We always celebrate Thanksgiving in our Assisi farmhouse…with a little italiano input. Pino’s turkey takes center stage. A winter squash dish from the island of Ustica, off Sicily, is always a side dish. I learned to make it years ago from Signora Giovanna at Ristorante Umberto on Ustica. ….and here’s the recipe: Zucca Agliata “Garliced…
Every year as fall moves towards winter, I play with ways to use up our summer garden’s last gift, those green tomatoes. For Thanksgiving this year, a green tomatoes/peppers sauce was on the table as a turkey condiment. Here’s how to make the sauce. Savory Green Tomato Sauce Ingredients: green tomatoes (and a few red…
We always enjoy having our apartment guests to dinner – but guests don’t generally help make the dinner and set up the tables. Nor do they pay for it! Ann and Warren did when they stayed in our Assisi apartment, Nido Tranquillo last September We were having a benefit dinner for twenty (as many as…
Can there be a more sublime setting for a sublime concert than the grandiose Upper Basilica di San Francesco, adorned with the late 13-c frescoes depicting the life of our San Francesco? At times during a recent November concert night, the frescoed vaults over the altar of the Upper Basilica di San Francesco glowed a…
We’ve been hearing it on the news, reading it in the papers: acquire Castelluccio lentils, Norcia salami, prosciutto and capocollo and pecorino cheeses as an economic support to those in the Umbrian southeastern mountain areas hit by the late October earthquakes. Many farmers and breeders are now in campers or tents near their animal stalls…
You know you’re near Antrodoco, Latium mountain town in the Rieti province, if the wispy clouds hugging Mount Giano lift and you can see “DUX” etched out in fir tree forests on the mountain slope. Mandated by the local Fascist government in 1939, the forest of twenty thousand firs avoided deforestation with a regional law…
The November landscape was misty, gloomier – but no less spectacular – than our first trip to San Marcello (near Jesi) in July. And no less spectacular was lunch at Ristorante La Lanterna da Ciro, discovered on that July trip. After taking friends Craig and Carol to see Pino’s restoration work on the monastery near…
We just had our second feast at Ciro’s ristorante near Jesi. How did we ever discover such a Marches region culinary treasure? Just a dash of buona fortuna. We’d headed to San Marcello (pop. 2000) so that Pino could make a site-inspection of the nearby 18th-c monastery his team would soon be restoring. It was…
My post-earthquake (August and October, 2016) mantra remains the same: “No, art is not eternal.” I’m more than ever convinced to assiduously continue taking in the infinite bounty of the artistic gems of Italy. The earthquake devastation has underscored the need. Grazie a Dio, Pino and I had visited Marches jewel Tolentino, damaged in the…
Since the August/October 2016 seismic shake-ups in the four regions of central Italy – Latium, Abruzzo, Umbria and the Marches – I have a new mantra: “No, art is NOT eternal.” I keep reflecting on how fortunate Pino and I have been to have explored so many of the artistic treasures of our region and…