So many gifts have been extolled on me in the past year.  I don’t have to look very far to see blessings all around me, in so many shapes and sizes. A fun, interesting, and very busy season.  We had so many great guests this year, and spent so much time laughing and talking.  I [...]

Everything that’s worthwhile requires focus.  Focus is hard today, because we have so many things competing for our attention.  Even if we are all alone, standing perfectly still, we know full well that text messages and emails are arriving, urging us to stop what we’re doing and look.  And once we’ve looked we’ve lost something [...]

The highest part of our season is upon us.  The B&B is bustling with activity:  people are tasting wine while watching the tractors carry loads of grapes to be pressed, we’ve been holding water color lessons and pottery lessons and Italian lessons, laughing and philosophizing. Guests become friends and we hug them before the drive [...]

Baby, it’s hot outside. The temperature here has topped 90 Fahrenheit here every day for the last eight, and the low 100′s have not been unusual.  It’s all very unseasonable. Even the crickets are too hot to sing at night. Nature is confused.  The vendemmia has already started – way too early – because if [...]

This evening I walked with my dog along my beautiful, peaceful road.  The greens are screamingly intense, and nature is exploding at every possible turn.  The weather was balmy and breezy, the perfect spring evening.  My neighbors were working in their gardens, watering the baby potato plants, coaxing onions out of the rich soil. We’ve [...]

In ten days our B&B season begins. Soon I will be finishing up the homemade bread and putting marmalade into little pots, cutting fruit and serving cheese. Pouring hot coffee. I will be doing what innkeepers always do everywhere – making it comfortable, keeping it clean, hoping it’s nice enough that everyone will be happy. [...]

it must be yummy it must be simple it must be wholesome it must be made from the best ingredients it must be made from ingredients that are in season it must feed the body and soul From top going clockwise:  Fresh peach tart with homemade peach preserves in a pate brisee crust, strawberry-melon smoothies, [...]

“You’re living my dream!” Really? Don’t get me wrong.  I like what I do just fine.  But there is a gap between having The Dream and getting up early seven days a week to make fresh bread in a foreign country.  I think, when people have The Dream, and when The Dream involves a bed [...]

Restoring old buildings in a country like Italy is a challenge that requires calling on all of your fighting abilities.  You have to fight to get the design you want, fight the bureaucracy to be allowed to get the design you want, convince your muratore that you are not crazy, just foreign, and that yes, [...]

“So what is it like?” she asked me as we kneaded the pasta dough during our month-in-advance-scheduled cooking class at my B&B.  I was giving the group of four a class on my Emilianese grandmother’s ravioli recipe.  Lots of roasted veal, spinach and wine were involved.  The kitchen smelled like heaven itself.  But one of [...]