Best Of Archives - Page 14 of 15

Best Of Archives - Page 14 of 15 - Itch.world

A three-minute escape to Italy.

Tuscany, travel, medieval village, Italy, festivals, celebrations, customs, cooking, recipes, living in Italy, moving to Italy, visiting, visit, restaurants, language

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February 3, 2019 In Best Of, Roam By Nancy

Adventures in high fashion: Sugar

Where I live I’m surrounded by three-wheeled Ape trucks, nonne in housecoats, and farmers in “onesie” jumpsuits on tractors. The last thing I expected to find is that I am near one of the fashion meccas of the world: Beppe Angiolini’s remarkable store, Sugar, in Arezzo. Another surprise is that an expat friend I’ve made in the village is also an ex-fashionista with serious cred in the fashion world and has become my guide and interpreter of this foreign universe. Or at least foreign to me, who has always been slightly terrified of high fashion.

This savvy woman used to be one of the key executives at Neiman-Marcus where she helped discover brands, including bringing Prada into the limelight. Then she moved to Italy to turn Gucci around with Tom Ford. So when she raves about Beppe and his store, and why it is important, I listen.

Luxury brands control every aspect of how their collections are displayed and sold. They go to market through their own stores or through branded sections of stores that carry many different lines. There is no mingling between Chloe and Alexander Wang in the racks at Barneys. If a store buys a collection, they buy the whole thing. Apparently there’s only one guy with enough clout to pick individual items from collections and art direct his own mix, and that’s Beppe, who opened Sugar in the 1980s.

Beppe Angiolini from TheSartorialist.com

He recently restored the ancient Palazzo Lambardi in Arezzo and relocated his store from across the street. The mix of lighting, mirrors, video, and modern furniture with the ancient frescoed walls makes one of the most fascinating architectural spaces I’ve seen. During restoration they discovered several rooms with Roman mosaic floors which they have skillfully incorporated with raised glass floors. In this stark space is a startling juxtaposition with a cluster of mannequins sporting the latest look.

Particularly after the demise of the store Colette in Paris, Sugar is now even more of an international destination. They will be opening rooms to stay in on the top floor, and have a small caffe with seriously good coffee.

And no, I am no more fashionable than before. But at least I know where I can work on it. And if you are so inclined, they have a serious online store at Sugar.it.

January 27, 2019 In Best Of, Chow, Live By Nancy

Spezzatura di maiale: nose to tail in action

After living in Tuscany for six years we were lucky enough to be invited to one of the most storied family events in Italy—the spezzatura di maiale—or the dividing of the pig. This tradition of using all parts of the pig has inspired chefs from Fergus Henderson of St. John in London—whose restaurants and cookbooks have popularized the idea of “nose to tail”—to Samin Nosrat, who filmed a pig being butchered in Italy for her cooking series “Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat.” An invitation to spezzatura di maiale offered the chance to go deeper than the popular coverage to see what this tradition is like in a family setting, as it has been done for generations.

For the majority of people in Italy, for hundreds of years, raising a pig was everything. I’ve learned that the ideas we have about the bounty of the Italian countryside are largely a modern construct. For most of history everyone but the aristocracy was barely getting by. Many of the oldest generation still living were raised in conditions of near-starvation because of Mussolini’s agricultural policies—for many years in the 1900s even plain pasta was a luxury. It was difficult to raise a pig to maturity because it required enough excess food to feed it. If at all possible, people raised two, one for their own use and one for the doctor. A kind of early medical insurance.

The pig is slaughtered in the winter because it is colder—the whole world becomes a refrigerator. A day or so after the pig is killed the spezzatura happens, which is a full day of work for four men (this seems to be an almost exclusively male task). Since the middle ages there have been butchers, called norcini, who traveled from town to town during the winter to do the spezzatura. Their skill with knives also made them the default surgeons and dentists.

After the intricate and precise work of cutting up the pig and making sausage, pancetta, salumi, prosciutto, and other things pork, there is a feast shared with friends and neighbors. When other families kill their pig it is their turn to host the festa. According to the family we joined this tradition has been largely unchanged during their lives, and it provides an opportunity to have some favorite foods, which are only available on this day.

We had no idea what to expect, and being a morally conflicted meat eater, I braced myself to be unnerved. But there was something about the atmosphere—the complete focus and attention of the men, the immaculate room, and the use of nearly every last part of the pig—that left me with feeling more of deep respect for the animal than anything else. This is an event that is not taken lightly. Very little of the meat is consumed fresh. The majority is preserved for use throughout the coming year. At the end of the day there were a couple of bones left, and that was it. Organs, skin, fat, cartilage … everything else was carefully used.

A bonus is that a breed of pig that was endangered, the Tuscan cinta senese, is now safely off the endangered list and thriving, because so many small farms, including this family, are raising them.

January 11, 2019 In Best Of, Live By Nancy

A wrinkle in time

Some mornings when I wake up I look at the painted walls in our bedroom and think about time. When we started working on the house the walls in the bedroom were a uniform yellow. One day when we were chipping away at something on the wall some paint fell off and we discovered that underneath the yellow the walls had been frescoed with an art deco pattern in blue, grey, green, and purple. John and I spent most of our free time for the following few months on ladders using baking spatulas to chip away at the yellow to uncover what was below.

In one small section, a chunk of wall fell away and revealed yet another pattern below the one we were working on, this one with cobalt blue. We think we’ve pieced together that the earlier decoration was probably done in the 1700s, and the art deco one in the 1800s. They were painted because what is now our bedroom, which is on the second floor, would have probably been the living room at the time, as you would never receive guests on the ground floor.

But what interests me most is to imagine the thoughts and conversations of the people who stood right where I am now laying, probably having animated discussions about which pattern to choose, which colors, which painter. The same conversations, concerns, and inspirations of light and proportion of the room that John and I have had, but separated by four centuries. Sometimes I feel like there is a thin gauze separating us, and if I strain hard enough I can see through it to the other side, to those other people and times. And I am reminded all the time that we are very temporary caretakers of this little patch of earth.

There are a couple of spots of even older paint that we stumbled across. When we bought the house everyone believed it was from the 1700s, but when we started restoration it became clear that the core was much older. Our house is a big box, taller than it is wide. The core of it was apparently a three-story defensive tower/home, which underwent a major remodel in the 1700s to add another third to the side and back. (The picture at the top shows how many times windows changed positions on the front of the tower over the years.) As a historian once told me, if you lived outside a walled village you either lived with multiple families in a hovel, or a defensive tower. This older paint dates from when our bathroom wall was part of a tower. And you can go back and back. A very nice farmhouse that is near us down the hill was once a Roman villa. The tiny lane in front of our house was originally an Etruscan road. And that’s just what we vaguely know about.

A lovely friend mailed me a book called Here. In it, the illustrator Richard McGuire has imagined the snatches of life that have occurred in the place that is now a nondescript room, spanning hundreds of thousands of years. It reminds me to occasionally take a deep breath, no matter where I am and how modern it seems, to appreciate what a small speck we really are in a very long chain of events that have happened, and will happen.

January 2, 2019 In Best Of, Live By Nancy

Lepers, donkeys, and baby Jesus

Around Christmas every year a surprising transformation takes place in the small hamlet of Le Ville. A cluster of nondescript, fairly modern houses, and the adjacent garden plots and fields, turn into ancient Jerusalem.

Our local Jerusalem is inhabited by Romans, slaves, shepherds, spice grinders, metal workers, basket makers, rug merchants, a colony of lepers, and more, along with cattle, goats, sheep, and donkeys. At the center is always a couple, accompanied by a newborn, a bull, a donkey and a couple of angels. It is the living nativity of Le Ville, or “presepe vivente.”

I grew up in a culture where Christmas is all about the tree. In Italy, the most important symbol is the nativity scene. They are more common than Christmas trees—there’s one in every church, most homes, and some businesses. I even spotted one in the deli case of the cafe at the train station.

A few towns have decided to take it further and create living nativities. In 2005, some people from the hamlet of Le Ville went to a living nativity over the border in Umbria and decided that they would create their own. They started work in July of that year, and according to the organizers, “worked incessantly, every afternoon, late into the night” to make the Christmas deadline. It was small but a success and has grown every year. This year around 10,000 people will come.

It’s the thing I look forward to the most over the holidays. There are over 200 volunteer participants in 50 scenes, lit by over 1,500 candles and numerous open fires, with music from Ben Hur playing over speakers. The path through it is a kilometer long. There’s a cantina halfway through serving olive-oil soaked bread toasted over an open fire, and pottery mugs of hot spiced wine. The sheer pageant of it sweeps me along—Italians have a special gift for spectacle—it is not surprise that opera was created here.

It also has a nice Tuscan practicality. It happens for five nights between December 26th and January 6th—it can’t start earlier because there wouldn’t be a baby Jesus. The three wise men don’t show up until the last event, on Epiphany or Twelfth Night (when they originally appeared). They enter with great fanfare and head to the manger.

The competition to be the sacred family is carefully managed by the organizers so as to not hurt any feelings. Couples who have recently given birth take turns, and Le Ville leads the way in gender equality with three of the five babies this year being girls. Also, parents are parents—you don’t need to be married to be Mary and Joseph.

December 26, 2018 In Best Of, Chow, Recipes By Nancy

How Santina makes agnolotti

Our reason for wanting to talk with grandmothers about cooking is to delve into a slice of Italian life: the role that nonne play in the family, traditions that are almost lost, and what all that means today, in modern Italy.

When we interviewed Santina about making agnolotti, a traditional Italian filled pasta, our goal was to capture more than just how to make it. Which we did. But those elements did complicate the edit. We decided to create an addendum to yesterday’s video, showing more practically how to actually make this wonderful dish, for those who want to roll up their sleeves.

So, here it is.

December 25, 2018 In Best Of, Chow, Recipes By Nancy

Making pasta with a grandmother

We are starting to develop our series on grandmothers cooking. Curious about what special things grandmothers make for the holidays, we were led to Santina, a pasta-making phenomenon. She always has fresh pasta she has made on hand to give to her family, including grandchildren, and great nieces and nephews. They frequently drop by for meals and keep her informed on the latest news in their lives.

We thought we’d be focusing on how Santina makes a filled pasta, agnolotti, but as is often the case here the people turn out to be more interesting than just what they do. Santina has inspired us to do two videos. This video gives you a sense of her special spirit, the role that a nonna often plays in Italian families, and what Christmas feasts are like in this small village. We wondered if there is a secret that Italian grandmothers have to keep their families legendarily close. We were surprised (and delighted by) the unexpected direction the answer to this question took, because of her wit.

Tomorrow we will share Santina, Part II, with some coaching and hints you need to make agnolotti, or any other fresh pasta, at home.

December 24, 2018 In Best Of, Live By Nancy

Hell’s Santas (on Vespas)

Christmas Eve in our village is not for the faint of heart. Santas of all ages, sizes, and both sexes come roaring into the piazza on every type of Vespa bearing sacks of presents which they give to the waiting kids. The piazza, dominated by a huge tree, is packed with a pretty good percentage of the village population. Sometimes one of the Santas bears a striking resemblance to someone you know.

Some years the presents are better than others. One of the first years we were in Italy the Santas gave out soccer balls to the boys and Italian grammar books to the girls. Our little four-year old friend, in the photo, was obviously delighted to receive a present that would yield so many hours of fun.

December 14, 2018 In Best Of, Live By Nancy

Ho! Ho! No.

I recently returned from London where I completed my tour of duty of some of the centers of the holiday universe: Regent Street, Liberty, Fortnum and Mason, Covent Garden … No one does Christmas like the Brits. Masterful holiday lights, bustling crowds, beautiful ornaments and decorations for the home, special things to eat, and, of course, everything you could imagine to buy as gifts.

thanks to Jeff Moore and Time Out

Then I returned home. Our valley is a kind of anti-matter to the London-style Christmas. The first few years we lived here I was stunned by the fact that there was virtually nothing to buy. Or to decorate the house with. Or to wrap presents with. Present options in our piazza include special housecoats to clean in. The farm stand has gift baskets with green peppers and celeriac. And there is this knitted lamp shade. The Santa (shown above) from the grocery-store-anchored mini mall sums it up.

There’s panforte, panettone, and things with truffles, but they can hardly compete with the goods on display in a big city. (There are exceptions to everything, of course. The family-run Busatti linens sold in the valley are revered around the world.) There’s none of that frenzied shopping bustle and long lines, except at the butcher.

I love this more relaxed version of Christmas. It was easy for me to think that my identity was defined by the presents I gave and how well-decorated my house was, but this world has offered up a different way to be during the holidays. Last year when I went to the sports store to buy ski wear there was only one set of choices, and you are lucky if they had the right size. There isn’t that treadmill of decisions about brands, performance, price, taste, and style.

Despite the lack of commercial Christmas cheer, I’ve never felt it more deeply. Everyone you meet greets you with an “Auguri!” and kiss. While running errands tonight I stopped by a church from the year 700, a stone’s throw from our house, while they were setting up the nativity scene. It gave me chills.

And this grabbed my attention as much as the lights over Piccadilly—what’s really going on in this life-sized manger scene near the piazza?

November 30, 2018 In Best Of, Live By Nancy

Let’s talk about money

Death, sex, money, obscenities—the rules are hard enough to determine in your native culture and language. I find discovering how another culture handles them a constant fascination. The Tuscans are in-your-face frank about so many things that I would have expected that money would be near the top of the list, but there seems to be this slight reluctance to demand payment mixed with honesty, the assumption of honesty on the part of customers, and a lack of urgency about getting paid that I don’t yet fully understand.

So many examples… Lola, our dog, was very sick this summer, which required once or twice daily visits to the vet for a month, complete with blood tests, IVs, and ultrasounds. She was finally declared cured so I asked to pay. The vets said they were busy with other things and to worry about it later. I followed up a series of calls and texts to get the bill, and a month or so later they finally totaled it up, texted me the total, and I was able to pay them.

In this area of Italy, when you eat at some restaurants you don’t get a bill. You go to the register and recite what you had and they tell you how much. Simple when it’s a couple of people, but groups of kids commonly go to these places —like 15-20 people—for birthday parties and other celebrations, and then go up, one at a time, and pay for exactly what they had. And it all seems to work.

At first, I thought these types of experiences were simply a function of being in a small town, but then John went to a medium-sized city about 45-minutes away to rent a rototiller for a few days. They load this three thousand euro piece of equipment in the back of the car and jot down his first name and phone number on a piece of scrap paper and he drives away. No deposit. No credit card taken. No ID. And no surprise when he returned it two days later.

One year we found a Christmas tree (late) tall enough for our living room even further away from the house. The guy cuts down a 15-foot tree to size, carefully loads it on the car, we choose a second smaller tree, and then realize he doesn’t accept credit cards. His solution is to give us his bank account number so that we can transfer money to him later rather than having to worry about finding cash that evening. “Con calma!” “No hurry!” he yells after us as we drive away with the trees.

One day the car needed gas so I stopped at a local station. It was cold and I didn’t want to pump it myself so I pulled into full serve. The older guy who owns the station came out, waving me to back up and move the car over to the self-serve pump. I assumed that it was because the other pump was broken, but no, he says “That one’s too expensive!” and proceeds to fill the tank himself.

My daughter, Donella, and I returned to this station about a month later badly needing windshield washing fluid. We had just filled the car up at another station where they were out of the fluid we needed, so we stopped here. I went in to buy a bottle and the same man comes out, insists on filling up the fluid reservoir, and washing all the windows for us, then charges us one euro for the solution. We pulled out, a little stunned, and Donella’s reaction was “How can this world even exist?”

I have no idea how much we owe our dentist at the moment, post braces, wisdom teeth surgery, and multiple cleanings, but we will get it all sorted out, at some point. And the price is always more than fair.

The Tuscans often pride themselves on being furbo (crafty, fox-like), and thrifty, so I find it hard to reconcile these traits with this seeming lack of urgency about getting paid, and an assumption that people will pay. Homogeneous culture? (But we are clearly outsiders, albeit with the “right” kind of passport.) Or perhaps a desire not to contaminate daily life with too much fixation on finances? I haven’t got an answer for you now, but will write more as I learn.

November 22, 2018 In Best Of, Live By Nancy

I park, therefore I am

The Tuscans are astoundingly pragmatic about life and I delight in seeing how this pragmatism plays out in daily life. Take the act of parking, for instance, which seems to be elevated to a fundamental right of freedom and self-expression. If there’s a large section of pavement across from your favorite bar, which happens to be a striped traffic island, who says it can’t also be a perfectly good place to park? After all, no one is supposed to be driving there, anyway, and a traffic island is a waste of good real estate.

As an overall rule, the lines painted on the pavement of parking lots are only vague suggestions of where cars should go, or how many cars fit in the lot. Many, many more can fit in as long as there are good manners and common sense used about never blocking someone in.

There are a number of parking lots I have noticed with no exit. The only way out is to backup the length of the lot, hoping no one is coming in at the same time. This system accommodates more cars in a lot and everyone just works around the inconvenience for this reason.

This is one of my favorite parking moments, for so many reasons. It’s a car from the official driving school (the one John and I took driving lessons from, which is a whole other story…). This parking lot is full, so the driving school instructor decides to park illegally in front of the trash dumpsters. What isn’t in the photo is that there is a huge lot right next to this one that is nearly empty, but you have to pay 70 cents to park there, so clearly it’s much better to ignore the no parking zone and park in front of the dumpster.

But the real story is that all of this somehow works. The driving instructor knows when the trash truck comes by and will need access to the dumpster, and that it is fine to block it for now. The police wouldn’t ticket for the same reason—you can’t really expect someone whose office is opposite and is constantly in and out of their car to park in the pay lot.

About a month after we’d moved to our village I’d parked the car in the square overnight, as we often did. When I returned the next morning I was surprised to find that it was now the only car there, and that the weekly market had sprung up surrounding it. Even more surprising, we hadn’t been ticketed. It turned out the police knew the car of the new Americans in town and cut us some slack because we weren’t yet up to speed on the fine points of village living, like what days the main square is emptied of cars for the market.

I love all of this, and it makes me frustrated when I come back to the U.S. and the rules of parking lots feel rigid, with no opportunity for creativity, common sense, and freedom of expression. In any given parking lot there is so much wasted space because people are parking only between the lines. I see parking opportunities everywhere, just ripe for seizing, if you are willing to break the rules.