Rather exhausted, due in no little part to Ryan Air’s change of schedule and a lack of drivers to whisk us away from an icy Luton station, I’m once more home in Islington.

Sicily was as ever amazing. The olives are few and far between this year and so picking was rather different. I might have though that it would be easier to pick fewer olives, but with them being so scarce, every tree had to be searched as each and every olive was needed. The moving of the nets also takes time so we did not make such speedy progress as we had thought we might.

Still we finished to whoops of joy and the olives are safely gathered in.

Anna, as usual, cooked wonderful food. A huge bowl of pasta or risotto at lunch and then a delicious dinner each evening.

So that made twelve lunch and dinner parties in a row. I found the pace quite exhausting and was pleased to work off the calories in the olive groves.

The picture above is Anna’s potato salad. A type of Russian salad made with mashed potatoes and an enormous quantity of mayonnaise. It is completely delicious and I’ll post the recipe as soon as I’ve worked on it.

As the oil yield is down this year if you want to try the delicious oil we picked you will have to buy early.

The address is www.racalia.com, check out the website it’s great.