The term “island life” conjures up some pretty powerful images in most peoples’ minds. Visions of bronze skin – radiant skin, really – not so much as a result of the constant absorption of UV rays from the everpresent sun, but an inner radiance that comes from a contentment and happiness of being one of the chosen few privileged enough to reside apart from the world, in one’s own private paradise. Continue reading On the Outside Looking In
On the Outside Looking In
A magical trip to Capri Read more
The term “island life” conjures up some pretty powerful images in most peoples’ minds. Visions of bronze skin – radiant skin, really ...
Campania, the Italian region south of Rome that calls Naples its capital, is rightly known for its sunsplashed coastline, fun loving inhabitants and great food and wine. On our first full day here we can vouch for all of the above. 
An uneventful flight from Charlotte to Rome marks our summer 2014 return to Italy. The beginning of our summer odyssey of sun and islands, the countryside and world class jazz and finally a long overdue reunion with one of our first Italian friends who now resides, of all places, in France. Strap on your seatbelt, make sure your tray table is in its full, upright position and get ready to join us for five weeks as we dolce vita our way through the land where the term was invented. 
Yesterday’s main Cucinapalooza activity featured a visit to the Perugina chocolate factory for a three hour class in chocolate making. Head over to 
Cucinapalooza is upon us once again. Our second annual installment of last year’s week long cooking tour designed not to enable our budding chefs to leave here thinking that they can cook like an Umbrian but so they can return home knowing they can more think like an Umbrian cook. 
“Regrets. I’ve had a few. But then again, to few to mention”
We’ve written before about 
Back in Florence for just a couple of days, the birthplace of our love of Italy. Two days here and one in Bologna before returning home to Umbria to start our two weeklong Cucinapalooza cooking tours. 
We first met Angelo Coluccia some years ago – perhaps seven, maybe eight years hence. And unlike the majority of our Italian friends, we did not discover him. Rather, he found us in his research on Italian specialty shops in the U.S. At the time this young man from Puglia, Italy’s southern region known as “the heel of the boot” was in the business of promoting food and wine from his native Puglia and, more specifically, from his home town of Gioia del Colle. We responded to his forthright email offering to introduce us to the treasures of Puglia and a friendship was born.
My father passed away earlier this year. He was 95 years old. And he was a lifelong Red Sox fan. 
We bill our Umbria Food & Wine tours as an opportunity to spend harvest time in Umbria. And these weeks in October are truly the heart of harvest time in this area. Grapes have usually just been picked and are fermenting in tanks in cantinas, tractors and combines move from one plot of land to another at all hours of the day and into the night. And the first olio novello is being pressed in mills in this olive crazy region.