Get Your Satiricon

When we last left you, which was only yesterday, we were beating a retreat across the island of Sicily in our slightly wounded rental car, having attempted to fit it through a street just a bit narrower than its own width.  Although the front panel scraping and the subsequent backing into a parked car left my ego more bruised than our Lancia’s sheetmetal skin, by dinnertime we had arrived at our home for the next two nights, the estate of Gianfranco Becchina, producer of the award winning Olio Verde extravirgin olive oil in Castelvetrano.  Even under cloak of darkness, when we arrived at the Tenuta Pignatelli we knew we were in for a treat.

Maalox and Autovelox

Day One of our post Food & Wine Tour itinerary is under our belts.  After two weeks of eating and drinking with our guests (I tell my father it’s work) it’s surprising there was any room left under there.

Food and Wine - Part Due

And so 2011 Umbria Food and Wine II, the second installment of our annual food and grape binge in Umbria came to an end yesterday.  And the second week was as intense, enjoyable and interesting as the first.  And completely different.

Now we need a vacation.

Letizia

Two weeks and it’s time to pull up stakes and move on.  For just over two weeks we have been eating and drinking and touring and guiding, introducing two wonderful groups of fellow travellers, now known as friends, to the wonders that make up life in Umbria.  Two separate week-long Umbria Food and Wine tours.  It’s time to close the book on this year’s experience.  It has been memorable.

Only in America

Only in America.

I thought this was a Jimmy Durante quote.  Wikipedia does not agree.  Nonetheless, we have a sense that certain things can happen only in America.

We keep returning to Italy, to Umbria, because days like yesterday can happen only in Italy.

Fabriano-ulous

Wow.  It’s hard to find another word to describe Fabriano.  Yesterday was our third visit to this little town tucked away in an obscure corner of our next door neighbor province Le Marche.  Fabriano definitely has it goin’ on.

I'm a Pickin' and I'm a Grinnin'

Some of our experiences here in Italy just cannot be written about.  Others, like the impact of seeing a particular painting for the first time, the joy of spending a day cooking with a local chef, the taste of a great meal or an unforgettable bottle of wine, lend themselves to recreation through words and pictures.

But others are so elemental that have to be lived to fully understand and appreciate them.  Picking olives with the Palermis is one of those experiences.

B-E-N-G-O and Ben-Go Was his Name-O

In this blog, in which I primarily recount our daily adventures here in Italy, I often try to tie together the day’s disparate activities by employing a common thematic strain.  Often, many of you will agree, doing so is a real strain.  Yesterday’s activities, at least for the first part of the day, however, lend themselves well to a theme.

Benozzo Gozzoli.

New Beginnings

Sometimes it’s difficult to see something that’s right in front of your face until someone points it out to you.

Gli Azzurri

In with the new.  Today our second weekly installment of Umbria Food & Wine 2011 began with the arrival of Mary Ellen and Robert.  You might recognize their names.  They joined us on our 2010 Umbria Food & Wine tour.  Some people just don’t learn from their mistakes.

Ci Vediamo!

Yesterday marked the end of our 2011 Umbria Food & Wine Tour I, our Friday being a sort of super add on bonus day for our one remaining guest.  This morning – very early this morning – we said goodbye to our last guest and begin the turn around before shifting gears and welcoming our guests to 2011 Umbria Food & Wine II. 

La dolce vita in high gear.  Like a Ferrari.

Olive Italy

And so we come to the end of our 2011 Food and Wine Tour, having said goodbye a day early to some of our guests, but adding an extra day for others as compensation.  And we get ready to welcome tomorrow our guests for our 2011 Food and Wine II Tour, a second week of eating, drinking, chattering, laughing and smiling in English and Italian.  We’re looking forward to it.

But there is some unfinished business to take care of on week I.  There is still food to be tasted, smelled, studied, looked at and learned about.  There is still wine to be sniffed, swirled, squinted at, slurped and quaffed.  So yesterday we set off in search of olive oil and cheese.

Rainy Days and Wednesdays

Wednesday is pork day on our Food and Wine itinerary, a day dedicated to driving to the far corner of Umbria to visit Norcia, the capital of pork butchery of Italy and the hometown of Saint Benedict, the patron saint of Europe.  Thursday is also hiking day in Castelluccio, the beautiful mountain valley town just beyond Norcia, whose vast lunar-like valley is blanketed with fields of lentils prized throughout Italy.

The itinerary says Wednesday is pork and hiking day.  But the weather says no.  A steady rain, which started the previous evening has thrown the proverbial spanner in the works.  We scramble to make new plans.

Kitchens and Garages

To spend time with Salvatore Denaro is to step into a fantasy world.  His personality literally bends and reshapes reality to suit himself.  From the numerous times we have been fortunate to spend a day with Salvatore, we can say it suits us too.

It's Pardi Time

Seven o’clock rolls around pretty early here in Italy.

I am aware that in reality it comes right after six o’clock, just like back home, but it sure seems earlier.  Maybe it has something to do with the euro/dollar exchange rate or the English/metric conversion.  But it seems awfully early.

Maybe it has something to do with our daytime activities.

Lions and Truffles and Lambs, Oh My!

My high school roommate’s father used to be fond of telling me (and presumably others) a certain joke.  He would start by asking, “William . . . have I ever told you the story of the lion and the lamb?”  Having heard the story on numerous occasions I would invariably reply, “why yes, Mr. Burton.  You have.”  “Good.  Let me tell it to you.”

The story goes like this.

Unchain My Heart, with Apologies to Ray Charles

When I was a kid in school there was a popular syllogism going around that said:

“God is love.
Love is blind.
Ray Charles is blind.
Therefore Ray Charles is God.” 

As we arrived at our villa in Cannara yesterday, after a day in Rome, my slightly jetlagged brain creakily came up with a new syllogism for our time in Italy:

“Umbria is called is the ‘green heart of Italy.’
Home is where the heart is.
Therefore Umbria is our home.”

I think to be completely accurate it should be “Umbria is our green home.”  Or green Umbria is our home.”  Or “Umbria is our home.  Green.”  I’ll keep working on it.

Real. Comfortable. Italy.

How easy it is to return to Italy.  Like a comfortable pair of jeans, it seems slip on so effortlessly and fit like it was always part of you.  And as an added bonus, it doesn’t make your butt look to big.  Yet.

 We were meant to return.   Otherwise the travel gods wouldn’t have found us a cheap upgrade to business class.  They wouldn’t have made traffic to National Airport light and skies from Washington to Rome clear of (most) bumps.   They wouldn’t have had us arrive 45 minutes early so we would meet up with Mary Ellen and her son Dan, who we will host next week, at the baggage carousel at Fiumicino.  Those travel gods kindly unleashed a once in a generation deluge on Rome the day before we arrived, rather than upon our arrival.  A flash flood so great that a day later everyone was still marveling over images of vespa riders being swept away by walls of water.

Those travel gods were just toying with us as little play things when they refused to let our in-seat video systems to work, facing us with the prospect of 8 hours no Nemo, no Marli, of no Snape, MadEye Moody or Hermione.  And they seemed to laugh out loud when they rendered inoperable the tiny button to turn off our overhead lights, leaving a searing laser of light pointed right at our faces as we sought to get a little shuteye on our videoless flight.  But toying it was, as those muses of travel whispered into the flight attendant’s ear to take a blanket and tuck it into the ceiling air vents, crossing the lights and covering their daytime blast.  And toying they were when they reminded us that we had packed a DVD of Roman Holiday, inviting Gregory Peck and Audrey Hepburn to urge us eastward, saying “come in, the water’s fine” even as Rome’s floodwaters began to recede.

I would recommend a viewing of Roman Holiday (our first was yesterday on the fight over) to anyone planning to spend a few days in Rome.  Even with its dated 1950’s black and white take on Rome, it catches something eternal about the spirit of the Eternal City.  And watching Gregory and Audrey wobble on their Vespa down the Corso Vittorio Emanuelle will make anyone want to risk the insane traffic to relive that experience.  We’ll save that for another trip, as we have only one night here in Rome.  But it was clearly fortune shining on us as we dropped off Karen, one of our companions for the next week, at her hotel at Via Margutta, 56, just a few doors down from Joe Bradley’s (Peck’s) flat at Via Margutta, 51.

Many would suggest that a walking tour of the Vatican would not be the best way to challenge jet lag on one’s first day in Rome.  They wouldn’t know Professore Enrico Bruschini, doubtless Rome’s very best tourguide, its most knowledgeable art historian and most passionate booster of Rome.  We began our two week plus trip to Italy with not a two hour or three hour or four hour walking tour of Rome, but a full five hours on our feet, chasing the eternally young professore down the corridors of the Vatican Museum, the Sistine Chapel and Saint Peter’s Basilica, as he pointed out a tapestry here, a piece of breccia marble or porphyry there, and shared personal accounts of his cleaning the centuries of accumulated grime from the walls of the Sistine Chapel.  Enrico is every bit a part of the beating heart of Rome as is Gregory Peck or a Vespa ride.

And just below that beating heart is a yawning stomach.  It was fed early and often on our first day back.  First at a simple lunch at the Osteria alla Rampa, a simple but authentic trattoria in the shadow of the Spanish Steps.  And then at an anonymous Trastevere trattoria for a fabulous dinner of mostly raw seafood with our Roman friends Kay and Massimo, Clark and Raffaella and Frances and our guests for the week, Karen, Willia and John.  How our souls had been yearning for the experience of sitting around a table with friends, old and new, enjoying a great meal and even better company.  How our feet had been yearning for nearly four hours seated, a chance to recover from five hours racing.

Yes, Italy is like a pair of comfortable jeans.  So easy to slip on, so flattering, just so right.  And today, as we head to Umbria to begin the first of our two week long Umbria Food and Wine tours, I suspect we might just have to unbutton her top button.

Ci vediamo!

Bill and Suzy

Thank You!

A big thank you to all of you who joined us on Sept. 24 to celebrate Bella Italia's anniversary bash.  It's been eight truly wonderful years of discovery and sharing with our customers. And it's been a memorable and rewarding year since we moved from Cupcake Alley (Bethesda Avenue) to our new location on Hampden Lane.  While the pedestrian traffic may be lighter we feel like we have found our home.

As with most anniversaries, this one gave us an opportunity to reflect on our journey over the past years. And I wanted to share a few thoughts about what it's like to own and operate a small business these days.  While politicians fight with each other just a few miles away about "job creators" and stimuli, it is clear to us that their machinations are barely relevant to our daily lives. No, we have learned -- as we have toiled to keep open the doors of a high end, narrow niche business and scraped pennies together to meet payroll to maintain the jobs of some terrific colleagues, all the while coping with a series of disruptive construction projects, a historic world financial crisis and a tepid recovery -- that what is important is not the macro, but the micro.  We can't control the cost of the Euro or even know if it will exist next year.  We can't control if people will shop more during the holidays than they did last year.  All we can control is what we do and love it with all of our heart.  And we do.

A happy result -- perhaps the most important result of all -- of our frequent trips to Italy over the past few years has been our discovery of what we have found, for us, is a far better way of life than the "American" life that preceded it.  In Italy we have experienced a modo di vivere that values relationships and connectedness first - connections with the natural world and selfless loving relationships with those around you - and then takes it as an article of faith that the material needs will take care of themselves.  We feel this spirit strongly in our adopted home near Assisi, it perhaps being a vestige of the Saint's presence there centuries ago.  But we see and feel it too in the faces and hearts of the Italians we have met across that lovely peninsula.

The past year has seen Suzy and me redouble our efforts at Bella Italia but even more so our commitment to what made us hatch this crazy idea nearly a decade ago.  A love for la dolce vita and all that it represents.  Some may think that we sell products.  We think we share treasures.  Treasures that hold inside them the spirit of a loving artist who wakes up every morning loving his work the same way his father and grandfather and grandfather's father did.  We think that those people and that way of life deserves to be supported.  We wake up every day, too, loving our work and thinking of who we are working for.

Small businesses like ours are fragile creatures.  We don't have marketing budgets, IT departments or corporate jets.  If you like what you see or what you've experienced at Bella Italia, it's likely due to the efforts of one of the small handful of us who do this daily. And what you told us last Saturday by celebrating our anniversary with us is that you do like what we do (even if some of you came only for the chance to win a week at the villa).

So if you do love the Bella experience like we do, you can help.  More than you can imagine.  Help us spread the word about Bella Italia.  When your friend says she is going to buy a wedding present at Nordstroms, let her know that a gift from Bella Italia will be more unique and thoughtful. Bring a friend or two (or three) by to meet us.  Think of us when you shop for the holidays.  Come with us on our Umbria Food and Wine tour or rent our villa in Umbria. Come to our book club, wine tastings or other special events.  Have your company send custom gift baskets to your clients.  Take a cooking class when Chef Simone visits in January.  Talk us up in the press.
   
Because as much as we believe in Bella Italia and la dolce vita we can't do it alone.  If you believe too, we welcome your support.

Looking forward to another fantastic year.

Ci vediamo!
Bill and Suzy

Bee-uty

I know it is possible to raise bees and make honey in America.  I even have friends that do it in Washington, DC.  But in reality it can't be done.  Just like we could flamenco dance when we go out at night.  It just isn't who we are.

But bee keeping and making honey, just like growing fig trees, frying zucchini flowers and taking a nap in the hot afternoon sun, is part of the natural rhythm here in Italy.  It is a part of our life here at our villa, in part because we are an agriturismo - a vacation farm house with a working farm.  We grow tomatoes, zucchini, cucumbers, peppers, basil, sage and more in our garden.  We have fig, apricot, date, walnut and other trees.  Each season we harvest some crops in our modest sized fields - onions, alfalfa, chick peas or tall fields of sunflowers.

But here in Italy everyone gets into the act.  Everyone has his own garden.  Everyone cures his own prosciutto, ages his own cheese.  Everyone, it seems, has his own hive and makes his own honey.

Perhaps that is a slight overstatement, but here in Umbria, at least, it seems everyone you talk to has his own hive or his own prized garden.  It is what they do.  It is who they are.

* * *

This was our second year raising bees.  One day a couple of years ago two wooden hives, two green painted, house-shaped wooden boxes, about a foot and a half high, appeared on the perimiter of the villa compound.  They were put there by Marco, the young Italian man who helps run the villa and who, growing up in Umbria has been steeped in the tradition of beekeeping, asparagus foraging and truffle hunting.  His father, our good friend Lodovico, a retired former pharmaceutical company employee grew up in the southern part of Umbria, where his brother still lives today, listening to and following the cycles of nature.  It is a way of life that he has instilled in his son, who is still in the process of developing this special gift, fighting against the tides of "progress" - Americanization - that would replace a lifestyle in sync with nature with one that values technology and isolation from the natural world.  It is interesting to daily watch how he reconciles the modern with the traditional.  He does a good job at it.

So two years ago Marco started our first effort to raise bees and make honey.  Every trip here I excitedly crept near the beehives, feeling them swarm around me even when they didn't, fascinated by the mass of buzzing bees that clung to the outside of their houses.  I had no idea what was going on inside, but watched with amazement as dozens of bees would enter the small passageway at the bottom of the hive and another dozen would emerge and fly off, presumably to collect pollen at some nearby favorite watering hole.

Our first season of beekeeping was entirely unsuccessful.  No honey was produced, or so at least I was led to believe.  One day when I asked Marco when he would collect the honey, he replied that there would be none this year.  He did not explain anything else, just cryptically saying the bees did not produce.  At least our luck was better than his father's, though, who suffered a colony collapse and ended up with an empty hive.

This year, then, I was determined to keep better tabs on the progress of our hive and honey.  Each trip to the villa I would talk to Marco about how things were going with the bees and my frequent visits to the hive confirmed that at least one of the two hives was thriving, a huge knot of bees sunning themselves on the front wall of their green chalet, non-stop activity in and out of the hive.  At the beginning of this trip Marco reported that they seemed to be working hard and making honey.  We were only a couple of weeks away from our first harvest.

Earlier this week when I asked Marco when he though would be B Day he replied later in the week and when we met at Lodovico's house for a lovely party later in the week he told me that I could borrow Lodovico's beekeeper suit if I wanted to help out.  I was already flying pretty high at Lodovico's party, but this sent me off the edge.

* * *

The next morning a rap on my window awoke me at 7am, announcing that the early morning honey harvest was about to begin.  I emerged a few minutes later, realizing I knew nothing about the process, showing up in shorts and sandals, which would not provide quite the level of protection as the thick shirt and attached mesh helmet.  I found some long pants and shoes, but was a little worried that I had only ankle socks, no long socks, hoping the pants would not ride up too much leaving my ankles exposed to the bees.

Slipping the beekeeper's suit over my head and emerging inside the screened in helmet for the first time was a feeling that I shall never forget.  You see the world in a different way when you are looking out through the screen, the world broken into a million tiny square windows not unlike a fly's eye.  As I approached the hive, the roof of which Marco had already removed, which raised the ire of the colony, the buzzing was palpable and time seemed to slow down.  The angry bees swarmed everywhere, landing on our arms and legs and walking along the screen of the helmet.  But Marco spoke in calm tones, telling jokes in his excellent English (I don't think the bees understood, but it kept my nervousness in check), moving deliberately but purposefully.

Throughout he pumped smoke onto the colony from a teapot like dispenser, a bellows on the back which would propel smoke where aimed.  This magic substance slowed down the bees and made them mostly docile, allowing us to work to pry up the vertically stacked wooden frames that were inside the top floor of the bee house, and which the bees had used to create honeycombs which had been filled with honey and sealed with wax.  Marco pried up a wooden frame, I would apply a bit of smoke to the mass of bees that covered the honeycomb and he would lightly brush them off of it and into the hive.  The comb was then placed in a plastic box that was covered to keep the bees from discovering it and re-defending it.

This process was repeated over and over until all of the combs were removed.  We then moved into the house where a large stainless steel cylinder, about two feet in diameter and three feet high stood.  We took the wooden frames and gently removed the wax covering from the ends of the combs with a knife, basically slicing off the cap on each side of the comb, and quickly inserted the oozing frames into the canister where they slid into place standing upright and radiating from a central core.  After each of the frames had been uncorked and placed in the canister, the top was closed and I cranked a handle which caused the entire core to rotate.  The canister was a large centrifuge and as the frames began to spin the honey in each comb was forced out and onto the side of the can, where it oozed down to the bottom.  In about ten minutes the honeycombs were empty, each frame weighing a fraction of what it had just minutes before, and the bottom of the cannister was full of honey.



We then put the cannister on a table and placed a smaller cannister below it.  Opening the valve of the centrifuge, honey began to stream in thick ribbons into the storage cannister, first passing through a seive to strain out bits of wax and honeycomb and, perhaps, the occaisional bee that had been trapped in this process.  By now all of the villa's guests were awake and watching this spectacle, dipping their fingers in the running stream of honey and oohing and aahing about the taste.  It was truly a moment of pure joy for all.

* * *

Several days later, as I write about this, our pantry is stocked with dozens of jars of honey.  Home made honey from La Fattoria del Gelso.  Even as the buzzing sound in my ears fades into memory, I still enjoy walking into the pantry and just look at the jars.  My jars.  Marco's jars.  Our bee's jars.  It is a satisfaction that I have never really felt before.  One I never got drafting contracts or writing legal briefs.  Not when doing well on a math test or even when having an excellent meal in a restaurant.  This satisfaction comes not from the doing or the accomplishing, but from the being.  From the connection.  I rarely feel it at home but often feel it here in Italy, here in Umbria.  A place where the bees helped put the be in human being.

Ci vediamo!
Bill and Suzy