Wonderful Week

Our table with a view for our cooking class.

Sometimes in Italy, there is so much to do and really so little time.
This week was one of those weeks.

I began my new three day programs,
with a day in Chianti
followed by a cooking class

and
a market day with lunch and shopping in Florence.

This week we had a class with a view!
Overlooking the Forte Belvedere

The weather held out until dessert, when we went inside to enjoy our Cassata.
Nicola, our teacher, is from Catania and does both Tuscan cooking and Sicilian,
which is great as I am hooked on Sicily now too.

Nicola, our teacher

What’s not to love in Italy?
There is still space available for my Sicily tour in October.

As summer kicks in
markets are really jumping.
This is San Ambrogio which is over by Cibreo restaurant.

San Ambrogio Market

Fresh Porcini to eat the caps grilled with nepitella, a wild mint and garlic
or
lightly floured and fried

fresh porcini, 24€ a kilo, which is 2.2lbs

Fresh Borlotti beans for Steve

if you are lucky you can buy beans already shelled too, but the color is fabulous

and since it is Friday!!!
Cherrye has written about her Good American Food
which is Tex-Mex!

If anyone needs a recipe on making your own flour tortilla’s let me know!
In one of my many past-lives here in Florence,
I hand-made 50 flour tortilla’s a day for the first Tex-Mex place here!
What was I thinking!

At the beginning of this week, the other mom cat showed up with two more kittens
now we have 9!

and last but not least…

I attended a book signing for my friend and assistant for the last 4 years
Perla Trambusti!

She and Miriam published a collection of short stories
for SoleOmbra

Life in Italy is never dull!

I hope you can come and experience some of the intense life that has inspired
so many great people
and begin your own personal renaissance, where it all started!