Rievocazione Storica e disfida con l'arco

WATCH THE VIDEO AT THE END!  Every year on september 9th (ish), a little town in Italy, Montopoli in Val d'Arno has a celebration remembering the renaissance times and is essentially a bow and arrow competition.  It's actually a gorgeous city sitting on top of a hilltop, offering homemade crafts, goods, and LOTS of food!  Unbelievable small dishes that use very little, yet simple, ingredients.  Kids flocked the streets with ceramic birds filled with water that when you blow into them, a chirp is made, making the sound of the air a beautiful place.

One of the few things I got to try (food wise) was a Ciaccino.  These are very local here in Montopoli in Val d'Arno.  Essentially what it is is pasta dough rolled out, which was then deep fried, and you had your choice of salt or sugar on top of it.  We have to (obviously) get both so we could try it.  And let me tell you, it was absolutely DELICIOUS.  Who knew a total of 4 ingredients could make such a delicious treat / meal!  Everybody was walking around with bags (dripping with grease) and destroying this delicious treasure.

Another delicious treat we had (wasn't much of a treat), but a meal to the least was Ciaccino Ripieno.  What the gentleman told me was "Dough with stuff in it."  I said that's okay, I'll go for gold.  Most people were getting prosciutto in it (ham) but they ran out because it was so popular.  So Jason (my roommate) and I settled for salami (which in all honesty I think was the better choice).  All that they did was bake pizza dough in a homemade brick-like oven until it was a little charred, threw some olive oil on it, and gave you some delicious salami with nice big hunks of fat in it!  The flavor was to DIE for.  There was no cheese, lettuce, tomato, sauce, ANYTHING.  Just meat, and bread.  Two ingredients, but packed a TON of flavor.  I wish I could share some with everyone that's reading this blog, but my words to you would just say to make basic dough, bake it with olive oil on it, then throw some salami on it...It won't be the same though.

Everyone was dressed up in costumes to fit the occasion.  Knights, maids, beggars, kings, queens, townspeople.  If nobody had a cell phone, you could have swore you just travelled back in time.  Quite an amazing experience.  So, for you folks back home going to RenFest, you haven't really experienced a renaissance festival until you go abroad to get a full feel for what exactly it was like!  To make it even more authentic, everybody's native tongue was Italian (go figure), so they didn't have to act with an oldish accent.  It just came natural to them ha ha.  As you can see on the right, even the kids participated!  The city (and area) was divided up to (I think) 4 different sections, in which they competed in archery competitions throughout the day, and the best archer represented his section of the city.  It was an honor if they won the competition.