Elizabeth Gilbert on Italian butcheries

“I go on alone to wealthy, ample Lucca, that little Tuscan town with its celebrated butcher shops, where the finest cuts of meat I’ve seen in all of Italy are displayed with a “you know you want it” sensuality in shops across town. Sausages of every imaginable size, color and derivation are stuffed like ladies’ legs into provocative stockings, swinging from the ceilings of the butcher shops. Lusty buttocks of hams hang in the windows, beckoning like Amsterdam’s high-end hookers. The chickens look so plump and contented even in death that you imagine they offered themselves up for sacrifice proudly after competing among themselves in life to see who could become the moistest and the fattest.”

Gilbert, E. 2007. Eat Pray Love. Bloomsbury: London.