In Italy, the streets are almost always named for great people in Italian history. Nearly every city and town will have a piazza or viale honoring the protagonists of the Italian unification: Garibaldi, Mazzini, Vittorio Emanuele II, and Cavour. Sometimes you get the great Renaissance painters, sometimes you get the most famous authors and poets; […]
Italian Olive Oil: Green Gold
A few years ago, a friend asked me if I would do PR for one of the olive oil factories he managed. He explained they needed an American to write copy for their new international website and negotiate an importation deal with the FDA and it had to be an American because an American news […]
Bar
I’ve said over and over to like-minded friends that I mourn what I have lost during this pandemic, even though I am a member of what I call the “COVID elite”; someone who kept their job, doesn’t have children to home school, didn’t* get sick and didn’t lose* anyone she loved. But I’m still in […]
Italian Farm to Table
In Italian, we call “farm to table” chilometro zero; food grown zero kilometers away. Just as it has in other industrialized countries, that distance from farm to table has grown exponentially here in Italy and “farm to table” has become a trendy dining “experience”. But I’ve found that in my area of Italy – rural, […]
The Best Things I Ate in 2020 (While Living in Italy During the Pandemic)
2020 wasn’t all terrible; despite everything, I ate very, very well! It feels almost wrong to be glad about something this year when so many are suffering. I live in Italy, one of the hardest-hit countries during the pandemic, but am one of the fortunate few who has a secure, work-from-home job, no children to […]
Italian New Year’s Eve Dinner: Millions of Lentils and Lucky Pork
On New Year’s Eve 2019, we ate Italian New Year’s Eve dinner at home and fell asleep before midnight. It was an accident – we’d planned to go ring in the new year in the piazza as usual – and we felt very embarrassed about it. Then we laughed; silly us! We’d be sure to […]
A 3-Day Pandemic-Era Holiday Dinner in Italy
This isn’t the year to head home to the States for the holidays, it’s not the year to head down to Calabria to his folks’, and it’s not the year to have the usual Christmas aperitivi and rimpatriate with friends. It’s not even the year to walk around looking at decorations, so it’s just the […]
Ten
August, 2020 Five days ago, we ordered our bed. It is the first piece of furniture we’ve ordered for the place, which for the days since we’ve moved back in, has lain stark and bare, like the dining room, like the foyer. We feel no rush. After all, while the renovations were being done, we […]
Eau du Thief
Don’t quote me on this because I have no idea what the hell I’m talking about, but there was this study somewhere, at some time, done by some psychologists. Basically, these psychologists set up two rooms – Candy Shop A, and Candy Shop B. Both Candy Shop A and Candy Shop B were virtually identical; […]
Why I Did Not Celebrate Halloween (and Will Not Celebrate Thanksgiving)
The zucche are back in season – round squash with bright melon-like flesh and ivory-colored bulletproof rinds. I see heaps of them in a plastic milk crate at the market and think about it for a heartbeat, but then remember the toughness of that rind, my desperate awkwardness with knives and, above all, the fact […]