After you’re satiated with the porcini mushroom goodness at the Santa Fiora mushroom festival, work off your lunch with a meander through the winding medieval alleyways of Santa Fiora, clinging to the slopes of Monte Amiata. As you enter the fortified town’s main square, you’ll note the stately crenellated belltower on Palazzo Sforza-Cesarini, sign of…
In mid-October in central Italy, many are hunting wild mushrooms or gathering chestnuts – or simply feasting on both of them. Countless sagre – food festivals – fête the October woodland goodness. On a recent week-end, Pino and I headed west to southern Tuscany for the Santa Fiora Sagra del Fungo Amiatino (“Festival of the…
“Prendere due piccioni con una fava” (“catch two doves with one fava bean”) certainly has a more lyrical ring than “kill two birds with one stone.” The Italian expression has a direct link to rural life: most Umbrian farmers have rows of fava beans waving over their gardens in springtime, and not just chickens and…
Ostensibly, you can’t touch an “intangible”. But Pino and I did so last June…and at a profound level, living Nola’s Festa dei Gigli with the locals. Ever since hearing about the 2013 UNESCO’s inclusion as Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity of Italy’s four Big Shoulder-Born Processional Structures, I’d set my sites on every procession, each…
Loi, thanks so much for your “arrivederci” note to us just before leaving our Assisi farmhouse apartment: “Your gusto, passion and love of Assisi are so special! Thank you, thank you, thank you for giving us such a wonderful experience. We’ll take back many great stories and memories to Colorado. I appreciate your goodness.” …and…
Carol, LInda and Tom, Darrell and Leona, so good to share the flavors of Umbria with you here in our Assisi farmhouse. …and what better way to renew the links than cooking those flavors with you all in California? I’ll look forward to our “cooking-and-eating” reunion in February, 2017 when I come to the U.S.…
The island of Ventotene has just two beaches: Cala Rossana and Cala Nave. And then there’s “the last beach”: the bookstore on the main piazza, “Ultima Spiaggia.” It’s often the last stop after a day on the beach – or a day of snorkeling in Ventotene’s pristine coves – but the bookshop can also be…
Many Italians consider goalie Gigi Buffon as Italy’s greatest soccer player. But he’s only “Numero Due” in any case, in the ranks of most beloved Italians. Who’s Numero Uno in this country? No doubt about it. Not to be debated. Francisco di Assisi. Not the patron saint of Assisi but the patron saint of all…
You’re drawn into a symphony of flavors, a chorus of colors when you push open the door of Bar Gardenia in Cardillo, humble borgata on Palermo’s outskirts. Even the entryway display greets you with a cheery kaleidoscope welcome: a colorful carretto siciliano, the brilliant colors of a Nino Parrucca ceramic plate and the varied palette…
August 24, 2016 will be a birthday to remember, in many ways. Although we did not feel it there on the island of Ventotene, an earthquake rocked central Italy at the start of the day, 3 34 a.m., devastating hill towns in four regions of central Italy, Latium, Abruzzo, Marche and Umbria. While sipping morning…