Italy

To paraphrase (very loosely) Ebenezer Scrooge - if I had my way, every restaurateur who goes about with truffle oil on his menu would be boiled in a vat of truffle oil and buried with a vial of the vile stuff stuck through his heart.  There may be good truffle oil out there, but I haven’t tasted it yet.  I detest [...]

We’re all rather fond of the local Coop supermarket.  The girls like being able to get Italian Cocoa Pops and I’ve become embarrassingly addicted to the Coop brand of sliced, pre-packaged mortadella.  I think it reminds me of the bologna I ate as a child.  Whatever the reason, I go through an average of a package a [...]

No train attacks, no mute children, no carpenter ants, no Maggie Smith.  But, like the character, Aimee, in the movie My House in Umbria, I’d like to stay forever.  My house in Umbria is the Rocca di Benano, in the tiny hamlet of Benano, just up the hill from Orvieto.

Sometimes you know.  You just know.  You stop at a restaurant for lunch at 12:30 and it’s closed.  Mostly likely closed for the August holidays.  But something brings you back another day to try again.  It’s that voice inside that says “go here, not there.  Here is where you are meant to be.”  A few [...]

Italy makes me cry.  My first trip to Italy came about during a rough point in Bones’ and my life.  We were grief-stricken parents and came to Italy to heal.  We did a lot of crying, a lot of eating, and eventually, though slowly, we came back to the land of the living.