Tag Archives: Sunday

Sunday with Simone

Aperitif with Simone Proietti Pesci

As the Menards have said before, Sunday is for Simone. 

This past Sunday I ventured out for lunch with Frances at Simone’s renovated restaurant. Having never seen his old restaurant, I was impressed by the freshness and modernity of his new place. When commenting on how small the kitchen is, he told me this new one is three times larger that his former one! While at first this seemed impossible, I soon remembered that Simone is the only person working in this kitchen.

He preps the dishes, cooks them, makes their presentation, and sometimes washes the dishes. From start to finish, the things you eat are 100% Simone. And so when you are eating a dish from Simone, you are also eating something he is proud of.

And so lunch commenced. We left the menu up to Simone, and were pleased, as usual. A perfect DiFilippo rose was consumed by all. Upon leaving, he asked if I would come back to help for dinner, which I accepted with enthusiasm.

Pasta with Simone IMG_2569

He made some fresh pasta for the night, and then a massive thunderstorm set in. A bit nervous that perhaps there would be no crowd for the night, (and it being the aperitivo hour), we had a spritz. But alas, people showed up, and Simone cooked away, preparing dish after dish himself for his happy customers. He even convinced me to eat a snail ( I have been a vegetarian since birth)…and I will admit it was good.  It all was a delight to witness.

Simone Pasta

And what would a Simone post be without a recipe? Yet again, we will bring you a zucchini recipe, appearing on the blog tomorrow!

IMG_2574

Ci Vediamo!

—-Elsa

Most people sleep on Sundays, but Simone is not like other people Read more

As the Menards have said before, Sunday is for Simone.  This past Sunday I ventured out for lunch with Frances at Simone’s renovated ...

Wine Wednesday – Sunday Routine 

We know, this last stretch of winter is rough. Just when you think you hear the birds tweeting about spring you are blasted with another arctic chill.

This can sometimes make Sunday’s turn from a day reserved for socializing on the town to a day reserved to snuggling as deep as you can possibly get into your covers. And while we respect that, sometimes you need something to entice you to get out of bed…

So how about tasting some wine on Sunday’s at Via Umbria?

dickII

Our friend and wine connoisseur, Dick Parke, will be joining us in the store every Sunday from 2 to 5, offering complementary tastings of wines he has hand selected from our stock.

dick

Up this week? Vincastro Umbria Rosso and the Adanti Nispero both just $14 and the same blend of 90% Sangiovese and 10% Merlot. Stay tuned as we learn more about these delicious wines later this week!

—Via Umbria

We know, this last stretch of winter is rough. Just when you think you hear the birds tweeting about spring you are ...

Savoring Sunday

piero-di-cosimo-pieta-with-saints-john-the-evangelist-mary-magdalene-and-martin-c-1510

 

We begin a new series, where we try to embrace slow Sundays, Italian-style.

 

This Sunday I had the delight of seeing the Piero di Cosimo exhibition at the National Gallery of Art here in Washington, DC. When I was in Piero di Cosimo’s hometown of Florence, I tried to visit churches with important artworks on Sundays, to continue my living art history education even if the museums were shuttered. Once, I went into SS. Annunziata on a Sunday, which had a Piero di Cosimo’s Incarnation, only to find myself in the middle of an open casket private wake. I left without seeing the painting.

This exhibition had allowed far simpler access to the artwork. The retrospective of his work groups his best paintings for the first time in history.

The creator of the most secular artwork of his time (perhaps tied with Botticceli), di Cosimo worked during the Renaissance with an eye for the mythological.

My favorite tidbit about di Cosimo (from the ever reliable and never exaggerating Vasari), claimed that he would boil many eggs at a time and then subsist solely on them for weeks! Vasari connected di Cosimo’s odd eating and living habits (he was not a very social or tidy man) to his odd and inventive artwork. Vasari could forgive the compulsive egg-eating upon seeing di Cosimo’s Liberation of Andromeda, c. 1510–1513.  Vasari lauded him, saying “…Piero never made a more lovely or more highly finished picture than this one, seeing that it is not possible to find a more bizarre or more fantastic sea-monster than that which Piero imagined and painted, or a fiercer attitude than that of Perseus, who is raising his sword in the air to smite the beast.”

1421945649181

Piero di Cosimo, Liberation of Andromeda, c. 1510–1513, oil on panel, Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence.

 

But I believe the Economist summed it up best in their review of the exhibition in which they conclude that “Though the term ‘surreal’ would not be coined for another four centuries, it seems completely apt for the work of this quirky genius.”

So next Sunday, put on your looking glasses and go experience the imagination of Pietro at the NGA. I promise Jesus is the only dead body.

 

— Elsa Bruno

 

Banner image from the lovely Galleria Nazionale dell’Umbria, which loaned the deposition as part of the exhibition. Pietro supposedly only left Florence once, to travel to Rome. He didn’t know what he was missing in his lovely regional neighbor!

Italian-style Sundays: Piero di Cosimo Read more

  We begin a new series, where we try to embrace slow Sundays, Italian-style.   This Sunday I had the delight of seeing the Piero ...

Sunday Finest

Day 11 018Sunday, 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?

Day 11 001It 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.

Day 11 004It 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.

Day 11 005 Day 11 007

Day 11 019It 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.

Day 11 014 Day 11 013 Day 11 012

Day 11 015It 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.

Day 11 017

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 ...