Italy
La Bella Vita - Mostly
Rites of Spring in Italy
We had a week of firsts. First rites of the spring season, first flowers, first adventures in Umbria. Italy is literally bursting with flowers right now and it’s a marvelous time to be here. Here’s a week in photos from our week of spring in Italy.
Recipe for Sunday Lunch: Slow Roasted Suckling Pig Leg With Friends, Fava Beans and a nice Chianti.
Carpe Diem! Sometimes you have to seize the moment, and when the local EuroSpin had a suckling pig leg on sale, it just had to come home with me. And you can’t eat pig leg all by yourself, because wouldn’t that just make you a little piggy? Which meant we had to invite some friends over, which suits us just fine on a Sunday afternoon. See how one little impulse buy has so many pleasant consequences!
A Bowl of Soup You Can’t Have
This bowl of soup is why people get on a plane and travel. It can only be served in one place on earth and it tastes of that unique place and time.
You can’t make this soup at home. You can make a variation, but never this soup. In fact, this soup only exists for one day, one batch at a time.
The Sensual Seduction of Fall
Mother Nature is giving us one last sensory overload before the dark and quiet of winter. Colors are vibrant but tinged with decay. The air carries the scent of earth and smoke; the smell of sunlight and freshness is relegated to the back of the closet along with t-shirts and sandals.
Our Umbrian fall smells of abundance.
Eating Alberto Il Magnifico: from beak to tail.
Screen shot 2011-11-06 at 5.12.16 PM
Alberto Il Magnifico was a capon, raised with loving care and surrounded by our growing appetites.
In case you are wondering, a capon is a castrated rooster. According to Wiki, the Romans ‘invented‘ capons as a way to get around grain rationing for chickens. Those crafty Romans would snip the little testicles off their roosters, feed them grain and they would grow to be twice the size of a chicken. And here is your word for the day: caponization. Yup, that means snipping off of the balls. Now, use it in a sentence and report back.
Plate2Page Magic in Toscana
Is it alchemy or magic when a spell is cast and you are transported to another place? When words transport and images bring a place to life?
Food bloggers are stuck in that nether world between art and craft, hobby and vocation, respect and silliness.
Perhaps we belong to the old tradition of serial story telling?
It was in that spirit, of wanting to walk in Dickens or Collodi’s shoes, that I went to the Plate2Page food writer & photography workshop in Tuscany.
Archive Posts
