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…
You’re drawn into a symphony of flavors, a chorus of colors when you push open the door of Bar Gardenia in Cardillo, humble borgata on Palermo’s outskirts. Even the entryway display greets…
Ristorante Il Vecchio Molino on the outskirts of Lubriano remains a “sensory overload”: for the stunning view from the terrace, for the enticements to the palate. Not far from Orvieto, it’s even…
All over Italy now, groups of friends and families are gathering together for pasta alla amatriciana dinners in solidarity with the ”new homeless”: the people of Amatrice and the nearby towns of…
Wasn’t Triple A an insurance company? AAA? Three “A’s” linked in early September at our farmhouse when nineteen of us gathered for a spaghetti alla amatriciana dinner as an earthquake fund-raiser. Main…
…or at least, cook with me! Amy and Fred, Lat and Kathy, sorry Pino missed cooking up Umbrian goodness with us – but he certainly enjoyed our rabbit cacciatore for at dinner…
The day following the Amatrice/Accumuli earthquake on August 24th (my birthday), Pino and I were enroute home to Assisi after yet another memorable vacation on the island of Ventotene. Although Ventotene, too,…
Not just here on Ventotene but all over Italy, cuisine is always a poetic palate-teaser. And not only: the appeal is to the eye as well. A visual work of art, each…
When you get off the ferry or the hydrofoil at the Ventotene port, you’ll see a landmark: mustached Vincenzo in carefully-ironed cotton shirt and shorts near his Ape (literally, “bumble bee”), piled…