Don Vito living the life Each year in May in my cellar under their grow lights are a couple of dozen young tomato plants, nearly ready to be planted out in my vegetable beds (within two weeks, after fear of frost is gone in my Zone 6a garden). My mind always fills with thoughts of tomatoes in this time of year... and hopes that there will be a good yield for our little famiglia... If I say, "tomato sauce" you think of Italian food, right? If I say "home grown tomatoes" you might think of Vito Corleone playing with his grandson in his garden in that final scene of his life. If I say "pizza" y ..read more

Awarded the World's Best Gelato, Sergio Dondoli's treats can be found in San Gimignano Congelato is the Italian word for frozen.  Freddo means cold (sort of the way Don Michael Corleone felt toward his brother, Fredo). Freddo is the way Italians feel all the time, even in when it's warm out. It's a puzzle and a wonder that they have embraced something so cold and frozen as gelato.  If you travel to Italy in summer--you--as an American, are going to want to do anything you can to keep cool. Not that Italians want this. They are always cold anyway. Italian air conditioning isn't r ..read more

A typical Italian breakfast Just how did this riposo thing get started in Italy (and other Mediterranean countries)? Many attribute it to the heat in the middle of the day--which can get extreme in summer--combined with the typically heavy meals eaten as lunch in the Mediterranean diet. Simply put, people get drowsy after a big meal. Italians supposedly are embracing this biological fact as part of their natural clock... napping when their body says to nap, whereas Americans are out of tune with their natural rhythms. When you speak to Italians and understand their lifestyle you get a cleare ..read more

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