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…
Grandma, you won't bring me into the broad bean field anymore, will you? This is one of the most memorable phrases of my childhood. Grandmother got her driving license when she was already fifty, she used to drive a small white Centoventisei, a tin of sardines commensurate with today's standards. She decided to get a driving license…
I will wait. I will wait until I lose some extra weight to buy that new pair of jeans. I'm gonna wait until I feel more confident to pitch a magazine for an article. I will wait until I get published on a magazine to propose for a book deal. I…