Frances Mayes's Blog, page 8

Getting Organized for 2012

In the current issue of Martha Stewart Living, I read the article on Martha's workroom. My first reaction was, "This is obsessive." My second was that I would love to have such an orderly space for projects.  On a smaller scale, I saw @ElbieSwan on Twitter. She'd reorganized her pantry so nicely. I have two. One just a tiny slab, the other more spacious. This morning I tackled them. Here's what they looked like at the outset.

Here's the smaller one, supposed to be my pasta pantry. Note ragbag of aprons and Graves teapot that long since stopped its Gare du Nord whistle.

Am I obsessive, or is this really a satisfying little project.  Behold: I have a Jamaican painting in the pantry. Bet not even Martha has that!

Now in the pasta pantry, I have room for the pasta pot and for the bottled water that was on the floor of the other pantry.

In reorganizing, I was noticing how beautiful the contents of the pantry are!

A chic Parisian woman who once interviewed me for Maison looked at Bramasole's bookshelves and said, "There's a good mess and a bad mess."  Walking around the house after this project, I thought maybe a few spots filled with my treasures have moved over into the latter category. My next project:

But not today. Onward to dinner–a big risotto with odor and shrimp.

FM on Facebook

Buona domenica, Several people wrote that they can't find me on Facebook.  I looked into it and it is confusing.

When you log into Facebook–and you must have an account to do so–two categories come up.  Pages and People.

Under Pages, there are several Frances Mayes entries which other people have started.  One is a "fan" page.

Under People, there's my own Facebook account.

Please let me know if this solves the problem.  Thanks.

With the Great Help of a Nine-year Old Boy. . .

I have signed on for Twitter and Facebook.  For one who still likes ink pens, the process was eye-opening. Most startling to me was when the links start scrolling down and I realized that friends know friends when I had no idea that they did. Or that someone I barely know in Washington is "friends" with good friends of mine in California. I was also surprised at all the welcoming responses. Welcome to Facebook.  So glad you are tweeting. I was joining a megachurch, a sorority, a union, a country club–all at once. After seeing these media connections, you have to believe in six degrees of separation, at most.  These two activities, I already see, could devour a whole lot of time that I should be spending on writing projects. There's a compelling, lethal mix of the trivial and profound, and everything in the middle. On my first tweet, I noted that two daffodils were in bloom at my house on New Year's Day. The second one was from the morning I woke up missing Rome and spent the day there in my head:

This is a trove of a book and a must-read for all lovers of the greatest city.

On Twitter, I'll recommend a lot of books. Please "follow" me there and on Facebook, where we will have the chance to see photos and to share news.  All this is new. I'm still learning. For Willie, my grandson, like so many his age, the digital age came free with his DNA. Fortunately, he likes notebooks and ink pens as well.

My sudden move into the world is occasioned by the cookbook's imminent release (13 March). I am getting ready to tour, be on best behavior, and be ready to have dinner out of the minibar if a flight is late, late.  I am going to be updating the blog: adding lots of Steven Rothfeld's amazing photographs from the book, adding some recipes, an interview with The Recipe Club, and, of course, posting my tour. I hope Ed will be with me for much of it. It will be fun if I meet readers of this blog. Clarkson Potter (publisher) and Steven Barclay Agency are hard at work right now juggling dates and places. A few dates are already pinned to the calendar:

14 March: Wilmington DL, Smart Women Lecture

21 March: Atlanta GA, Atlanta History Center

27 March: New Brunswick NJ, Smart Women Lecture

28 March: Des Moines IO, Smart Women Lecture

More on all that later. Hope everyone's new year has commenced with a flourish.

Organic Gardening Magazine

The February-March issue of this vital magazine features an article on my North Carolina garden, Chatwood. It shows a picture of the back of the house, which is on the historic register. It was built in 1806 as an inn and tavern for the grist mill–still standing–down the road. It's a rambling Federal farmhouse  with a front porch and the old millstone at the base of the steps.  The primo joys of the house are the spicy scent inside that reminds me of ancient Italian churches, its leisurely gardens and meadows and walks along the Eno River.

With six acres of camellia and azalea swaths, a butterfly garden and many large perennial beds, plus a three-room walled rose garden, the upkeep of the property, to put it mildly, remains a challenge. Or, you might think of it as a calling. The cover photo was taken in the rose garden.

I love the 1770 barn and the nine outbuildings, even the funky forties greenhouse–don't touch that wire!–where Willie and I now have an ongoing project. He grows gourds in summer. They're like kudzu–just take over whatever space they can.  All fall they dry out in the greenhouse.  Around Thanksgiving we begin to drill round holes in some of them and to scrape them out. The insides, packed with seeds, are SO primitive.  The gourd has a mighty evolutionary drive!

We clean them with steel wool, spray with sealer, run wire through the top, drill a little drainage hole in the bottom–and there's the birdhouse. They're hanging in trees everywhere and they also are Willie's Christmas presents to friends.  Bluebirds like them, especially, and many are home to little yellow finches. These are still drying:

This is such a satisfying project!  As the gourds dry, I love the mottled surfaces, and the cheery shapes seem like little creatures!

Back to the Organic Gardening article!   Lovingly written by my friend Kim Sunée, there is a recipe for easy strawberry semifreddo from our soon-to-be-released The Tuscan Sun Cookbook, and other recipes are included on line at organic gardening.com/tuscanrecipes

When Kim wrote Trail of Crumbs, her editor asked me for a blurb. I read the manuscript and we have been friends ever since.  She came to Tuscany twice to help Steven Rothfeld and me with the food prep and styling when we were photographing for the cookbook.  In North Carolina, we had a very fun day with photographer Peter Frank Edwards styling the food, trying to photograph the semifreddo before it melted, and picking bouquets.

One challenge of the land is the number of volunteer trees all of whom want to choke out the others. For Christmas, Ed gave me two orange tools that grasp and uproot saplings.  The tools are made by The Weed Wrench Company, www.weedwrench.com .  They were recommended to us by Nancy Goodwin, whose lovingly curated garden, Montrose, is the major one in our area. She thinned a woods for a magical garden full of cyclamen, primroses, ferns, snowdrops, peonies–a secret poem of a garden. Nancy has all measures of these simple and amazing tools.

Their secret? Jaws and leverage. You fit the trunk into the maw and as you pull back, it closes and the leverage lifts the offending tree out of the ground.

The instructions say over and over "don't fall backwards."  We are clearing some of the woods of underbrush so that the meadows and woods become seamless rather than the meadow abutting a stop-view wall of weeds, vines, and volunteer pines. Good winter work–a corrective for all the feasting of the holidays! On New Year's Day, I spotted two daffodils in bloom! The garden is just waiting to burst forth again.

Happy 2012! May we all foster our inner selves–read and feast and travel and act boldly and rest and pursue private dreams.

Solstice 2011

Now we turn toward light. On the shortest day, I'm reflecting on the year and thinking about the new one coming quickly toward us. If I wrote a Christmas letter, I'd include descriptions of our great trips to Rome as well as our week on Lake Nantahala in North Carolina. There we swam, sat on the big porch reading with our grandson, hiked, and cooked. Kind of the opposite of worldly, historic, magnificent Rome, but, still, the Smokies are pretty divine.

In a Christmas letter, I'd talk about the many feasts we've prepared, finishing the cookbook, leisurely visits in Italy with friends, and about Ed's show with Alberto in Cortona.  Lots more on the gardens I tend.  I'd have to mention that we were robbed this year–what an assault.  And, most sadly, our family has just lost our dear Bill Jackson, my sister's husband.  He was a sterling man–a veterinarian whose specialty in animal opthamology took him all over the world. He was a big sportsman, a kind friend, and a happy man. At the end of his obituary, my sister wrote that instead of flowers, please remember him by performing a random act of kindness.  This was appropriate for someone who so often did that.

Driving home from the funeral twelve hours south of here, Ed and I listened to The Great Gatsby all the way home.  We stopped overnight in one of my old haunts, Fernandina Beach, Florida. I spent endless time there as a child and the town, now quite gentrified, is as familiar to me as my hometown. It has kept its Old Florida feel and the beach is as sublime as ever. I started to look at real estate windows but Ed steered me on down the street.  Once, when I was about twelve, I was alone on the beach and I saw two Navy planes collide over the water and crash. I ran in to tell everyone and no one believed me. "You were imagining it," my mother insisted and continued to insist until the evening news came up on the hotel bar. In Fernandina, I used to write messages and shove them into bottles. My father indulged me by taking them to the fishing boats and asking the men to throw them in the water way out at sea. If you find this, write to me. . . If you travel near Jacksonville, Florida, take a detour to Fernandina! Instead of a white Christmas, I'm dreaming of a week there at the lovely Elizabeth Pointe Inn. It was full this time so we stayed at a motel on the harbor instead. A whole week there, a slow winter week to walk, write, and read.

But for now, we're at home in unseasonably warm North Carolina.  Friends from NY came for two days and we cooked  big Tuscan ribs and polenta, and drank some big wines. Willie and I made wreathes out of scuppernong vines, greens, red berries and herbs from the garden. They look kind of pitiful compared to my neighbors giant wreathes but we like them. We made bird houses from gourds Willie grew and gave them to friends. As Christmas morning approaches, it's a little sad that Willie, nine, no longer believes that Santa is plummeting down the chimney and spreading gifts around the living room.  The only constant is change. At year's end, you remember many good times and try to sweep the bad aside. Best not to think of our elected representatives who have betrayed us all with their heavy partisan nonsense.  Very unpatriotic.  Better to think on summer tomatoes, falling stars, a special gift found for a friend, a dream of a vacation to come, a good book by the bed, a folio of recipes to try, a child to awe, a little time to dream.  Always, I am missing the warmth of Tuscan evenings with friends there. Meanwhile, much to savor and learn here.

I hope everyone who reads here has lovely holidays.  Invigorating–leading you forward. I hope that no one feels like those deflated vinyl Santas I see lying on lawns in my neighborhood.  The sled, the reindeer, the big Santa, who always seems to give out first and lie on the lawn! After all the gifts and the feasts, the New Year is coming. Time to make lists. Time for renewal. There, I've almost written a Christmas letter after all.

Out / About in Rome II

At the end of my post on Rome, I noted "to be continued." Finally, here's more on visiting that city with the greatest heart.

When my daughter, her husband, and our much-adored grandson arrived in Italy for the olive harvest, we started off with three days in an apartment near the Pantheon. (No photo / address included–it probably had been furnished in an afternoon at some unspeakable discount store. Great location, clean, but not recommended!) But to be near the Pantheon! That grand center of the western world, fabled dome from ancient times, stop-in-your-tracks Pantheon. I always remember being there on a February day when a slushy rain fell through that amazing oculus at the top of the dome. Our friend Alberto prostrated himself and let the snowy water fall on his face. He (architect) was drinking in the whole mother legend of western architecture. If the Holy Ghost ever makes an appearance, surely it will be through this aperture.

You could not have lain on the floor in October–you would have been trampled.  In all my years of being in Italy, I NEVER have seen as many tourists as there were in Rome this fall.  Many, many are eastern European. They are on the move. They have money, freedom to travel, and they are having a fine time! I loathed the crowds and we were on a tourist mission–to show Willie the Forum, the Colosseum, the ruins where Caesar was killed, some favorite churches and, of course some of our favorite places to dine on Roman artichokes, lusty pastas, and wild field greens. No matter how many times I have seen Rome, I'm always astonished.

I was curious to see how a nine-year old would react.  We gave him a camera and what he saw was obviously not what we normally saw. And he loved the ancient sites. Lapped up the stories of the paintings, as well as much gelato.  If you have a child in your life, hie thee to Rome!  It was such a joy.  We were out all day. At night he organized his photos and wrote extensively about what he'd seen.  We didn't mind at all that he missed ten days of school. Here are a few of his photos. He took other standard ones but I liked his perspective:

This is the classic, utterly simple cacao e pepe, pepper and cheese pasta that Romans adore.

For a child who lives in a small town, the street life especially fascinated.

Even the multiple locks were interesting, and the pavement on the streets.

Roof gardens, gelato cones, details in churches, the fascinating obelisks–dozens of memories to take home and, I hope, always to bring him back to Rome for the nourishment of his spirit.

One joy of friends and family coming to Italy to visit is that we get to share the places we love and to see them from new viewpoints. With them I especially love coming upon the secret corners of beauty that are everywhere in Roma.

On this packed visit, these are some special stops I'd like to pass on, along with the suggestion: go in winter!

Venchi, one the the tip-top chocolate makers in Italy has opened a gelato shop at via della Croce, 25, near the Spanish Steps.  Mamma mia! Many gelato places announce themselves as artigianale, artisan made, and they do make the gelato in house, but often with industrially produced mixes.  Not so Venchi.  Everything is fresh and the flavors are natural and deep. Of course there are chocolates to take away.

The Galleria Doria Pamphilj is one of my favorite museums.  http://www.doriapamphilj.it/ukhome.asp The immense palazzo at Via del Corso, 305, houses the galleries and also is still lived in. In addition to the art, you get a sense of how the old aristocracy lived (and lives still).  The collection is large but not staggeringly vast. Caravaggio's La Maddelena is there, as well as his Rest on the Flight into Egypt. I love the Filippo Lippi Annunciation. In the Bar Doria on the ground level, you think you could spot Henry James taking notes at a table and enjoying a delectable pastry. It's an old-world place, quiet and civilized. An ornamental marble font looks like the world's ultimate bathtub.

Roman trattorie are one of the great pleasures of life. On this trip we dined happily at La Gensola in Trastevere (piazza della Gensola, 15), Ditirambo (piazza della Cancelleria, 75) near Campo de Fiori, Gusto (piazza Augusto Imperatore, 9–the wine bar trattoria around behind the more crowded front part), Da Fortunato (via del Pantheon, 55) near the Pantheon, and Ristorante Matricianella (via del Leone, 4)  near the sublime piazza San Lorenzo in Lucina. The fall artichokes were in and Romans, of course, cook the best artichokes on earth. We ordered fried ones to start every meal and often proceeded to the deep-fried whole ones.  One of my favorite dishes at Matricianella is a plate of tiny veal meat balls sautéed with artichoke hearts and cherry tomatoes. Their  bucatini all' amatriciana is called the 5 Ps–pasta, pomodoro, pecorino, pancetta, peperoncini (red peppers) and is devoured all over Rome. When Ed and I travel alone, we usually pause at a bar for a panino for lunch then move on, but with the family we had both pranzo and cena out, along with too many stops at Venchi and at early evening wine bars. Fortunately, we were walking all day.

On the fourth day, we hauled everything to the train–our son-in-law travels with a bicycle–and traveled north to Cortona for the olive harvest. Because of the hail storm in early summer, we had a small crop this year but the oil is still superb.  I've written about the harvest in all my books so you probably already know that for us it is the best time of year. (For more info look at www.thetuscansun.com)  And even better this year, since we got to share the feasting and celebrating with our family. This is how the olive oil first appears from the press:

That color! I would like a winter coat that color. When the oil is this fresh, it's loaded with ultra-healthy properties and anti-inflammatory powers. Besides, it tastes sublime. Pour some on a plate, dip in grilled bread on both sides–soak the bread–sprinkle a little salt. There–that's the essence of good Tuscan food. The taste is green, and brings to mind the lines from a Lorca poem,  "Green, green how I want you green / Green wind. Green branches."

Fall Backward

The hour changed here, one week earlier than in the U.S. I don't know why that one hour always seems dramatic; I'm more bothered by it than by the six-hour time change when I fly to Italy. I suppose it is the early dark, the sudden creation of long winter nights.  When I hear "fall backward," I simultaneously think of falling into a big pile of autumn leaves, and of the time when I can again "spring forward." Yesterday was, to my mind, the end of fall, end of the tourist season, and the beginning of the delicious time when Italy returns to calm, big feasts, and anticipation of holiday gatherings with friends. What a joy to wake up to the changing hillside:

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1 November is All Saints, a national holiday; today is All Souls, which was once a holiday too but has been demoted. This is the time of year when Italians travel to their home ground to place flowers on the graves of family members. There's a huge business in chrysanthemums, flower of the dead. (Never take a pot as a gift!) We spent the day in other pursuits. The chestnut woods around our mountain house are in full glory so we took a basket and went out to gather. Around here, people look especially for he sweet marrone.  Of the many trees, few are of this type that produce the choicest nut. Of course the regular ones roast beautifully, too. Encased in spiny little garages, chestnuts are well protected until they fall and break open:

The burs (one -r) hold one to four nuts, though I've read that some types hold up to seven. The marrone are single. American used to have four billion chestnut trees, until a blight in the early 1900's destroyed most of them. What a tragedy.  They are enchanting trees.

Walking down the road, we don't even talk. We just absorb the golden smells, the loamy ground covered with the charming little hedgehog chestnut casings, and the great gift of silence.

We were lucky enough to be invited to our neighbors, the Italiani, for the holiday feast, served at one p.m. and ending around four. The are our neighbors on the mountain, Ivan, his parents Domenica and Giovanni, and the grandmother Annetta. They are just amazingly self-sufficient people with a huge vegetable garden, chickens, geese, rabbits and all the mountains around providing wild berries, game, mushrooms, chestnuts, asparagus, crab apples, and field greens. Ed's sister Anne and her husband Paul also were invited to this amazing pranzo. They cooked the porchetta in their bread oven. The skin crackled and the meat, fall-apart tender, was so flavorful with the garlic and herb stuffing.

The two bruschette are black cabbage and cannellini beans, doused with new oil from our grove. That's it in the bottle but it's rich green really.  The dish in back holds baked fennel. Ivan likes to serve meat on big cross sections of chestnut logs. After the bruschette, Domenica served her homemade pappardelle with lepre (wild hare) sauce. While the pasta cooked, Annetta heated her preferred iron on the wood-fired stove.

Domenica's pasta was lighter than air, the sauce rich and meaty. Giovanni carved the pork and we all succumbed at least twice to big servings. We barely could reach for the fennel and salad. Then came a delicate panna cotta with Ivan's blackberry sauce, followed by that classic Tuscan dessert from the "poor kitchen," cucina povera tradition: castagnaccio. A taste of that and you are way back in country tradition when there was no sugar, not much of anything, so a dessert was concocted from somewhat sweet chestnut flour, a few raisins, some rosemary, and what nuts were on hand. It's usually a flat, strange cake that I always thought you had to have been fed while under three to like.  But Ivan has revised my thoughts! Look at this beauty and the proud maker.

All saints be praised!  All souls, too. With the time change, dusk was beginning as we drove home. A low fog covered the valley far below and the orb of sun seemed to wobble toward the horizon. Or maybe we were wobbling. Giovanni's homemade new wine was delicious. And the espresso sent us flying out the door.  We were not hungry for dinner but around ten, Ed make an omelet with eggs Domenica gave us and we had a small glass of Giovanni's vino, raising a toast to the family.

Out / About in Roma, #I

During this fall time in Italy, we've spent great times in Rome.  When we first landed, we rented an apartment for just two days in the Parioli district, new to us and apparently to most tourists. We saw few fellow turisti around. The apartment was spacious and pleasant and rather wacky. Five different artists each had been asked to paint a room. The dining room motif included abstract fried eggs painted on the ceiling and one room was wild with Alice in Wonderland scenes.  It's called, aptly enough, Art Apartment.  artapartrome@hotmail.com It was fun and the day was warm enough to have breakfast on the balcony. Just down the street, a long flight of stairs led down to the piazza with several good cafés and small shops.

What drew us to that out-of-the-way area of leafy streets and handsome, grand houses?  A little architectural tour of non-ancient Rome!  First we walked to MAXXI (Museum of Art of the 21st Century), designed by the architect Zaha Hadid. ( http://designmuseum.org/design/zaha-hadid )

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Far from the Roman Forum!  I've already argued with an Italian architect friend about it. He thinks the building overpowers the art–and I think it's a splendid and exciting showcase. There's not a large permanent collection yet but special exhibits travel through. We loved the exquisite exhibitiom on how Italian architect Carlo Scarpa used lettering as part of his practice. I'd never considered before the lettering on buildings as part of the intrinsic design. Scarpa seems to me a paradigm architect. He designed buildings and also extended his work in areas of interior design, crafts, and surroundings. His approach: holistic, not just the building itself.  He's a fascinating study. Here's an intro:  http://architect.architecture.sk/carlo-scarpa-architect/carlo-scarpa-architect.php

Zaha Hadid, born in Iraq, shocked the ground with her bold design.  Oddly, the structure is attached to a row of white military barracks. How that decision was made is a mystery, and, to my eye, a mistake from the outside, but once in front of her structure, you forget the weird appendage. The arches above are from the old building and work beautifully from the inside perspective. Across the courtyard, another row of these white barracks have transformed into a dramatic café–the best thing that could happen to a military barrack. Naturally enough in Italia, the food is wonderful and aesthetically presented as well.

You need to get around the obstacles to see what's there.  The temporary-looking fencing makes me thing that another solution to the parking might be in the works. There's an outdoor space for changing exhibits. I took this to be an urban version of our Tuscan fields of poppies in spring:

Meanwhile, another outdoor exhibit involving painted paths was in preparation:

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We continued to Parco della Musica, a megawork by Renzo Piano. How nice that someone named "Piano" designed a music center! We were not able to hear a concert in his stupendous auditoriums but will return for that soon; their schedule looks fantastic. Piano's exterior shapes resemble the domes of Rome, or, to an American eye, hangers for blimps! He has used the narrow bricks that you see in ancient Roman buildings and vast expanses of travertine walkways that extend inside some of the complex.  The soaring auditoriums, said to be finely calibrated acoustically, are made of American cherry wood and have the warm glow of a musical instrument.

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If you're interested, you can see many images of the interior online.   http://www.galinsky.com/buildings/parcodellamusica/index.htm The restaurant Red is part of the complex, as is a spacious bookstore.  Lovers of design enjoy Italian bookstores even if they can't read Italian.  There is still a strong tradition of the beautiful book.

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Our allotted time was cut short by a very late flight arrival and we also lingered long in both of these spaces. This left us no time for the other adventurous building in this area, MACRO, the Museo di Arte Contemporanea di Roma, www.macro.roma.museum ,  designed to incorporate a former beer brewery, by Odile Decq:  http://archrecord.construction.com/projects/building_types_study/museums/2011/Macro-Museum.asp I also will go back to see Villa Torlonia, Mussolini's home from 1925-43, an interesting villa aside from him. Always there are reasons to return to Rome and now to this area north of the Borghese gardens.

As twilight darkened, we walked to our third main objective, the neighborhood designed by the quirky Florentine architect Gino Coppedè. His 31,000 square meter Quartiere, at via Tagliamento and via Dora, reflects a wild pastichio of styles–baroque, venetian, gothic, renaissance, Liberty (Art Nouveau)–somehow flamboyantly  resolved and very Italian. Mythological beasts, iron spiders, fountains, niches, balconies, tiles–a plethora of fanciful detail. I would like to be sitting in the lighted room on the left with the slender columns.

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Living there, I would always feel as though the opera were about to begin. The fountain of frogs is charming; so is the medieval-style chandelier hanging in the entry arch. Coppedè worked on this project from 1910-27. What fun he must have had.  You can imagine him waking up and deciding, "I think I'll add an Assyrian touch today. . ." As you see, I was losing the light. I found a good video on you tube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mogFdpknFbE

The first balmy night, rather blasted by the long-delayed flight over, we had dinner at Ambasciata d'Abruzzo, a traditional trattoria with outdoor tables.  We'd missed the whole day we'd planned to use well by our flight having to return to New York after two hours out over the ocean.  .  . Scary.  Then the wait for reboarding, etc. etc.  We were very happy to be dining on Roman artichokes and pasta with truffles. (Kiss the ground!)  The second night , after our architectural tour, we ate at Al Ceppo, worth the taxi if you're staying in the historic center.  We were seated in a refined room with commanding portraits of women, whose company I enjoyed very much. I refrained, in such a setting, from photographing the grilled skewer of octopus, the swordfish on a baby spinach salad, the veal chop, the little veal meatballs, the wild green salad with fresh anchovies, and the caramelized figs with orange-scented gelato and toasted almonds.  We had a mile hike back to our wild apartment but we simply floated home after such a stimulating day.

TO BE CONTINUED……..A second apartment in Roma. . .

The Tuscan Sun Cookbook

Ed and I are so looking forward to the publication of our cookbook–a collection of our favorite recipes from twenty-one years of feasting in Italy.  He, my daughter, and I all say: at last we won't have to search for a particular recipe again.  Having the recipes bound in one place will save us hours of looking through folders and emails and torn pieces of paper stuck in other books.  The book has gone to press and will be published in mid-March. I'm already looking forward to the book tour, much of which will take place in restaurants around the country, with chefs preparing the recipes.  Sounds like so much fun! Steven Rothfeld, the photographer, and I did almost all our own styling and preparation. My friend Kim Sunee, who wrote Trail of Crumbs, came over to Tuscany twice to lend her expertise.  Steven and I work incredibly well together. All the photographs were taken here in Italy, most of them at my indoor and outdoor tables. My friends Susan and Frances Gravely, who own Vietri ceramics in my adopted NC town of Hillsborough, arranged for us to have several sets of their evocative Tuscan ceramics, to complement the dishes I had. (With 150 photos you run through lots of dishes.)  So we were lucky with all this talent and help. I must say, I've never seen more fabulous food photos, thanks to Steven's meticulous eye, a shared vision, and a great appetite among all of us. The shots are all natural.  No strange interference to make the food look better. We devoured it all when the shot was done! Here's the cover of the book:

These are our close friends. Ed and I are at the ends, Silvia Regi and Riccardo Baracchi are in the foreground (with their Astore and Ardito wine on the table). They started Il Falconiere, a sybaritic inn and restaurant in Cortona about the same time that we bought Bramasole so we have kind of grown up together.  Fulvio Di Rosa, in turquoise shirt, is a master restorer of old houses in Tuscany, including our mountain house and Borgo di Vagli.  Cecelia Cascella is our vivacious friend who's the mother of three gorgeous (how could they not be?) children. We're at the end of a three hour lunch. Steven is out of the picture but had an honored place at the table. This project has been a true labor of love. Clarkson Potter, a division of Random House, is the publisher.

Tomorrow we go to Rome for five days. We will have the intense pleasure of showing our nine-year-old grandson the ancient city.  He has a book with over-lays showing the city as it is now, and as it was.  We've rented an apartment near the Pantheon so we can walk to all the historic sites.  My daughter and her husband are arriving, too, and, when we come back to Cortona next week, Ed's sister, her husband, and four friends converge here for the olive harvest.  Marvelous season.  This fall's weather has been the most sublime in memory. Hope it holds while we're up on ladders in the olive grove. The next post, without doubt, will be a report on the taste of the new oil.  Grassy? Almond? Peppery? The crop is small, due to the hailstorm that I wrote about in summer.  The delicate flowers were knocked off. But we'll pick what's there, picnic in the grove, and of course will be grilling a lot of bruschetta for tasting the fresh oil. By the time we finish the harvest, the hill we see from our kitchen at the mountain house will look like this and the season of fall feasts will be upon us!

Amanda Knox Verdict

Italy is rocking today with the verdict, finally, of Amanda Knox's innocence.  I've yet to meet an Italian who thinks she's innocent, though some concede that the evidence for conviction was not there. What is behind this loud-mouthed certainty? I am struggling to understand it. My daughter, a forensic psychologist, says women almost never commit sex crimes, and-look–she is a student who had it together enough to study abroad. No record of any kind. She'd known the boyfriend a week.  And look at him–no underworld hunk, not even bad-boy sexy. He looks like what he was–a computer student.

So why are the Italians quick to judge her?  Ed says maybe it's because of the generations of badly behaved American students. We've seen them in Florence. Drunk or drugged out of their minds and shouting in the streets. Florence now has a three-strikes program.  Disturb the peace, throw beer bottles in the Arno, get rowdy at two a.m., throw a needle in the street–do this three times and do not pass go; you in your smelly T-shirt and baggy shorts are shuttled to the airport and home to mama you go.  Maybe there's something to Ed's argument.  Watching the privileged Americans misbehave for a few decades and maybe you're ready to believe the worst. Still, vomiting drunk in the piazza and slicing up a roommate are worlds apart.  No one knows, despite vociferous opinions, what happened to the unfortunate girl in Perugia.

I'm vastly annoyed by people who say "They did it!"  From whence this judicial certainty?  Fortunately ours is a country where you are presumed innocent until proven otherwise. The evidence was botched horribly from the outset. And, if innocent, these two young people are marked for life by the bungling of the Perugia officials. Not to mention the years of their youth in jail.  So, Amanda learned Italian well.  I doubt she wants to hear a syllable of the language for the rest of her life!

Will the truth out?