It’s Italy, so there’s always pizza.  Problem was, one was always too much for one person and too little for two.

What’s it like in the shops?  Well, you can fill up your wine jug with red or white from the bulk tin.  And pick up some pasta!

Drinking in Sardinia…

a) Water – always bottled.  You get a big one-liter bottle with your dinner and go from there.  “Naturale,” if you don’t want it fizzy.

b) Beer – the local beer is “Ichnusa.”  The basic model is not very good, kind of like Bud.  The “Non-Filtrato” is very good.  The lemon radler is basically a lemon soda.  We never felt any buzz from it whatsoever.

c) One good beer not pictured here was called “Friska”.  I think that was also local.

d) The wine is OK.  The only one we were really taken with was a dessert wine we never found again.

e) We discovered a wild soft drink called “Chin 8”, pronounced “kin-AUGHT-o”.  It was kind of a Moxie meets Dr. Pepper.  Also available in Diet!

f) Summer afternoon, hot… drink, drink!  Alcohol, sure, but it doesn’t have to be.  Limonata, Chin-8, granita (ice slushy), smoothie (lots of smoothies)…

f) Late afternoon: Apertivo!  Spritz!  Drink, drink!

g) After dinner: Digestivo!  Grappa!  Drink, drink!

Popular way to have pasta – with shellfish.  I’m not really a shellfish person.  I usually avoid dishes with “too many mussels” (reference).  But when in .. um.. an island due west of Rome…  it was always tasty and I never regretted getting a pasta & shellfish dish.

An unusual presentation of the usual vegetables.  The grilled vegetables: always zucchini, eggplant, peppers.

And the mixed salad: always a chopped iceberg-type lettuce, with some variation of tomatoes and/or carrots and/or cucumbers.  Always with a bottle of olive oil, a bottle of vinegar, and salt on the side.  Incidentally, this was the way my mother always had her salad.  I kind of like it.

And the tomatoes.  Always tomatoes.  Always cherry.  They came on everything.  And since X doesn’t eat them, I always had to eat both his and mine (it’s the law).  So I came away feeling like a big cherry tomato.

This is the “bread” that comes with every single sit-down meal.  It’s a super-thin cracker.  It’s really only good when coated with olive oil and salt.  Otherwise, it’s a mindless pre-meal munch.

My favorite Sardinian dish, fregula!  (FRAY-goo-la).  Read about it at the Page-a-Day calendar:

https://christinestaffa.blog/2018/07/21/day-5-a-oristano-e-fregola/

Here we have it with mussels, tomatoes, and garlic… in a broth with clams… and with tomato sauce on a bed of Carta da Musica – the ubiquitous cracker-y bread.