Image Courtesy of Love Ala

Every six months I have the incredible opportunity to rent an amazing house with eleven of my favorite photographers.  We sit.  We eat.  We craft. We cocktail.  And we simply enjoy our lives.  It’s the most fun thing I do all year!  This trip is taking us up to the Santa Ynez valley where we plan on doing very little.  You can follow along with us at A Traveling Heart.

Have a beautiful week!

Hands down, the best thing we did in Tuscany was take a cooking class.  I’d looked into quite a few classes before we went, and it seemed we had a few options for an inclusive day.  An Italian woman that spoke no English, an American woman teaching Italian cooking and an Italian woman with fantastic English.  As we don’t speak Italian, the first was out.  And as it seems ridiculous to go all the way to Italy to learn about Italian cooking from an American, that was out.  And so we booked Alessandra… which was the best decision of all.

Alessandra is loud.  She is funny.  She is direct.  She is generous.  She is so warm, so kind and so wonderful!  We meet Alessandra at a coffee shop in town to go over the menu, drink some coffee and run through what the day would be like.  Then we followed her through town to do the shopping… grocery store, butcher, produce store.  And then to her house where we drank wine, cooked amazing food and learned so much about Italy!    She told us about living in Italy, about the healthcare system, about bidets… no question was off limits and I learned a lot more than simply the proper way to cook pasta.  I think one of the best parts for me was really spending time with an Italian family, in an Italian home.  Those things that you don’t really get a feel for when you’re staying in a hotel, or just passing through a town.   How they live the everyday life… how it was different from my everyday, and how it was so similar.  We ate together and more than overstayed our welcome.  It was all around the most amazing experience!  If you are ever in the vicinity of Cortona, call Alessandra and grab a seat at her next class… it will be the best part of your trip too!

Finally!   Finally I have dug my way through the thousands of images I shot in Tuscany!   Knowing that I wanted to do a lot of shooting, I decided to only take my digital cameras.  While I love & adore shooting film, I try to be aware of each shutter click.  Because, well, it’s wicked expensive.  Thought I would be a bit easier on myself and let my fingers click away.  And I’m pretty happy with the outcome!

My aunt rented an amazing house just outside of Cortona, a sweet little town on the side of a mountain.  It’s where Under the Tuscan Sun was actually filmed!  It was absolutely gorgeous, so, well, Italian!   All about the food, the wine and the people!  It was everything that I hoped it would be!  What we were not expecting, was the heat.  It.was.so.hot.  Sweltering.  Unbearable.  We made up for it with copious amounts of prosecco and dips into the pool!

So, this is the first round of images from our fabulous trip, the little towns of Tuscany!

Chris & I actually flew into Rome, and took a train into the city.  When we were there in December I fell in love with the Trastevere neighborhood.  We had just missed dinner at La Gensola, a little restaurant in the neighborhood, so it was high on my list to return.  So.Good.  So.Fresh.  So. Delicious!  Go, eat all of the fish.  All of it.

So, I left my camera in the hotel room the one night we were in town.  That’s it on Rome.  Just the train/drive into the city.  Blargh, that’s so boring!

In the morning we rented a car and drove out to Tuscany.  This is the view from our house.   Nothing… just stars, sky & fields.

And this, this is Cortona.

We drove over to Siena.  And I have a lot of thoughts about Siena.  If you are in Florence, and don’t want to rent a car, take the train to Siena.  It’s cute, it’s Tuscan, and it’s very different from Florence.  BUT, if you have a car, and can go to any of the little towns in Tuscany, avoid Siena with all you have.  For a small town in Tuscany, it’s pretty big, it’s touristy and not so much authentic.

If you have a car, go to Montepulciano.  My husband still cannot say this word.  At this point, I think he thinks it’s just funny to add other letters.  But this town, this town is fantastic.  And produces some of the best wine in the region.  Well, my favorite at least!  We didn’t go to Montalcino on this trip, but we went in December and it’s just as fantastic!   Some of the best views we saw in all of Tuscany were in Montalcino.

Arezzo has a more medieval feel… we didn’t spend much time here, but it’s super tiny and very nice.

Any excuse to make pasta, drink wine and sit with my friends.  So, after deciding on Beautiful Ruins for her next review, Jess & I thought a delicious pasta dish would beautifully complement.  So, so, so good.  So light and airy.  So unexpected.  So. Good.

Jess and I made the pasta from scratch, while surprisingly easy, is totally not necessary to really enjoy this dish!  The roasted garlic will make your entire kitchen smell like heaven.  Almost so good that you wish it were a perfume. The preserved lemons are tough to find, we did spot some at The Cheese Store in Silverlake.  The smell atrociously.  Taste delicious when warm, not so much when cold.   Make lots, store it in individual containers and love on those leftovers for days!  I generally hate leftovers, so this is saying quite a bit for me!   Enjoy!

Fettuccine with Preserved Lemon and Roasted Garlic
adapted from The Essential New York Times Cookbook, recipe by Molly O’Neill

2 heads of garlic

1 T plus 2 t olive oil

Salt

2 T unsalted butter

1 preserved lemon, pulp and rind finely chopped

1/2 c freshly grated Parmesan cheese, plus more for serving

1 lb Fettuccine

Freshly ground black pepper

Zest of one lemon

1. Heat the oven to 400 degrees. Chop the top third off each head of garlic and discard. Drizzle the heads with a teaspoon each of olive oil, wrap in foil and roast until the garlic is very soft and golden brown, 50 to 70 minutes. Remove from the oven and let cool slightly.

2. Squeeze the garlic out of skins. Set aside.

3. Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. Cook the fettuccine until al dente. Toward the end of cooking, scoop out about 1/2cup of the pasta cooking water and reserve. Drain the pasta and place in a serving bowl.

4. Meanwhile, combine the remaining tablespoon of olive oil and the butter in a small pan over medium-low heat. When the butter melts, add the roasted garlic and preserved lemon and cook for 1 minute.

5. Toss the fettuccine with the preserved lemon mixture. Toss again with the Parmesan and season generously with salt and pepper. Add a bit of the reserved pasta water if necessary. Grate the zest of one lemon on top to serve.

I’m still working on our Italy images, but until they’re ready, perhaps you ought to bury yourself in the most fabulous Italian novel!   I haven’t had a chance to read this one yet, but Jessica’s review makes me so happy and excited for it that I bought it on my phone while we were chatting about it over brunch.  That good!

(a few frames from our trip to Portovenere in December 2011)

Enjoy!

Beautiful Ruins by Jess Walter

As part of our Summertime Wanderlust reading series, let’s travel to Italy! It might be my favorite country in the whole wide world, but you know what’s better than just plain Italy: Italy in the early 60′s…with movie stars! Bananas, I know. Actually, this is the perfect “my body can’t travel, but my mind can” book because, in addition to Italy, Walter takes us to so many different places (the Pacific Northwest, Hollywood, Idaho, London and Edinburgh) and times (1960′s, present day, the end of WWII, 1980′s). By the second chapter, I was completely caught up in this delectably inter-woven story. I am forever in awe of a storyteller who can take several seemingly unrelated strands and turn them into one lovely story. It’s tough to achieve, so when it’s done well, I can think of nothing more enjoyable to peruse.

The novel begins in the tiny (fictional) coastal village of Porto Vergogna, home to a few fisherman and not much else. It’s 1962, there’s not a whole lot going on, but Pasquale Tursi has great aspirations for his family’s teeny hotel there. (The name of his hotel is Hotel Adequate View. I dare you not to laugh at that.) He dreams that one day, American tourists will flock to his place, much as they’d started to visit the nearby Cinque Terre. But the village isn’t connected to the rail lines. It’s so small and insignificant that it can barely sustain its handful of inhabitants. This makes it the perfect lay-low-lair for a dying young actress, Dee Moray, who flees the set of Cleopatra in Rome and appears on the docks and stays in Pasquale’s hotel. With her, Dee brings the all messiness of the whole modern world, changing the little village, and Pasquale forever.

Other characters include Claire Silver, a creative assistant who left her broody/serious academic endeavors for a job at a dying production company. (The only problem I have with Claire is that she lives in Santa Monica, works on the Universal Lot and her commute is described as taking exactly 18 minutes. This is impossible. But let’s not get bogged down.) Her boyfriend is an out-of-work actor with good looks and a porn addiction. Her boss, Michael Deane, used to be a huge Hollywood player, but is nearing the end of his life and trying to hold on to some of his former success. Shane Wheeler is an all-around failure, living with his parents after his recent divorce and hoping to sell his screenplay to Deane’s company. It’s about the Donner Party. As in, cannibals. An in, people eating people. As in, why would anyone want to see that movie?! Lucky us, one of the chapters in Beautiful Ruins is Shane’s pitch for his movie, which is called Donner!, so we get to see the magic unfold. Another chapter is the first and only chapter of a book that a failed writer and frequent guest at the Hotel Adequate View has left behind in one of the rooms. That one little stand-alone chapter made my eyes water like crazy (as in, I was NOT crying!)

All of these character’s stories are beautifully inter-woven to a perfect climax, after which, all of the ends are tied up like a pretty little gift to yourself. (As in, please do yourself a favor and read this book!) Calgon only takes me to my bathtub, (which, after a moment of soaking, I invariably wish was cleaner, thereby causing me to question my housekeeping skills as a whole. It’s all quite depressing) but this book is transporting!

If Gemma Hardy were sitting outside Blackbird Hall, and considering a cocktail, perhaps she would whip this up for herself.  Because it is fantastic, and Scottish, and perfectly mysterious.   Enjoy!

eeek the very first Flipping Pages!  I’m not going to lie, I’m super excited about this one because, well, it’s delicious.  One of those books you don’t want to put down.  And definitely one of those books I never would have read had Jessica not been in my life.   So, go pick this one up and settle in.  Tomorrow there will be a cocktail to go along with this delicious story!

Summertime Wanderlust: The Flight of Gemma Hardy by Margot Livesey

Jessica at Edinburgh castle, 2001

Every year as summer rolls around, it hits me: Wanderlust. I don’t want to be home wrapped up (read: tied down) in the everyday, I want board a plane and roam distant lands (which hopefully have luxurious accommodations).  However, life sometimes gets in the way of my travel plans. I know, ridiculous! When I can’t get away, the next best thing to travel, for me, has always been finding a great story to get lost in. During the summer, I try to read novels set in faraway places. So simple, so cheap. All you need is a comfy, quiet place, your book and your imagination. Add a latte (or, dare I say, a cocktail) and a few delectable morsels to nibble on and the experience could almost compete with a fabulous vacation. I am aware that this sounds cheesy, but who cares?

The Flight of Gemma Hardy satisfies some serious wanderlust. Set in Scotland, and later in Iceland, the novel is a clever re-tooling of Jane Eyre. In most situations, I’d frown upon something billed as the “retelling” of a classic, beloved novel. It seems like stealing. Or just laziness. Practically every beloved classic has been copied, both outright and covertly, a thousand times. The originals are perfect. Just read those! But Livesey takes the basic threads of Jane Eyre to create a story that feels fresh. It’s fun to note all of the clever parallels to Bronte’s masterpiece (they’re sort of sign posts that mark your place in the story: here, the harrowing school years. There, the letter announcing a job offer), but you don’t need to have read Jane Eyre to enjoy Gemma Hardy.

It begins in the 1950′s and stretches into the late 60′s as Gemma is taken from her native Iceland to her uncle’s home in Scotland after the deaths of both her parents. Her uncle intends to raise her as one of his own, but he, too, dies, leaving her in the care of his mean-spirited wife. Gemma’s aunt sends her away to a boarding school where Gemma must work as a housemaid and fight to get an education where she can. Eventually, she finds a job as an au pair to a wild young girl living under the care of Mr. Sinclair, master of Blackbird Hall in the Orkney Islands. And then things get really interesting.

The novel is so lovely, so skillfully crafted. Some of the gothic elements from Jane Eyre are preserved, but don’t feel out of place in the least. I found myself cringing at all of Gemma’s missteps, all her little misfortunes. And going through all of these with her make reading about her triumphs all the more satisfying. The ending breaks away from the Jane Eyre model to fit in more with the time it’s set in, the beginning of the women’s movement. By the end, you’ll be sorry you can’t follow her just a bit farther, just a bit longer.

Happy reading!

We’re back from a whirlwind trip to Italy & Spain!  It was HOOOOT.  So hot.  Like, taking a vacation in a sauna hot.  The kind of hot where are you just want to stand under a cold shower.  The kind of hot that makes it horrendously hard to get up and be a productive tourist.  But, we tried.  Our feeble attempts were usually rewarded with prosecco, or cava or sangria.  And that, well, that made it delicious!

I’m still getting through all of the images from the trip, but I did want to share all of the goodies that I brought home!   I love to bring back things that I’ll use.  Things that will remind me of the wonderful experience without necessarily screaming I WENT TO ITALY AND BROUGHT BACK THIS T-SHIRT!  I try to pick up the pretty things that a country is known for.  Things that might have originated there or have beautifully adapted to there.

So, turns out the Italians love olive wood.  Or they just have too much of it.  So I picked up olive wood cheese boards and lugged them through Italy.  And then Spain.  They are so heavy and so lovely I couldn’t bear to leave them behind.  More olive wood serving spoons and olive oil drippers.  A few kitchen utensils and the teeniest flour scoop.  I adore it and am so upset with myself for not buying at least fifteen of them. The book is Marie Antoinette in Spanish, picked up at a tiny outdoor book store in Barcelona.  And then my most favorite new purchase, a dragon head spicket for the new back yard sink.  If I’m going to have to scrub dirt off vegetables, I’d like to do it in style.  Now, just to find the perfect outdoor sink.  I’m hoping to find something in marble, maybe with a high back, so the spicket comes out of the wall, through the sink and then down.  I have a feeling it will be a lengthy search!