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Many many beatiful pages to see
Here you are what it happens in Siena
Here you are what nice turn
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 Breakfast
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.. if you want to celebrate birthdays, anniversaries, or something to be forbidden of..
Palio's Plates
.. if you want to celebrate birthdays, anniversaries, or something to be forbidden of..
The Palio of Siena's Mugs
 Ostemeraviglioso with:
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"Saint Lucy: leave the acorn and take the olive!". Close to Christmas, in Saint Lucy holiday, on the thirteenth of December, or around that day, we start to collect the olives. We used to go to the olive grove early in the morning, each one of us bringing on his neck his own bugnolo, which is a one-side-flat basket. First of all we had to collect all the olives fallen in the soil: a bit eaten by animals or just spoiled, these olives were used for a special olive oil. This oil was good but wasn't mixed with the one made by olives collected from the trees. Nowadays, the olives' collection usually starts in November, when the olives are still green and a bit unripe. While we used to collect them in December when they were really ripe, very big and black. We used to climb the trees, one or two people for each tree, according to the largeness of the tree. Then we put the olives one by one into the bugnolo, taking care of not spoil them. In this period of the year we used to eat very often the pulenda or polenta (a kind of cornmeal porridge). It was cooked into a big pot, called paoiolo which was put into the fireplace in the morning. Cooking the polenta was a men's job. Usually it was made by the head of the family, called capoccio, or someone who was free at home, since sitting close to the fireplace mixing the porridge while keeping stable the big pot on the top of the fire, and all this for almost an hour, was really an hard task. It was a men's affair. When it was ready, the porridge was rolled out in a rolling table and cut in pieces using a thin and sharp string. So cut, the polenta was put into the plates and each one had its own piece of it. We used to eat polenta with 
The collected olives were put into the mats to dry. They were left there for few days. Then they were brought to the frantoio, the olive press room, which was just into the farm, very close by. After the olives were washed, the squashing work started. In those days we were used to sacrifices. It wasn't like nowadays: none had home the electrical light. We used to get up early, at three o' clock in the morning, to go to the frantoio: when it was still dark we were already at the frantoio. Here the horse was tied at the millstone, since the donkey wasn't enough strong. Then, while the stone turned, we chopped the olives to put into it. When the olives were broken they were put into the press: the pivot started to turn and the oil came out. The press was just turned by and tied to the animal. We too took rope turning around a stick: turning the stick some more oil was pressed. It was very very hard to turn this stick, but the 
We didn't made oil all in one time. Instead we did every time some quantities according to how many olives were ready: so that we collected olive also after Christmas! We finished early in the evening since the sky was often cloudy and at half past three, four o' clock it was already dark. When we couldn't see the olives on the twigs, only then we stopped to collect and went to the Christmas's Novena Mess. The Novenas, especially those of Christmas, were followed by a lot of people. Everybody went to church, at least in the countryside villages. In the bigger churches could come a preacher from outside too, often a monk coming particularly for these novena's days. This period, said the monk, has to be used by the devotes to prepare themselves to the Holy Christmas. The Vigilia's days, those days on which one shouldn't eat meat, were respected too. These days weren't spoiled: it wasn't so difficult not eat meat, by the way..
Since the oil floats into the water, the squeezed oil was put into the earthenware jars, called coppi, to rest there so that the water left could go at the bottom. This water was sent to a tub called 'the hell'. From here, as if the oil was in a 
