Across Umbria every weekend throughout the summer of fall, there are many sagre or food festivals taking place. Over the past five years we’ve visited many of these local festivals, but have learned the festivals in the fall featuring mushrooms, chestnuts, onions, truffles, and black celery are our favorites. We visited Trevi last weekend for the Black Celery & Sausage festival which is one of our favorite festivals each year. The black celery of Trevi isn’t really black (see... Read the whole entry »
I do a lot of baking here in Umbria for our guests, and the one ingredient I really miss from North America is my vanilla extract. Here in Italy they use either whole vanilla beans which are sold in pairs, tiny bottles of vanilla essence, or they add vanilla flavor with the vanilla flavored baking powder. I brought one bottle of extract as well as a bottle of vanilla bean paste with me to Italy this year, which didn’t last long with all the baking I do. There is nothing like pure vanilla... Read the whole entry »
A month or so ago on one of our excursions outside Umbria, while driving down a country road we spotted a farm selling all sorts of gourds and pumpkins. Since pumpkins and gourds aren’t as popular here in Italy as they are elsewhere and I rarely ever see them, I had my husband stop at the farm, so I could buy an armful of gourds to use as a fall display outside, and I bought three large, pretty pumpkins. We are now leaving Umbria in just over a week, and in my attempt to use up all our... Read the whole entry »
My family loves polenta though we only seem to enjoy it in the fall and winter when we seem to crave heartier food. Although we’ve had an extremely warm fall so far here in Umbria, last week I decided to treat my husband with a new polenta dish I had been thinking about. Polenta is so versatile and you can do so many things with it that we never get tired of it although when I’m really in need of a good plate of comfort food, I love a bowl of creamy soft polenta topped with either a... Read the whole entry »
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