“Ho trovato funghi ieri. Venite a mangiarli!” (“I found mushrooms yesterday. Come eat them!”) Peppa chortled over the phone. How to refuse? As I savored those mushrooms, what memories of my own…
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We often eat at Peppa’s. Every meal is always an Umbrian rural feast, and although she’ll invite us over for “solo per un primo,” it’s never “just a first course.” Lunch…
The crusty bread of central Italy is made without salt – and for me, enhances the savory tastes of our prosciutto and pecorino (sheep’s milk) cheeses (both salty). Why is there no…
As you head up to Assisi in mid-summer, you’ll note giant round bales of hay at rest between the rows of olive trees. Around sunset, golden olive bales underscore the majestic beauty…
The cultivation of sunflowers throughout Italy adds a joyful floral frame to the views of the medieval hilltowns… …..and creates a butter-yellow carpet setting off a simple farmhouse ..,,,while rolling yellow fields…
The sugar, salt and coffee are the only foods on the table in Giuseppa and Paolo’s farmhouse kitchen not raised by them. Lunch or dinner there is truly a “farm-to-table” experience or,…
We always tell our apartment guests that the best eating – and at the most economical prices – is at the evening food festivals of the small villages, le sagre. Our favorite…
When here in our splendid Umbria, “Italy’s green heart”, you simply can’t miss meeting and feasting with Umbria’s rural people. Just ask young Shelby from Georgia, here in June in one of…
Bud and Irma, “Mille grazie for your warm note to me after our rural life tour: “…… thank you for the wonderful rural life in Umbria experience, everything we expected and much, much more.…
A culinary highlight of an Umbrian springtime? Wild asparagus. Just ask Novella, selling it at her stand in Assisi: …or our rural neighbor Raul, foraging for it in the wood behind our…