Every year for Corpus Domini (60 days after Easter), over seventy stunning floral tapestries carpet piazza and winding alleyways of medieval hilltown gem, Spello, fruit of months of flower-gathering and then all-night work to create the flower masterpieces, le Infiorate. On the morning of Corpus Domini, as as the spellani floral groups are anxiously adding…
I was about twelve years old when our family made a trip to the late 18th-c Spanish Franciscan mission church San Juan Capistrano in California. On a recent Abruzzo jaunt, Pino and I linked up with the Mission’s origins, exploring the Franciscan monastery just outside L’Aquila, San Giuliano, where San Giovanni from Capestrano (a tiny…
I remember the year that a tour guest summed up our walk through Spello on Corpus Cristi (60 days after Easter) this way: “Seeing the Infiorate should be on the cover of the book, A Thousand Things to Do Before You Die”. I second that thought each year when starting out early with my tour…
I’ve been told by more than one that you can’t truly feel the passione for the Ceri unless you join in carrying one of the three mammoth pyramidical structures, called “candlesticks.” Said to represent those candles carried solemnly in Gubbio patron saint Bishop Ubaldo’s funeral procession mid – 12th c, the wooden Ceri – phallic…
As you walk through Assisi’s main square these days, you’ll hear metal clanging as workers set up the grandstands. Posters of medieval personages adorn Assisi notice boards. Blue and red flags flutter in the breeze over Assisi’s meandering medieval alleyways. In the stone-vaulted medieval taverne of Assisi’s two rival factions, la Parte de Sopra (“Upper…
La Festa della Vernaccia is celebrated in the tiny walled Umbrian town of Cannara just after Easter for this treasured dessert wine is intertwined with Easter in local tradition. The cannaresi traditionally inaugurated their wine of the vernaccia grapes on Easter Sunday morning accompanied by the traditional Umbrian cheese bread and the new salami. Many…
Thanks to artisan husband Pino’s fine handiwork, our countryside apartments charm each visitor. I’ve been thinking: what better place for a family reunion or a gathering of friends….or a writer’s conference..or a photography seminar….or.. a yoga workshop? In our Casa Campagna, we have three apartments right behind our farmhouse and we can host up to…
Whether the U.S. cooking classes are business events – as the February California events in Fresno and Sacramento – or birthday celebrations (birthdays were fêted in Redwood City and San Francisco events) or just the occasion to celebrate friendships, no better way to link people than through cooking together and feasting together. Professional links can…
In Umbria, when springtime sprouts, so do the wild asparagus. It takes about an hour to walk to Assisi from our house: if you’re not foraging for wild asparagus as you walk. Today, the walk took me about three hours: lots of asparagus to pick enroute. And a few stops here and there to photograph…
Mike, glad you joined in the mid-March cooking good times at the home of Karl and Sherry in Herndon. And every one of my U.S. cooking classes aims at uniting “food, fellowship and fun” as you so aptly put it in your very appreciated note to me: “Thanks for wonderful food, fellowship and fun! ….fabulous…