While in Italy, don’t miss joining in a village food festival – la sagra – if here from springtime to late fall. Enjoy highlights of the area’s culinary specialties shared with “the locals” – who might conclude their sagra evening with ballroom dancing to live music.
Recently, Pino and I took our farm friend, Peppa, to the sagra Amici de Montagna (“Friends of the Mountain”…in Umbrian dialect) just up the hill from her farmhouse. A huge tent had been set up adjacent to the mountainside church there, Santo Stefano (where Pino and I were married…) and volunteers cooked up the local specialties in the ambiences adjacent to the church.
We were there at 7 pm, quite early and groups were just beginning to arrive…
…and outisde the food tent, the band was setting up: the ballroom dancing always starts about 9 30 at le sagre.
Our smiling young volunteer server, Jacob, brought us the first of our foods: prosciutto e melone for me, suppli (rice croquettes) for Peppa and Pino and also lamb stew with cooked greens for Pino:
Peppa relished their gnocchi, too:
All around us, groups of families and friends shared buonissimi local specialties:
The Presidente della Regione Umbria, Stefania Proietti (front right) was there, too as she grew up here on the Assisi mountainside. Assisi councilwoman Donatella Casciarri and her husband shared the mountainside goodness:
Jacob and other young volunteers served at table . after picking up their orders from the improvised kitchen
And at the entrance to the food tent, guests could order beverages from our neighbor Claudio and daughter, Chiara, amici de montagna, both volunteering for all 10 days of this sagra:
Many other amici de montagna volunteered – like Paolo, who stopped for a short chat with Pino:
Tributes to our dear rural neighbors, truly our amici de montagna, lined the food tent walls – almost all of them deceased now…
Paolino’s papa’, Tito, was among our amici de montagna remembered in one of those photos :
Backdropping the diners, those photos of our mountain area rural friends truly made this sagra a tribute to them…
:
….and this sagra beautifully linked us all, amici de montagna, past and present.
See this video about la Festa di Santa Anna – another mountain sagra
Click here to see a video of the Amici de Montagna sagra
Click here to read about our apartment guests joining in a sagra good times.
Read about – and see – the enthusiasm for the Festa di Sant’Anna
Click here for another note on sagra enticements
Read about – and see! – why the Sant’Anna events draw many
