Dreaming of Italy with a Simple Salad

Tonno e fagioli

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Roads shouldered by enclosing walls with narrow

cobbled tracks for streets, those hill towns with their

stamp-sized squares and a sea pinned by the arrow

of a quivering horizon, with names that never wither

for centuries and shadows that are the dial of time. Light

older than wine and a cloud like a tablecloth

spread for lunch under the leaves. I have come this late

to Italy, but better now, perhaps, than in youth

that is never satisfied, whose joys are treacherous,

while my hair rhymes with those far crests, and the bells

of the hilltop towers number my errors,

because we are never where we are, but somewhere else,

even in Italy. This is the bearable truth

of old age; but count your benedictions—those fields

of sunflowers, the torn light on the hills, the haze

of the unheard Adriatic—while the day still hopes

for possibility, cloud shadows racing the slopes.

~by Derek Wilcott
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Simple, basic salad in the Italian way...

**Tonno e Fagioli**

• 1 6 ounce can water packed tuna (drained and flaked)
• 1 19 ounce can cannellini beans (drained and rinsed)
• 1 small red onion (chopped)
• 1 clove garlic (chopped)
• 1 handful chopped parsley
• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 1 tablespoon lemon juice
• 1/2 teaspoon Dijon mustard
• salt and pepper to taste
• 1 handful salad greens

1. Mix the tuna, beans, onion, garlic and parsley in a bowl.

2. Mix the olive oil, lemon juice, mustard, salt and pepper in a bowl.

3. Mix the dressing and the tuna and beans. Top it all on a bed of salad greens.

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