I started to look at recipes with a different perspective. While I am preparing dinner for us, on the marble table upstairs in our house, or while I am cooking during one of the classes, where many hands and experiences meet around the same wooden table now marked by time,…
Where has April gone? And what about March and February, that slipped away from my hands, silent, liquid, imperceptible. Not to speak of May: I'd swear it had begun just a few hours ago, yet I'm already planning activities for June. Only yesterday I was hoping to spend a few…
Sitting at the wooden table in the living room, I still need a sweater when the night falls. Next to me there is a glass pretending to be a vase with a withered branch of mimosa that comes from my father-in-law's garden. I can't throw it away: despite having lost…
Dad, I want to cook you something special for your birthday. What do you want? And his answer, always the same: something made au gratin. Yesterday was my dad's birthday. He is a handyman, who built our wood burning oven for pizza and bread just by watching videos on YouTube.…
I was sitting outside, wearing an old swimming suit and large sunglasses, lazily bathing in the sun with a notebook and a pen in my hands. My intention was to write, I had a free Sunday afternoon and a few stories and recipes queueing, waiting to be told. My skin…
A friend told us about this almost ninety-year-old gentleman who made beautiful copper pots in his old-fashioned workshop near Pistoia, then life, by chance, put us in contact with his grandson, and here begins our story. First we met Francesco on line, then in his family shop, Bottega Donnini, in…
In these days, the philosophy guiding my efforts to produce good content I could be proud of is perfectly synthetized in a Nicole Gulotta’s sentence I found in one her latest newsletters, a brilliant source of inspiration: in this writing life, the only thing we can control is whether or not we…
Driving back home at the beginning of summer is refreshing. You can almost hear the grass growing, the hedgerows are exploding with white flowers and the fields shine with just the most pale tone of yellow, treasuring the rich green for some more days. You can spot wild fennel from afar. It loves growing…
I’ve written my first acceptance speech, sitting at my tiny desk in the living room with a stained apron, dreaming to wear a red dress and high heels and to stand in front of some of the best food writers, bloggers and editors of our time. I am sure I would have cried, I’m emotional.