Weeeeeeeeeee’re baaaaaaaaaaaaaack! And, if you care to follow along, we’re back for six weeks. More or less. We’ll try to keep the posts short and sweet. Not a strong suit, I fear.

Six weeks in Umbria. Six weeks during the fantabulous harvest season, one of, if not the most beautiful time to be in central Italy. For the next six weeks we’ll get to see firsthand once more, and you, dear reader, should you choose to follow will get to see and experience second hand, just why Umbria is called the “green heart” – il cuore verde – of Italy.

We are now a couple of days into the first of five week long Umbria Food and Wine tours. A week of gorging and slurping and touring and photo-ing. This week’s group is a group of six women who in six degrees of separation know one another, renting the villa for a weeklong girl’s night out and then asking Suzy and me to organize a program around their visit. This is something we know how to do pretty well, if I do say so myself, so this week will hit some of the highlights that Umbria has to offer during harvest time. Stay tuned.

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Yesterday’s big adventure, or at least one of them, was a daylong cooking class with our friend Ernesto Parziani, the chef-owner of Cannara’s Perbacco restaurant. We try to cook with Ernesto just about every visit here, and we have written about his marathon classes, which end up with several hours at the table, eating our handiwork. Yesterday was no different.

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What makes Perbacco so special beyond Ernesto and Anna Rita’s incredible cooking and imaginative yet traditional cuisine, is the restaurant itself. The design springs from the creative mind of Simona, Ernesto’s uber talented wife and her whimsical notes peek out from every corner, nook and cranny. The small, two room restaurant is almost alive with movement, with musicians strumming, piglets painting and architectural elements dripping off the walls.

References to pop culture and artistic icons abound.

And the bathroom is not to be missed. An Alice in Wonderland theme with piggies in fishnets. This is not your grandmother’s local restaurant. In our quiet farming hamlet of Cannara no less. Be sure to drop by on your next visit. But until then, enjoy the slideshow!

Ci vediamo!
Bill and Suzy