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. Continue reading Labor Olive
Labor Olive
We bill our Umbria Food & Wine tours as an opportunity to spend harvest time in Umbria. And these weeks in October ...
Our second Umbria Food and Wine Tour began this Saturday with our group gathering together from various places throughout Italy to Santa Maria degli Angeli, the small town below Assisi where Saint Francis originally established his Franciscan order. True to its name, our first activity – at the Casa di Norcia restaurant – centered around food and wine. 
Often – well, pretty much always -we take for granted the little stuff, the daily stuff, the routine stuff. And this is certainly true when talking about our first activity of the day here in Italy – breakfast. 
Returning to Italy today, to our home town of Cannara, brought a tear to my eyes. Literally. 
On yet another perfect evening, lapped by cool rustles of soft sweet Umbrian nighttime air, under a blanket of darkness lit by thousands of tiny pinpricks of brilliant luminescence we dined. We dined al fresco as we had the night before and many previous nights over the past weeks. But tonight the food arrived at the table not plate by plate on Alvaro’s sure hands, but wheeled in on wave after wave of gigantic carts, like some culinary Trojan Horse. And make no doubt about it, while the offerings on the carts were meant as gifts to our group of 25 assembled around the table, they just as surely they were planned as a means of conquest. Beware of Italians bearing gifts. Especially if they are offered by Giuliano Gilocchi. 
After five days of preliminaries, the big day had arrived. Up until today we had butchered pigs, made sausage, tried our hands at pizza dough and pasta, shopped for fresh vegetables and foraged in fields for their wild brethren, we had baked, broiled and boiled, kneaded, preheated and weeded. We had broken bread and baked it too with Danilo, Moreno, Gabriella, Jennifer, Simone, Salvatore, Ernesto and Mauro. Tonight, however, we were on our own. Dinner was ours to imagine, conceive, develop, design and execute. Tonight we were cooking – cooking with gas. And with wood and carbone. Preparing a dinner for the ages. Dinner for 30. 
Like unrepentant recidivists, Suzy and I returned to Italy today and returned right to the scene of the crime. A crime that we masterminded and executed just three months ago, a crime against sensible nutrition and moderate diet. Back in April we engaged in a two and a half day whirlwind pizza tour of Naples. This morning we arrived back in Italy, landing two and a half hours north of Naples in Rome, our first order of business to drive as fast as the Italian autostrada would allow us (and it has, in essence, no speed limit) to Naples. To return to the scene of the crime. And to commit it one more delicious time. 
Tuesday, the fourth day of our Cucinapalooza cook’s tour, saw our gang of six beginning to bring the various elements of what they have been learning to the task of preparing a full meal. From beginning to end. From shopping to menu design to preparation, execution and service. From plating to wine pairing to entertaining. And what better coach could we have for this soup to nuts experience than our good friend Simone, with whom we spent the better part of the day. 
The cooking portion of our Cucinapalooza cook’s tour began in earnest on Sunday with the arrival of Gabriella and Saverio Bianconi at the villa for a full day that was not so much a cooking class as a cook’s journey. But hours before their arrival from Citta di Castello our group assembled for a special breakfast visitor. 
