Buona Pasqua!

Easterrsssss hereeee! Yeaaaahh.

Easter means chocolate.

And Easter in Italy also equals family and food (aka, a beastly dinner).

Dominga had started to prepare the courses we were going to eat for Easter lunch on Friday. That's how badass you know it was going to be.

Giorgio's mother and his sister came and joined us for lunch and they laid up the long wicker dining table in the hall to fit us all. His sister seems to be nothing like him. She looked slightly similar (at first I wasn't really introduced so I tried to work out from the early conversation who exactly she was) but appeared to be the polar opposite in terms of personality. Giorgio is an unsocial, self-confessed snob and his older sister, well, seemed normal.

First course, was a savoury bread filled with meat and cheese, and salami. Second course was a meatball-boiled egg-mozzarella pasta bake. I didn't know it was possible for all three ingredients to be put into one dish and it taste good, but somehow it worked. Dominga gave me a portion probably acceptable as a stand-alone dinner, and I was informed by Giorgio that the main course was yet to come.

Blimey.

Third course was the meat from a roasted leg of a piglet - I don't know if there's a specific word for piglet-pork meat, but it was good anyhow. Fourth course was dessert - pastiera: a kind of sweet wheaty custard pastry tart which was quite nice... but did slightly ressemble lumpy custard with a pastry crust. Then we had strawberries.

And finally fifth course, of course, was easter egg. You remember these?

Mmmm...

... lurking on the top of the cupboards for a few weeks, waiting... Well, it soon turned into this:

Giorgio's mother may be laughing at me in the back there....

Quite possibly the biggest chocolate egg I've ever had all to myself - especially made with Lindt chocolate.

And that's not all... Italian easter eggs aren't just like plain old English ones. They're not empty, with a couple of small chocolate bars on the side to go with it. Ohhhh no. They're like a christmas cracker: you break them in half and inside is a gift. Even in adult easter eggs... I mean, Clari had a 'Winx' doll in her Kinder egg, and I've got a metallic shot measurer. Hahaha amazing.

Many people have asked me if they think Clarissa is spoilt because she's an only child. I always shook my head and told them I didn't think so. Today, I've never seen one child receive so many toys and chocolate eggs as she did. I'm now thinking I was probably wrong.