Lunches of the Threshing Time

In the country, the threshing time was an important moment in which the main fruit of the entire year's labor was collected. The threshing of the grain took a lot of hands. The farmers accomplished the task by taking turns helping each other. The threshing labor could take several days and between 15 and 30 people, depending on how much wheat had to be threshed. Those 15 to 30 people had to given drink and food. Depending on the amount of work, there had to be a lunch, a lunch and a dinner, or at the big farms, even more. The main dishes prepared were pasta, roast meat, soup and garden salad.During threshing time, the goose was the animal to be spread on the tables, roasted, and made into sauce for the pasta and broth for the soup. All of the farmers raised the geese specifically for the threshing time. While the men were busy with the threshing, the massaie (farmers' wives) were busy cooking. Believe me that this was no small task, but a great deal of work. The only ingredients that were bought were the rigatoni. Everything else was produced on the farm. The geese had to be butchered, feathered and cleaned. The innards were also carefully cleaned and used to make crostini. Their taste still lingers in my memory. They used the intestines, the liver, and the stomach, and the feet were used to make an incomparable sauce for the pasta. These flavors were only achieved during the threshing time, possibly because of the great quantity of innards made available then.