Peppa Knows Her Chicory!

La cicoria d’autunno is not the most tender, Peppa explained to me as we gathered wild chicory today in our field up behind the donkey pen. “Quella di maggio e’ la migliore”, she affirmed as she cut the roots off a chicory bunch. In the years we worked the land, la cicoria became a main staple for us as I mimicked my farmwomen neighbors in everything, learning from them, loving the snips of wisdom which came along with the snipping of wild greens out on the fields together in the afternoon.
read more…

Mugello Mushrooms… By Chance

We recently headed back to the Mugello valley for a weekend with the warm, welcoming Manetti family (and, of course, Mamma Gianna’s cooking is an enticement, too). Funghi ended up being a surprise highlight of the weekend. Funghi per caso: “mushrooms by chance”. Due to an inordinately hot, dry summer all over the peninsula, few fungaroli had been combing the woods til now: why put in the effort? But – finalmente – it had rained intensely October had been unseasonably warm. For mushroom-hunters, che combinazione perfetta!
read more…

November Cemetery Splendor in Assisi

I wasn’t visiting anyone in particular as I walked through Assisi’s cemetery on November 1st, but everyone I met there was: visitors had armfuls of lilies or bright yellow chrysanthemums for the gravesites of loved ones, some were scrubbing family plot headstones, others lovingly polished the framed photos of their deceased and two sisters chatted as they snipped lilies for the vase before the photo of their father (on his Vespa!).
read more..

Viterbo’s Wonder, La Macchina di Santa Rosa

“La macchina di Santa Rosa” is not the “car” of Santa Rosa, nor of anyone for that matter: it’s not even a car…but a “construction”, to put it in very understated simple terms. Imagine a curvaceous steel, aluminum, fibre glass tower of gold, silver, greens and ochre, nearly thirty meters tall, weighing around 5 tons, illuminated with 1200 LED lights decorated with 900 handmade textile roses, 9 tall and delicate angels – and carried on the backs of over 100 men through dark medieval backstreets lined with “the locals”, awaiting with bated breath….and you are JUST beginning to get a sense of the wonder.
read more…

We Have a New Nest – but not an Empty One!

When you are next in Umbria, why not stay in “Il Nido Tranquillo” (“The Tranquil Nest”)? The name perfectly fits this snug little apartment for two in the quiet medieval backstreets of Assisi, just off the main square – yet in perfect silence. Small, basic, in the “spirito francescano”: one small bedrooom with double bed, tiny sitting room with sofa bed and TV connecting to a fully-equipped kitchenette for two.
read more…

Peppe, Gentile…and the New Wine…

Last white grapes still to be picked[/caption]“Poco ma buono” , wine experts unanimously declare the 2012 vintage. The lack of rain and intense summer heat hampered the proper maturation of the grapes, resulting in a drastic drop in grape production, though the quality of the wines should be excellent. Claudio Riponi, head of the Departimento di Vinicoltura ed Enologia dell’Università di Bologna, assures “qualita’ buona”, explaining that this summer’s hot and dry temperatures protected the grapes from disease.
read more…

Gargano: Resisting Nero and Caligula

“…Nerone infiamma il Centrosud…e dopo…arriva Caligola“, early August newspaper tidbits report here in Italy: “Nero inflames central/southern Italy…and later…Caligula is coming..” According to an erroneous legend, the emperor Nero (Nerone) played his lyre as Rome burned in 64 A.D. and he’s back: meterologists have dubbed this summer’s fifth sub-tropical, Saharan anticyclone “Nerone” and Nerone has followed Scipione, Caronte, Lucifero, and Ulisse. (Ah, these Italians: even the winds spiraling out from areas of high atmospheric pressure – the anticyclones – are named for protagonists of their history, literature and mythology).
read more…

Norcia: Finding a True Norcineria

In the Middle Ages, the disparaging term “Il norcino” (literally meaning, “from Norcia”) grouped together a variety of improvisational impersonators of i chirurghi (‘surgeons”): il cerusico (“barber/surgeon), il cava-denti (tooth-extractor), and il concia-osse (“bonesetter), who wandered from village-to-village offering their rudimentary surgical skills at prezzi popolari. In ancient Rome, i norcini had been known above all for their skill in the castration of pigs (necessary in order to attenuate the strong gamey flavor of the meat of the male) and the transformation of the pig’s meat into temptations for the palate. The norcino pig-butchering skills lead easily to surgical interventions on humans: the setting of broken bones, tooth extractions, excision of tumors, cataract and hernia operations – and even to the castration of young boys, transforming their voices into mellifluous voci bianche
read more…

Going Underground in Camerano

Ah, Italy “the land of the endless discoveries.” One never finishes discovering the wonders “above ground” – let alone underground! And sometimes, serendipity leads you to yet another discovery.
Gray weather at the seaside last weekend prompted us to head out for some exploration. What wonders we found in a seemingly nondescript Adriatic seaside town, Camerano, whose very name is linked to its suprising labyrinthine maze of subterranean grottoes and tunnels, used by its first inhabitants, the Piceni, in the 9th-c. B.C., our guide, Daniele told us.
read more…

Preci’s Curious Fame

A friend joined me for the adventure: we took a curvy wooded road into the Valnerina and then up into the Sibiliine mountains in southern Umbria, until we came to tiny Preci (population: about 200). Born as a medieval rural village near a Benedictine oratory (now the Abbey of Sant’Eutizio) time seems to have stood still in Preci. The serenity of this picturesque mountain village of warm Mediterranean colors belies its bellicose past: in the thirteenth century, feudal overlords battled Papal authority for dominance. After decades of conflict, the town was sacked in the early sixteenth century by nearby Norcia and then later rebuilt by Paul III.
His mid-sixteenth century reign coincides with the diffusion of the fame of the medical skills of Preci doctors throughout Europe. Preci’s sought-after surgeons constructed noble palaces and the town soon became an elegant fortified village.
read more…