Driving up switch back after switchback on a single lane road through the Apennines, Bossy turned to me and said “[Blonde] and McClure are keeping our eyes on the road.” 

We had just made the two hour trek from Panicale to Norcia (the “Disneyland of sausage” according to the owner of our villa and the Bossy Blonde’s sometime boss, the Contessa di Mozzarella), and were heading towards Castelluccio, the place where the best lentils in the world are found. All of this sounds well and good, I am sure, but we were winding up this steep, steep mountain like a corkscrew and there was barely a guardrail keeping us from plummeting to our deaths in the valley below.

“Neither [Blonde] nor McClure are billy goats, so this is good.” I said, trying my best not to rubberneck when we noticed an ambulance scraping an unfortunate motorcyclist off the road while four of his distressed, luckily leather-clad, biker friends looked on in panic about a mile or so up the climb. 

I’d never really given lentils much thought. They’re beans and I’m American. I eat black eyed peas on New Year’s Day because I’m both southern and superstitious, but other than that I wouldn’t say that they really have a place in my diet. But Bossy has made a couple of batches of lentils since we’ve been here and I’m kind of obsessed with them now. Even our Italian friends have been super impressed with the flavor and texture of her recipe, though one of them did tell me that lentils are basically just eaten in the winter for them, too, just like our black eyed peas.