Prefer your “flag” with eggs or without? Clearly, I can’t be referring to that pennant you solemnly salute with hands over heart (perhaps?). This “flag,” that Umbrian tri-colored vegetable dish, la bandiera (“flag”), is often voraciously sharerd by rural families – and not only! – on summer nights. This is a typical Umbrian rural dish…
La Spezia, Liguria (see map) – As we pushed open the osteria‘s dark green wooden door, lace curtains on the windows, our spezzina friend Monia asked us, “Ever eaten in a seafood restaurant which closes for the day if the owner can’t get the morning catch of fresh seafood?” This was one: Osteria Picciarello in…
Back in our “farming years,” we’d ride our old Gilera motorcycle to nearby Bettona for peach-picking in July. I’d rather hoe corn, muck the pig stalls or even help on the haying than pick peaches. Hot, sweaty and itchy work. But what peaches! And you’d forget about sweltering in the Bettona peach orchards when savoring…
Many scholars maintain that the late Etruscan life-sized bronze sculptural masterpiece, “the Orator” (now in the Museo Nazionale Aracaelogico di Firenze) was found near Tuoro on Lake Trasimeno. But you can’t convince anyone in Pila (near Perugia) of that: as you enter the Parco dell’Arringatore (“Park of the Orator”), a sign adjacent to the wrought…
We usually spend many a summer weekend at the Hotel Eden on the shores of Lake Bolsena. No free weekend this year yet – but we did slip in a lunch there this week, enjoying the good whitefish of the lake, coregone, at a peaceful lakeside table. I did coregone all the way, as usual…
How not to think of Van Gogh today while looking out over the sunflower fields bordering our Umbria farmhouse? …and of course, thoughts of my artist brother Tom, too, and his sunflower wonders (and wishing he were here to paint the golden glory): I sent him a few of the photos I took of the…
In the rural cuisine of Italy, the family bread, no longer fresh, won’t ever go to the chickens. Bread is sacred and will be used in a variety of tasty dishes. One is that summer salad, la panzanella, and of course, another is the universal favorite – served in many variations and eaten all year…
Don’t short-change Assisi: the town needs far more than a day to see all the wonders. If you’re in Assisi in spring, summer or early fall, wander the labyrinthine medieval Assisi backstreets to take in the floral splendors accenting 14th-century arched medieval doorways, cascading off wrought iron balconies and adding colorful swatches to the the…
“Good things come in threes,” they say. For me, our third year of the early May ten-day “Annesitaly INSIDE Umbria” Celebration affirms the saying. Kris, Sally, Jerry and Carol, mille grazie to each of you for your enthusiastic participation in all our adventures, for the zest with which you each truly lived our “INSIDE” Umbria…
Hot summer days bring “panzanella time” to central Italy. This rural dish of la cucina povera (literally “cooking of the poor man,” ie humble cuisine), la panzanella (bread salad) is a perfect summer food for the hard-working rural people: tasty, filling and simple ingredients, not requiring cooking over a hot stove and easily prepared prior…