The day after the Festa, Oct 5th, the town becomes an open marketplace as the annual street fair, la Fiera di San Francesco, winds its way through the medieval alleyways of the…
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“You’ve brought the world to us,” Olga once told me with a hug after a banquet dinner at her home. Olga and Americo have warmly welcomed everyone into their home and both…
The best “aftermath” to my February/March U.S. cooking lessons/lectures tour are notes like this one from Mary (who joined in and cooked with me in Pennsylvannia in mid-March- and then cooked our…
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!…
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”,…
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…
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,…
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…
As the July evening moves in on Adriatic coastal gem, Sirolo, sea-satiated vacationers head up from the turquoise waters to the main square for a stroll from stand-to-enticing-stand at the food festival,…
Hard to imagine we are coming up to the fourteenth edition of the wondrous food festival celebrating Italian first courses, I Primi d’Italia. I wrote this when there ten years ago and…