Olio Novello Time is Here! ‘Tis the season for fresh olive oil!

t’s olive picking time in Umbria. Olive picking, followed by pressing is fragrantly joyous; there is something comforting about knowing you will have oil. It means there will be food on the table and it will be good.

This past weekend, a small group of us were invited by Mario Ciampetti of Terre Rosse to participate in an olive oil weekend in Spello, Umbria.

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From tree to table: Our very own olive oil!

Ripe olives First we hand picked 146.1 kilos of olives. It felt good and right and pagan to be out there harvesting olives…. Now that we had our crates of olives, we still hadn’t solved our olive oil press problem. The picturesque mill we’ve used before wasn’t an option.

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Embracing Bittersweet Fall

We picked olives this week, which is another sure sign that it’s time to get ready to head back to New York. Olive picking is a marvelous excuse to be outside on a gorgeous fall day, to climb a tree, to spend time with friends. Now if we could solve our olive pressing problems, life would be perfect.

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Olive & Grape Compote Da Vinci Style

A recipe handed down through the centuries, emerging from the swirling mists of Tuscan history drifted into my kitchen. OK, maybe not really, but I did get inspired by the olive and grape recipe found in “Signora da Vinci” a fictional novel about DaVinci’s mama. If you can suspend belief and surrender to the central…

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Fall in Umbria

And the days go flying by. The searing summer heat is gone, replaced by a chill wind and a few thunderstorms.  A tougher skinned, hardier tomato has replaced the sun warmed summer tomato, but no one really is thinking much about tomatoes now. The first of the fall artichokes showed up at last week’s market,…

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