La Sagra: Something Sacred?

There certainly is something sacred about the sagra: a local village festival offering the best in local cuisine at minimal prices, top (and free!) dance band music outdoors til the wee hours and entertainment for all from pre-schoolers to the elderly. At some sagras, there are mini-soccer tournaments, others offer a performance of a local dancing school on one night, and others fill the food tent walls with artwork of the village school children.
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Auguri, Italia!

No, Italians are not flag-fliers. A nationalistic sense of being Italian is missing. For an Italian, first reference point is the family. If you are Italian, identity point is the section of the town where you grew up (whether it be called quartiere, terziere, rione, or contrada). After all, most festivals are about competitions between town districts.
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Novella’s Last Wild Asparagus

Farmwoman Novella had a couple tempting bunches of wild asparagus at her vegetable box (to call it a “stand” would be an exaggeration) in the Assisi “piazzetta” the other morning. I stopped by early to chat with Novella and husband Bruno as they unloaded their 3-wheeled Ape (“bumble bee”, literally, but maybe best described as a “scooter truck”) and set up their farm abundance for morning sale.
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May 9th: Remembering an Anti-Mafia Hero

Pino and I will head to the meeting tonight (May 9th) in Assisi in memory of courageous young Sicilian Peppino Impastato, eliminated by the Mafia on May 9th, 1978 for his outspoken criticisms of Mafia crime via the Radio Aut he started (his brilliant broadcasts were often full of irony and cutting humor) in his small hometown of Cinisi, not far from Palermo.
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Calendimaggio: Assisi’s Glorious Celebration of Spring

Since time immemorial, man has heralded the arrival of spring with ritual and festivity. In Assisi, committees meet nightly for months to plan the annual traditional salute to spring, the Calendimaggio. The three-day festival – which lasts three days – is a re-evocation of the medieval celebration of Nature’s rebirth and the initiation once again of the life cycle.
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Singing in May in Umbria…

Pino and I had been working the land here outside of Assisi for about eight months and collapsed into bed exhausted on April 30th (1975) – as we did most nights in those days! At around 2:00 am, we were awakened by robust, joyous male voices singing under our window, accompanied by rollicking accordian music and the jangling of a tamburine: our first introduction to the maggiaioli! (“May singers”).
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GRAN FINALE to the 2011 U.S. Tour

My stay in the Washington, D.C. area was a perfect wrap-up to a memorable 7-week (almost!) coast-to-coast U.S. cooking lessons/lectures tour. It synthesized what my annual U.S. tour is about: connecting with family, old friends and former tour guests via my lectures or cooking classes of Umbrian rural cuisine. In the D.C area, five superb cooking classes were the gran finale: such an interesting variety of people involved in stimulating and interesting work (consider the area!). I learned much in conversation with many of them while cooking…
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Blessed Easter Abundance in Umbria

Driving through the Umbrian countryside during the week prior to Easter, you’d note whiffs of smoke drifting up from the outdoor stone bread ovens fired up by the farmwomen. Holy Week for the Umbrian farmwomen is a busy one, an exhausting one: making the torta di Pasqua (“Easter cake”) or pizza pasquale, as it is often called, in the stone bread ovens is a major task. The traditional Easter “cake” or “pizza” is a raised cheese bread, make of eggs, flour, olive oil, salt, pepper and three kinds of cheeses: parmigiano, pecorino and groviera
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