Southern Italy and the Southern US

On Sunday I made:

• Tuscan Baked Cannellini Beans with Rosemary and Garlic. The recipe came from the Jack Bishop Italian Vegetarian book you gave me for my birthday. It was awesome, although next time I will probably use the crockpot instead of the prescribed Dutch-oven-in-the-oven, because I would like my beans a little bit moister.


• Fennel and Orange Salad with Mint and Olives, also from the Bishop book. The taste was phenomenal, but I didn't like the size and shape of the orange and fennel pieces as dictated by the recipe -- the oranges were in big rounds, beautiful but hard to handle, and the fennel was in weird chunks.


• Piadina, a Roman flatbread I have probably mentioned before.
  


• Collards cooked for five hours with some smoked pork neckbones.

I liked the way the collards fit right in with the three Italian dishes. A very balanced meal, all in all.

More on collards very soon...