The tiny northern Umbria village, Citerna (pop. 3500), – ever heard of it? – will now be highlighted on the Italy map of any art-lover (and not only): after years of painstaking restoration, the early 15th-century polychrome sculptural wonder of Donatello, aptly named “La Madonna di Citerna,” has come home – to the village church of San Francesco. With the fanfare a queen merits.
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Pino’s way to season a Thankgiving – or Christmas – turkey is a far cry from those U.S. “butterball” birds, complete with inserted thermometer to tell you how long to cook it! When we farmed, Pino slaughtered one of our turkeys, then plunged it into boiling water to loosen the feathers: the plucking and gutting was up to me. I’d do the stuffing, Pino did the basting…and then that turkey was roasted at Ristorante da Giovannino down the road: those birds were too big for our wood-burning stove oven!
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“L’Italia si riscalda a legna e brucia il caro bolletta” (“Italy is heating with wood – burning up the costly bill” – i.e, heating bill), a local Umbrian paper reported recently. Yes, as fuel costs soar, wood is back, fire has been re-discovered. Although we have propane gas heating – methane heats many a home, too – we hardly ever use it: our woodstove is used not only for all our cooking and baking but also heats our water and warms the house (circulating heat through the floors). Many an Italian home is woodstove-warmed today: since early 2012, the importation of legna da ardere (literally, “wood to burn”) is up 26% and the consumption of gas oli has dropped nearly 50% over the last twenty years. Over six million wood-burning stoves and fireplaces have been lit as cold weather moves in: an all-time record. Italy is now the world’s lead importer of firewood notwithstanding our 10. 4 million hectares of forest.
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“Quando piove e tira vento, il cacciatore perde tempo” (“when it rains and the wind blows, the hunter wastes his time”) says the old saying, thus verifying why Ristorante/Bar Da Giovannino near our house was full of wild boar-hunters on a recent Saturday. Needle-like rain bucketed down as hunters in camouflage suits and the required fluorescent vests sat in the bar, sharing “missed hits” stories of past cinghiale hunts over espresso or panini di prosciutto with vino rosso – or shots of grappa (“takes the chill out of the bones”, elderly Siverio affirmed). All headed out for wild boar as soon as the rain let up. Two caposquadra (“team leaders”), Sergio and Italo, left with kilos of sliced prosciutti and paper bags of sliced bread for their squadra – about 30 of the 50 men would hunt that day – all hunters equipped with radios in their pockets (required by law) so that each knows the location of all. The number of dogs they’ll take varies: a team of about thirty will use twenty dogs or more.
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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.
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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!
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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!).
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“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.
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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.
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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.
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