Day 3 in Les Combes:
Bad weather keeps Pope indoors
LES COMBES, July 15 (Translated from ANSA) - Wholewheat bread, strudel and raspberry cake, lots of fresh home-grown veggies, and myrtle berries, raspberries and strawberries.
Benedict XVI likes good simple food with a minimum of seasoning. And he is getting the best produce that Val D'Aosta can offer.
But he also likes his desserts - and supplementing the dessert fare prepared by his Memores housekeepers is the Dupont pastry shop established in 1920 in nearby Villeneuve.
Patrizia D'Amico, who owns it, has served two Popes. "This weekend, we will bring him a thyme-and-raspberry cake, which is our summer specialty, and a simple strudel."
She adds, "We will add a card wishing him a happy vacation with us."
The Pope's daily bread comes from Arvier, another small town near Introd, from the Frassy bakery. "They come at 6:30 to pick up the order," says Ettore Frassy, the owner. "It seems the Pope likes wholewheat bread, but they also order white bread. John Paul II always asked for black bread (rye)."
"We have provided bread for the Pope since the first visit of John Paul II in 1989," he says proudly. His son Ymanc and an 18-year-old nephew help him out. "It's a great honor to be the baker to the Pope."
Since the bakery provides bread to Arvier and the surrounding area, they start working at 10:30 in the evening, preparing the dough.
Don Tomasso Scotto, housekeeper at the Don Bosco Institute of nearby Chatillon, is in charge of bringing food and other supplies daily to the Pope and the nearby Salesian vacation colony.
"I take care of all the food requirements as well as those needed for maintaining the house and grounds," he says. "I must say Papa Ratzinger has no special requests. I bring up fresh fruit and vegetables - I brought up two baskets of raspberries, myrtleberry and strawberries for the Pope just now. And of course meat, eggs and milk, cheese, wine and liqueurs, through the Pope himself does not drink alcohol."
On his second day in Les Combes on Tuesday, the pope did take an evening walk and visited one of the new features prepared for him by his Salesian hosts this year - a small cottage in the woods, where he can rest and even do some work (read and research) if he wants to.
But today bad weather did not allow the Pope to do anything outdoors.
The cross fashioned out of single tree root, the statue of the Madonna, adn teh accessory chalet are new this year in Les Combes.
Home-grown veggies for Benedict -
and next year, his own soaps and creams
LES COMBES, July 15 (Translated from Apcom) - An organic vegetable garden was started by the communal farm of Ollignan on the grounds of the Holy Father's Les Combes summer redience.
Fifteen handicapped wards of the Fondazione Ollginan from the homonymous village adjoining the local shrine of Quart, 20 kilometers from Introd, wer assigned to the garden which they have fenced off with twisted beech twigs. It has a circumference of about 70 feet,
They have salad greens of every kind; red, yellow and white onions; cabbages, and a herbarium for rosemary, thyme, basil and salvia.
The wards planted everything at Ollignan and then transplanted them in les Combes. From the communal farm itself they bring eggplants, tomatoes, zucchini and beans, as well as apricots and grapes.
Foundation director Rene Benzo said that the farm also raises calendula, a variety of marigold, which can be used as a salad green, a natural food coloring like saffron, a home remedy for burns, stings and wounds, and a source of oil for cosmetics.
He said that next year, they will be able to offer the Pope refined calendula oil as well as a line of calendula-based soap and creams.
The Foundation, founded in 1999 by a regional association of families with handicapped members in order to give employment to handicapped persons, has seven hectares of farmland, 25 beehives, a poultry, and 1,080 calendula bushes.
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 16/07/2009 01:22]