One of the things that makes me happy is finding a store full of local, hand made cheeses, local wines, and prized local lamb. I found one yesterday.
Naturalmente Lunigiana has been on my radar for a while. It wasn’t until we got in the car and drove toward north towards Pontremoli that the anticipation of what we saw on the web site started to make me salivate. There’s nothing like seeing craggy, moldy, cheeses to get the juices flowing.
Along the SS62 from Aulla to Pontremoli, especially near Scorcetoli where Naturalmente Lunigiana has a blistering white roadside store, you pass lots of enticing places just right for foodie larder-stocking. Organic fruits and vegetables, wine, olive oils and even Lunigiana Lumache (them’d be snails to you. Mmmm).
Anyway, look at those cheeses. They’re not in some fu-fu store strangled in plastic wrap, as you can see. They’re aged and they show it.
And, we found, they don’t cost an arm and a leg either.
We bought two hand made cheeses. They cut them small as you like. One piece cost us €1.29, the other €0.72. Each was priced at €15 per kilogram, about $10 a pound. Check prices of your local artisanal cheeses in the US. You probably can’t beat these prices. It’s one third of the price of hand made cheeses sold in San Francisco.
This time of year the shop also carries Zeri lamb—the best Tuscan lamb around from lambs raised in Zeri, which is a loose confederation of small villages west of Pontremoli. (The first time we looked for it, we were confounded that there wasn’t a town named Zeri.)
Man, I’m tellin’ ya, season up some Zeri lamb up, slap it on a hot iron plate, and if the smells don’t make you happy happy, then you aren’t capable of happiness.
Find out more about Naturalmente Lungiana and gawk at the artisanal cheeses. See our Lunigiana restaurant map. There will soon be an artisanal food products locator map as soon as the research is complete.
And believe me, there is no better job on earth.