Christmas at home is a postcard. Each one has a role, as in a theatrical operetta: everyone has his lines or his stage costumes. There have been the same smells for decades, the chicken liver crostini and the spices of panforte hovering from mid-December to the Epiphany on the 6th…
I am traditional. A few days ago I found myself kneading, as if I had received an order from another time. An internal clock, tuned in to the coming and going of seasons, reminded me that the day of the pan co' santi had come. It is a dense bread,…
My mum used to say that I had started a food blog as I had plenty of free time: I still didn’t have a boyfriend at the advanced age of twenty-eight. Once you’ll find someone, you won’t have time for the blog anymore, she would say, looking up to the…
It was the beginning of summer 2010, I had the blog for slightly more than one year and I was stuck in a daily job where gratifications were meagre. I was still at home with my parents and my family was renting the house where I live now for the…
In the last five months we've been traveling through Tuscany and outside our region for our book tour. It has been a whirlwind of emotions, with a frequent question: which is the recipe that represents the quintessence of Tuscany, the one you should try at least once in your life to understand the true spirit of…
If someone invites you to go to a sagra, stop whatever you're doing, cancel other commitments, dress up comfortably and bring along a mosquito repellent. The sagra, a town food festival, is the heart of the true Italian food scene. The sagre fill up parking lots, sports facilities and squares throughout the year, but mainly…
I am proud of how my hands look now. Growing up I used to have small gracious hands, and my granddad Remigio would say: guarda che manine! Look at your hands. These hands have studied, they have not worked yet. He had worked for all his life as a bricklayer.…
Growing up I would not have thought possible to find fascinating that bowl of greenish soup that represented part of our dinner at least four times a week throughout the year. The minestrone would come straight from a bag from the freezer, always the same brand as mum loved that…
