Tonight I had some odds and ends in the fridge that needed using up. If you’ve ever had squacquerone, you might wonder how I had squacquerone that needs using up! But it is what it is. I had squacquerone, pancetta, a shallot and Carnaroli rice and chicken broth hanging around, so this is what we got!
Continue reading →It seems like every day since Sunday, something has changed just a little in our little corner of the world. On Sunday, we went to our “Sunday bar” for our breakfast. Sunday we were told that our province of Parma had been added to the “red zone”. That meant that were were not allow to travel out of our comune, and the bars and restaurants would only be open from 6:00-18:00.
Continue reading →I’ve been creating my own little “village family tree” using all of the records I can get my hands on. For one of the towns, the records I most easily have access to are only a single census, and then death records for about two centuries. Because of that, I was building families first with only their dead children, and then after I had all of the death records placed in the tree, I went to the census and filled in some gaps (the birth records will someday fill in more gaps). It was tough.
Continue reading →One of our favorite parts of the Fiera del Fungo (Mushroom Festival, or as my husband affectionately calls it the “Fungus Festival”) is the “Cooking Show Pavilion”. Here there are multiple cooking demonstrations and tastings throughout the days of the … Continue reading →
Wow! My husband will have a photograph exhibited at the upcoming MIA PHOTO FAIR in Milano, March 22-25, 2019. Many of you know that Joe invented a camera trigger for capturing high speed events normally unseen by the human eye – you can see more about it at SnaperturePro.com. He’s spent the past couple of years concentrating on Water Drop photography, and it’s obviously paid off.
Continue reading →Pesto is one of those sauces that brings back vivid memories for me. The first time I had pesto was on my first trip to Italy in 1978. As a foreign exchange student in Switzerland (German part), I ended up almost by accident in Vernazza near the end of my year, and the memories of pesto and focaccia stayed with me all my life. Many of my US friends had pesto for the very first time at my dining table (I do make a mean pesto if I say so myself). When I realized that I was to live in a location that is quite literally at the border of Emilia-Romagna (a foodie haven), Tuscany and Liguria, it was almost heaven.
Continue reading →Today is Ferragosto. Ferragosto is a national holiday in Italy and many cities empty out to go to the beach, or the mountains. In days gone by, foreign tourists were faced with many closed stores and ghosts towns/cities for much of the month of August. These days you will still be confronted with much quieter tourist locations, but many locales will cater specifically to those natives who opted to avoid the crowds . . .
Continue reading →Normally when I’m up at the crack of dawn on Thanksgiving morning it’s to get started with the cooking. But this year, Italian bureaucracy has given us a new way to celebrate the holiday. On a bus to Parma. As … Continue reading →
We’re always told that BorgoTarese “just want to be happy and have fun”. That sounds like a reasonable aspiration to me! We arrived back home on Thursday, and Friday started the celebrations for La Sagre delle Castagne – the Chestnut Festival! I love parties, and I love chestnuts, so that was fine by me. The music was a bit loud Saturday night while we were trying to get over our jet lag, but being happy and having fun requires sacrifice 🙂
Continue reading →The Terre Di Canossa International Classic Car Challenge comes through our mountain town every year. Our town is in what we’ve come to dub “The Tri-State Region”. So, we are right in the middle of this fun ride!
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