The Opera Lovers Cookbook

This is a transcript of the podcast appearing on our Podcast Page.

Carolyn: Francine Segan is a food historian, writer, lecturer and frequent radio and TV personality. She appears on CBS, The Discovery Channel, The History Channel and of course, The Food Network. In her monthly feature for the Tribune Media Syndicates, she has interviewed chefs we all know; such as Jacques Pepin, Lidia Bastianich, and Mario Batali. Francine Segan has also written a collection of wonderfully themed cookbooks: The Philosopher’s Kitchen, Movie Menus, Shakespeare’s Kitchen and the one we’ll be talking about today, The Opera Lovers CookBook.

The Opera Lovers CookBook is a 2007 Cook Book Award Finalist of the International Association of Culinary Professionals, and a 2007 Book Award Finalist of the James Beard Foundation.

Thanks to the support and collaboration of New York City’s Metropolitan Opera Guild, The Opera Lovers CookBook is even more than a wonderful collection of recipes. The book is illustrated with rare photographs and drawings from the archives of the Metropolitan Opera.

Carolyn: The book is so interesting, not only the recipes which are just great, but there are all these little things, opera notes, little snippets, trivia about operas and how certain dishes became focal points in certain performances. It’s more than just recipes.

Francine: it’s kind of this wonderful project of trying to get people who may not know opera, to have a little taste, in every sense. So there are of course recipes, which were inspired by different operas. And then are also little sidebars, little tidbits of information, like little morsels, little nibbles at a cocktail party, of information about composers or maybe a wonderful aria or song about toasting or drinking. Or something special about a composer and his connections w/ food. Little trivia things like, food that was inspired by opera and all that is weaved into wonderful recipes, wonderful photographs, photographs from the Metropolitan Opera.

Also, because this is so much a cookbook to get you to enjoy music and maybe share it with friends, it also has tips on how to entertain, how to do a little party or buffet or a dessert party. Just to invite people over, put on a little CD of opera music and kind of experience it in a different way.

Carolyn: One of the things that I like about it as well is the title, Opera Lovers Cookbook. You take it from many different angles. For instance, there are recipes that seemed to have actually been featured in certain scenes in certain operas. Then there are dishes that are named after composers or opera singers. Then there are dishes that come from the town of a great composer, or maybe a favorite dish of a composer or a performer. So you really do take the whole spectrum of the connection between food and opera and it’s wonderful.

Francine: Well thank you. Doing a cookbook is a lot like cooking. You take a little bit of this and a little bit of that and you stir a little bit more and you taste it and what does it need? It’s the same thing when you create a cookbook. Especially when you collaborate with such a wonderful organization like the Metropolitan Opera House.

Carolyn: Let’s talk about some of the Italian inspired recipes.

Francine: You can really see my Italian roots because it has 12 chapters and 5 of them are Italian language opera-centric. So there’s a very heavy emphasis. I did a Bel Canto chapter, composers like Donizetti from Sicily. And in his day there was a wonderful dish in Sicily spaghetti with eggplant and a wonderful tomato sauce and they, to honor their wonderful composer-son, named the dish after one of his best operas, Norma. So Pasta alla Norma which everybody knows, is really named after his opera, in his honor. So that’s one of them.

I give Verdi a whole chapter. Verdi’s a wonderful composer of so many important works there’s lots of different dishes that are inspired by him. Including an Aida pyramid dessert. You know the little, wonderful, the balls that the Italians we do for the Christmas time which we fry, the little honey dipped balls, we always serve it in a little pyramid. So I thought, how perfect is that for Aida? So I kind of did a little free association there.

Carolyn: Oh that’s great.

Francine: But then, Puccini’s got a chapter. So for La Boheme in the second act, he has a line where he has people strolling and saying a list of ingredients. It almost jumps out as a recipe to me. It says dates and ferone and candied fruit and all I’m thinking is: Macedonia la frutta seca, which is a kind of dried fruit salad that Italians make in the wintertime. And it’s a very homey dish. It’s all sorts of nuts and candies that are left over, like ferone, little bits of amoretti, dried fruit. They’re all mixed together, put a little splash of some liquor. and just that scene with all the ingredients being called out just kind of made me think of that.

Carolyn: Oh that’s wonderful. I’ve love for you to tell the story about what opera was like in the Baroque period. So different from what opera is like for us now.

Francine: When you’d go to the opera house, back when Rossini was a composer, you would enter and of course you’d be elegantly dressed with the long gloves. You’d mingle w/ friends and you’d take your seat. But unlike the theater today, right away you’d notice some differences if you went back in time.

First of all the lights don’t get dim in the audience the way it does nowadays. and also the theater stage wasn’t set up high, it was kind of the same level that you were. Those 2 changes, the proscenium going up and the house lights going down didn’t happen until Wagner, until like the 1870’s. In Rossini’s day the lights were on. A little bit because you had to read your libretto but a lot because you were chatting, looking at your friends what they’re wearing, getting up and down. Because also in Rossini’s day, there was no intermission. So you’re sitting for this long opera and the composers knew, the audience knew, the performers knew that you’d have to get up and stretch your legs, get a little snack.

It was so known that in fact there are arias that are called Arias di Sorbetto, Sorbet Arias. Meaning in the middle of the opera, Rossini and other composers from that time period would stick in an aria because they knew you were going to get up and get a sorbet. Sorbet was really nice snack that they used to serve in the opera houses. Very elegant. So this Aria di Sorbetto which is always at the mid point, is always secondary characters, they’re not singing anything that’s going to advance the story, not particularly important, you can miss it. But it’s nice background music while you’re getting up and getting your snack.

The other thing that you would have seen if you went to the opera in Rossini’s time was that in the back of the house they would also have card tables set up. And people who were less interested in the opera would go in the back and play cards, they would gamble. And it was OK. Rossini got a cut of the house proceeds of the profits that were made from the gambling that was going on in the back.

So nowadays we sell popcorn and Jordan almonds in the movies, in those days you used to have sorbetto and your little gambling to make a little money.

Carolyn: Such a great story. I love that.

Francine: One of the things that I think also, just to kind of finish on Rossini, who’s of course the composer of L’Italiana in Algiers, La Barbara of Seville, lots of really wonderful works. He was probably the number one foodie composer. He loved food. He obsessed about it. He was a gourmet cook. When he would travel and he would have to put up a show, let’s say in Paris and he would have to stay there for a number of weeks. He would write home letters and I recently just saw one at a sweets shop in Genoa, that still exists today from Rossini’s times. It was a sweets shop that started in the 1700’s. And Rossini wrote a letter home to his friends, 2 separate letters to 2 separate friends, saying, please go to Romanengo and get me, and he’d make a list of all the sweets that he wanted, because here in Paris they don’t have such good food. He was so connected to Italy, he would always make fun of Paris. You know there’s nothing good to eat here, please bring me the salumi from Giuseppe’s Salumiere, please bring me the…You’d think that Paris was the wasteland of food. He just couldn’t tolerate it.

And of course this all spread and people knew, including the Baron Rothschild, from the famous vineyard. He was a wonderful opera lover. And he wanted to give a gift to Rossini. The opera season coincides with the grape harvest. So he took his most wonderful bushel of grapes and he had it personally delivered to Rossini’s dressing room and hotel. Rossini took the grapes, was very grateful, wrote a thank you note to the Baron saying, ‘Dear Baron Rothschild thank you so much for the grapes. But in the future I would like you to just know that for me, I prefer to take my wine not in a pill form. I like it liquid.’ So the Baron got the hint and he sent a case of Baron La Fete Rothschild, a nice case of wine to Rossini.

There’s also one, a funny Rossini story. When I was going thru the documents that the Metropolitan Opera had on all the composers, I was looking at the librettos because Rossini liked to dabble in art and he liked to draw. And on these librettos, when he was in Paris or Milan where his operas were sort of being tested, before they were finalized, in the margins he would draw these little Chianti bottles, these little bottles of wine in the margins and I would see 2, 3, or some pages that had 6,7 bottles of wine.

Carolyn: So these are like the old fashioned Chianti bottles with the raffia, wrapped?

Francine: Right. That little chubby bottle. So I couldn’t figure it out for the longest time. And then finally it dawned on me. In Italian, those kinds of wine bottles are called fiasco. Meaning like in English, fiasco, a disaster. They’re made from like leftover bottles or cheaper bottles. What he was saying was not, I need a drink, but this section of this opera needs help, it’s a fiasco!

Carolyn: So that was his shorthand?

Francine: That was his little crib note in the sides.

Carolyn: The trouble spots.

Francine: And he’s got some wonderful, wonderful urban legend and true food stories about him. Including, you know, going to a restaurant and asking for a dish and then not liking how it’s prepared so asking if he could go into the kitchen and re-cook things.

And there’s one dish that’s very famous. It’s named after him, it’s called Tornados Rossini, like a tornado, that’s how it’s spelled, that’s how it’s pronounced. And the story behind that name is that he was in France and he went into the kitchen to tell these French cooks that they didn’t know what they were doing, that they needed a nice Italian hand in there and he wanted to show them how to remake his favorite combination of food, which is filet mignon, truffles and foie gras. And so he was redoing it and the chef, of course, of this 4 star restaurant is screaming I can’t stand looking at you in here! I can’t stand looking at this! What are you doing I can’t look at this anymore! And Rossini turned and said, so then, turn your back. Tornez le dos in French. Which sounded sort of thru the way that the story got evolved to tornados instead of Tornez le dos.

Carolyn: OK, so it’s really, what’s the full name of the dish?

Francine: It’s really called Tornados, mispronounced, misspelled you know, like a storm, but it’s really called Tornez le dos. Turn your back.

Carolyn: I love the way these stories evolve.

Francine: A little urban myth, a little fact. It’s a delicious dish anyway. It’s a really heavy dish when you do it as a main course. In Opera Lovers Cookbook I do it as a little appetizer so you get just a little nibble. So one little filet mignon could serve like 6 people.

Carolyn: Puccini. Each dish celebrates his exotic operas. Can we talk a little bit about that?

Francine: Well, Puccini is uber Italian. I mean he was very connected to his Tuscany, very connected to Italy. But yet he set his operas in some pretty far flung locales. I mean, he’s got Madame Butterfly in Japan, he’s got La Fanciulla in America so I did a very eclectic buffet for Puccini. So I do some fun things. Tea eggs for the MB chapter and a ginger martini, sort of a Japanesey flavors. Tea eggs are just eggs that you boil then you crack the shells so it looks all broken up and then you soak it in the fridge for a few days in tea and some spices which flavors the egg but also gives it this pretty marble look. So that’s one example of a kind of far flung kind of recipe. It’s not Italian but it’s inspired by how eclectic his locales are.

Carolyn: The other thing I love about the book is I don’t know of another art discipline, or theatric discipline that’s so connected with eating as opera. I mean there’s just so many operas where you’ve got these fantastic ballroom scenes and banquet scenes and the actions revolving around the food.

Francine:One of my favorite categories are all the wonderful drinking songs in a sense, the toasting songs. Like in Don Giovanni, there’s a wonderful what they call a champagne aria. It’s really called Fin ch'han dal vino, just this very lively, one minute aria where he’s kind of telling his servant, go get every male guest drunk at the party because I want to sleep with all the wives.

Of course Don Giovanni is just this horrible character. But it’s a funny song and it’s one of the classic drinking songs. And of course the most beautiful probably is Brindisi from La Traviata. Libiamo, just that beautiful song that I think is the essence of the Italian spirit of you know, lift you glass, rejoice. The sparkling wine, the bubbliness, the effervescence of life that is in this glass of champagne or prosecco is something to be celebrated. And all the bubbliness of Italy’s wonderful sparkling wines just goes with the rhythm of the music and just is the perfect, perfect backdrop to a wonderful song celebrating what I think is some of the best of Italy. Our wine, toasting, having fun, enjoying life, celebrating life.

Carolyn: When Francine was a little girl, her Grandmother’s cooking rituals brought opera to life.

Francine: My grandmother would really cook to different arias. She’d pull out a certain one and so really felt like it was part of the recipe. Grandma’s got to go get this particular album, puts it on, puts it in a certain place. OK, now it’s the time to stir the risotto because this section’s going to last for whatever, 15, 17 minutes that she needs to make risotto. When she was going to cut onions, she go take out Madam Butterfly for the suicide aria and she says, I’m going to cry, I might as well have a good reason. And you can kind of hear the heart-wrenchingness of it, without hitting you on the head. It was just a wonderful music lesson to show the emotions that are in it, the fun of it, you know, when something is bubbling and boiling she’d put on something else very lively. So I think that cooking to opera can be a lot of fun and a great way to introduce it to yourself or to kids.

Carolyn: You know what’s wonderful about that? It makes opera approachable. This is something that you use while you’re doing your everyday things like cooking, opera is your accompaniment to that. As opposed to opera being some sort of rarified event that’s very formal and very separate from the rest of your life. This is like, no, it’s in my kitchen!

Francine: That’s a great point and why I like sharing with everyone that Rossini knew people needed a break. I do think it’s become something so fu-fu, high brow that we forget that this was supposed to be an entertainment form. This was fun, it’s OK to take it in snippets, you don’t have to sit with your hands folded in your lap. You can have a little bit. You can have more and you can take it when you like and that’s why I love the fact that CDs are now so great. You can have a little bit of it, and I also love that it’s in movie theaters now. So you can go for a very affordable price and experience the movie in a theater setting. If you do choose to want to sit and sort of see and listen to the whole thing from beginning to end, but I think it’s OK to just pick and choose your arias. And the Metropolitan Opera in fact, even made a little CD of just an assortment of different arias. They put the label of Opera Lovers Cookbook on it, and it’s a kind of CD for entertaining.

Carolyn: No kidding!

Francine: It’s sold in their wonderful giftshop, it’s the Opera Lovers Cookbook CD. Some of my favorites, some fun ones, a whole big mix. So when you are entertaining you can have a nibble of that, little piece of that, little bite of that.

To learn more, visit francinesegan.com.

Capri - Reflections of the Island of Dreams

This article also appears on our Italian Journal page.

What may be Capri's best gift: the time and desire to dream. Capri is an island that worships the senses. The sweet, slow surrender to the sun, the tropical smell of lotion, the feel of fresh cotton towels and the sharp taste of the sea's salt on your skin. Sun bursts onto the water every morning. I open the hotel's wooden shutters to the brilliant light. Craggy rocks jut out of the water's surface, their reflections splayed onto the ever-rippling blue water. I look down to see roads narrow and winding. Compact-sized buses, stifling and glittering metallic, wend their way around the Island below me. Above me, a grassy hiking trail leads to the Island peak, where a 360 degree view of shimmering water awaits. The hike soothes the brain, calms the mind, taxes the body.

This is the heady, intoxicating mixture that awakens our long dormant senses. It gave us the tale of the seductive Sirens and headstrong warriors, Jason and the Argonauts. Centuries later, the Roman Emperor Tiberius was lured to the Island and made it his summer retreat. Far from the restrictions of Roman governance and society, Capri became his hedonistic playground. Such beauty and sensuality surrounded by the sea unlocked the Emperor's fantasies and ultimately, his good judgment. Perhaps he stayed too long in the company of the Sirens.

Now, so many years later, Capri retains this magic. You understand why Jason had to be tied to a mast to resist the call to leave his ship. I was not, so I could not. I dive headlong into the luscious decadence of sea, sand, and sweat. I surrender to the pleasures, at once earthy and ethereal. Where does this strong, almost magnetic pull come from? Perhaps from wearing as little as possible because of the heat. Perhaps from sensing the chance to live another way, to be a character in another life. Jason didn't know what he was missing. It ultimately killed Tiberius.

In a profound way, we are forced to acknowledge our separation from our usual lives and our connection to Nature. There is more of It than of us; no avoiding it. We are small and profoundly lucky at the same time. Maybe it's this mixture of opposites, these contradictions that blend inside of us and close us off to our usual states of stress and hurry. We surrender. We have no choice; do with us what you will. Capri obliges. It's ready to insinuate itself into our blood and our minds with its hypnotic beauty and heat. In a short time, our interior walls and protective barriers crumble, and we have no desire to rebuild them. At last, permission is granted to feel the breezes blow, the waters soothe, the sun caress. We are changed. It is glorious.

May Day in Siena - Part 3

This article also appears on our Italian Journal page.

Yes, breakfast was included in this wonderful sleep-over that Gabriele had arranged for us. It was set up in the dining room downstairs. We must have overslept because as we made our way up the hallway to the stairs, we saw that all the other guest rooms were emptied. The doors were open and Max’s hardworking mother was laboring away. Stripping the beds, opening windows, vacuuming, all in her measured, my-arthritis-is-acting-up sort of way. It slowed her down, but it didn’t stop her.

Max waited for us at the dining room table, complete with our place settings, a pot of espresso and a large plate with mounds of biscotti and fresh pastries. It seems Max’s Mom made these this morning, before she started cleaning the guest rooms. We had a few hours to kill before we were to meet Gabriele, so we settled in for a leisurely breakfast with Max.

Max seemed to be in his 30’s, attractive, lithe, with dark hair and those deep Italian eyes. The three of us talked about a wide range of subjects: Italy, America, working parents, children, cooking, Siena, girlfriends (he didn’t have one) and on and on. After about an hour, Max’s Mom emerged from the kitchen with a big smile and another plate of just baked pastries (we had pretty much decimated the first plate). That’s when we realized she had made these fluffy goodies and hadn’t just picked them up at the bakery. We feigned protest, but probably weren’t too convincing. After all, she’d already made them. We couldn’t let them go to waste. She walked slowly back to her chores upstairs and we continued to eat and pass the time with Max. We couldn’t help noticing that young, healthy Max was doing nothing while his mother did everything.

At one point, I went upstairs to use the bathroom. I was too paranoid to lock the door, so I just closed it and hoped for the best. As I was making my way downstairs again, Max’s Mom was walking a few steps ahead of me. Remember the slow, painful movements of this woman? There she was, singing a little tune and bounding (yes, bounding) down the stairs like she was 20. I was happy she was happy but still, what was going on?

I rejoined Lana and Max at the table where we hung out until we had to leave. There was quite a scene saying goodbye. Not so much Max, but his Mom didn’t want to see us go. She hugged us both so tightly we were getting confused. It wasn’t until we were walking over to the café to meet Gabriele that we put the morning’s events together. It seemed to us that Max’s Mom was probably like every other Italian mother we’d ever known or heard about: she wanted a wife for her son. She had morphed from cripple to singing athlete once she decided that at least one of us must have been interested in her handsome, available Max. Why else would we have spent so much time with him at breakfast? To Max’s Mom, he was the catch of a lifetime! What young woman wouldn’t want to hook up with Max and cook all his meals, do his laundry, clean up after him and then give Mom a hand cleaning the guest bedrooms, the bathroom, dusting, vacuuming, straightening? Ah, to two single American women it all seemed like such a mad whirl of delights! Really, we couldn’t walk to the café fast enough.

May Day in Siena - Part 2

This article also appears on our Italian Journal page.

After much shopping, eating, drinking and walking, it was well into the night and time to return to Acqua Calde. We got ourselves a cab at the taxi stand and started down the road. The driver spoke only Italian and seemed to be in a really sour mood. We, in all of our excitement of the day, had neglected to get the address of where we were staying or even the name of the establishment (did it have one? We had no idea). But we were confident that we would recognize the side street we needed when we saw it, and tried in vain to convince the driver of this. I say in vain because he became irate, complete with gestures, yelling and red face (as much as we could tell in the dark). We even showed him our money, in case he thought we weren’t going to pay him. We honestly couldn’t understand his anger, but we literally didn’t speak each other’s language. After much fretting and histrionics on all of our parts, he abruptly pulled over and refused to take us further.

To give you the sense of this moment, it was near midnight, pitch dark, a single lane road with tall grass on either side, no street lights, very little traffic, no houses, no businesses, nothing. We paid the driver (we were nothing if not honest) and started to walk the rest of the way to that side street we saw in our heads. All the way there, we tried to make sense of what had just happened.

We walked quite a while, but we finally got there. It was such a relief when we turned that corner and saw the little house. We walked through the front gate and tried to open the door, but it was locked. Oh no; we were never given a key! Just as we were sizing up the garden as a place to crash until morning, the door opened. Suddenly, we were staring at Max’s parents sitting on the couch in their living room, watching TV. Obviously not expecting visitors, Max’s mother had her hair up in curlers. Oh Lord, we used the wrong door! We backed up, apologizing profusely, out into the night.

We then found the correct door, dragged our tired selves up the steep, wide stairs, and went to our room.

I needed a bath. Leaving Lana relaxing on the bed (beside the non-working stereo, there was no other furniture), I took our bathroom key and headed out the door. The bathroom was down the hall, shared by all guests on our floor. Since it was very late at night, all the other guests were asleep, all the doors on either side of the long hallway locked up tight. So the bathroom was mine for the foreseeable future.

It was spacious with a large, sunken bathtub. The floors and walls were done in deep green marble tiles. It looks amazing but in my opinion, water and marble are a very dangerous mix. Instinctively, you try to create traction by putting a towel down on the floor as you stand by the sink or get out of the tub. But one quick move turns the towel into a runaway flying carpet. You grab hold of the nearest stable object to stop your momentum. Maybe it’s the sink. Or the slippery edge of the tub. Or the towel rack. Anything to keep from hurtling into to that luscious Italian marble you were cooing over just moments before. Now you’re wondering what you’ll scream as you skid across the floor. “May Day” perhaps?

Somehow, I made it out of the tub and got dressed without killing myself. I felt relaxed, refreshed and oh so ready for a good night’s sleep. All that stood between me and sleep was the locked bathroom door. So I gathered all my things and slipped my medieval-looking skeleton key into to the lock and turned. The lock made the noise, but nothing else happened. The knob didn’t turn. The door didn’t open. No problem, I’ll try again. So I did. Many, many times. Turn, clank, nothing. This went on and on. I wondered if I’d have to spend the night in the bathroom. My options weren’t pretty. I could try to sleep on the bruise-inducing marble floor or in the bruise-inducing bathtub. Then there’s the humiliation factor when the lucky stranger opens the door in the morning and finds me staring up at them.

At this point you’re probably wondering, what’s Lana doing? Well, keep in mind that the bathroom is all tile and porcelain, and the hallway is all wood, no rug. So the sound of the key incessantly turning in the lock is resounding all the way down the hall to our room. Lana is sitting on the bed, head in hand, crying from laughter. It’s not like she could help me. We had only one bathroom key between us. I was on my own. She was flirting with a hernia.

Eventually, the lock gave in and I won. Turn, clank, open. Remember how relaxed I felt after the bath? Forget it now. I was some combination of overtired, stressed, relieved and dumbfounded. I made it to bed and fell asleep just in time for breakfast.

May Day in Siena - Part 1

This article also appears on our Italian Journal page.

Let’s pick up this story at Il Querceto, a villa in Castellina in Chianti, during the last week of April, 1998. Laura, the owner, was an energetic woman who seemed to do the work of 3 people. She had already informed my friend Lana and me that due to the upcoming May Day holiday weekend, we would have to find other accommodations for the upcoming Friday night. This meant we’d have to pack up everything & vacate the villa Friday afternoon. However, we were welcome to return to the villa on Saturday & stay for another week (which we did; who says “no” to that?). No problem, we thought. Lana & I prided ourselves on traveling without compass or reservations. How hard could it be to find a place for one night? We had just landed in this cozy spot for another 7 days. Surely the gods are with us. Sometime over the next few days, I mentioned this situation to our Italian friend, Gabriele. He said he would find a place for us. Fine, we thought. Let’s go shopping!

As we flitted around Tuscany, we heard bits & pieces about this May Day thing. It seemed every Italian would take 3 or 4 days away, as this year it fell on a Friday. Hotels had been booked for months. We saw TV predictions of bumper-to-bumper traffic from everywhere in Italy on the way to everywhere else in Italy. Keep in mind that neither one of us had ever heard of May Day before, except as something you screamed if you were having a military emergency.

We didn’t hear back from Gabriele for several days. Lana & I discussed our options. We seemed to have only one: worst case scenario, we find some public place and/or a bench and stay up all night, returning to Querceto the next day. We’d take only a backpack each for easy transport, as Laura allowed us to keep our other luggage in one of her storage areas for the night. Thursday afternoon flowed into Thursday evening when our phone finally rang. It was Gabriele, telling us that he had found us “the last room in Siena.” Located through the ever-powerful Italian social network, one room of a rental property in Acqua Calde, just outside of Siena, remained unrented for Friday night. Gabriele would drive us there. This could work.

We piled into Gabriele’s car Friday afternoon and set off for Acqua Calde. Many winding roads later, we made a right turn onto a side street and pulled over. Walking through the gate to the front door, it suited Lana & I just fine. Quiet, surrounded by a green field and trees, we were welcomed by a large, enthusiastic Labrador. The front door opened and Gabriele did all the talking (in Italian, of course). We were introduced t0 Max, a late 20-ish, handsome and (we would later learn) single man who lived on the property with his parents. We met his mother who was very sweet but seemed to be just on the edge of physical pain. Every move she made was slow and deliberate, as if specifically calculated to avoid discomfort. Her smile was wide and warm, but we could see the pain in her eyes.

Meanwhile, Gabriele was wheeling and dealing. For all of us to hear, he confirmed the price of the room and how it would be paid (in cash). Max brought us all upstairs to see the room. The hallway was wide and our double room was at the far end. I was so happy to see a stereo set up at the foot of the bed. “Great! We’ll have music!” I said. Gabriele, smarter than I about Italian accommodations, turned to Max and said “Funziona?” (“Does it work?”) Max sheepishly replied, “No.”

The deal was made and as it was the middle of the day, Gabriele offered to drive us to Siena on his way back to Poggibonsi. That sounded great to us. After agreeing to meet the next day near a café by the rental property to bring us back to Castellina, he dropped us off and we were let loose in Siena.

Musings on Italian shoes, Siena and a linquistic cautionary tale...

This article also appears on our Italian Journal page.

There was the time my friend Lena and I went to Siena. We walked all over that beautiful city, tracing the circular patterns of its narrow stone streets for hours. We marveled over how we were doing this in Italian shoes purchased only the day before...and neither one of us wearing socks. My shoes were medium heeled, black suede, square toe, adorned with silver and black metal shapes across the upper. Hers were low heeled, black suede loafers that were crafted so stylishly they made you forget that penny loafers ever existed. After hours of walking on stone surfaces, our feet still felt like they were encased in clouds. No blisters, bleeding or painful stepping. This, we decided, is why Italian women are always wearing beautiful shoes no matter what they're doing. Because they can. Because they are always comfortable. They have no reason to reach for shlubby sneakers ever. (Just to clarify, this was the mid 1990's, well before the stylish sneakers we now enjoy were available. But even now, the Italian ones look and feel better). This theory was reinforced later in the trip when we drove past an elderly, rather stout Italian woman walking up a hill in a pair of black pumps with narry a trace of discomfort on her serene face. This woman was walking up a hill in heels, and she was happy about it. Surely Italian shoemaking secrets can help bring about world peace.


But back to Siena. At this point, we had finished a wonderful dinner in one of the restaurants in il campo, the main piazza. We were trying to find our way back to the parking garage to get our car. I say "trying" because it wasn't easy. As I mentioned earlier, the streets of Siena are built in a kind of circular fashion. This leads to all kinds of interesting paths, whether you're trying to make sense out of a street sign or the directions a kind soul has just given you in rapid fire Italian, complete with at least 3 options to get to your destination. To give you an idea of what we were up against with the street signs, at one point we raised our weary eyes to a big sign screaming "Parking Garage" (Yes! in English!). We thought we were saved; all we had to do was follow the arrow. Make that 2 arrows. Each pointing in an opposite direction. Oh, the joys of circles.


By this time, the streets were dark and the stores were closed. Most of them had metal grates pulled across the windows so we couldn't see what they were selling. We kept walking and asking and reading and yawning and sitting. It was during one of these sit-downs that we read the sign over the store next to us that read "Morbidi". (Please keep in mind that this was only our first or second trip to Italy, so we knew very little Italian between us. I was still making the rookie mistake of thinking that if an Italian word sounded like an English word, it must mean the same thing). Morbidi? Morbid? What kind of a store is that? What on earth are they selling? Caskets? Cemetary supplies? Ewwww.

The following day we got ourselves an Italian-English dictionary because we had to figure out what that store was selling. We found morbido, the singular version of morbidi. It means "tender, soft". The store was probably selling lingerie, jewelry or any number of adorable things. Not caskets. We looked at each other in horror and then burst out laughing. We spent many happy hours since then singing "Love Me Morbidi" to the tune of "Love Me Tender". So it wasn't a total loss.

Click here to view selections from Carolyn's Photograhic Collection "Italy Through The Eyes Of Love"

Click here to send beautiful ecards or to download exquisite desktop wallpapers from our unique selection.

This article and the images contained herein are protected by copyright laws and may not be copied without permission.

How Did All This Italy Stuff Get Started, Anyway?

This article also appears on our Italian Journal page.

My first trip to Italy was in 1995, for 2 glorious weeks in October. It was a trip of several firsts for me: first vacation with a girlfriend, first villa rental, first overseas car rental and of course, my maiden voyage to the land of half of my ancestors (the land of the other half, Sweden, would have to wait).

It was perfect timing for Lena (not her real name) and I. Each of us had finished with a marriage and freed ourselves from romantic entanglements for the time being. Each of us had migrated to California from our East Coast origins. Although we had moved for our own personal reasons and at separate times (we had only met a year or two beforehand), we found ourselves sharing some very similar life experiences and open-ended, who-knows-what's-going-to-happen-to-us-from-here future uncertainties. So, it was the perfect time for a vacation.

Fast forward to a gloomy, gray and damp-cold winter day. If you were a fly on the living room ceiling, you'd look down and see the San Francisco Chronicle Travel Classified Section spread out on the floor. Next to that, a world atlas (because we weren't sure where a lot of the places we were reading about actually were). Interspersed among the papers, you'd see glasses of red wine constantly moving from hand to mouth to floor to hand to mouth as two women study the information laid out before them with all the intensity of the Normandy invasion. From your vantage point on the ceiling, you'd hear "Fiji! Let's go to Fiji!" "Yeah! Where is Fiji?" "I don't know; I'm checking the atlas! I don't know where to start; doesn't this atlas have an index?" and on and on.

We almost decided on Fiji, until I saw an unassuming little ad that said something like "Rent a Villa in Tuscany". It sounded right to me. It sounded right to her. Although she'd already been to Italy and had some idea of what we'd be in for, I had no idea whatsoever. Looking back, we were happy at that moment with our decision, but there was no fanfare, no instantly recognizeable bolt of universal confirmation. Instead, it just sort of snuck up on us. It just seemed like a good idea at the time. I didn't have a clue as to how it would alter my life.

So much has changed since then. After several trips to Italy and some astonishing life experiences, Lena and I lost contact a few years ago. As for me, Italy has continued to beckon and I have answered as often as I could. I've traveled throughout the country, taken classes in language and dance, planned many a foreigner's wedding in Italy (Italians don't need to hire a wedding planner; they've got mothers and grandmothers and aunts and cousins), attended conferences, concerts, birthday parties, lost my way down dark narrow streets and found myself in places I never knew existed.

Click here to view selections from Carolyn's Photograhic Collection "Italy Through The Eyes Of Love"

Click here to send beautiful ecards or to download exquisite desktop wallpapers from our unique selection.

This article and the images contained herein are protected by copyright laws and may not be copied without permission.