I haven’t been blogging very regularly this month, because, as most of you who read my blog on a regular basis know, we have just had a baby: Liam! He has certainly turned our lives upside down, but we are finally finding new rhythms and adjusting to our new existence as parents.

2011 has been a great year for us. We have welcomed Liam into our lives, I got tenure, we bought a new car, we had a fabulous season with our vacation rentals in Tuscany and, thanks to that, we made several new friends!

There were some sad moments. We lost some dear ones, who are and will be certainly missed. But life is like that: it’s made of great moment and very sad ones. I am simply very thankful that I have amazing people around me to make the “ride” so pleasant.

Let’s hope 2012 is a serene year too, both for us and for all of you who are reading this post.We have much to look forward too!

This year, we will spend New Year’s Eve at home, trying to keep our eyes open until midnight! As usual, there were many interesting events that we could have attended in Pisa, or Siena.

New Year’s Eve in Pisa will see music in the squares of the city: a great street party and fireworks. In Siena, there will be the usual concert in Piazza del Campo. We won’t be drinking spumante, but we might be celebrate with a bottle of milk in our hands!

To you all, a very very happy new year! We hope it brings our way many new interesting people and, hopefully, some old friends too!

For the first time in 17 years, I have had the chance to spend October and November in my home village and see the fall “happen” in  the countryside, rather than in the city. It has been a very unusual fall for sure: almost summer-like in October, and still very warm in November;  not a drop of rain, the trees just starting to turn brown at the end of the month… But it has been pleasant. I haven’t needed to wear a winter coat yet. Which is good… as my winter coat doesn’t even button anymore…! I have to walk with my baby bump hanging out of it!!!

Anyway, I am ready for some Christmas atmosphere now! My favourite shop in the village, Fiori e Dintorni, is all beautifully decorated and packed with great Christmas stuff! My last project before the baby comes is to decorate the house, so this week I need to get a Christmas tree (and shop around for some new decorations… a yearly pleasure!).

Tomorrow Tuscany celebrates Festa della Toscana: the anniversary of the abolition of the death penalty and torture in 1786. Tuscany was the first “country” to end capital punishment, and this, I believe, is a good reason to be very proud! We won’t do anything special, I guess, but it’s a nice feeling to know that you are from a place that has supported the value human life for 225 years!

I am totally meteoropathic… I can only function if my natural rhythms work, if my reference points are right. A year like this, with a never ending summer and a never coming autumn confuses me. And my stomach.

Normally, I would welcome the first cold days happily snuggled under a blanket on the sofa with a cup of thick hot chocolate in my hands.

Or toasting bread in the fireplace to prepare the first bruschette with our bright green new olive oil. Or maybe roasting a sausage on slow burning embers… That is November comfort food to me: the smell of food must mix smoothly with the smell of burning firewood.

This year, it has been too warm to even cook a soup… and I have… but we have had to eat it with our windows open!

When I sat down to write this post for this month’s Italy Blogging Roundtable, I realized that all food is comfort food to me (and that is not necessarily a good thing… LOL), and that different seasons come with different comfort foods.

Fall Comfort Food

When the autumn comes, there are three things that really need to be on our table at a certain point: polenta with wild boar, castagnaccio and pumpkin risotto.

I grew up in a family of hunters, so game meat has always been available in our home. As soon as the first clouds start gathering upon the Cappelli family’s roof, my mum digs out corn flour and my dad is sent out to shoot some stuff! The fireplace is lit and the first layer of hot polenta appears soon after on the old wooden pastry board, where my grandmother gravely proceeds to cut it with a piece of cooking string. Apparently that is a sacred operation and there is absolutely no other way to test the quality of the polenta… Portions are distributed on everybody’s plates and literally buried under wild boar stew! The occasional guests might ask for the vegetarian option… polenta with olive oil and parmesan cheese. They are usually indulged, but they are likely to get my mum’s and grandmother’s sullen look, which unveils a mix of wonder, astonishment, pity and condescension and translates as “Who could possibly not want to stuff his face with wild boar stew?! There must be something wrong with them… maybe they might prefer a bit of sausage instead?! ” (I know Rebecca and Alexandra will cringe when they read this! LOL)

(Photo by Okapix)

They will be ok with castagnaccio and pumpking risotto, though! Castagnaccio is a thin, dense cake made with chestnut flour, water, olive oil, raisins, pine nuts or walnuts and rosemary. Very simple, but another “must” of my autumn cravings. As soon as the first chestnut flour is available on Monte Amiata, out comes the old castagnaccio baking tin! It’s perfect with the first vino novello!

(Photo from Tuscanfoodie)

I won’t say much about pumpkin risotto as it is not really a traditional Tuscan dish, except that in our variant, the pumpkin is likely to be sautéed in olive oil rather than butter.

(Photos from Memorie di Angelina)

Winter Comfort Food

Winter is a terrible season for my figure (not that the other seasons are any more merciful…). As soon as winter arrives, so does Christmas with the holiday sweets: ricciarelli, cavallucci and panforte. No point in even trying to resist: I have to have ricciarelli at least. For those of you who don’t know what these heavenly sweets are, well, they are traditional Christmas almond cookies typical of the Siena area. You can buy the industrially prepackaged ones, but if you happen to spend some time in a place where there is a bakery that makes them fresh every day, stock up.

(Photo from MyMySays)

Of course, with Christmas also comes the traditional boiled meat meal: you use the meat to prepare broth where you cook some tortellini or home made egg pasta, and then you eat the boiled meat as a second course with some sauces (usually home made mayonnaise and salsa verde, a green sauce made with parsley). This for me means essentially fighting with my cousin over a plate of boiled tongue. I know… it does sound revolting, but it is one of those things that I need to have before the holiday season is over (did I mention that besides being hunters, my family is also a family of butchers?) and it’s delicious!

Then New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day come. And there is no lucky end or beginning without a steaming hot plate of zampone or cotechino with stewed lentils!!! “Every lentil is a golden coin“, my great-grandmother used to say, and who doesn’t need that or the high cholesterol level brought about by a large portion of cotechino?!

Then Carnival comes (I told you winter was tricky…) with all the traditional fried sweets: crogetti (the local name for cenci – thin fried pasta covered in pastry cream, or honey and icing sugar), zeppole (small balls of fried pasta filled with pastry cream and rolled in sugar), and bomboloni (doughnuts or cream puffs).

(Photo from Amiche Cuoche)

Last but not least, Father’s Day comes on March 19 (St. Joseph’s Day) with the traditional rice fritters!

No wonder, the spring starts full of good intentions for future diets…

Spring Comfort Food

Spring means only two things to me: nespole (loquats) and strawberries. As soon as the first nespole become available I have to have them at the end of every meal. Too bad they don’t last for very long!

And of course strawberries with whipped cream, and maybe cherries! Lots of them!

Summer Comfort Food

Summer too is mostly about fruit and vegetables: the sweet tomatoes, the succulent peaches, and the watermelons!

But there are two things that I absolutely have to have: prosciutto and melone and ice-cream.

(Photo from Cool Cook Style)

I think I am a very generous person in many ways, but there is one thing I do not share: ice-cream. When ice-cream crosses the threshold of our apartment, I have no friends: I become territorial with the freezer and very protective! LOL

There is no sharing when it comes to gelato: it can take all my sorrows away, and it has to be all mine! My husband says that I “morph” when it’s around! If I am stressed, the smile comes back on my face after the first bite. If I am happy and he steals a spoonful of my ice-cream I turn into a real harpy! So beware!

Year-round Comfort Food

There is one thing that can always cheer me up and I think it’s pretty much a universal thing in Italy: Nutella. Nutella is a hazelnut chocolate spread, as if there were any need to introduce it…

It’s soul-healing power is such a stereotype in this country that there is a scene in Nanni Moretti’s movie “Bianca” which has become a symbol of this! If I had a euro for every time that I have dreamt of a jar of Nutella like his!!!

A Journey Down Memory Lane

There is one very Tuscan comfort food that I remember from my early childhood years and which my great-grandmother Tilde used to prepare whenever she was looking after me. It was typically my “merenda“, my mid-afternoon snack, and it has always had a special place in my heart and stomach: pane col vino e lo zucchero, that is a slice of stale bread soaked in red wine and covered in sugar.

(Photo from I love spaghetti and you)

I know that many of my non-Italian readers will be horrified by the idea of a granny incorporating wine in a child’s snack (probably as much as reading about my soft spot for boiled tongue! LOL), but, believe me, it hasn’t killed me or any other child over the centuries and I am ready to bet that that was a much healthier snack than most processed stuff that our children eat on a daily basis.

I remember licking the plate!

The winter variant, when it still used to snow regularly in the village, was to use  a glass full of the first snow from our kitchen’s window-sill instead of bread!

Delicious, and unforgettable!

Italy Blogging Roundtable

This is the sixth post in a monthly series called The Italy Blogging Roundtable. Here you can find the posts of the other bloggers who participate in the roundtable. Our topic this month was “comfort food“:

Alexandra (Arttrav) – Minestrone: my winter comfort food

Jessica (Italylogue) – Comfort Food is a Cultural Thing

Melanie (Italofile) – Comfort me with potatoes: A tale of two tuber dishes in Italy

Rebecca (Brigolante) – Eating in the Comfort Zone

Halloween and the All Saints’ Day Weekend are here already!

I’ve just realized it’s that time of the year already… Halloween or the All Saints’ Day long weekend! To me, it usually marks the first holiday of the holiday season and the beginning of the olive harvest, but this year it has arrived so quickly upon us that I am somewhat disoriented.

First of all, I am on my maternity leave: this means that I didn’t go back to teaching in September, so I was not counting days to the first long weekend as I usually do. It also means that we have spent over two months in Civitella, except for this past week when we came back to Pisa and time has literally flown by since we’ve been here.

Second, because I am so pregnant, I can’t help with the olive harvest anyway this year, so I didn’t need to organize my schedule so as to be able to participate. Plus, this year the fall has been so warm (it was still 25°C/77°F in Pisa yesterday…) and dry that we my parents had to start picking early, because olives are just falling from the trees.

Third, I had a big job interview last week (that’s why we are in Pisa) and I didn’t really think of much else up until then… And when I finally had the time and energy to start thinking about something else… well, we realized our baby was supposed to arrive in a month and we hadn’t bought anything yet!!! So we dedicated this past weekend to baby shopping… and we were shocked by the outrageous prices of baby stuff!!! People are out of their minds!!! Being our first child, we have nothing… and we also had no idea what we might need (I know… we must be the worst parents-to-be ever!!). So we did a lot of window shopping and then went and bought the most expensive stuff online, where you can really get great deals…

On presents for our baby and other generous thoughts…

To all those of you who have generously asked us about presents, we would like to say that we really don’t want anybody to feel obliged to send anything. Presents are neither required nor expected. Your loving thoughts are more than enough for us.

However, since some friends and family members have asked repeatedly, we have created a wish list online which is more of a “memorandum” for us than a true wishlist. You can find it here (the name is “gloriamarcel”). We would like to thank you all in advance, and to repeat once again that you don’t need to send us anything, really. And that we are just as happy if you contribute something to the fund for the people who suffered the terrible flood in Cinque Terre and Northern Tuscany last week. Their children are certainly in more need than ours at the moment.

A traditional Tuscan recipe for an alternative “treat”

Anyway, this morning I suddenly realized that it was Halloween when I saw lots of pumpkins outside the local food stores. That’s funny because pumpkins are certainly in season (and we have already eaten an enormous amount – I also need to thank Alexandra and Tommaso for the delicious one they gave us last week!), but the habit of decorating with pumpkins is not really in our tradition. I certainly remember carving pumpkins as a child, but not necessarily on Halloween.

What really reminded me that it’s the All Saints’ Weekend was a phone call from my mother asking me if I wanted some of the Schiaccia dei Santi that my grandmother has made. Of course!!! That is the typical dessert we celebrate with. We make  Schiaccia dei Santi (a type of focaccia)  and Pane dei Santi (a type of bread). They are typical of Siena and some areas of  the province of Grosseto.

They both include more or less the same ingredients but the “schiaccia” is thin, crispy and a bit greasier, whereas the “pane” has the consistency of a loaf of bread, even though it’s much sweeter. The peculiarity is that the dough is enhanced with walnuts, raisins and dry figs: essentially all the “poor” ingredients that are usually available at the end of the summer.

Now I can’t wait to be back home to have some!

If you want to try the traditional recipe of the Pane dei Santi (All Saints’ Day Bread – also known as Pane co’ Santi in Siena) here it is!

Ingredients

• 400g  walnuts
• 250g olive oil
• 50g brewer’s yeast
• 400g warm water
• 1kg all purpose flour
• 250g raisins
• 200g of dry figs
• 10tbs sugar
• 3tsp salt
• 3tsp pepper
• 1 egg yolk (to brush the surface of the loaf)

Sauté the walnuts with some olive oil in a small pan for a couple of minutes and let them cool down. Melt the brewer’s yeast in warm water.

In a large bowl, mix flour, sugar, salt, raisins, walnuts, olive oil and pepper. Add the yeast mix. Mix until you can make a ball with the dough. Cover and let it sit in the bowl for at least 6 hours.

When the dough has risen, cut it in 4 to 6 parts and shape them as you like (either as a ball or in an elliptical shape). Make a cross-shaped cut on the top of each one and let them rise for one more hour.

Brush with whipped egg yolk and bake for 30/35 minutes at 180°C (350°F).

Let the loaves cool down and enjoy!  You can store them in paper bread bags and they last for days.

You can eat them on All Saint’s Day or give your Halloween a Tuscan flavour!

Happy Halloween and Happy All Saints’ Day!

Here are some of the things that caught my attention the most!

• From October 7 to May 31, every Friday, Saturday and Sunday at 11am a low cost tour of the monuments of Piazza dei Miracoli other than the Leaning Tower (8 euros). The visit includes admission to the Cathedral and the Baptistery. From  October 6 to December 15, every Thursday, visitors to the Museum of San Matteo (Piazza San Matteo in Soarta, Pisa)
  will have the opportunity to join in a free tour inclusive of a visit to Simone Martini’s Polyptych.
• From October 8 to  December 31, every Saturday at 10.30 am a tour of the city dedicated to the places where Galileo Galilei lived. More on the Galilean Tour.
• From October 9 to February 12, every second Sunday, at 6pm, a guided tour of Palazzo Blu and the Permanent Art Collection.
• Until November 20, From Corot to Renoir, an exhibit at Museo della Grafica which offers a glimpse of the great 19th-century French engraving season between Romanticism and Impressionism, with papers from both collection Timpanaro and from a private collection.
• Until the end of June 2012, every second Sunday of each month, an organ concert is held in the Church of Santo Stefano dei Cavalieri (admission is free).
• From October 15 to January 29, Palazzo Blu will host an extraordinary exhibition of  masterpieces by Pablo Picasso.

Soon will be available a booklet called P.I.S.A. (Percorsi – Itinerari -  Sapori – Arte) with all the events of the fall and the winter in Pisa. The website related to this initiative is already online: www.pisacittapalcoscenico.it

If you plan on visiting Pisa over the next few months and you are still looking for accommodation, take a look at our vacation rental near the Leaning Tower to see if this is what you are looking for!

“Pane e coperto” literally means bread and tableware but it is essentially a service charge that restaurants add to the bill for each guest.  It can be as little as 50 cents and as much as 3 or 4 euros in more touristy places. If the restaurant applies these service charges, the amount is always indicated in the menu. Please note that it will be charged at village festivals too.

Up until a few years ago, restaurants were obliged to charge for “pane e coperto“, but now restaurant owners may decide whether to charge their clients or not. As a matter of fact, many of the restaurants that cater to locals or where people go for lunch on work days don’t charge it anymore. In Pisa, I haven’t paid any service charges for a long time at either Vineria di Piazza or Osteria dei Santi.

The most common complaints I have read online are…

Why should I pay for bread if I don’t eat it or if I didn’t order any?

The fee doesn’t really have anything to do with bread per se, even if the word pane is in the name. It’s is simply a service charge. It is part of the Italian way of life… you simply have to know that you might be charged for it, so make sure to check how much it is on the menu and deal with it.

Bread is brought to you whether you eat it or not. If you ask for more bread, you will not be charged extra, similarly to what happens with water in most north American restaurants.

Why should I pay for unsalted bread that I don’t like?

Bread in Tuscany is mostly unsalted. Restaurants serving you with unsalted bread are not trying to give you the cheapest stuff they could get: that’s what people eat here. Tuscan bread is not to be eaten alone. It is meant to accompany savoury food, such as cured meats, game meat, or crostini sauces.

The charge is too expensive

Charges will be higher in the most touristy areas. Restaurants have the right to choose their own prices. The only thing you can do is avoid restaurants in very popular spots (where people invite you in, or where you can see pictures of food…) and always check the prices on the menu before sitting down. Many restaurants publish their menu outside, and there is nothing wrong with asking to see a menu if this is not the case. Most smaller restaurants or restaurants outisde the touristy areas will in fact not have menus on display because they assume you know the average price for food in the area. If you sit down and you order, you commit to paying the service charge if applied.

I had no idea that I would be charged for pane e coperto

As I always tell our guests, if you don’t like finding out about cultural differences once you are already here, you need to “do your homework“. Most guidebooks will mention these charges. Every country has its own habits: when you visit you need to adjust to the local way of life. Please see my post about “Expecting the Unexpected” for further cultural differences which might come as a surprise to you.

Being charged for service is unacceptable

It always amazes me when I hear this comment from North American guests. I always need to point out how tricky it is for an Italian to go to a North American supermarket or restaurant and find out that the prices advertised are before taxes and that tips are mandatory, only when the check comes. All in all, pane e coperto is incredibly cheap compared to adding taxes and a tip to the final bill, and this way the price list is much more transparent.

It’s the way things are done in the States and Canada though, just like pane e coperto is how things are done in Italy. As we say… paese che vai, usanza che trovi, that is, when in Rome, do as Romans do… which is particularly appropriate in this case!

But at least at home I can choose not to tip for bad service

The “pane e coperto” service charge is not a tip.  The money goes to the restaurant, not to your server. Tipping your waiter is optional in Italy. Waiters, as a rule, don’t expect tips although they do appreciate them. If you get bad service you can choose not to tip your server just like you would back home, but you’ll still need to pay the “service” charge. It’s just the way things work here.

It is one of those bittersweet moments when you have both reasons to be sad and reasons to be happy. The downside of going back to school was that… you had to go back to school! In a small village like mine, it means essentially having to get up early and get on a school bus around 7am from when you are 11 to the end of highschool… 8 years of long, early morning bus rides… Very, very tiring… I still hate traveling by bus to this very day! And we were the lucky ones, because at least we could go to school in our village until the end of elementary school (5th grade). The kids living in the countryside or in the neighbouring villages had to get such an early start from day one of pre-school when they were only 3!

The positive side of going back to school was also that you would go back to school! That meant a lot of things for me (and in a way still does).

First of all, it meant that the summer was over, which was bad in a way because some of my friends who were in the village for the holidays were going back to their home cities, and that was it for the year: in some cases we would see each other only during the Christmas holidays or the following summer even.

It was also great though, because it was and it still is the time when life goes back to normal: shops would reopen, your favourite TV shows would start again, if you had extra-curricular activities besides school (language courses, sports, etc), they would also start again, etc. After 3 months when your routine was messed up, I have always enjoyed going back to “normal”.

Second, going back to school was preceded by that great moment when your mum would take you shopping for new clothes, a new school bag, books and stationery! That was the time I loved the most!!! I remember my mum used to take me to a large store in Grosseto called “Grandi Magazzini“. They would have an entire section dedicated to notebooks, pencil cases, bags, and all sort of stationery! I have always been a stationery freak! I can still smell the mix of paper and plastic! Oh! And it was time to buy a journal!!! That is the most important object for an Italian student! You do use it for your class schedule and as a memo for homework, but it’s also a bit of a diary, where you write down your thoughts, maybe your secrets, collect important things like cards or photos, and have your friends write in it! I still have all my school journals! Such great (and embarrassing) memories! Anyway, the choice of journal was crucial.

I loved my new course books too! Here everybody has to buy their own textbooks. We don’t have lockers, so you need your journal so that you know what lessons you have everyday, which books to bring, and which homework to do. The smell of new books is still one of my favourite! The glossy paper, the colourful covers! I never wanted used books, and my parents were always kind enough to spend all that money on me!

Third, on your first day of school you would see your new classroom. In Italian schools, we don’t change classroom according to the subject. The curriculum is the same for everybody and different teachers alternate in the classroom. So that space is yours for the year. You found it bare and plain, and you had one year to fill it up with your own stuff! Of course seeing your classroom for the first time it also meant choosing your new seat for the year! Getting to school early on your first day was vital or you could be stuck in one of the front rows!!! It also meant to get to pick your desk-mate! And the relationship with your desk-mate is a serious matter: it’s a life long relationship!

Fourth, after the 5th grade, going back to school also meant seeing some of your favorite school friends after the holidays! Up to the end of the elementary school, since I was living and studying in a small village, the fact of seeing my classmates again was not a source of great excitement, because I would have seen them everyday anyway. But when I started going to school in a different village first and city later, there were plenty of people who I didn’t get to see during the holidays, some of whom I really missed (as the September telephone bill would show… God bless the internet these days…).

Fifth, going back to school also coincided with my mum going back to work (she was a pre-school teacher for 40 years until she retired last year), which, when I was a young kid, was sad, and, when I was a teenager, was great!

Sixth, the day school started… catechism would also start. I have to say that I have very fond memories of my days in catechism too: it was yet another opportunity to socialize!

As an adult working in education myself, I still have mixed feelings about the beginning of the school year! I certainly appreciate the summer holidays now more than I used to when I was a kid! I work at the University, so with the beginning of September come the exams and the correcting, and the meetings, and the deadlines. But with it also comes meeting my colleagues again, going back to a stimulating environment, and meeting new students and new challenges and teaching new courses. I love all of that.

This year, I will miss the excitement, I am afraid. For the first time in many years, I won’t be going back to school, well… not physically… although I have already done my fare share of grading papers and there is more waiting for me in the next few weeks… I am on maternity leave, because I am (very) pregnant with our first (and probably only!) child. If everything goes as it should, our baby should arrive at the beginning of December and I won’t be able to go back to work until early March. I guess there are reasons for excitement too… although at the moment I spend more time freaking out than rejoicing! But I am kind of looking forward to the moment when I will hopefully be able to live the whole going back to school excitement as a mother. Or maybe not… let’s see what kind of kid he is… he might not be a “swot” like me!

Italy Blogging Roundtable

This is the fourth post in a monthly series called The Italy Blogging Roundtable. Here you can find the posts of the other bloggers who participate in the roundtable. Our topic this month was “Back to school“:

Alexandra (Arttrav) – Windsurfing in Tuscany (aka, what I learned on my summer holiday)

Jessica (Italylogue) – What I have learned from Italy

Melanie (Italofile) -On getting lost in Italy

Rebecca (Brigolante) – Lesson learned the hard way

I associate that very special feeling with the ripe blackberries that all of a sudden cover the bushes that flank the countryside lanes around the village. Late August and early September is essentially that to me… the blackberry season!

I have very fond memories of the days around the time when the blackberries ripen.  First of all, usually, that is the time in the summer when the weather starts to change: the temperatures start to go down (not this year apparently…), days get shorter, thunderstorms start to give the countryside that very special smell of wet hay and of the end of the summer.

When I was a young child, I occasionally went for a “blackberry picking expedition” with my great-grandmother along the road that leads to the old abbey by the river Lanzo. I had a tiny basket and of course I never manage to fill it because blackberries are never incredibly abundant. And because we would eat half of what we picked!!! That’s why I was always amazed when I stopped and my grandparents’ place and saw the lady living above them (now actually above us!) making blackberry jam in a large pot in the street. The smell was divine! Her jam was famous in the entire village. She spent days picking blackberries to maybe make 20 jars of jam, one of which was always for me! It seemed such an amazing treat! I’ve never had such delicious blackberry jam after she stopped making it!!!

When I got older, I started to go on long walks with my friends. It was the first taste of “freedom” because we could walk to places where there were no “vigilant grown-up eyes” on us. We would walk for 3 to 4 hours and pick blackberries, and chat… those long, open-hearted chats you can only have when you are a teenager and your best friends mean the world to you. Those are the sweetest memories. With those few berries we would make a cake, or we would put them on fiordilatte icecream when we would finally be back from our walk and stop at the small bar at the entrance of the village.

The young kids nowadays don’t seem to be interested in going for a walk in the countryside anymore. Nor is it probably as safe as it used to be. But for those who, like me, grew up looking forward to “il tempo delle more“, the blackberry season, the end of the summer is always the time when you look out for those delicious wild berries!

Here are a couple of links to some delightful blog posts by a friend who like me shares this passion for blackberries!

• About hedgerows and blackberries: Macaroon Tart and
• Apple + Blackberries = Jam

by Giulia, aka the amazing food blogger of Juls’ Kitchen

It’s a great opportunity to participate in a festival that is really popular among the locals, to discover live Italian music, and to contribute to support one of the organizations which does the most to preserve our territory and keep it as beautiful and green as it is.

The program of the concerts is available here. My personal favourites this year are:

• Caparezza on August 5th (tonight! My husband is taking our nephews!)
• Daniele Silvestri on August 6th (one of my favourite singers!)
• Roberto Vecchioni on August 7th (one of the most representative songwriters of the Italian music tradition – a real artist)
• Bandabardò on August 9th (fabulous Tuscan group: seeing them live is an event in itself!)
• Elisa on August 11th (one of the most beautiful voices on the Italian music scene)
• Mario Biondi on August 15th (a unique jazz singer, fabulous voice, and great performer)

And if you are travelling with children, Festambiente always has an area with entertainment for children, with activities and workshops, and plays for children.

The weather this summer has been a bit crazy up to now. We had a cool June, a very hot early July and a cool and rainy second half of the month. It has been raining quite a lot, and the temperature is lower than it usually is at this time of the year, but the countryside after a summer rainfall is spectacular!

Here are some more shots we have taken over the past few days!