Today the coolest thing happened. I was at the beautiful Fattoria La Pievanella by chance. I was helping out the owner with some translation work when I heard her talk to some American people who had stopped by to ask if it was possible to get something to eat.

Normally, it’s always better to book in advance there (and be prepared for the prices) because the restaurant works mostly for the guests and if the guests choose to go out for the day, the chef gets some time off. As you can imagine, he cannot leave at any other time during the tourist season. Anyway, I went out to help out with the language barriers (the owner is German) and in the end she decided that she could ask the chef to prepare a light lunch for them anyway. She asked me if in the meanwhile I could take them around to see the pool etc. They seemed very nice, so I did.

While we were walking down to the pool, I noticed they had something printed and I asked how they found the place. They told me they had read about an off-the-beaten-path drive in Tuscany online… It was the guest post I wrote for Keith’s Velvet’s Escape Travel Blog!!! There was a  photo of me, my bio etc! It was so weird and so cool at the same time! We had a good laugh!

They had lunch there, and then we took photos and talked a while! It was so funny! I almost felt like a star! LOL

In the end, when I was ready to leave, I guided them along my favourite route around there, to the Castle of Monte Antico. There they stopped to take a walk around and some photos and we said goodbye!

Ah…the power of the web!!! I need to thank Keith once again for asking me to write that guest post and in so doing, for giving me a chance to meet nice people like them!! I hope they will send the photo we took with the print-out of the article!!!

The fact that we own a vacation house in Tuscany might simply look like a job to some people. To us, though, it’s often much more than that.

It’s a funny feeling, especially for me, but I guess for my husband Marcel too in a way. Casina di Rosa is the house where my great-grandparents raised their family, my grandfather Gino’s family, after actually building it with their own hands. My mother was born there (and I mean right there), and so was my uncle. I have grown up knowing that that was my greatgrandmother Rosa’s home for as long as she could live on her own. And now it is a holiday rental in Tuscany… but to me offering Casina di Rosa does not  equate selling accommodation, it’s actually like opening my family’s home’s doors to our guests.

We have tried to make it comfortable and pretty. But mostly, we hope we have managed to preserve the fact that it is a home.

For this reason, when we meet our guests on Saturdays, it’s always exciting and worrying at the same time. There is always a funny feeling inside of me that makes me worry about whether they are going to like it or not, or whether they will enjoy spending time in the village or if they will rather think we are a bunch of hilly-billies and how can people ever live like that!? For me, it’s like opening a door on who I am and on where I come from, on my life, my culture and my history.

I obviously love my village and our little home: it inevitably does get personal.

Most people, luckily, end up loving both the house and the village: and that is enough to make me happy, because it makes me proud. It is hard to explain.

And then, there are those special cases in which our guests really get to experience life in the village: they participate in local events, they mix and mingle with the locals, and contribute to the local community in many ways. When we are lucky enough to meet these people – and the first sign that that is the case is when others in the village ask about our guests and tell us that they “hanno fatto amicizia“, they made friends -  then I know my “heritage” is in very good hands!

When those guests leave, it’s like saying goodbye to friends, and you wish they will be back. I told you: it’s not a job. It’s getting to know people, opening the doors of your home and connecting.

And I think, recently, we have been very lucky.

Today it was a perfect summer day. It was hot but not unpleasant: it was sunny and there was a cool breeze covering the olive trees in a thin yellow dust. We spent the whole morning in the countryside painting the fences and watching our dogs chase lizards. I did something that I rarely have a chance to do at the weekend: I sat down on one of the lounge chairs under the tall oak trees in the garden and read a few pages of a novel by Victoria Hislop, The Return: a bit of time for me alone… well… for me, the birds, a hen happily announcing the arrival of her new egg, a cow that didn’t sound too happy about her life, a few bugs and my dog.

Then all of a sudden the sky beyond the hilltop where Civitella Marittima, our village, sits went dark. Thunder could be heard in the distance. It didn’t take long for the storm to arrive from Monte Amiata. The countryside suddenly went silent. No cheerful birds, no grumpy cows, no happy hens. Just lowering clouds quickly gathering over the village and over our house, and the rumble of thunder. The rain came “wrapped up” in a whirlwind, with more thunder and lightning. The storm didn’t last more than 20 minutes and left us with a brighter, dazzling sun. All of a sudden the air was cool and clear; a thin, smoke-like steam covered the roads; a distinctive smell of wet straw and earth filled the air.

It was sunset already and while the western sky glimmered over the vineyard colouring  the vines in an intense pink, to the east, a beautiful red full moon was raising in a bright blue sky over the silver olive trees.

Just another perfect summer day in the Maremma.

(Please, click on the symbol on the bottom right-hand corner to see the photos full-screen. If you don’t have Flash, you can see the photos here)

Traditionally, the word aperitivo used to indicate a drink (alcoholic or non-alcoholic) served before a meal. It has always been common for Italians, at least here in Tuscany, to meet at a bar before going out to dinner with friends. Typically, if we have plans to go to dinner with a group of friends, nobody goes to the restaurant and sits down inside until everybody has showed up, something which used to drive my Canadian husband crazy! He was not used to standing around waiting for the usual late friend before being able to grab a drink! But what one would consider to be “late” in Italy, as most people know, is a very flexible concept!

Up until not long ago, the most popular apéritif drinks were Campari and Cinzano. Then prosecco, a dry sparkling wine similar to French Champagne, took its place.  Soon, essentially any cocktail became available as an aperitivo, some of which, such as Negroni, are strong purely alcoholic drinks.

Italians, at least up until to my generation, were not heavy drinkers. Drunkenness was a social taboo, and most people would not drink at all, with the exception of a glass of wine with their meal. For this reason non-alcoholic drinks and cocktails have always been quite popular. For those who were brave enough to venture an alcoholic drink on an empty stomach, bars started to provide something for people to nibble on while drinking. It was mainly very simple snacks such as chips, salatini (variously shaped and flavoured crackers), olives, and capers.

Little by little, the aperitivo became a fashionable thing to do, rather than just a way to kill time before dinner. Now, to go out for an aperitivo means to go to a bar where you order and pay for a drink and help yourself to a rich buffet of finger foods, pasta or rice salads, vegetable salads, cured meats, pizzette, and other more elaborate dishes for free. The drink might be slightly more expensive than it would be in a bar that does traditional apéritif (with no buffet), but the difference is minimal and sometimes the price is exactly the same. Aperitivo is usually served between 7 pm and 8.30 pm. If you go to a very popular bar, you might not find a table to sit at: but that’s normal. Most people just stand around as they would at a cocktail party.

Aperitivo has become very popular in Tuscany, especially in the larger centers. My favourite places for an aperitivo in Pisa are:

• Modus Bibendi: a very stylish wine bar, with a great interior design. It’s in Via Cavalca, just a few steps away from the vegetable market of Piazza delle Vettovaglie.
• Argini e Margini: a recently opened bar on the river bank (Lungarno Galileo – Scalo dei Renaioli), with tables on a deck by the river and a floating restaurant serving seafood. They have a stand which serves fried seafood for as little as 4 euros a portion. They often have live music. A really nice spot in town and perfect for the hot summer evenings.
• Caffetteria delle Vettovaglie: one of the first bars to offer aperitivo. It is very popular. It has tables in Piazza delle Vettovaglie itself: a really nice spot.

There are many more for sure, but these are the ones I’ve tried so far.

In Grosseto I’ve been to Bar Siracusa in Via Matteotti (it’s ok), and Bar Dribbling in Via Ximenes. I’ve heard it’s become too crowded now. I’ve also heard of a new bar in Piazza Volturno, Bar Cristall, but I don’t think that it’s my kind of place (I like informal, relaxed places rather than trendy places).

In Siena I have been several times to a bar in Via di Vallerozzi, only a few steps away from Porta Ovile, called Caffè La Piazzetta.

As you can guess, I love aperitivo. Here are my top 5 reasons to choose an aperitivo over a seated dinner:

• It’s at the perfect time in the evening. I often don’t have the strength to go back home after work and go out again and maybe stay up late. This way I can just stay out a little longer, and by 9 pm I’m home.
• It’s inexpensive. Unless you plan on drinking like a fish, you can really have a full meal with as little as 5 euros.
• It’s fun. I like the selection of different finger foods, some of which are really creative. Often there is live music, so it is almost like being at a party.
• It’s informal. No need to spend much time sitting down. You can stand outside, you can walk around, take it easy.
• It can be social. It’s the perfect place to mix and mingle and make new friends.

Did I mention that it is very inexpensive…?

Yesterday, after a long day of work, we went to a new bar that has just opened right on the river bank in Pisa: Argini e Margini. To get to the bar you need to go down to a small sandy beach by the river Arno. The walk provides a very unusual perspective on the buildings of the Lungarno and the atmosphere is really cool. It is a “different Pisa”, in a way.

Argini e Margini consists of two small stalls with tables – a bar and a small booth where they fry seafood (squid and shrimp) -  and a floating seafood restaurant.

You can sit wherever you find a spot: we sat next to two perfect strangers, so it might be a good way to make new friends!

They serve aperitivo: you buy a drink and you can help yourself at the fingerfood buffet. Truth be told, there is not much to eat compared to other places in the city, mostly dipping sauces and bread, but the fried-food stall sells really good fried seafood!

The bar serves wine, beer and cocktails. Actually, I found out that my allergy pills and mojitos don’t go well together… and so I “had to” eat two servings of fried fish and vegetables to avoid getting too drunk! What a sacrifice!!!

The place is not expensive, and the crowd is very laid-back. Yesterday there was an exhibition (Firehouse Rock Poster Expo) and music. At the weekend they have live jazz concerts too. I think I have found my favourite spot in Pisa to hang out in the warm summer evenings!

And I would like to stress once again that Pisa at night is really beautiful, and fun. There are so many new locales, pubs, events and exhibitions! Spending only a few hours in the city and then leaving to go to Florence or elsewhere is “a sin“!

With the warm weather people start preparing tasty salads again! For me, spelt salads are synonymous with summer food! Last weekend, we invited my sister-in-law and family over for a dinner at my parents’ house in the countryside and had a delicious spelt salad with chicken, and tonight we had spelt salad with shrimp. These are my two favourite combinations but you can invent many other recipes just mixing up your favourite ingredients. Spelt salad can be eaten warm or cold.

A side-note: spelt is called farro in Italian. It is a very nutritious type of grain which contains high levels of proteins and vitamins. Spelt is the oldest known cereal and was already cultivated in 7000 BC. In Tuscany, the Garfagnana area near Lucca is probably the “homeland”. I discovered spelt only after I moved to Pisa. While it’s now quite popular all over the region, up until not too long ago it wasn’t very common in Italian homes. Luckily, it’s back in fashion and is very easy to find even in smaller stores.

Chicken spelt salad

Ingredients

• 1 chicken breast
• 200g spelt
• olive oil
• garlic
• sage
• salt and pepper
• yogurt

Cut the chicken breast into small pieces.

Cook the spelt in a pot of boiling water for as long as indicated on the package (I use the pre-soaked spelt which cooks in 18 minutes, but most shops sell spelt that you need to soak overnight before cooking).

While the spelt is cooking, fry a clove of garlic and some leaves of sage in olive oil and add the chicken. Cook until the chicken is well cooked. Add salt and pepper and the yogurt. Mix with the cooked spelt. If you like the salad warm, sauté for a couple of minutes, otherwise let it cool down before serving.

Shrimp and pepper spelt salad

Ingredients

• 200 g spelt
• 2 red bell-peppers
• olive oil
• garlic
• 400 g of shrimp (fresh or frozen)
• salt

Cook the spelt in a pot of boiling water for as long as indicated on the package (see above). Slice and dice the red bell-peppers. Fry a clove of garlic in abundant olive oil. Add the peppers and let cook for at least 10 minutes. Add the shrimp. Let cook for 10 more minutes. Add salt and pepper. If there is water in the pan, make sure it evaporates. Add the spelt and let cook for 3 more minutes. I like this salad warm, but if you prefer it cold, it goes really well with mint sauce.

Not long ago, two friends living near Assisi, Letizia of Alla Madonna del Piatto and Rebecca of Brigolante Guests Apartments, got together to film the recipe for farrotto, the equivalent of risotto but made with spelt (farro). To watch this amusing video, check Letizia’s lovely food blog!

We have been working on the renovation of Casina di Rosa, our vacation rental south of Siena, since November. We have rebuilt the roof, pulled down walls down, built new ones, restored old windows, bought new doors… We have brought some of the original features of the house back to their old look, and we have added new features. We have built the vacation rental in Tuscany we would have wanted for ourselves.

Casina di Rosa is not just a property for me. My great-grandparents built it a century ago. They were a humble family of carpenters: hard-workers, wise spenders. My mother was born there (literally). She lived there with my grandparents and my uncle, her grandparents (nonna Rosa – hence the name of the house – and nonno Gualtiero), her aunt, uncle and three cousins for quite a while. You might wonder how big this “villa in Tuscany”! is! Well, it’s approximately 40m2 (430 square feet)!! But those were hard times in an Italian village, immediately after WW2. Luckily, they didn’t have to live like this for long. By the 60’s the three families had three separate homes. But still, thinking about that these days, while we are debating whether to have two sofas or a sofa and an armchair to leave a bit more room for the 2 guests that the house will accommodate seems quite funny!

We are very happy about the way the renovations have turned out. We have changed the plan of the house to comply with the new regulations on accommodation facilities. Instead of having three small rooms (bedroom, kitchen, sitting room), we now have a slightly larger kitchen and a large bedroom with lounge area. Where the corridor used to be, we now have a closet and a wardrobe. The bathroom is accessed from the bedroom. The house seems more compact but it is certainly more comfortable.

I hated the old kitchen. There! I’ve said it!!! Now, we have brand new country-style kitchen furniture in the tones of cream and hazelnut-tree wood. We have a nice fridge with freezer compartment (isn’t that essential in Tuscany!? Where are you going to store your gelato otherwise?!), a nice oven and much more room for storage. The washing machine, which used to be in the closet, is now in the kitchen… essentially in the same spot as before, but the closet has been moved to make the kitchen wider. The fireplace is still in its place. There was no way we would move that! It has always worked perfectly, with no smoke at all in the house. That’s so rare in these old buildings!

I also hated the old floors: now we have brand new cotto-style tiles! It looks so much nicer! I have wanted to redo the floors for years!

I really like the little touches the builders and carpenter added: painting the back of the main door in a warm yellow, covering the corner of the kitchen wall with bricks, treating the wooden beams to make them all the same beautiful colour they were 100 years ago, and the stone wall in the bedroom is just beautiful I think (but hey, I might be a bit biased…). It looks so Tuscan!!!

We got rid of the fake wooden drop ceilings too. My grandmother had them installed 30 years ago, when the sandblasting equipment was not yet sophisticated enough to allow the builders to clean up the original cotto roofing tiles without breaking them. But now the new sanders are more “delicate” (that sounds like an oxymoron!!!) and we managed to bring both the cotto tiles and the wooden beams back to their old splendour with the result that we now have really high ceilings in the kitchen and part of the bedroom!

And then we wanted to add some comfort… We asked ourselves what we would like in a vacation rental home for ourselves and we installed air-conditioning and proper heating (with air pumps), a gas water heater so that guests don’t always have to deal with power shortage if they have the oven on and want to take a shower at the same time, a satellite dish for international channels, we bought a new TV with DVD player,  a cd player, and we had a phone line installed so that as soon as the phone company hooks it up we can offer free Wi-Fi for our guests.

We have just finished bringing the furniture back in. We now have to tidy everything up, and add the decorating touches. I asked my gifted friend Lorella of Fiori e Dintorni to come take a look and find nice things for our Casina di Rosa to make it both pretty and comfortable. She has beautiful house-ware and decorative objects so I am sure she will give us great things!

We still need to finish fixing the loggia by the entrance. We have to bring patio chairs back and a small table for those who wish to eat outdoors. I wish we had more room outdoors, but at least there is enough room to sit outside and enjoy the warm morning sun and the cool evening breeze. We managed to save one of the two jasmines which were there. We had to move them because we needed to have  part of the house façade replastered to get rid of an ugly old layer of grey concrete which we substituted with a nice yellow layer of facciavista plaster. One died, the other one now has a brand new trellis just for itself!

The first guests will arrive on June 12 (volcanoes and striking aircrews permitting…). We will take the new photos later this week hopefully, so that we can start advertising again in portals and we can launch our brand new website. The old one is quite disgraceful and has essentially been abandoned. The paradox is that my husband Marcel has a web design studio!!!! That’s always how it works, isn’t it? In Tuscany we have a saying: “la figlia del calzolaio va con le suole rotte“, meaning the cobbler’s daughter walks around with broken soles!

Now we are exhausted but happy and excited to see the finite product!

I want to thank all the friends and former guests who have been writing and asking about the renovations! This post is mostly an update for them! Grazie!

Today I feel creative, so I have decided to experiment a little! I love cooking and cooking experiments and this one was a success!

Risotto is considered a “primo“, a first course, to have as an alternative to a pasta dish. Rice recipes are very popular in Italy and risotto is, in my opinion, one of the easiest things to prepare and one of the best dishes to cook when you don’t have much left in the fridge.

Risotto prugne, pancetta and yogurt

Ingredients

• butter
• 1 onion
• pancetta cubes or a thick slice of pancetta
• prunes ( you can use fresh plums in the summer)
• rice (40 to 60 grams per person)
• vinsanto (or any other sweetish wine)
• water or vegetable broth
• plain whole-fat yogurt

Melt butter in a pan or casserole and add thinly sliced onions. Let cook for 5 to 10 minutes on low heat. Add pancetta cubes and cook for 5 more minutes. Add prunes and cook for 5 minutes more. Add rice and stir for 3 minutes so that it does not burn. When it becomes transparent, add a drop of vinsanto and let it evaporate. Add hot water or vegetable broth to cover the rice, and keep adding it until the rice is cooked. Do not add too much water if the rice is almost ready, as it must have completely evaporated by the time to rice is properly cooked. Add a few tablespoons of yogurt, let the risotto thicken on low heat and… buon appetito!

The various phases are “documented” in the slide show below. To see larger photos, click on the symbol in right-hand bottom corner.

It’s been over 10 days already since my last post! Time flies. A couple of weeks ago, we went for a nice walk in the green heart of Pisa. Most people think that Italian cities are not green enough: Pisa is actually very green.

I have already written about the gardens of Pisa in the past,including about the Botanic Garden, but Viale delle Piagge deserves a post of its own.

Le Piagge is a tree-lined boulevard running along the river just outside the center of the city. The boulevard has buildings on one side, and a lovely park on the other. It is very popular among the locals, who go there to exercise, take their dogs out or just to take a romantic walk hand in hand with their loved one.

Viale delle Piagge is a 2km long trail, beginning at Ponte della Vittoria and ending at Ponte delle Bocchette.

There is a bar at the entrance of the park, called Bar Salvini, which also has a nice terrace by the river. Just a few steps from the bar, there is a children’s playground.

People with dogs normally use the smaller trail closer to the river, while people jogging or walking use the “proper” park trail.

I like walking from Ponte della Vittoria to the beautiful Church of San Michele degli Scalzi. The bell tower is the second most leaning tower in the city. Pretty impressive.

An old industrial complex which was built by the church has recently been renovated and houses now a bar and rooms for events. I love the clash of the modern building with the “quarter monogram” standing in the middle of the square and the Romanesque architecture of the old church which dates back to 1025 AD.

In the square where the church opens there are still ruins from old 19th century buildings bombed during Worl War 2.

Le Piagge makes for a nice off-the-beaten-path walk in Pisa, and a perfect way to discover Pisa away from the crowds of the main sites.

Something to remember: in mid May, Le Piagge hosts a really nice fair called Fiera di Sant’Ubaldo. Lots of stalls selling flowers, pets, local products and good street food.

Below, you find a slide show of some of the photos we took the other day. To see them in their original size, just click on the icon in the bottom right-hand corner of the slide show.

Pasquetta, literally “little Easter”, is the Monday after Easter Sunday. It is one of those days on which Italians know they must do something special, usually a taking a day trip somewhere more or less crowded or having a huge picnic!

I am not a huge fan of day-tripping on days like Pasquetta and Ferragosto, when 90% of my fellow countrymen get on the road, but I love picnics and barbecues!!!

So we took it very easy, and had an Italian-style barbecue (no hamburgers or hotdogs… well, hotdogs for the kids… but only pork ribs, steaks and sausages) at my parents’ place in the countryside.

The countryside in Tuscany is really beautiful right now, with the bright green fields, the first early spring flowers and the fruit trees in bloom.

Too bad that for the first half of the day, the weather was not as good as we would have hoped. It was cloudy, windy and it ended up raining too.  So we had to gather around the fireplace with a glass of wine in our hands!

The sacrifices you have to make to adjust to the rhythms of Tuscan country life…

In the afternoon, though, around 4pm, the sun came out and the temperature went up. The light was just beautiful and the day turned in the perfect April day we had hoped for. We then decided to go for a walk.

This part of Tuscany, called Alta Maremma, an area on the border between the Siena region and the Maremma plains, is full of great “strade bianche“, country lanes, mostly closed to traffic and ideal for easy relaxed walks in the beautiful countryside.

So we put our rubber boots on and followed our dog! A friend, and my sister-in-law with two of her children and her husband came with us on this fabulous walk.

I am not sure who was happiest jumping through the muddy puddles,  our dog or our 7-year-old niece Chiara! They both certainly  had water all over themselves!

The kids loved the walk: we had to walk through a little stream, we saw cows, and… even a huge parrot! Surprising Tuscany!

And when we got back, it was the perfect time for “merenda“, an afternoon snack, and another good glass of wine! A perfect Pasquetta in the countryside!