Although Italian street festivals (sagre) can be found throughout the year, the sagre of Fall are particularly exciting.  The brisk autumn air, the colors of the changing seasons and the passion of the local townspeople to showcase the bounty of their farms and fields makes for a rousing good time ..read more

Tomorrow is a very special day in Italy. August 15th is the traditional celebration of Ferragosto, an Italian midsummer holiday with foods that celebrate the season. Like panzanella - a Tuscan bread and tomato salad ..read more

The ancient recipe of alkermes has a colorful history and a Renaissance connection that made its way to the formulary of the monks of Florence’s Santa Maria Novella Farmacia. Originally formulated by a 9th century Persian physician in the court of the caliph of Bagdad as a medicinal elixir for the  elite, the sensual ingredients used in the Persian recipe read like a formula for an exotic perfume; aloes, ambergris, apple juice, cinnamon, gold leaf, honey, musk, powdered lapis lazuli, crushed pearls, raw silk, and rosewater.  Cochineal, a red coloring additive made from dried insects ..read more

First published on July 4th 1865 Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland created a world of visual art and literature with characters that captured the imagination of illustrators all over the world including  Fulvio Bisca, an Italian graphic and type designer from Torino who created a curiouser and curiouser version of Alice with a series of contemporary illustrations. Although the inspiration for Bisca’s fantastical illustrations for Le avventure di Alice nel Paese delle Meraviglie can never be completely known, his background as a  teacher at Scuola Internazionale di Comics and profes ..read more

Italians are passionate about their pasta. Their feelings for making, eating, cooking and buying pasta are defended with strong emotions that run as deep as the Medici-Pazzi rivalries of Renaissance Italy. North versus South, dry versus fresh, fatto a mano or machine rolled. Every Italian has their opinions about the art and science of making pasta and rightly so. After all pasta may be the poster child of Italy. The average Italian citizen eats over 90lbs of pasta per year and pasta is the first food given to babies when they’re ready to eat. The first course, il primo, served ..read more

In the world to come, a person will be asked to give an account for that which, being excellent to eat, she gazed at and did not eat. (Jerusalem Talmud, Kiddushin) Food inflation has greatly affected our eating habits and communities are feeling the pressure as food prices continue to rise. Foods most affected by inflation are some of the most nourishing while processed food prices remain fairly stable. When purchasing becomes restricted food security becomes an issue. More and more we are opting for lesser quality foods like rectified oils and slick, quickly dried pasta that although appear t ..read more

Our cousins are from Milan and so our aperitivo experience begins there, in a city known to be populated with the Masters of Negroni.  Anyone who has ever traveled to Italy, especially in the North, has noted the distinctly Italian pre-dinner ritual known as aperitivo. A moment of relaxation at the end of a day to wind down and socialize with your friends at your favorite bar for a light drink and mini-buffet of antipasti before dinner. The word aperitivo comes from the Latin “aperire” which means to open. The aperitivo hour (generally between 6 and 8 in the ..read more

My first meeting with an Italian Spinone was on the beach at Bellagio in Italy. Every time we visit our Milanese cousins we travel to Bellagio to eat lake fish at Ristorante Bar “Mella”. The fish is fresh caught and delicious and as you eat overlooking the water you can see there is a special connection between the restaurant and the fish caught from the lake. Ristorante Bar Mella After several glasses of spumante and eating through most of the menu we walk down to the lake to see the fishing boats and here it was was that I first met the Spinone. This most agreeable breed of Italian sporting ..read more

The Mediterranean is overheating again and temperatures continue to climb as the heatwave of the summer brings even higher temperatures to the Mediterranean. Italian cities and towns can be hot in the summer however the extreme heat of 2023 was exceptional making the summer of 2023 the continent’s hottest year on record and summers in Italy notoriously hot and humid. AC is not standard in most Italian homes. Central air conditioning as we know it is rare. Tourist hotels in the larger cities do have accommodations with air. However because of the intricacies of Italian law and the high cost of ..read more

A bottle of St-Germain Elderflower Liqueur was all I needed to complete my reminiscence of Hugo. If you’ve traveled in the Trentino- Alto Adige region of Northern Italy you’ve probably met up with him at an aperitivo bar where he can always be found making everyone happy.  He is refreshing and light, popular and charming. Hugo is a palate pleasing aperitivo from Italy’s Sudtirol, a cousin of the edgy Venetian Spritz. Both are made with prosecco or white wine, sparkling mineral water (soda) and a flavor variant. In Venice that would a bitter aperitif like Aperol, variat ..read more