Frances Mayes's Blog, page 3

Crazy Year!

The holidays rising right up before us will pass in a blur at our house. Although the restoration of Bramasole is not yet over, in October we launched a big project at Chatwood, our farm house in North Carolina.  I hope never again to hear the expression “can of worms,” which amplified here to “exploding can of worms.”  All I really wanted was a kitchen to replace the weird L-shaped narrow one that we currently maneuver.  A 1930s sunroom along the back of the house, with a wide and close view of the garden, seemed ideal for transformation. It has leaky windows, an ugly floor, and is too narrow for any good arrangement of furniture.  Double the size, we thought, and there’s a dynamite greenhouse kitchen right off the big living room.  The current kitchen, with the panty knocked out, could become a bedroom.  And we want to insulate this old board house which is impossible to heat well.  We decided on geothermal. After many meetings with Fred, our architect friend, and the preservation committee, we gained approval. Restoration stories! They all have the same narrative threads running through them! I’ll cut this short.  What is happening is that all the stabilizing work that must precede the dream kitchen and bedroom, is draining the coffers so fast that we may end up with a completely solid house–but no new project!  The estimates were, for us, over the moon. And so much to do to prepare. First, asbestos all over the basement. (No mention in inspection report.) A crew in hazmat, with a guard, spent a week sawing pipes–loud–and running huge filter fans and shaking the house. Then, to install the geothermal and ducts, a huge basement excavation began and it’s still going on. Three men running wheelbarrows of red dirt to a huge burm that’s growing in the front yard. They’re into the second week of that. It’s like tunneling with a spoon for a jail escape. I can’t believe how good natured and cheerful they are.  Forgot to mention, we took out an internal chimney that ran through the kitchen and attic (hence the awkward L). It was a 40s vent for the basement boiler that must have been a relic of the industrial revolution. When the chimney came out of the attic, we decided to put a dormer in the roof, matching the dormer on the other side of the room. Soon the attic will be an almost-room, a secret reading spot.  I loved finding the pegged beams at the peak and the Roman numerals on each beam along the roof peak.

 

The new roof is next. Off it comes so that insulation can be installed underneath.  The new one will be weathered zinc metal, replacing what Ed calls “”urp-colored asphalt shingles.” Then painting. Of course, of course, there are layers of lead-based paint, so welcome back the hazmat suits.  What insulation there is in the attic just won’t do and must be sucked out. Basta!  Enough!  Suffice to say that our days are full, the satisfaction of preparing the house for the next hundred years is great, and that we can’t wait for it to end. And Bramasole, too should be drawing to a close in the next couple of months, leaving us with–again–a healthy and solid house.  Much of this, though, is like buying a new washing machine. Not fun like a new painting or sofa, just invisible, virtuous improvement. There are morals there but I’m not inclined to pursue them, as I would prefer the greenhouse kitchen!  

I haven’t seen Bramasole in six weeks. The stone masons there must have been beamed in from the renaissance–they are masters of their craft, patient, and proud. Their work is gorgeous, whether brick or stone.

September in Italy is sublime–the most dependably serene weather, with one golden day piling onto the next.  The highlight of our six weeks was an intimate dinner at Villa Taverna, the American embassy residence in Rome, and getting to know our terrific ambassador John Phillips and his super wife, Linda Douglas. We were invited to stay overnight and were given the presidential suite! All the American presidents have stayed there, most recently Barack Obama, and it was such a thrill to lay my head on the pillow that so many world leaders must have dreamed on.  The villa is ensconced in formal gardens, where wandering late, you might hear the distant roar of a lion from the zoo at Villa Borghese. Full of art and southern Italian tile floors and courtyard light, it’s a fine residence for the American ambassadors. May I have his job when he’s finished with it?  I took a few pictures but I guess it would be tacky to post them.  Returning to the chaos of Bramasole, we felt full of energy and excitement and started up immediately on finishing the plans for the new kitchen there.  We took another short trip to Florence, which just keeps getting better and better. If you go, do visit the new second floor of the Mercato Centrale, now a chic and contemporary haven for artisan bakers, vintners, and all things food! Many more streets are closed to cars, prompting a revival of bicycles with Italian drivers. Watch out! I also recommend a visit to the newly revamped Richard Ginori store on via Tornabuoni. Dazzling!

For the first time, we are not in Italy for the olive harvest. You might have read that 2014 is a tough year for olive oil. A heat wave in May blasted the teeny developing flowers and they fell. Many people are not even harvesting. We have a protected grove and were somewhat spared. Fabio and friends brought in the oil for us, since we had to get back to NC.Our mill just shipped us a few cans, so we are already tasting the crisp fall air there, the green goodness, and the spicy after-bite of just-pressed  oil. Nothing like it! First use–a pan of vegetables tossed with olive oil, then roasted.  Great with Ed’s stuffed pork roast, and leftovers go happily into a pasta sauce.

Next year I plan to be on the other side of renovations and to post only about travel, books, gardens, food! All the fun things our homes are backgrounds for. My attic will be orderly, the garage pristine, the house warm, and the basement free of snake holes and possum nests. I will make peace with my L-shaped kitchen and find a comfortable chair and lamp for the attic dormer where I can plot a writing project.  Oh, writing! I almost forgot about that.  Time to forge ahead into blank white pages.

Instead of the bountiful, laden table I’m used to, our just-family feast will be Julia’s beef bourguignon followed by a stroll along Hillsborough’s new Riverwalk. Ed will be heading to Italy; I will stay to supervise here. What a crazy year. Happy Thanksgiving to all!

PS–The November issue of OUR STATE magazine has a huge section on the charms of Hillsborough. I wrote a short ode that’s included, too.

August So Soon!

Could you–I could–live in a place that was eternally summer? This summer is especially delicious–today I am picking up at Walker farm fifty pounds of Romas to make pomarola for the coming months when the weather is not so fine. Later in the week, I will roast another fifty pounds of mixed tomatoes, pack them tightly in jars and cover with olive oil. They are so great to have on hand during any season. (See The Tuscan Sun Cookbook for both methods.) My own tomatoes are coming in too, but it seems that some creature takes a bite out of each one one day before it’s ripe. I have made every kind of yellow squash I can think of. Just sautéed with onion then a little cream and parmigiano stirred in seems best, especially if topped with seasoned coarse bread crumbs. No creature seems interested in squash. Something already has eaten the corn, all of it. I set out the catch-and-release trap twice–expecting to catch a raccoon and release him miles from here–and caught first a possum, then a skunk, the latter being quite a shock. Ed was in Italy so I called on the handy, handy man who helps us, and he approached the trap slowly, holding up a sheet of plastic and a stick with a hook.  He deftly lifted the trap door and the skunk just looked up at him and didn’t move. We didn’t want to rattle his cage!  Finally he ambled out, waving his glorious tail but refraining from spraying into the soft summer twilight.  The raccoon remains at large.

North Carolina can be blistering but this summer has been lovely.  At night I walk out on the porch a couple of times just to hear the loud, teeming, rhythmic night chorus and to inhale the moist, fragrant scents. Right now, the ginger lilies are perfuming the air. The front porch is a good perch for reading, a glass of iced tea, and for visiting.

If you’ve read Under Magnolia, you know already that the lively air of the South has drawn me back all my life. In summer, I am in paradiso.

Soon, I’ll return to Italy, but two months of southern summer suits me! This is the Eno River that runs by our meadow.  This is taken upstream where there’s a bridge.

Back in Italia, the restoration at Bramasole continues. Is this my life’s work? Here are the new beams, new outside wall for the old limonaia at the back of the house. Soon (?) to be the kitchen. The ceiling will be coved.

Ed has been a commuter, and what a long commute. Praise the travel gods for the nonstop from Charlotte to Rome on US Airways. We loved having our grandson in Italy for all of June. He studied intensive Italian at Polimnia in Cortona. We took the Frecciarosa fast trains on weekends to Venice, Rome, and the Amalfi Coast. The new trains are superb–comfortable, wifi, drink service, dining car, and, oh, so quick. We are thrilled that Willie’s a born traveler–curious and ready and open to any adventure, especially if it involves trains and boats.

A very special event in June was the launching of the Tuscan Sun walk around Cortona. Signs have been placed at historic sites, places I mentioned in my books, and places shown in the movie of Under the Tuscan Sun. Everyone was so pleased that Audrey Wells (on the left), screenwriter and director, came for the opening of the walk.

When I brought him back to his mama, who missed him terribly, Ed stayed on at Bramasole to oversee, to make the innumerable decisions and to deal with the inevitable dismaying discoveries that happen with old houses.  The best news is that the work is impeccable. We have talented stonemasons whose patience I only can admire from afar. How they manage to keep chipping  stones perfectly and hauling them from A to B, I don’t understand. But they do derive enormous satisfaction from creating something like this.

We changed the color of the shutters from brown to dusty green. The cabinets are being made now. I found glass pendant lights at Schiavoni http://www.renoschiavon.it/index.html on the island of Murano. I’ve ordered a big blue stove. Soon we will be stirring ragù and popping open a glass of something very good!

With all the travel, I’ve had time to read, although on one flight I got hooked on Sherlocke Holmes and watch three episodes without stopping.  Some recent and recommended books:

The Essays of E. B. White–I’ve read his essays over the years but found it inspiring to stay with the whole collection. Wish I’d known him!

Bobcat by Rebecca Lee–Subtle short stories that move in surprising directions and come to a real conclusion. I don’t like short stories that drop off into an abyss and you’re left wanting to turn the page.

Mona Lisa by Diane Hales–Only a smattering of information remains about La Giocanda but this book puts her life in the context of her time, giving a rich portrait of women’s lives in that era and the larger context of history, economics, and art.

The Bigness of the World by Lori Ostlund–Another deft book of short stories, these set in far-flung places, focusing on relationships that just-miss. Often funny, satirical, and touching.

The Gray Notebook by Josep Pla–A charming, compelling journal kept by this Spanish writer starting in 1918 when the influenza epidemic sent him home from Barcelona, where he studied, to coastal Spain. Love his voice, his acute observations, and the evocation of an era.

As always, I would love to hear your summer recommendations.

I hope everyone reading this is enjoying luscious summer meals of tomato tarts, fried okra, peach pies, watermelon and tomato salad–and squash casseroles! May summer linger long.

 

Summer and Italy

Because of book touring for Under Magnolia and other trips promoting my Tuscan Sun Wines, I have been long away from See You in the Piazza.  I am back. Well, actually I am leaving North Carolina again today—going to Italy. Ed has been there three weeks, trying to rush along the restoration projects that just kept multiplying. One unexpected event–new floors in the old kitchen and the cantina. The builder found great old bricks.

Meanwhile, it’s hard to leave our North Carolina house as high summer arrives. The spring garden was a great pleasure this year, especially after a nasty winter.

 It seems that if I sat on the porch with a glass of iced tea, I might start my next book.  But Italy calls, as it tends to do.  Soon, I will write from there, where the cherries are just coming into season, the workers have taken down the fifty foot Polish Wall, and the garden is merely mud!!  A presto!

At Home in North Carolina

This from The Wall Street Journal. Estate? Really it’s an old farm. On their website, there are more photos.

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304756104579451170734219080?mg=reno64-wsj&url=http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304756104579451170734219080.html

More later.

Congrats to 5 Winners

The drawing took place this morning at Random House. Here are the five who will be getting a copy of Under Magnolia:

Joseph Teague

Wendy Pitout

Marisa Bergamasco

Nancy Stone Hough

Penn Clark

So hope you enjoy it!!!!!!

UNDER MAGNOLIA: A SOUTHERN MEMOIR

Dear Friends,

On April Fool’s Day, my coming-of-age memoir will be published by Crown. What a marvelous team helped bring this book to reality! The physical book is beautiful. I love the spray of images and the bold lettering that gives heft to the background blue.  I’m there, at eighteen, looking blindingly innocent, with my gorgeous parents, my maternal grandparents’ house that burned, and a pure white magnolia, the flower I loved most as a child.

I grew up in Fitzgerald, Georgia after World War II and on the cusp of the civil rights movement. We were the last isolated generation–before widespread TV–and a small town deep in South Georgia seemed a world unto itself. For me, a marvelous world. I loved the land, the flat horizon, the fragrant nights, the rain that “walked” across the fields, the sun that could melt gold. Like many southern families, mine had it’s share of wild, eccentric characters.  They were full of love but flailed about in preposterous ways, unable to figure out how to live. I grew up. And thrived. And that green, green world still exists whole in memory, that vast terrarium.

It’s not a casual undertaking to write a memoir about growing up in a difficult, loving, often funny family. For one thing, the act of writing pulls up more and more memories from the primordial layers of the past. Another caution is that you involve other people who may not want to be involved. But beyond that, there’s a wonderful alchemy that occurs in the process of arranging memories into narratives. Your life begins to make more sense as a continuum. And those sharp memories that have barked at you all those years tend to lie down and sleep. Also, you experience your life all over again. Those long gone rise up whole with all their demands, passions, and gusto. The places you lived in and visited flash forward vividly, allowing you to smell the narcotizing scents of ginger lily and to see the four-paned square of light that hit the wall every morning of your childhood. The writing is a lively pleasure, with painful revelations at times, and over all, the writing process makes you appreciate the startling gifts of everyday life.

I hope you will like taking this journey with me back into the deep South. If you’ve read my (mostly) sunny, happy books about Tuscany, you might be surprised by my early life. Oddly enough, I was always confident of my happiness. I never doubted it! The best thing writing a memoir might do for the writer is to reveal that you were always exactly yourself, inevitable as a planted seed, regardless of circumstance. I see that I started out writing my life.

In April, I’ll be on a book tour and I’d love to meet you. The blog comments are such a thrill for me. I feel that I know many of you who’ve written in. So check the TOUR heading soon and if you’re near where I’m traveling, please come. And please do let me know what you think of the book!

My publisher, Crown, will randomly choose five people from those who respond with comments here, and mail them a signed book. So just write in, even just to say CIAO!

If you are nowhere near where I’ll be traveling and would like a personalized book, please order one from Purple Crow Books in Hillsborough, NC, my home town, and tell Sharon how you would like it personalized. Her email: purplecrowbooks@gmail.com  She will mail it right out to you.

Here’s the opening:

At a few times in my life, I’ve not been aware that I’ve just stepped onto a large X.

Change might not be on my mind. Why change? I’ve always admired lives that flourish in place. The taproot reaches all the way to the aquifer, the leaves bud, flourish, fall, and grow again. I like generations following one another the same house, where lamplight falls throughout the windows in squares of light on the snow, and somebody’s height chart still marks the kitchen doorway. But there I stand on the X, not knowing it’s time to leap, when, really, I’d only meant to pause. In Oxford, Mississippi, one chance weekend, the last thing I expected was a life-changing epiphany.

My Stony Life!

When I look back over my years at Bramasole, the first thing that comes to mind is stone. We are always moving piles of them, looking for them, hoping they don’t fall, building things from them. We’ve been lucky to find good sources, and never luckier than now. Sergio, our builder, has scoured the countryside for hefty, smooth old stones because our projects keep multiplying.

 

These were lifted by the little crane on the truck and are quickly becoming a stone terrace with our best view.

 

As everyone who’s ever restored knows, one thing leads to another. Our old limonaia will become a summer dining room / kitchen. Right now it’s a muddy, rubble-filled shell. Now that the sun is out and all the fruit trees in Tuscany are turning into pink or white clouds, work is moving along at a great pace. Everyday, progress.

The fountain is almost done.

Beginning to think about restructuring the garden, we visited Vadi, outside Cortona, where they fire their own terra-cotta pots.  There are differences between the handmade and the industrial.  The colors are so chalky and subtle. And they don’t crack in winter like normal pots. We found two to surround our big jasmines plants. Our workers cut off the bottom and back so they could attach the pots against a stone wall. How skilled they are. I held my breath, fearing that the pots would shatter. I may go back for this one:

At night, plenty of time to dine. We’ve been to two new places nearby. Lodolo, outside Foiano, is a small and charming place with an appealing menu–lots of things usually not found on traditional menus–puntarella, the wild chicory salad, a savory ricotta “gelato,” meat loaf stuffed with black olives, a very tasty maltaliata pasta with cauliflower and sharp pecorino. A good wine list and a cheery, quirky atmosphere, good friends Debbie Travis and Hans Rosenstein, and there’s a perfect evening.

The next night, La Toraia near Sinalunga with Fulvio  and Aurora Di Rosa, who have a talent for finding interesting places to eat and travel. The bull barn!  A grand red brick structure that shows just how valuable the chiana bulls are! Their names are still over the stalls, and now tables are placed over the former manger. The specialty, you know already, is val di chiana beef. I had my first hamburger ever in Italy! The famous bistecca Fiorentina reigns here and is a masterpiece! Fulvio is reaching for the knife. He and Ed shared this huge, sizzling, and tender cut. I had a bite. They have a shop, too, where they sell their beef and also an excellent artisan beer.  If you’re near Cortona, Pienza, Montepulciano, both of these places are excellent diversions.

Last night we visited one of our long time favs, Trattoria Dardano, whose owner Paolo we’ve known since he was a child, and who is now one of my partners in Tuscan Sun Wines. He makes the very quaffable Tondo Tondo (Just right). There we ordered, as usual, fried porcini mushrooms, and, what, more beef? A filetto di vitello, from just up the mountain in Teverina, and with more porcini on top. Porcini are not in season here, but Paolo has them flown from North Africa.

These two major beef experiences will hold us for awhile!  Excellent, excellent. Tonight we dine with our neighbors, who are grilling a guinea hen and sausages.  How amazing the food is in these parts. We’re forever enthralled!

Next week I will be writing a big Ta-Da!!! for my new book. It’s a memoir about growing up in the South and I hope you’ll indulge me while I swing away from Tuscany and toward my original home.

We’re thrilled to see spring. It’s breaking out everywhere–even out of stone!

Discreet Charms of Winter

We’re taking two winter trips to Cortona this year. Restoration at Bramasole keeps raging on, and I admit that I keep adding projects, such as a half-moon fountain against a tall stone wall. I bought a stone lion face years ago, and now he’ll reign over the new fountain with a little copper tube from his mouth spilling water. I dwell on this point of possible beauty because the rest of the place is a muddy zone with so many trenches that it looks like ancient warfare.

At least the crane is gone. Progress!  On our January trip, this is how we spent many days:

Valter, the architect (in the middle), is a hands-on, droll, and resourceful person who keeps us calm. He’s there several times a week, paying attention to the minute details.  Sergio, second from right, is the builder. We huddled many mornings in the rain to review the work. What IS Ed laughing about? That ganglia of tubes  mystifies me.  What they’re standing on is the new marciapiedi, made from old stones Sergio found in a crumbling barn. This walkway seals the bottom of the house and will prevent moisture from seeping up the walls. The facade is all restored except for the bottom part. They are waiting on that until the marciapiedi was laid and everything has a chance to dry. With the rain we had while we were there, when might that might happen?  

Mud is a pretty good word, but the Italian word fango sounds more like what you see above.  This looks like a BEFORE picture, but actually, it’s AFTER. As you may recall from previous posts, this is what the front garden looked like before:

In spring, we’ll put down new grass, pull the lemons trees out of the limonaia, plant big pots with spilling geraniums, and hope that it returns to its former beauty.

When we were not knee-deep in mud, we were, of course, eating. Most restaurants are closed during January but the ones that remain open seem especially cosy and jolly. And, ah, the winter food! Polenta with mushrooms and sausage–as in The Tuscan Sun Cookbook, and what we loved at the tiny trattoria Fettunta–polenta baked with tallegio in the oven. At Bar Tuscher, where we had many lunches, they make lasagne with a twist. The tender layers of pasta and ragù are served on a little pool of béchamel, rather than the béchamel being incorporated into the ragù layers. I loved this idea because the lasagne seemed lighter and the flavors more nuanced.  At home, we savored the big pork roasts, pasta with wild boar, and the marvelous thick soup, ribollita.  We managed only one party and for that Gilda made zeppole.

Fried bread, but so light. Usually they’re sweet and sprinkled with powered sugar but for the antipasto course, she served these as savories. Some with cheese stirred in, some with anchovies. Recipe? “There is no recipe, you just make them.” Next time, I’ll try to write down how, exactly, they’re done. I looked for recipes on line and didn’t find anything similar. If anyone reading this has a recipe, let me know!

We have not been in Italy in winter in several years. The streets shine in the rain, shop owners cover the windows with newspaper while they spruce up their walls or rearrange, one lone man leans into a doorway out of the rain. He’s gazing out at the empty piazza and I think he could have been there for a thousand Januarys.

Tourists? There’s one, an American from Michigan, and he’s in Bar Tuscher every day. I think he’s learning Italian very fast because, in this season, everyone wants to talk. Last seen, he was holding court with several policemen and they were enjoying an afternoon prosecco. Such are the charms of winter–an intimacy, a privacy with a place, bright faces in the rain, that second bottle of wine you share with a neighboring table where you’ve just met a couple down for the weekend from Torino. An icy wind whips down from the Alps and smells like snow. Spontaneous waterfalls in the woods surprise you on long tramps in rubber boots.  

 

We spent many evenings by the fire with dinner on trays, and books. I adored Elena Ferrante’s  My Brilliant Friend and the sequel, The Story of a New Name. We roasted chestnuts and opened our neighbor’s nutty vinsanto. I like to step outside late, just to shiver a little and hear the owls calling. What winter has is time. The nights are long and after the rain, the stars are clear and close.

 

 

Befana the Witch Has Long Since Gone

Befana did not leave me any lumps of coal so I must have been good in 2013.  I have a rag-doll Befana figure that I just packed away with the Christmas ornaments. The last thing I saw as I closed the box was her snuggle-toothed grin. I like the legend and have come to prefer her over Santa Claus. Maybe I’ve just seen too many scary mall Santas. 2014 and it seems not so long since the big millennium New Year’s Eve party at Edo and Maria’s in Cortona. They had vintage sun glasses for everyone, a vast seafood feast, dancing, and fireworks. I do remember someone up on a table. It’s good when a memorable evening with friends anchors a big event. Here in North Carolina we celebrated more sedately to usher in 2014 but the many tasty dinners and gatherings of the holidays still linger. My grandmother’s silver butter dish was put to a use she, a teetotaler, would not condone:

A highlight of the season was a Dutch friend’s Rijsttafel (rice table), the feast that the Dutch who colonized Indonesia devised to showcase the cuisine of the area.  Rene said he’d cooked only for a week to prepare it.

I’ve always loved Chicken Satay. His were the best.

Best, too is that Rene knows all the history of the dishes prepared for a traditional Ristaffel and all the influences from Maylasia, China, Sumatra, Bali and many other islands.  This feast especially pleases me because I could live on rice. So, you take a big serving of rice and surround it with all these spicy, savory, complex, and tasty morsels. The textures play together: crunchy marinated cabbage, fried tiny bananas,  pickles, meats braised in coconut milk, those crunchy shrimp crisps on the right, tender beef similar to shaking beef, and lots of taste-spikes of chili peppers. I’ve had Rene’s wife Gleda’s cakes before. This night, she found a recipe for an Indonesian spice cake. Perfect last taste for a transporting dinner.

Somehow, it was an ethnic season. A friend threw a sushi buffet. We had an Indian family feast at Cholanad in Chapel Hill.   I ate quite a bit of garlic nan. And then my daughter threw a party for her husband’s birthday. He built a bonfire and we ate oysters out in the woods in front of their house. He and his twin are of Greek descent so the menu included grilled lamb chops, roasted eggplant and potatoes, mint-flavored meat balls, and big Greek salad. I volunteered for the spanakoppitas and, quite unGreek, my mother’s monumental coconut cake. Both are trouble. Worth it? Oh, yes! That is, after you get the right recipe.

I found the spanakoppita recipe on line. It’s been years since I handled phyllo pastry and somehow it seems easier now. I remember cursing or crying over dry and crumbling dough and finding it creepy like human skin.  This time it worked just fine–flaky, delicate pastry, and the spinach filling tangy with an artisan feta, green onion, and a little nutmeg. My mother’s cake, however, did not work just fine. I think I added the thirteen egg whites at the wrong time because the batter had the consistency of hour-old cement. It rose only an inch. I had to toss the whole thing and go with Ina Garten’s recipe. She calls for a seven-minute frosting but I’ve met that Waterloo before so I stuck with my mother’s cream cheese butter frosting. I know my mother’s cake recipe can work because she was famous for that cake in my home town. Now I’m blaming my convection oven. I think it bakes too fast and the cake gets set before it has a chance to rise. Anyone know if this happens? Hours later, I presented the grand cake above and it was stupendous. I don’t usually think this way but I am thinking that what I read is true—834 calories a slice.  So much cooking over the holidays that I’ve stripped down and cleaned the kitchen and declared it open only for simple meals. Ed has gone full steam into his winter soup mode.

I hate to take down the front porch lights but other than that, the day after New Year’s down comes the tree at our house, and out go the greens which are looking a little fire-hazardy by then. Then the house just looks like its plain self again, but somehow renewed and ready to go forward into a new year. As I write, the polar vortex is whirling around causing havoc. It was 3 degrees here, rather exciting for a temperate clime, but no snow. Today the sky is the color of a newborn boy’s blanket and the light seems to spark off the edges of trees. The kittens ventured out then ran back, meowing what the hell is this?  But–how amazing–bulbs are popping up, the quince is budding, and in our lane the little yellow jasmine is scattering its sparks of bloom.

Some winter books, so far: 

The Queen of the Tambourine by Jane Gardam, one of those writers that you read and then marvel at how you’ve never heard of her before.

My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante. A brilliant novel on the twists of friendship.

The Signature of All Things by Elizabeth Gilbert. I came to adore Alma and wished this were a true biography!

The Enchanted Life of Adam Hope by Rhonda Riley. Hearkens to traditional tales of the demon lover, but so well grounded that you forget that.

Starting Over by Elizabeth Spenser, and a toast to her for continuing to write fine stories as she moves into her nineties. Brava!

Provence, 1970 by Luke Barr. When Fisher, Child, Beard, and Olny converged in France and lit the match under American cuisine.

A House in Sicily by Daphne Phelps. This was sent to me by Jeff Minnich. Thank you. What charm and humanity in these glimpses of post-war Sicily.

 

As always, I’d love to hear recommendations from you for the long January nights.

How many days until spring???

When Lemon Trees Flew

Just before the first hard frost, all the potted lemons that dazzle our garden must be moved into the limonaia, a glass-fronted room where they spend the winter in sunlight but protected.  Because of the scaffolding around Bramasole, the passage from the  front of the house, where they all reside, to the limonaia was partially blocked–not enough room for the specially-made lemon cart to pass.  Don’t worry about any Italian crisis, they are the most inventive people on earth!  We arrive to find the gardener loading a tree onto a pallet.

 

 

Then we notice that the pallet is attached to the crane, which has been used to haul up roof tiles during the restoration.  NO!  Lift off!

 

Soon, the pot is flying across the garden. Up, Up! “Where’s Fellini now that we need him?” I ask the gardener who has devised this unlikely scene. How surreal on this foggy morning. “Magic realism!” Ed says. A few tourists in the road below are laughing and applauding. Our neighbor stops his motorcycle and shakes his head.  Crazy Americans!  But we didn’t think of it!  Soon the pot is soaring.

Then it comes safely to rest near the limonaia. They repeat this fifteen times.  Not a mishap. I was imagining a lemon tree falling from the sky!

Before they’re muscled into the lemonaia–these pots weigh a lot–I harvest all the ripe lemons, then the pots are crowded in together. Each pot has a mark on it to show that spot faces the sun.  All winter, you can slip in among the pots and find a lemon, smell the tight aromatic blossoms, and feel your hair curl from the humidity generated by so many leaves. Fabio, the man with the red glove is just SO good. What a bold idea!

The lemon may be my favorite ingredient in the kitchen.  For the quickest pasta, I love the crab and lemon spaghetti (page 85) in THE TUSCAN SUN COOKBOOK. It’s light and unusual, as good a choice for a first course at an elaborate dinner as for an instant family meal. For the holidays, I suggest the lemon cake (page 210), a family favorite and I’ve made it a million times.  It’s a lovely gift, as is a jar of seasoned salt (page 24) with a half of a lemon blended into it.

Someone just gave me a jar of their persimmon and five spice marmalade and I will serve it with some aged pecorino.  The homemade gifts are the best.  They just have a lot more heart than those acquired by “proceed to checkout.”  I would love to hear what you’re giving from your house.  I just took a pan of pecans out of the oven.  The easiest gift imaginable: Arrange a pound of this season’s pecans in a single layer on a baking pan. Dot with a stick of butter, and sprinkle with salt.  Roast at 350 for five minutes, watching them every minute, and turning them over twice to coat them with butter.  Nothing is easier to burn than nuts.  Marvelous to serve with drinks, along with some cheese straws.  I think most people have one thing they find irresistible during the holidays. Mine has, since childhood, remained roasted pecans. Maybe it’s because I was made to pick up the nuts in our back yard, and to help shell them. At least there was a big reward.  Let me know what you’re finding irresistible!