Renting a villa in Tuscany gives you a unique opportunity to see lots of medieval reinactments as well as food festivals called sagre, the plural of sagra. Who doesn't enjoy eating fresh local food expertly prepared all'aperto (outside) in the summer?

Gloria over at At Home in Tuscany has been accumulating information on all the big festivals in Tuscany, so there's a few pages you might want to bookmark: July Medieval Festivals & July Sagre in Tuscany.

The mouth waters...

We were passing through Fossombrone in the Marche region on our way to the Autostrada at Fano when we decided to stop for lunch. Passing a wine shop, we took a quick detour to see if they had anything local and interesting we could take home. The owner waxed poetic about the quality of the Marche's liquirizia, a black licorice digestivo. She then went on to tell us about the local specialty "cocktail", the: Moretta.

Moretta is one of those local coffee drinks. You could call it a type of Caffè corretto, coffee "corrected" with a few drops of liquor. But its way more complicated than that. Preparing a proper Moretta is a ritual, we found out after lunch.

After eating, we, like the rest of the locals, made our way to the little bar. I ordered a Moretta. Everything stopped while it was in production.

The barista took a metal steamer and put small but equal amounts of liquirizia, brandy and rum in it. Then she cut a hunk of lemon rind and dropped it in, along with a bit of sugar. She steamed the whole works until it was quite hot, then poured it into a small glass, which ended up half full. Then she removed the lemon and tilted the glass under the espresso spout and let fresh coffee gently slither down the sides of the glass; a proper Moretta is made in layers--liquor on the bottom, coffee on top.

By golly it was good. I suspect the strong steaming the booze got took some of the alcohol out of it, because it didn't have an overwhelming alcohol bite to it.

Ask for a Moretti if you're so inclined next time you're in the Marche near the coastal town of Fano. You won't regret it. Even Martha tried it, and she hates coffee.

As you can see in the picture, luscious strawberries are showing up, even in this northern Italy market in Pinerolo, where the Giro d'Italia just passed through.

There are also some very spiny artichokes and lots of asparagus.

Risotto with asparagus is simple to prepare. We warm some broth and add the chopped up stems of asparagus to the broth to cook a bit, then we brown the rice a little in a butter/olive oil combo, then start adding the broth and the stems, stirring frequently. When the rice is just about finished we add the tender tips to just barely cook them. Finish with some Parmigiano Reggiano, and you're done!

Ok, I have to admit, Gallipoli is my favorite town in Puglia--so far. The picture tells the story. Pick a warm, sunny day. You'll be seeing blue.

Yes, I know that Lecce is the "Baroque jewel" in Puglia's crown. Lecce is wonderful.

Gallipoli, though, is a seaside village that isn't entirely devoted to tourism, but rather to the enjoyment of folks who head down for some rest and relaxation. Plus, people still make a living fishing in Gallipoli. You can walk the little streets of the historic center and discover little places like Corte Gallo, a virtual outdoor ethnographic museum with all manner of cultural items you'd expect to find in the houses of a small fishing village maybe 40 or 50 years ago. People have just assembled these things and stuck them artistically to the walls spanning two courtyards. Fabulous!

If you have an apartment, you can go down to the fish market and talk to the friendly folks there, who will sell you impeccably fresh fish (mussels, 2€ a kilo!) or will have fun guessing where you're from.

If you don't like the look of fish fresh from the sea, you can choose to have your them served to you right on the shores of Gallipoli's jutting peninsula with the little houses as a pastel background to it all.

I found Gallipoli friendly, inexpensive, and full of life and vitality. Try it. You'll like it--even when you're blue.

It's fun to be in Italy at Easter, especially when you're in a village.

After a walk that took us to the next town over, we returned to find one of our neighbors puttering around in his cantina. I said "ciao" to him and by the time Martha came around the corner he had a bottle ready to hand her.

Then, around noon, Martha puttered around just long enough so that Francesca came out and asked her if we were alone this Easter. We were indeed.

"Well," said Francesca, "we have lots of ravioli--why don't you come around one?"

At one we sat down to some bruschetta and some of Armando's prize winning salami along with countless slices of culatello. If you don't know what culatello is, you haven't lived--that's all I can say. It's the tenderloin of prosciutto, the single, central muscle of the leg of the pig, cured in the same way as ordinary prosciutto. Mmmm.

Then there was the ravioli in a veal sauce.

Of course, that wasn't all. Not by a long shot.

There was the meat course. Lamb cooked with olives. PLUS roast capon. Peppers stuffed with anchovies and capers and preserved in olive oil. Then fragole, strawberries. Then two large chocolate eggs were slashed open with a sharp knife, as was a finger. Ooops.

Then coffee. Then grappa.

Then I went home and took a nap.

Easter is like that in Italy.

No, I wasn't referring to the refrigerator of your villa rentals. It will be clean. The "fridge of horrors was a term evidently used by Italian Agriculture Minister Luca Zaia to describe an icebox full of counterfeit "Italian food."

''It will be a refrigerator chock-full of all the disgusting things we have confiscated in the last eight months,'' Zaia explained, stressing that only around one out of ten products with labels claiming to be Made in Italy are actually authentic. ~ 'Fridge of horrors' to be unveiled

The haul of disgusting goods includes: pasta produced in Arab countries, Chinese mozzarella and United States 'parmesan'.

Ok, I'm with the Italians on the one item with which I'm familiar. Parmesan is indeed disgusting. It is used as salt by us Americans to ad zip to intentionally undersalted food which we've been tricked into believing is good for the ol' ticker.

It is expensive when used as salt. It may even be expensive as cheese from Parma, since there's a glut of the stuff in Italy these days.

Last night we chowed down on one of the simplest and most satisfying pastas in our repertoire: Pasta with Greens and Sausage.

You need a fat sausage for every two people (your choice), some washed and chopped greens (left fairly wet--I like mustard greens), a bit of chopped onion, garlic, and olive oil. Grated Pecorino or Parmigiano cheese to taste at the end.

Put the water for the pasta on to boil, plenty of it.

Saute the garlic and onion. Slit the sausage and drop small bits into the saute pan, hack them with a wooden spoon if they're too big. The sausage doesn't have to completely cook before you add the greens. If the greens are fresh and young enough not to have woody stems (or you don't use the stems), they'll cook (steam) quickly with the top on the pan.

Add the pasta of your choice when the water boils. I use something stumpy, like penne. The "sauce" or "condiment" shouldn't take any longer than the pasta.

When the pasta is almost done (a tad too al dente) drain and add it in the saute pan to finish cooking for a couple minutes and come together with the "condiment." If it looks dry add some pasta water that you've reserved.

Add the cheese and serve. You can add some red pepper flakes at the end as well if you like.

Mmmmm.

The thought of a vacation in Umbria scared me at first. It was that "The green heart of Italy" thing. In America's green heart, you see, even the farmers have pretty much bought into the myth that just about everything you put in your mouth is bad for you except engineered industrial crap food. So, oddly enough, you have a hard time get anything decently edible in the area of the world's most fertile soil unless someone brings you something from their garden. Heck, they're mostly making biofuels now instead of good eats.

But Umbria is different. They have wine for one thing. Good wine. And where you have wine, good food is bound to follow, and in Umbria it does. Sure, Tuscany gets all the applause for its wine and cuisine, but there are four Umbrian wine roads. Why, you could rent a villa and set out each day to visit all sorts of wineries and drink wines you've maybe never heard of, like Sagranitino from the slopes around the town of Montefalco. Here are the roads:

• Etuscan-Roman Wine Road
• Trasimeno Hills Wine Road
• Canticle Wine Road
• Sagrantino Wine Road

There is little on the web about Umbrian cooking. I find it a bit more interesting than Tuscan cuisine, but maybe only because it's different. Instead of Tusany's white beans, Umbria has very tasty lentils. If Tuscan cuisine is "cucina povera" the cooking of the poor, then Umbrian cooking seems to take the concept further; the food is earthier. Dishes with black truffle, another Umbrian specialty, are numerous in Umbrian restaurants.

Umbria is the only landlocked region of Italy, so don't expect a lot of seafood. Sausage is wonderful in Umbria, in the fall, there's lots of game. Priests are made fun of in Umbria through the primi piatti. Strozzapreti is a hand-rolled pasta whose name translates into "priest choker". Yes, the greedy priests of old would likely have choked on them when they wolfed down the fine dish--in Umbria Stozzapreti (or strangolapreti "strangled priests") become a form of gnocchi or dumpling.

If you're tired of the crowds and large towns of Tuscany--come to Umbria. It's only a short drive away, but a much more rural and laid-back environment. It's not like you haven't heard of Umbria's larger towns: Assisi, Spello, Spoleto, Todi and Perugia are all Umbrian and worth visiting.

The picture above is of the Eturscan walls and gate of Perugia, the capital of Umbria.

The Italian city of Lucca faced accusations of "culinary racism" on Tuesday after it banned new foreign eateries from opening in its historic center. The city council recently voted to deny new licenses to any bar or restaurant whose style of cooking was non-Italian within the Renaissance-era walls encircling the city center. ~ Reuters

Well, ok, that's good for us tourists who are appauled every time some corporate house of food horrors sets down in a medieval center. The story doesn't mention if residents feel deprived of alternative cuisines, but the Tuscany regional government put out a warning against 'gastronomic or culinary' racism.

"The defense of quality is one thing, discrimination is another," Paolo Cocchi, the regional councilor for commerce, said on the region's website.

I have news for Paolo. Defense of quality is discrimination. After all, discriminating taste is seldom considered a bad attribute.

Italy has raised up its cuisine by discriminating against crap food. We haven't done enough of that in the US.

Ok, so you're a student and what you'd really like is some cheap crap food. No problem, the four kebab shops already gracing the center of Lucca can continue operating.

Usually, I wouldn't call doner kebabs crap food. I actually like them. But they're salt and fat bombs. A study in London found:

The worst offending kebabs managed 1,990 calories before salad and sauces were added and almost 350 percent of a woman's saturated fat intake. ~ Rueters

So, um, even if you're near penniless, maybe a little gastronomic discrimination is in order.

20 years ago you seldom heard of the sparkling wine made in northern Italy's Veneto region called "Prosecco." Its an easy to drink sparkler that goes well with food.

Today Prosecco is everywhere. You hear of it all the time. It's gotten so popular that foreigners have started to produce bottles (and cans!) they label as "Prosecco." According to an article in the New York times:

"One product, Rich Prosecco, is made by an Austrian company whose ads feature Paris Hilton. In some, she is naked and spray-painted gold. What’s worse to some producers, the product is sold in a 6.8-ounce can, in gas stations as well as stores, for around $3." ~ Italian Makers of Prosecco Seek Recognition

You see, Prosecco is the name of a grape, so it's pretty much free game for winerys to plaster on a label. But, it's also the name of a town, so perhaps the producers of Prosecco will have a leg to stand on in European courts when it comes time to recognize the origins of the wine..

In any case, it's quite safe to sit down at an Italian bar and order a Prosecco; it won't cost you much but makes a great aperitivo in the early evening. Order it and you might be surprised at the little nibbles the wait staff will set upon the table. Enough for a light meal sometimes.

Prosecco makes a fine New Year's celebration drink, especially if one of your resolutions is to start saving money on "Champagne."

There is a pleasant trend ramping up in Europe: turning the Supermarket back toward its roots in the grand covered markets of Europe.

Eataly Turin, housed in an old Vermouth factory just outside the Lingotto center, is one of these successful transformations. Slow Food consults on the products. You can go there to shop, eat, drink, or get educated on where food comes from. Producers of goods on the shelves are profiled.

It's odd seeing tables with people socializing, eating great food and drinking wine right in the middle of the supermarket. After you get used to it you end up thinking, "gee, what a great idea! Fill a store full of the sustainable production from farmers who care, then cook it up for folks who want to eat in a lively environment."

You can have a full meal, munch on tapas, or fill your wine bottles from huge barrels. Or you traditionalists can just shop for great products that have the blessing of the Slow Food people.

And there's an Eataly recently opened in Milan as well: Piazza 5 Giornate, inside COIN, floor -1

Go. Eataly if you can.

I miss real milk. You know, the kind the milkman put on your doorstep. It had the cream floating on top. In winter, if you forgot it, a gush of milk, captured as if part of an ice sculpture, rose majestically out of the bottle top.

We don't get that anymore. Despite the legendary, mythological reproductive powers of the milkman, he's gone. What we get when we drive our SUVs to the supermarket has the cream taken out and other noxious chemicals put in.

But slowly, insidiously, there have been appearing fresh milk kiosks in the north of Italy.

Dang, it's what I like about Italy. When the economy tanks, people look for even better things to put in their mouths instead of cheap, industrial diluted things.

Anyway, the picture above is of a fresh milk stand in Brisighella, in the Emilia Romagna, a nice place to visit.

Pinerolo has just got one too, according to the Bella Baita Blog, and it dispenses the real thing.

Did you know that humans are pretty much the only animal that partakes of other animal's milk? Strange, eh?

Take olives for example. They're quite bitter right off the tree. You wouldn't want to eat one unless you're a glutton for gastronomic punishment. Over the years, many ways to deal with that bitterness have been developed.

You can use lye to cure olives. Lye was a common ingredient in soap for many hundreds of years, so you would have some around. Lower grade lye can be used as a drain cleaner. Funny what ends up in our food, isn't it?

But the easiest way to cure olives, leaving a slight bite of bitterness behind, is to just salt cure them. On the Tuscan coast, you just mix your fresh olives with lots of sale grosso or coarse salt and leave them in a warm place until they pucker up like in the picture.

Funny how simple things are sometimes, eh? We've just forgotten how to work with many ingredients, and let factories churn out inferior versions of the stuff we cram in our mouths. That's a pity.

What is this Bottarga thing? Fish eggs, but not caviar. In Sardinia, the roe of Muggine, gray mullet, is dried and then either grated over pasta, or machined and put in a bottle so you can spoon it out.

The Sardinians are clever enough to have mullet farms in order to harvest the roe.

In any case, you can sprinkle or grate Bottarga over warm Tomino cheese or over pasta. Martha just returned from Sardinia, bringing a bottle of "machined" Bottarga, so we just bought some fresh ravioli stuffed with shrimp, ricotta, and squash blossoms, cooked them in boiling, salted water for three minutes, drained them, then drizzled them with oil and sprinkled the Bottarga generously on top.

As you can see, it looks wonderful, eh? A true one pot gourmet feast, a great treat for your vacation.

Just in case folks are picky, you can just tell them it's bread crumbs on top of their pasta. It won't be until they take a bite that they'll suspect something fishy is going on.

It's hard to find a town that's noted throughout the world for not one but two of its food specialties: In this case Parmiggiano Reggiano and Prosciutto di Parma, cheese and ham.

Everyone knows them. Every country capable of making cheese from cow's milk tries to make Parmigiano Reggiano, usually under a name that suggests the real Italian name, like Argentina's Reggianito, but doesn't shout it for fear stiring up the ire of the Italian discoverers.

What got me started on this topic was today's lunch. I made risotto with sausage. It took a while to cook and I was starving, so, while I had the Parmigiano on the cutting board, I thought "now's the time to break off a chunk..."

So I did. I ate a bit, then thought lustily about the slices of prosciutto in the fridge.

Now the prosciutto is another story. There was a special on it at the market, making the price a tad less than €10 per kilo. So my etto, or tenth of a kilo, cost a single Euro. That's darn near a quarter pound of something that usually costs upwards of $30 a pound in the states.

For me, this might be enough reason to come to Italy and stay in a vacation house for oh, maybe a year. Ever few days I'd sit on my sun-drenched terrace with my chunks of Parmigiano Reggiano and my slices of prosciutto and my glass of wine from the €2 bottle and thank my lucky stars I was here. Every third or fourth time I'd drizzle some (real) balsamic vinegar (from nearby Modena) over the cheese and eat it with good, forno a legno bread and that ham...

But did you know there's another ham that's even more refined than Prosciutto di Parma? It's called Culatello di Zibello because it comes from Zibello, a town near Parma (so close that it's sometimes called Culatello di Parma).Culatello is essentially the inner muscle of the leg from which prosciutto is made. It's "lightly salted, stuffed into a pig's bladder, tied to give it a pear-like shape, and then hung 8-12 months to cure in farm buildings in the Bassa Parmense," according to Kyle Phillips, About.com's Italian food guru.

What I like is the story of how Culatello came about. Seems this guy was making typical prosciutto. The aim when you're curing prosciutto is to salt it as little as possible so that the flavors of the meat dominate, not the saltiness. Well, he used too little for the conditions, and the ham started to go bad. Since he knew it went bad from the outside, where the bacteria get in, he "saved" his ham by cutting off the outer meat and salting and curing the inner muscle. He aged it in a cave and when it was done a whole new taste and texture of prosciutto was discovered, which we now call Culatello, or "little backside."

There are lots of ways to turn cauliflower into a topping for pasta, but most contain the secret ingredient: anchovy. It's a nice combo.

My recipe is very simple. It's for folks who don't want to end up doing a lot of dishes. After all, you're on vacation, no? It takes a pot to boil the cauliflower--and later the pasta, and one to saute the ingredients you see above, plus some olive oil and the optional ingredient: peperoncini, hot red peppers.

It's a white dish, so you can also add chopped parsley at the end to give it some color.

Ingredients: Pasta (I'd use penne), a head of cauliflower, garlic to taste, 4-6 salted anchovies, olive oil, and grating cheese.

Boil the water, then add some salt, a short palmful of sale grosso big salt crystals for a large pot. Add the cauliflower and boil it until it's quite soft.

Remove the cauliflower and let sit on the board to cool while you chop the garlic and anchovies. Heat a pan, add 4 tablespoons of olive oil or so and add the garlic, anchovies, and hot peppers and cook until the garlic is soft.

Start the pasta. Chop the cauliflower (or put it in a bowl and squash it with a fork) and add it to the pan to warm in the oil.

When the pasta is al dente, drain and add to the pot with the cauliflower, garlic and oil. If the pasta doesn't coat with the sauce, add some fresh oil and give it a toss while it's still on the heat.

Then all you need to do is turn it out onto the plates and serve with the grated cheese.

Variations: You can add chopped tomatoes, or cover the pasta with homemade breadcrumbs. It's a gutsy sauce, so it goes well with whole wheat or farro pasta if you prefer.

Americans tend to shun anchovies, especially the salted ones. But they're in there for sure, lurking sublimely in good Italian regional cuisine.

But now, elements of anchovies will start appearing in American orange juice, according to Bizarre Foods host Andrew Zimmern (from a story in the NY Times).

Sure, you won't get the fishy taste (they say). But what will happen to the price of anchovies once they start using the oils in them for fad nutrition? Will the price of the flavorful little fishes skyrocket, as corn did when they started using it for biofuel?

Is it time to invest in anchovy futures? Will Italian cuisine suffer? Is this a US plot to punish Italy for its devotion to fine food in a time of declining living standards likely to crash further as normal, law abiding citizens are forced to bail out the failed mortgage schemes of greedy bankers around the world?

So many questions, so few pizzas.

Somewhere in Ascoli Piceno in the Marche region, the Italian food formula seemed to go awry for just a second. Somebody was undoubtedly sitting in a cellar one night, a bit buzzed no doubt, and thought, "hey, why don't we get some really big olives, stuff them with ground up meat and garlic and some other things, then bread them and deep fry them?"

Well, I'm glad this all turned out ok in the end and nobody sober nixed the idea. I like Olive Ascolane. A few of them are perfect with an aperitivo in a bar. I get them at our local market at the place that sells the spinning chickens for €7.

Even if you don't know Italian, you can point to these golden orbs (see the picture above - don't you just want one?!) and indicate you'd like a few. Then when the vendor slides a big, fat, spoon under them and starts filling a bag you can just say, "basta!" and he'll likely stop within the next two scoops.

You should at least learn the word "basta." You might need it when a vendor or ne'er do well starts bugging you. It's a good word to know.

Well, that's basta for now. I've got Olive Ascolane to eat.

Then, like all addictions, mine grabbed me by the throat. I went to language school.

And eventually, I bought my own place, a rural hideout. An apartment that was once an attic where my downstairs neighbors once hid from the Nazis.

Then, slowly, I began to learn the ways of my neighbors. Good grief, they seemed self sufficient! After all, in my Palazzo there are men who produce both white and red wine, a woman whose salamis have won competitions far and wide, a man who makes honey, and several who make polenta.

No, I don't mean these guys sit and stir a copper pot of polenta for hours. I mean they plant little plots of corn, dry it, and mill it this time of year to have it for the winter. (They make their wives stir the polenta, I'm pretty sure.)

But what are the cannons that blast away day and night in my little Tuscan village this time of year? Well, I found out soon enough, but you'll have to view my video. (Yes, Fellini would roll over in his grave. Maybe twice.) It's about those cannons and their relation to the corn the locals make into polenta: Cannons and Corn.

We looked over the balcony last evening to see our neighbor Enrico unraveling and cleaning the bright orange nets they arrange at the foot of olive trees to catch olives at harvest time. He explained that the ulivetto or olive grove was just over the hill, and we should visit, as it was in a beautiful spot. He pegs the harvest at the middle of October.

So we made plans to walk up the hill and see it the next morning, then go to the Saturday Open Air Market in Aulla. Enrico assured us that it wouldn't rain, maybe a few sprinkles in the evening...

Well, it's raining cats and dogs, gatti e cani.

Which means that we probably won't be going to the local sagra di porcini, a communal feast of porcini mushrooms, the promise of which has had our mouths watering all week. Enrico commented on those plans as well, waving a finger and making that tsk-tsk sound Italians make when you're wrong about something.

"It hasn't rained in 3 months. You won't get having fresh porcini, don't kid yourself."

Oh, yeah. We hadn't thought about that.

But with this rain....

After an almost sleepless night, a result of the "cannone" or large canons blasting away all night to keep the cinghiale (wild boar) out of the corn with probably some remnants of jet lag thrown in, we arose to an absolutely perfect day, sunny and clear as a bell, the Apennines all aglow. Who says bad things about off-season weather? He should be shot. So should the cinghiale, and he'd go good over polenta.

Anyway, after throwing on some clothes we went to the Fivizzano open air market, food, household items, clothing, and porchetta trucks circling the Medici fountain in the center of town.

We bought vegetables, of course.

But that wasn't the half of it. When we entered our favorite butcher shop to get some sausages and chicken for a mixed grill, there was the most beautiful torta d'erba I'd ever seen sitting in a glass case like museums use for royal jewels. Our wedge of it is pictured above.

It was still warm from the wood-fired oven, stuffed with all manner of field greens and potatoes. We're having it for lunch and dinner. Mmmm.

And just in case you want to see what shopping at the Tuesday morning market in Fivizzano is like, and what the food costs that we bought, check out the movie: Fivizzano Tuesday Market.

Happy shopping!

There are lots of differences between the two countries, but one thing I've noticed: there's hardly any indication you've entered a German town. I mean there's no sign giving the name of the town when you enter, and no sign saying you're leaving, as you always find in Italy. Things get confusing at times.

And then there's the food, of course. I have to say, the food we've had in Germany this trip has been quite good, especially for the weather we've had, which is cool and drizzly. Venison stew with spetzel, rabbbit tenderloins with grilled quail and foie gras. Not bad stuff. But still, we can't wait to get to Italy, to get back a little lightness and freshness to the food.

Spaghetti all'Amatriciana is easy enough to make. In the US we have to substitute pancetta for the guanciale unless you happen to live in a big city where you can get lots of international raw ingredients.

Eternallycool sends notice that Italy has released a stamp celebrating the Sagra degli Spaghetti all'Amatriciana, the feast day in Amatrice celebrated at the end of August. I'm sorry I missed it.

I can't wait to get my hands on one of these stamps though. It'll be one of the few I've heard of that I'm anxious to lick.

Got a note from Andrew Zimmern of the television show Bizarre Foods the other day informing me that he'll be doing a show in Sicily this season on the Travel Channel, for those of you in the US who get it.

I immediately wondered what bizzare foods were left after Antony Bourdain ravaged the place for television a while back.

In any case, a little research shows that two of Zimmern's favorite markets are in Sicily, the Vucciria Market in the centro storico around Piazza San Domenico, and Ballaro Market in the Albergheria district.

Anyway, the Sicily episode of Bizarre foods will air on November 16th. I'll be in Italy, without a television. You know, there's that television tax and all.

(What's your favorite market in Italy? Leave a comment!)

In Sardinia, I remember a joint called the Pizza 2000. Yes, a plain pizza cost you 2000 lire, or about a dollar. The place was close to the hospital, but we never needed those services. Some folks ate two pizzas in one sitting, despite the fact that the pizzas hung over the plate.

Recently though, there has been a real surge in prices for pizza.

So chefs from Campania put some pizza ovens in the middle of town and baked pizzas for everyone to publicize the cost: Chefs protest against pizza prices. They say a pizza, properly done, shouldn't cost more than three and a half Euro. Good for them.

Remember, all you need is a forno al legno (a wood oven), some San Marzano tomatoes, extra-virgin olive oil from Campania, and 'mozzarella di bufala' to eat right.

Later, of course, there came reports that some adulterated wine existed that actually could do you some harm, all sold in boxes costing less than two euros.

So how do you counter the bad vibes that wine in boxes has received? You put good wine in those boxes.

Italy’s Agriculture Ministry has recently stated that some fine Italian wines that receive government quality guarantees will be allowed to be sold in boxes. We're talking DOC wines here. DOCG wines will evidently be bottles only for a while.

You gotta admit, wine in boxes makes sense in a polluted world faced with dwindling and increasingly expensive fuel. According to a NYT op-ed piece, "A standard wine bottle holds 750 milliliters of wine and generates about 5.2 pounds of carbon-dioxide emissions when it travels from a vineyard in California to a store in New York. A 3-liter box generates about half the emissions per 750 milliliters. Switching to wine in a box for the 97 percent of wines that are made to be consumed within a year would reduce greenhouse gas emissions by about two million tons, or the equivalent of retiring 400,000 cars."

Since every one of those 400,000 cars seemed to be at rest on the freeway today, I'll pledge to do my part. A box of vino is on the shopping list.

One of my favorite dishes this time of year is simply pasta with fresh tomatoes, olive oil and cheese. I chop the tomatoes while I cook the pasta in abundant salted water (real salted--as salty as the sea, none of that "half teaspoon in 5 gallons of water" garbage the food dunderheads on the tee vee tell you). When the pasta is done I drain it, add the chopped tomatoes, some oil, and then mix and sprinkle some cheese on top. It's done. It's easy. It's mighty tasty.

Of course, you can spiff the dish up with some crushed garlic. Or, you can go to your local store's deli department and buy a couple tablespoons of pesto and add it too.

It's not just me telling you to add pesto to your fresh tomato pasta. Nope, the Genovese who settled in Carloforte on the island of San Pietro off the south west coast of Sardinia make their pesto with fresh tomatoes, so you're eating the real deal.

The folks of Carloforte are known for their Tuna fishing prowess. You might see tuna stomachs drying in the sun if you go there.

If you need a story to tell your friends after visiting an Island they've never heard of, tuna stomachs floating in the breeze might be just the thing to start things off with.

Carloforte celebrates a tuna festival, usually at the end of May to the first days in June. They also have a Cous cous festival in May.

You gotta love those cross cultural currents flowing through the Mediterranean...

I'd head right on over to the local tourist office.

Tourist offices in Europe have become increasingly sophisticated over the years. A visit to one isn't limited to grabbing a map and a couple of brochures. Today you are likely to find that a reasonably sized tourist office maintains a list of local guides, who, for a fee, will take you wherever you want to go and explain it all to you.

Yes, you can be independent travelers and still go on a tour, except you're in charge of what you see and how deep you want to go into the details.

You're also likely to find a list of local festivals. In summer, there's a sagra celebration pretty much every weekend in rural areas. A sagra celebrates a particular food in season; it may, for example, celebrate watermelons or prosciutto, and a whole menu will be built around that food. You step up to the window and order whatever you want to eat (or point to random things on the printed menu if you don't know the language and you're not a squeamish eater).

Attending a sagra is a fine way to meet the locals and eat cheap. In the Lunigiana, where I have a house, it seldom costs us more than 15 or 20 Euro for a full Italian meal at a sagra, incuding, usually, a bottle of local wine. In America, I couldn't buy the wine for that price.

And the locals love it when I pull out my camera and start photographing the food. Well, they laugh anyway...

Usually, when we're looking for a culture's take on food, we look at what the top restaurants serve. We get a good idea of the evolution of the local cuisine that way. "Garden Snail foam on Frozen Peach Coulis" the menu says, and we know we're not just eating, but about to have an out-of-palate experience, a deconstructed, reconstructed walk in the garden--with pests.

But I figure that what a culture feeds its young-uns says a lot more about how they view and value particular foods. I was thinking this very thought his morning after What Babies in Italy Eat appeared in the blogosphere. Here's the menu a pediatrician offered for a babies first non-milk meal:

-vegetable broth prepared with one carrot and one zucchini -a few spoonfuls of powdered rice cereal

AND

- one teaspoon of olive oil

Ok, we're back to Ferran Adrià, or at least David Scabin over at combal.zero. What the baby is clearly eating is deconstructed risotto primavera.

Mothers elsewhere probably wouldn't think of adding a dollop of olive oil to their child's menu. Especially in the US. Especially in the very center of the US, where I'll be off to next week, where the food is always fried and the butter is always fake. You don't want to overdo the cholesterol, you know.

American babies could do with a little olive oil. Maybe they'd grow up to cook right.

The best San Marzano tomatoes are grown in the volcanic soil around Vesuvius. Authorities have been trying to relocate people from this area for years in anticipation of the next Vesuvius eruption, but the soil is so rich and people have been making a living here for so long that a majority of them won't budge.

The tomato came to italy in the 16th century via Pisarro and the Spaniards, who used the tomato as an ornamental plant and declared the fruit both poisonous and aphrodisiac. It wasn't until the 19th century that folks started seriously adding tomatoes to the diet.

About the old look. It's coming back. The cans used for San Marzano used to be rather squat, as in the picture. You can again buy them this way.

Although there's a controversy over whether soil types change the taste and quality of tomatoes, to get the real deal look for tomatoes marked "DOP" from the Agro Sarnese-Nocerino area. These should be packed in the juice of San Marzano tomatoes (Some packers evidently use inferior tomatoes to make up the liquid to fill the spaces in the cans--the DOP label should keep these practices at bay).

The ingredients listed on the can? "Pomodori pelati interi San Marzano, succo di pomodoro San Marzano" meaning simply peeled, whole San Marzano tomatoes with the juice of San Marzano tomatoes. No salt, no citric acid or other additives which you might find in industrial tomatoes, which means you might have to adjust your seasonings in sauce recipies a bit.

Happy eating!

Aha! That's wrong, fortunately. You're looking at Malloreddus, a type of pasta whose name evidently derives from the Latin "mallolus", meaning "small morsel".

Which could, in Sardinia at least, refer to something like the maggots that either infest or enhance--depending on your point of view--a block of pecorino con vermini, or pecorino with maggots. Sardinians tend to like the creamy and tangy pecorino con vermini after the evening meal. Late at night the vermini are invisible under cover of darkness. Just don't have a peek midday.

Sometimes this pasta is known as gnocchetti, little gnocchi, or gnocchetti sardi. Those you see above are infused with saffron, a spice brought by the Arabs to Sardinia and and still raised in the Campidano, a flat plain in the southwest that was once pretty much a malarial swamp. Retired Roman generals were often given land in the Campidano upon their retirement because they had the power to get the swamps drained and plant grain; after a while the Campidano became the source of wheat for many Romans' bread.

The malaria from those swamps hung on until the Allies came through the island with DDT during WWII, often marking storeroom doors with the dates of application. As of a few years ago you could still read some of them.

In any case, a good Malloreddus with saffron is a great base for a pasta dish. It's fairly thick, so it cooks a long time--but that means that you'll have a better chance of cooking it properly al dente, since it doesn't turn to mush in a few seconds after it's done. And the grooves (which used to be made by pressing the dough into straw baskets) hold the sauce well.

In the dish above I've made a sauce using a standard tomato sauce and a can of great Italian tuna in olive oil. No it's not like the garbage on our shelves in the US; it's good fish. Adding the zest of a lemon and a few flakes of red pepper makes a zippy dish that's great for a lunch on the terrace.

I like it as you see it in the picture. Melted on a piece of bread, preferably roasted over charcoal.

The interesting thing is that folks think this is unhealthy--then they wonder why there's no butter for the bread in Italy.

Did you know that humans are the only known animals that consume another animal's milk?

The EU, in its infinite collective wisdom, wanted to ban lardo, because of the ancient way in which it was produced--in marble vats. "Impossible to keep clean," they said. Marble is indeed porous, but the meat is salted, which keeps the bugs away. Besides, as high energy food for marble miners, they weren't dropping like flies, so that should have told the suits something about lardo.

The tourist would be wise to head up to the quarries above Carrara and take a peek at the Fantiscritti marble quarry where Michelangelo selected much of his marble, then continue up the hill toward Colonnata, where Lardo is made. Have lunch there. Just don't ask for butter for the bread.

We picked up some at the Fivizzano market this spring. I happened to have my mother along. She looked at the two bunches of Agretti I had in my hand and said, "so...we're going to eat grass? How do you cook it?"

The nice thing about shopping in Italy is that if you speak a bit of Italian you can ask the vegetable person how to fix something and wham! you'll get an answer right away. In my local California store I get the opposite reaction.

"What's THAT?!" the checker exclaims as if I've placed a dead rat in front of her.

"Oh, it's just some radicchio."

"It's what?"

"Radicchio."

"What are you going to do with THAT?"

"I cut it into quarters, brush it with oil, sprinkle with salt and put it on the grill."

"Oh," she says as she puts it on the scale and winces. "Jeez, do you know what this thing costs? Why don't you just get some cocktail weenies fer yer grill?"

Anyway, back to the Agretti. I blanched it in some boiling water (the water I would eventually use for the pasta), then stirred it into a pot in which I had sauteed some garlic and chili pepper flakes in olive oil. A few flips of the pan, a little salt, and it was done. Prepared this way, you can eat it a little later, (tepido, as they say) or if you leave it longer, at temperatura ambiente.

Some people do without the blanching and just add the Agretti to the hot oil or butter. Slowly cooked in butter with a little garlic, the agretti becomes a sauce for a simple ravioli that just about anyone can cook in a vacation home kitchen.

You can also put the agretti into a sterilized jar and then top up the jar with good vinegar. Cover and set in a cool place for a couple of weeks and you have pickled agretti.

Or, as mom would say, "pickled grass." But you know what? She loved it. We had to buy more.

Hotels? Waiting for the maid to barge in? When you think about it, who needs that chocolate on the pillow? I'd rather be in the thick of things without a smear of chocolate on my cheek.

Yeah, I know, after a week or two in a vacation rental, nobody's going to come by with a certificate and make you an honorary citizen--but you'll learn a whole lot more about the culture of the place you've chosen to spend some quality time in than you would if you were holed up in a hotel.

When I'm at my Italian house, I'm constantly reminded of the different way Italians look at food. We Americans talk of "eating local" and then define "local food" as something that you can find within 100 miles from home. When we can't find anything to eat 100 miles away we simply redefine "local" as being within 250 miles. Problem solved.

When eating at my Italian neighbours' house recently, I was treated to the Tuscan idea of eating local. My neighbour had grown the corn, dried and ground it to make the polenta we'd eaten. The Cingiale (wild boar) that made up the sauce for the polenta once made a mess of the local forest. Two wines were offered, both from local vineyards and aged and bottled in the same building I live in.

My neighbours even win gigantic trophies for their salami. Speaking of salami, I go nuts when I'm in the local store. In America you get maybe one or two kinds of salami. In Italy there are so many you can't count them. They come in different textures, different degrees of dryness, differently spiced and they're made from the flesh of different animals, some of which race for a living.

There's no more satisfying reason to travel than to discover the amazing diversity of cultures that exist in the world.