When the rains come and the air chills, it’s time to pick all the tomatoes: those few remaining red ones and all the green ones that never made it to full ripening.…
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Tucked away in the northeast corner of Umbria – with no railroad access – the splendid medieval hilltown of Gubbio hides many wonders. One is Sabrina, painter and ceramicist. Just ask Nora…
About half of our grapes went to the birds this year. Literally. Pino picked the rest, filling two crates (about 100 kilos of grapes). He bought a small press for our small…
We always enjoy having our apartment guests to dinner in our Assisi farmhouse. But Ann and Warren – staying in our Nido Tranquillo apartment for a month- actually paid for their dinner,…
Giuseppa gives us far more than an “Umbrian” welcome when we arrive at her farmhouse for a rural lunch. No one opens home and heart to visitors like Giuseppa. No one. Just…
“I won’t paint subjects guaranteed to earn me money: I have to paint the memories of my rural childhood,” Nino told me with a grin as he held up the painting of…
After you’re satiated with the porcini mushroom goodness at the Santa Fiora mushroom festival, work off your lunch with a meander through the winding medieval alleyways of Santa Fiora, clinging to the…
In mid-October in central Italy, many are hunting wild mushrooms or gathering chestnuts – or simply feasting on both of them. Countless sagre – food festivals – fête the October woodland goodness.…
“Prendere due piccioni con una fava” (“catch two doves with one fava bean”) certainly has a more lyrical ring than “kill two birds with one stone.” The Italian expression has a direct…
Ostensibly, you can’t touch an “intangible”. But Pino and I did so last June…and at a profound level, living Nola’s Festa dei Gigli with the locals. Ever since hearing about the 2013…