Keep your eyes open as you walk through Spello so as to take in the hints of the splendor of the Roman colony, Hispellum – and they’re even in the churches. In Santa Maria…
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Once again, my mantra “only in Italy” is most fitting: after all, where else might you find the splendid mosaic floor of a Roman villa when digging out a parking lot? It…
We’ll explore Spello together in my next ZOOM on November 21st – and until then, I’ll be sharing blog notes as introduction; after all, there’s so much to share on this medieval…
Quiz for the day: what is a “trunk-shaker with a reversed umbrella interceptor”? Here it is: It’s the mechanized tool used by the Trabalza-Marinucci family to harvest the olives of their three…
When we first harvested olives here in the Umbrian countryside in an icy December, 1976, the picking was all done by hand. Basket around the waist, you’d reach up the olive branch…
November is the month of the olive oil harvest all over Italy – and this year, it’s my month to focus on olive oils, subject of my two ZOOM presentations (- and…
Umbria’s “liquid gold,” olive oil, is world-renowned and celebrated by the umbri in glorious festivals. These feste celebrate the olio nuovo (the “new oil”, that olive oil just pressed) at harvest time which takes…
Since ancient times, man has used resinous substances for lighting and the pressing of woodland berries and animal and vegetable fats as a means of illuminating the darkness. As of the 4th…
People in the eastern Mediterranean have been grinding olives for oil for the last 6,000-8,000 years. and wild olives, which originated in Asia Minor, were collected by Neolithic people as early as the 8th…
For my October 31st ZOOM talk (my twelfth!), olives and olive oil in Italy’s art, history, cuisine, medicine, folklore – and not only! – will take the stage. I’ve decided to write…