Comments on: Tiny detectors of hidden delicacies: searching for truffles with the mouches à truffe

By: tomfiorina

tomfiorina — Sat, 16 Jan 2010 08:36:06 +0000

Thanks, Laurie. Tell John that we can always use another good nose here. And using Palmiers (French puff-pastry cookies) as a reward sounds like a good deal to me;-).

By: Laurie

Laurie — Sat, 16 Jan 2010 02:30:39 +0000

Dear Tom,
Interesting article, and I loved seeing the photos, especially of the one where you are looking like a bloodhound. Too bad, brother-in-law John wasn’t there, I could picture him being down there sniffing, also..

By: tomfiorina

tomfiorina — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 20:28:56 +0000

Thanks, Tammi. I’m glad that you enjoyed the article. Two other people who wrote comments about this article run truffle hunts in Italy and France (you can go to their websites by clicking on their names). Those are with dogs, not flies, but it would certainly be an interesting experience nonetheless. I’ve never hunted truffles with a dog, so I may try that myself someday. Maybe I should start training our black lab, Enzo, now…

By: tammi k.

tammi k. — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 19:57:40 +0000

thanks for the fantastic article. although i doubt i’ll ever put the methodology of truffle hunting to use, i highly enjoyed being transported to an idyllic walnut farm on the french countryside….i loved it so much i had to share with my friends on facebook….

By: tomfiorina

tomfiorina — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 08:44:26 +0000

Thanks, Heide. My best wishes to you and your family as well. Too bad that you don’t live closer. We’d share a truffle together.

By: Heide

Heide — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 22:33:11 +0000

Beautiful..Here’s to Rene and an art that requires more patience than I have.
Thanks again for a great experience.
Best to you and your family,
Heide
@gourmettravels

By: tomfiorina

tomfiorina — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 20:48:17 +0000

Thanks, Chrissy. That was a good trip. We just ate some confits from Mme Archer last week (this wasn’t 10 years old; it was purchased in 2009). It brought back a lot of good memories.

By: Christine

Christine — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 20:41:52 +0000

Thank you for refreshing my memories of the Perigord. My time with M-A at Madame Archer was one of the most unusual and educational vacations that I shared with your family. Great photos….Almost “yoga-esc” Chrissy

By: tomfiorina

tomfiorina — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 12:59:47 +0000

Thanks for having brought that book to my attention. I've added it to my Amazon Wish List. I see from your email and URL that you're an experienced "tartufi" hunter from Umbria. Curiously enough, before we purchased our walnut farm in the Périgord, we looked at farms in Umbria. Beautiful country... That farm-hunting trip would be a good article. We had contacted a guy named Nando, who had advertised an agency called Umbria Realty in the International Herald Tribune. He didn't realize how much Italian we understood (my wife, in particular, is quite fluent because she speaks Corsican), and he kept calling his secretary (probably a cousin of his) on his mobile phone (this was in the early 1990s when mobile phones were still quite rare), telling her to call him regularly so that it looked as if he had a lot of clients or was extremely in demand. He took us to see a number of what he called, in Italian, "stupendous ruins"; because of our budget and interest in renovating old houses, we wanted, what we call in American English a "fixer-upper." Periodically, we'd visit some place that didn't have two stones that were still upright, and, when I would try to get a look at the interior, he would scream: "non va più lontano! ("Don't go any further!"), as he feared that the floor would cave in. He also took us to see a 13th-century tower (which we later discovered was owned by his family) that was around 5-meters square by 15 meters in height. It would have made a great elevator shaft, but as a home it left a lot to be desired. Too bad that the agency seems to have gone out of business, as a quick search of the Internet showed, as I would love to see Nando again.

By: Truffle Hunter Italy

Truffle Hunter Italy — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 12:55:15 +0000

It sounds just like Gustaf Sobin’s “The Fly-Truffler”. One Italian truffle hunter I know used to use flies to find truffles before he trained his first truffle dog -at the age of 12!