lunch

I know: I shouldn't have let this arugula start to flower ... it's a sure sign that it's a few days too old.  And whilst the leaves were wonderful and peppery, the stems - stalks, even - were a little bit too tough.  I should mow the rest of it, with scissors, tomorrow; rescue the tasty leaves; and let this particular effort at pandemic farming resuscitate.

A million years ago, in the spring of 1977, I was a graduate student in Florence, working on politics in late nineteenth century Italian art, and living briefly in an apartment on via Orsanmichele.  None of us had any money: some were graduate students - in art history and architecture; one was doing his servizio militare through working in an old people's home; a further, but overlapping group in the apartment above were very involved with Lotta Continua ("Lotta Continua, Libertà e potere non vanno in coppia"), a radical Marxist group that seemed extremely exotic at the time.  There was a mild ongoing tension between those of us who were also involved in feminist activity - especially around abortion rights - and the guys.  Mealtimes involved (a) going across the Piazza della Signoria to Trattoria Anita, where we were treated generously, and like family, or (b) pasta, or (c) a kind of omelette sandwich, with fresh crusty bread, and an extraordinary spicy salad leaf.  What is this, I asked, wide-eyed? "C'è arugula!"  I had never heard of such a thing.  I asked some more - and found that it was sold by various old ladies in the market, who came down from the hills with bundles of the stuff.  I bought it, thinking it the most extraordinary culinary discovery.  A decade later, I found packets of arugula seed on sale in Italy, and bore them home triumphantly, and planted them in our garden in Oxford.  Who could have foretold (maybe I should have invested, and made a fortune...) how ubiquitous it would become?  But I still can't resist growing it.