The visitors arrive, the fire is built to roast the lamb and we open a bottle (or two or more) of bubbles.
Scacciadiavoli brut. Umbria twice fermented.
Buona Pasqua!
Bill and Suzy
The visitors arrive, the fire is built to roast the lamb and we open a bottle (or two or more) of bubbles. Scacciadiavoli ...
Easter arrived early to la Fattoria del Gelso here in Umbria this morning. Nine o’clock early, with the arrival of chef Simone and his colleague Amadeo. It promises to be a buona Pasqua indeed, as they brought with them three large bundles of wild asparagus, foraged from the countryside by Amadeo.
Just one of the traditions that Umbria is so rich in and which enrich the lives of its people and those, like us, with whom they share.
We’ll keep you posted throughout the day. Until then, buon appetito!
Ci vediamo!
Bill and Suzy
Easter arrived early to la Fattoria del Gelso here in Umbria this morning. Nine o'clock early, with the arrival of chef Simone and his ...
One of the things we have found so appealing about Italy and the Italians throughout the years is their ability to slow down and enjoy the life that is right before their eyes, noses, ears, tongues and fingers. Often summed up in the phrase la dolce vita, we have built our business and our lives around spreading the gospel of slow. And we even sum it up in Via Umbria’s tagline – Discover | Savor | Share.
Italians don’t just pay lip service to savoring life, they simply cannot ignore this genetic predisposition, ingrained as it is in their DNA. More than once when involved in business negotiations or getting to know a new supplier we would break for lunch and rather than continuing the negotiations over the meal all talk of business would be banished until the last grappa was consumed. Usually three or four hours later
But despite being ambassadors for this way of life, we have always had a difficult time walking the walk. Anyone who has travelled on one of our tours and who has gotten to take a peek behind the curtain knows that in organizing these apparently carefree experiences, the reality is anything but. It’s not just that the candle is burnt on both ends, the leftover wax is literally doused in lighter fluid and until the table itself is set aflame and the house afire.
And so as we returned to Italy last week, the first five days to be shared with both our daughter and one of our sons, we resolved to be truly Italian. To slow down and put aside all thoughts of work or business, anything that would distract from enjoying the here and now of being with our family. And despite not just a mountain, but a whole range of Everests that demanded our attention – more than you, dear reader will ever know – we did a pretty good job of staying focused on the things that matter. Family. Friends. Connections.
And what a memorable and meaningful five days it was.
Five short days with family. But when you slow down and savor each moment as we did this week, it seems like a blessed eternity. The Italians definitely have gotten something dead on right.
Ci vediamo!
Bill and Suzy
Italian Way to Enjoy Family Time Read more
One of the things we have found so appealing about Italy and the Italians throughout the years is their ability to slow ...
How cute are these little white goats!? Bill and and son Teddy and daughter Lindsey, along with Via Umbria favorite Simone Proietti-Pesci, got a chance to visit the goats last week when they stopped by the farm of local cheesemaker and winemaker Diego Calcabrina. Diego is well known and respected in the area for making goat cheese, alongside small batches of hand crafted Sagrantino wine. He is very passionate about his work as a farmer and a winemaker. He holds himself out as a biodynamic farmer, which means he practices organic farming, as well as many other strictures about following the phases of the moon and getting in touch with nature’s natural rhythms.
The Menard family visited Diego for the first time last fall, and Lindsey, Teddy and Bill (along with Simone) revisited on the first day of their current trip. Cheese first.
And just how difficult is it to make goat cheese? The process is not too complicated but requires completely clean and unadulterated goat’s milk, which is an art in itself. Those goats are not always the most cleanly, or easy, to milk. And it requires a cheesemaker’s niche knowledge of the right feel of curd, and the correct temperatures during the different stages of the cheese process.
But you should try it at home. Goat cheese is best when ultra-fresh. You can still taste the…goats…which most of the time is a good thing. Yours may not end up as good as Diego’s, but you can always drop by Via Umbria and pick up a bottle of Sagrantino to wash it down.
Simply follow these few steps:
In a medium saucepan, we heat the fresh goat milk until it reaches about 180 degrees.
Then we remove from heat and stir in lemon juice. This separates the curds (the fat and protein, which becomes cheese), from the whey (the liquid).
We shake the little curds into their cheese containers, and place them on a tray that allows the excess whey to run off into the pail. One the desired amount of liquid has come off, the curds all set in their containers, making a solid block of cheese.
Ci Vediamo!
– Via Umbria
Meet our new friends! Read more
How cute are these little white goats!? Bill and and son Teddy and daughter Lindsey, along with Via Umbria favorite Simone Proietti-Pesci, got ...
Did you know Mr. Valentine was an Umbrian? Saint Valentine was born in Terni, an hour drive from Cannara, where he lived and eventually died on the 14th of February. Very little is know about the actual Saint Valentine, and much of his life is shrouded in conjecture and myth.
Ideas to delight all your valentines Read more
Did you know Mr. Valentine was an Umbrian? Saint Valentine was born in Terni, an hour drive from Cannara, where he lived ...
I can’t exactly remember when we first met Claudio Cutuli. But I’m glad we did. Continue reading Scarfing Down Life in Bevagna
Surrounding Ourselves with Italian Culture Read more
I can’t exactly remember when we first met Claudio Cutuli. But I’m glad we did. Bevagna, the small Roman-medieval village that is a ...
Stepping out of Ristorante Perbacco briefly to take a break from our marathon cooking class with Ernesto yesterday, a flock of sheep wandered by the banks of the Topino river. The tinkling of bells around their necks created a soothing symphony punctuated by the occasional bleat. A local Cannarese boy, watching the procession from his bike just a few yards away struck up a conversation with me. When I responded to his question with non capisco he asked if I was a tourist – they don’t get many in our little village of Cannara. My Italian then kicked into gear and he smiled when I told him I was from America. He wished me a good stay and then took off on his bike and a few minutes later I was back inside Perbacco, ready to sit down and enjoy the fruits of our labors.
Just when nature gives you a punch to the gut she reminds you how sweet she can be. Life is good in Cannara. Life is good in Umbria.
Life is good.
Ci vediamo!
Bill and Suzy
Stepping out of Ristorante Perbacco briefly to take a break from our marathon cooking class with Ernesto yesterday, a flock of sheep ...
One of the things that defines Umbria and Umbrians is their connection with and to the earth, an impulse that traces its origin back to their beloved St. Francis. That love of nature and the natural world is not limited to just those who make a living off the land. It seems everyone – doctor, lawyer, barista – has a special room in their house, a cantina or magazzino where they are aging cheese, making and storing wine, hording olive oil made from the family’s trees.
When nature shares its bounty with us it is truly a glorious thing. Tomato plants straining under the weight of heavy fruits literally bursting at the seams with life and with flavor. Freshly dug truffles wafting their exotic and intoxicating perfumes, setting the mind and senses on fire. Succulent meats glimmering and glistening in the fire.
But nature is not always so friendly. She can be fickle. And so when our group visited the Trampolini olive mill for our scheduled appointment to observe the olive harvest, to marvel as fresh, ripe olives were washed and sorted and turned into paste yielding their fluorescent green oil it was a shock to find the mill silent. The usual commotion of tractors laden with enormous baskets of olives did not fill the air. The rushing of bodies to and fro to start this machine, to monitor another, to remove stainless cylinders full of oil was missing. Instead, we were greeted, not grimly but cheerily by two generations of the Trampolini family, owners of the mill since the 1700s (the mill traces its roots back to the 1200s) who told us the shocking news. This year’s entire crop was a loss.
Infestation of flies had affected all two thousand trees, rendering the shiny green and black fruits unsuitable for making not just fine oil, but oil suitable for consumable at all. This year the mill would be mostly quiet, started up only occasionally to make oil from those lucky enough to have avoided the plague, which has affected olives across the peninsula. Get ready for higher olive oil prices, America, because there is going to be little oil from Italy available this year.
But nature has focused her wrath not just on olives. For the second year in a row Umbrian wine producers have faced extremely difficult and untimely weather, rendering another crop of extremely low quantity, requiring heroic efforts to harvest sufficient grapes of high quality.
And what of the Umbrians? Those who make their living producing award winning olive oils? Those whose days are spent in the fields and in the cantina making wines of distinction? How do you move forward when your entire year is wiped out? The Umbrians we know move forward and don’t dwell on the past. What have we learned this year, Alessandro Trampolini asked himself? We will be better prepared next year he promises. We may not have a Montefalco Rosso this year, but we still have some great bottles from the previous year in our cellar, opines our host at the Paolo Bea winery. This is part of the cycle of nature and those who benefit from the good years don’t run around like their hair is on fire in the bad years. They trust in nature and look hopefully to the future. Perhaps we all could learn from their example.
Ci vediamo!
Bill and Suzy
Different Shades of Nature Read more
One of the things that defines Umbria and Umbrians is their connection with and to the earth, an impulse that traces its ...
Sunday, our group’s first full day in Umbria, lived up to its being a Sunday. For Sunday’s are a special day in Umbria as they are throughout Italy.
What’s so special about Sundays? Or at least what was so special about our Sunday?
It wasn’t simply the visit to the Luchetti family farm, a place of peace and serenity where nature takes center stage. Where chianina cows are raised and cinta Sienese pigs are fattened. A place where a 25 year old toils with the patience of a senior twice his age, cleaning and salting fat legs of pigs for their yearlong journey of becoming prosciutto.
It wasn’t simply the opportunity to share the day with another food and wine tour group from the other Washington (this one Bellingham), with our friend Jennifer McIlvaine acting as the glue that connected our group and hers. Although it was special to watch our guests bond immediately with their counterparts. Food and Italy have have a way of forging those bonds.
It wasn’t simply the blue skies and unusually hot “fall” weather.
It wasn’t simply the visit to Alma and Dino’s tidy farm, just around the corner from our farmhouse, just another patch of farmland that makes up a single quilt square on the countryside that is one enormous quilt of farms. But what a patch the calloused couple has created. Fields of lettuces, fennel, asparagus, broccoli, cauliflower laid out in neat, tidy, fertile, bountiful rows, each one bursting with life. Truly bursting with life. Here you feel that farming is not so much work as it is a gift. To be the keeper, the custodian of these fields is hard work, no doubt, but in the joyous faces of Alma and Dino you can read that it a labor of love and contentment.
It wasn’t simply the meal, an hours long Sunday kind of leisurely feast set around a table twenty feet long and shaded with the retractable umbrella built into the couple’s mobile farmstand truck. A feast prepared by Jennifer and her former boss and everyone’s friend Salvatore Denaro. Salvatore, the notorious, noteworthy, noted chef, gardener, media personality. Salvatore, an imp and an impresario. Each dish passed around with a smile and a twinkle, each glass filled with a rousing chorus of “Vino, Vino, Vino.” Each occupant at the table feeling as though he or she was the special guest of honor.
It wasn’t simply having Jennifer and her husband Federico and their two adorable children steal the show and our hearts. Federico coaxing the infant Gabrielle to ham it up with the three liter wine bottle from Federico’s winery while his protective sister Olivia watched over the scene to keep him from any harm or too much embarrassment.
It wasn’t anything in particular that made this or any Sunday in Umbria special. It was all of it. For on Sundays in Italy it is not just family and friends that take center stage. It is life and love that is invited in, not just for a quick visit, but for a long, lingering sojourn.
I fear that by inviting ourselves into their world we may some day change and diminish – tarnish – that which is truly special in Umbria. Things like Sundays. My hope is that Umbria changes us first. Let’s hope that sometime in the near future, back in Washington, DC or Bellingham, Washington on a Sunday afternoon, while enjoying lunch al fresco with your family you, too, may hear drifting on the winds the refrain “Vino, Vino, Vino.”
Ci vediamo!
Bill and Suzy
Every Sunday is a special one here Read more
Sunday, our group’s first full day in Umbria, lived up to its being a Sunday. For Sunday’s are a special day in ...
We returned to Italy today after a brief soggiorno in France. As you no doubt know if you have been keeping up with our posts. [Note, there will be a test at the end of the month.] Continue reading Quite an Eye Full
We returned to Italy today after a brief soggiorno in France. As you no doubt know if you have been keeping up ...
I don’t think I really drove home the point in yesterday’s post about the silence in our newly plowed fields the other night. After winding down an al fresco dinner at about 2:30 in the morning, I wandered to the corner of the property shown in the photo and stood for ten minutes without hearing anything.
Nothing. Nada. Nix.
Try to imagine ten minutes of not just quiet but silence – absolute silence – in today’s world. Just the ringing in your ears. Alone with yourself under an enormous blanket of darkness punctuated by beautiful pinpricks of light it is hard to imagine how one could not help but find himself drawn closer to nature and God as St. Francis was.
It is a mighty powerful experience.
Ci vediamo!
Bill and Suzy
I don't think I really drove home the point in yesterday's post about the silence in our newly plowed fields the other ...
