Tuna-bean salad

Rio della Crea, Venice, May 23—

BREAKFAST, LUNCH, AND DINNER at “home” today, in our Venice apartment. No bread for breakfast, but we did have coffee and milk and that delicious blood-orange juice so easily bought in grocery stores here; and if you don't have toast, well, packaged cookies will do.

Lunch was mortadella on bread, because we'd gone out to a nearby grocery store. Too bad we didn't think of getting a little butter: well, you can't have everything.


Dinner: after a few more stops at markets, boutiques, and a “supermarket,” we were able to dress the rest of yesterday's delicious melon with some strips of San Daniele prosciutto.



For the main course, I combined three cans of white beans with one of tuna, chopped in half a good white onion, then snipped in three huge leaves of sage with a pair of scissors. A little salt, a little olive oil.

Came next the green salad, a bittersweet head of butter lettuce, fresh and crisp, in my usual vinaigrette. We didn't need dessert: we'd had a gelato earlier at Paolin, on the Campo Santo Stefano. Life is good.

Prosecco spento, bought by the jug down the street