Italian food

Hot Chestnuts! Two Romans Explain How

May 17, 2007

When I visited Rome for barCamp in January, I stayed with family friends Serena and Sandro – true Romans both. We had grand plans to film Sandro explaining Roman swearwords (with gestures), as an addition to my Italian slang section, but then we drank a lot of wine and laughed and talked a lot, so [...]

Read the full article →

Pastiglie Leone

May 15, 2007

Leone brand candies have been around for a long time in Italy. I love the Art Deco and Art Nouveau package designs. The flavors are interesting, in concept, at least: coffee (I want a poster of this box!), Tuareg green tea, Polar strong, the Merchant of Venice (spices, I’m guessing), Lemon, Prince of Naples Orange [...]

Read the full article →

Italian Milk

May 9, 2007

It’s the Little Things That Surprise You When you move to a foreign country, you expect (if you are wise) that the food will be different from what you’re used to. For the adventurous this is a welcome change, a chance to explore new flavors and habits (though sometimes you also crave the taste of [...]

Read the full article →

Why Italians Drink Bottled Water

March 13, 2007

From time to time in the travel forums, I run across people complaining about the added expense of bottled water at restaurants in Italy. It is possible to drink tap water at any restaurant in Italy, and in some areas it’s the norm, but in many places the request is considered unusual. Although the water [...]

Read the full article →

Funny Italian Street Names

February 16, 2007

“Wild man alley” – with a shop called Angel Devil on the corner. Chiavenna The US is full of streets named after trees, or simply called “Main,” or given numbers or letters. Washington DC is built on a grid of numbers and letters of the alphabet. I won’t even attempt to explain Salt Lake City. [...]

Read the full article →

Sweetness and Dark on Lake Como

February 10, 2007

Some evenings, stepping off the train as it arrives in Lecco, there’s a slightly toasted, coffeeish scent of rich, dark chocolate in the air. It’s not a hallucination: Lecco is the home of Icam, one of the world’s largest manufacturers of organic chocolate. They process 6000 tons of raw cocoa beans per year, and when [...]

Read the full article →

Oh, My Darling Clementine

January 26, 2007

The fresh fruits and vegetables section of a standard American supermarket looks much the same all year round. There is no seasonal variance in the availability of any common foodstuff: you see the same tomatoes, lettuce, broccoli etc., even when they have to be imported from someplace far away where the weather is right for [...]

Read the full article →

Gallery: Chiavenna in December

December 28, 2006

From our family post-Christmas lunch trip to al Cenacolo in Chiavenna.

Read the full article →

A “Typical” Italian Christmas

December 26, 2006

Of course , our family is far from typically Italian. Even my husband’s family isn’t very typical: his mother moved around a great deal while she was growing up, and had only two brothers (who both died young), and Enrico’s father was an only child – hardly the norm in his day! So the close [...]

Read the full article →

Gallery: vlogEurope, Videobloggers Invade Bellagio

December 15, 2006

All the photos I took at and around vlogEurope in Milan and on Lake Como, November, 2006.

Read the full article →

Return to Bormio

December 1, 2006

My birthday present this past weekend was a trip to Bormio, to indulge in the natural hot spring water as we have before. Enrico and I left Saturday morning, while Ross was in school – we are thankful that she is now old enough to be left home alone from time to time! To get [...]

Read the full article →

Caffeination: Italians and Their Coffee

November 1, 2006

music: Manhattan Transfer – “Java Jive” Although Italy has some of the best coffee in the world, Italians don’t drink nearly as much of it as you might think. My own routine, which I suspect to be fairly average, is: one at home at 7:30, before starting my commute one fairly soon after arriving at [...]

Read the full article →

The Perils of the Italian Quest for Fresh Wild Mushrooms

August 29, 2006

While out on a walk (which became a hike), I saw a couple of women heading into the woods with wicker baskets dangling from their backpacks – off to hunt for mushrooms. Italians, like hobbits, are very fond of mushrooms, especially the varieties which defy cultivation and can only be found in the wild (or [...]

Read the full article →

Italian Food in Video: RistoExpo, Erba

February 19, 2006

Ristorexpo, Erba: salumi, cheeses, coffee, fast food, slow food, cookies, cakes, chocolate, wine, grappa, liqueur… some of the things that make life worth living in Italy! Salame d’asino is made from donkey. The blue gelato shown at the end is “Smurf” flavor. No, they don’t make it from actual Smurfs.

Read the full article →

Dining in America (and Italy)

January 15, 2006

I instinctively dislike chain restaurants: when someone says “Let’s eat at a [name of chain restaurant],” I wince. And it’s getting harder and harder to find a restaurant in the US that isn’t part of a chain. However, my instincts may be out of date: chain restaurant food seems to be improving. During this recent [...]

Read the full article →

Ristorante Belvedere: A Gem on Lake Como

July 17, 2005

We set out for a lunch somewhere along Lake Como, knowing only that we wanted a view. After pulling into a few parking lots and then changing our minds, we climbed the hill towards the Monastery of Piona, following signs for Ristorante Belvedere – with that name, it had to have a view. The Belvedere [...]

Read the full article →

Customs and Etiquette When Dining Out in Italy

April 15, 2005

House Wine In many Italian restaurants, you can get a low-cost house wine (usually one white and one red selection) in carafes of 1/4, 1/2, or a full litre. In some places this is a decent though not stellar local wine, in others it will be something completely unrelated to the area. Personally, I’d try [...]

Read the full article →

La Bottega del Maiale: A Salumeria in Lecco

February 25, 2005

This one’s for Carol & Steve, who went shopping in Boston and vlogged it. La Bottega del Maiale (“The Hog Shop”) is a small gourmet food shop in the heart of downtown Lecco (Piazza XX Settembre) specializing, obviously, in pork products, but they also have a great selection of cheeses, wines, sott’oli (preserves in oil), [...]

Read the full article →

Italian Recipes: Torta di Pane (Bread Cake)

September 7, 2004

This is a good way to use old, dry bread. The recipe is more or less one that I scribbled down from a magazine in a waiting room. Cut/break 1/2 kilo of dry bread into smallish dice Soak it overnight (in the fridge) in about 1 liter of milk; I also add a few tablespoons [...]

Read the full article →

Il Capriolo: A Wonderful Restaurant in an Italian Alpine Village

September 6, 2004

Saturday Enrico and I were restless and decided to go for an outing. We visited the abbey at Piona (a small town at the northern end of Lake Como), then headed up the mountain. We had a booklet listing restaurants in the province of Lecco, including one more or less in the area where we [...]

Read the full article →

← Previous Entries

Next Entries →