how one person could do on their own. My favorite was the giant turtle that was about 10 feet high and 20 feet long, we couldnt get close enough to that one though because some of them they had blocked off. I definitely want to visit that park again one day again. After our visit there we headed on home. It was a shorter day than we were used to, but it was a lot of fun and it was a lot closer, no more than an hour on the bus in between destinations. Once we got back we went out for a while, but I didn't stay out too late, a lot of people were going to Rome the next day and I was planning on working at the restaurant this weekend.