While traveling in Italy this past fall, I found myself examining not only the cuisine of the place around me, but also a place 4,000 miles away. The question incessantly popped in my head: “What is American cuisine?” It’s a question I struggled to answer when my Italian hosts prompted me over dinner, and a…
La Cucina Toscana
When it’s cold outside, we crave warm, bubbly, comforting dishes. It’s a universal association that I’ve experienced not only in the depths of a Massachusetts winter, but also 4,000 miles away in the Italian countryside where this past November I arrived at peak rainy, drizzly season – the beginning of the Tuscan winter, my host…
Zero Waste Update
Happy 2019! It’s the beginning of another year, and as usual it’s got me thinking about this past trip around the sun. I’ve always thought of resolutions as wishy washy – statements promising to change your life in some grand way that seem to disappear as quickly as they’re formed – but in the past couple…
La Ricotta in Traduzione con Masseria Sgarlata
To taste fresh, hot ricotta is to experience the transformation of a pure ingredient at its finest. Simply put, that’s what ricotta is – a transformation of milk – in fact, it’s what all cheeses are. Like many food staples of cultures around the world, cheese emerged as a way to preserve a fresh product…
La Raccolta delle Olive con Olio Taibi
La storia – the story Montaperto is a small town perched on a hill, home to less than 500 inhabitants and surrounded by a rolling landscape that I have come to love during my short month on the island of Sicily, both the hills and the sea seemingly always off in the distance. The village is…
Terra Madre Salone del Gusto
Ciao from Italia! It is already the start of my 4th week here in Italy, and I’ve been busy busy busy – moving from town to town, eating delicious food, meeting new people, being surrounded by beautiful scenery…life is hard. About a week ago I arrived in Sicilia and made the drive to the…
Gironzolando
The word “gironzolando” in Italian translates to “wandering”. Why is this word relevant to my life right now? I remember when I could chart out on paper exactly what I would be doing for the next 2-3 years. I also remember looking at this list and feeling incredibly suffocated in the seemingly absolute certainty of…
Waste Free in JP
…and other general life updates/efforts to create a sustainable life in the city! … It’s been almost exactly a year since I veered (very happily, willingly, and rather desperately) off the path towards medicine and into the world of food. It’s weird to think that it was only one year ago I had just quit…
Eat Local Challenge
From October 16th to November 5th, I decided to pledge to Slow Food‘s “Eat Local Challenge”. What’s Slow Food, you ask? Just what it sounds like! Slow food is the exact opposite of fast food. The Slow Food movement began back in 1986 when its founder, Carlo Petrini, decided to fight back against the opening…
I Gusti dell’Estate
CIAO. It’s been a while. This summer has been so busy and yet the entire time I was thinking, “Man, I really want to write more on that thing I started a few months ago…”, but it just never happened. I think I was waiting for a ‘theme’ to write about, and of course I think…
Orchard e Orto 