If you haven’t read or watched “Under the Tuscan Sun”, you might not know Cortona. A typical hillside town, beautiful, steep, adorable! The American woman who visits Tuscany after a mayor disappointment back home, spontaneously buys a house in Cortona, and falls in love with the town, an Italian ragazzo and life in Italy. That’s very easy to experience here. Even the gardener mowing the lawn here at Borgo di Vagli is a ragazzo, charm as can be, movie star potential and the age and testosterone of a picture perfect Italien lover.

We walked around Cortona as much as Ted knee allowed, we had a delicious lunch at Quanto Basta at Piazza Garibaldi and we – I – did some shopping damage in a few cute boutiques and stores in the old town.

We happened to be in Cortona on Monday and it seemed to be laundry day…

Another collection grabbed me while strolling around: mailboxes!

But Cortona is not just a town of laundry and mailboxes, it is – as said before – a town you can easily fall in love with…

It all started with this:

And then there were several days of suffering, until we took a day off vacation and spent 9 hour at the Ospitale Santa Catarina in Cortona.

Paracetamol and a moist dressing with medication (5-6 days), rest for a week and some pain drops were ordered. The dressing fell off after 3 days, so we bought a stretchy brace. And here he is, heroic conqueror of the bees’ knees:

Yesterday I ate rabbit, today it was wild boar. And I haven’t eaten meat in the last 2 years! But somehow, Italy tries really hard to teach me a lesson here…

The food is just incredibly good!!! Ted fell in love with Gorgonzola, a soft blue cheese, that is just to die for. And he will, if he continues to eat it in those quantities 😜

Today we went to Spoleto to the Dolci d’Italia, the Italian dessert festival! For me, this was like heaven. A whole town dedicated to show, advertise, expose, educate, and – drumroll – sample desserts from every region in Italy. The final event this Sunday evening was to break the world record of the longest cheesecake: 60 meters, 197 feet. And they did it. And we tried it. Again. And again. And again. I think I tried 3 or 4 pieces from different sections, just to make sure the quality is consistent. There were hundreds of people indulging and eating and everybody looked quite happy! Btw, this was not just a mediocre kind of cheesecake that tastes like heavy duty New York kinda cheesecake, that cheesecake was delicious! All 4 or 5 pieces I tried, were super good! Wait a minute, there were 5 or 6 maybe?!? But who counts anyway…

Once we were back “home“ in Borgo di Vagli, a little Tuscan village near Cortona, we prepared some chestnuts for tomorrow:

Roasted Chestnuts

1. With a sharp knife, cut a X in each chestnut. This is easiest if you have the flat side facing down, cutting the X in the rounded side

2. Soak the chestnuts in cold water for 10-12 hours, then put them on a baking sheet and roast them for 30-35 minutes.

3. Once done, wrap them in a kitchen towel, let them steam for 10min, then squeeze the towel really hard to break them open.

Enjoy!

Busy is good, yes, and Italy busy is great! We are so blessed to have good company: this week, our friends Leslie & Tom from California are with us. We take day trips by car, by ferry and by foot.

Salò is calling again and again; I guess it develops into being my favorite town here at the lake. With an art museum, a gorgeous old town, good restaurants with views to die for, a great selection of stores (not one, but two bookstores, many boutiques, specialty grocery stores, for example a truffle store, toy stores, etc.) Gelaterias and bars, pizzerias and cafés, there is certainly no need to starve! On top of all this abundance of choices, there is the Saturday market, the biggest market I’ve ever been! Clothing, leather goods ceramic, food, shoes, everything you need and more stuff you don’t need! People everywhere, little tastes handed out, it is very hard to resist! Seafood, cheese, salami, chestnuts, fruit and vegetables, all those choices – it’s hard to not buy one of each …..

Leslie and I shared a bag of seafood goodies and thank god, Tom and Ted declined the offer!

Another day trip was the hike to Piovere with a great reward of a delicious lunch at the restaurant there. Piovere is a little more than double the size of Muslone with 144 inhabitant, vs Muslone with barely 60 people. So Piovere has it all, a restaurant with a small alimentary store, they have a church and a waterfall! Besides Enzo’s alimentary store, Muslone has only a church. And nothing else. And that is a good thing! So it is an easy 1 hour hike to visit Piovere, you hike along a stone wall that is several hundred years old, through olive gardens, and everything with this view down to the lake that keeps changing around every corner. Gorgeous!

In Piovere we sat down for a delicious lunch with sandwiches the size of a big dinner plate, pizza and a super tasty seafood salad!

Our hike also presented us with a few discoveries:

Our third means of transportation, the ferry, brought us to the east shore of the lake. To Malchesine to be precise. Another medieval town with another castle, another old town with narrow streets, cute balconies, great cafés and restaurants….. what else do you need? Did I hear line dancing? In Italy? Cmon! But here you go, line dancing it is…..

And what else is going on in Malchesine?

On our way back we had just the best view from the ferry

Of course I have to write about food! Italien food is delicious, versatile and healthy; Italy is surrounded by the Mediterranean – and the Mediterranean diet is the healthiest diet in the world! 7000 different vegetables are grown here, which makes Italy number one for diversity – far more than number two: Brasil, where you can find (only) 3000 different veggies!

I love to cook! Going to the markets is one of my favorite things to do. What are the local farmers growing here? The smell of fresh food, the look, the size and shape of everything – incredible!

I wrote about porcini mushrooms in a separate post, and man, do I love those! Another local delicacy is radicchio, Treviso radicchio, which is an early variety, harvested in September vs it’s more leafy friends that are harvested in November.

Radicchio is used for appetizers, with pasta, soups, salads, as side dishes, bread spreads, and gelato [kidding, I haven’t seen radicchio gelato – yet] 😝

Cucina Italiana is a great source for recipes and the following one I found is from there:

Focaccia with radicchio and scamorza cheese

Quick to prepare, this focaccia can be served as a first course or as the appetizer of a rustic menu. To prepare it, roll out the bread dough in a low edged baking pan and well-greased with oil. Spread two or three tablespoons of oil on top and bake for 15 minutes at 200°.

In the meantime, cut three tomatoes into thin slices or if you prefer, use a puree. In a pot, sauté 1 lb of radicchio leaves cut into strips with a tablespoon of oil, two splashes of balsamic vinegar and half a chili pepper. When the focaccia is ready take it out of the oven, spread the tomato, the slices of radicchio and fennel seeds on top. Sprinkle with a drizzle of olive oil and put it back under the oven grill for 5 minutes. Remove the pan from the oven, add the scamorza cheese cut into pieces and some slices of bacon. Put under the grill for another 5 minutes, remove, cut into slices, and serve.

And of course there is pizza, big, thin crust of course, with only a few ingredients on it. But those ingredients are just plain taste explosions: porcini mushrooms, or speck, or Gorgonzola, or radicchio of course, and so on. Wherever you go, the pizza options are endless: at least 5 pages of pizzas are offered on the menu! They are big, tasty, and cheap! Between €8 and €15 or 16! But be prepared, when you order a pizza, they are not sliced and you better eat the whole thing with a fork and a knife. Not the American way!!! And your spaghetti, you eat with a fork only, no spoon!!! Spaghetti are always served on a plate with a wide rim: that rim is used to twist your spaghetti onto the fork. Very easy!

Best meal I had so far: at Naturall Garda Bistrot in Salò

I love mushrooms! They are flavorful, delicious and powerful. With mushrooms you can miraculously whip up a sauce, a sidedish, you can make soup, add them to salad, you can upgrade almost any dish with mushrooms. Maybe except gelato. But I don’t eat gelato or icecream or sorbet stuff anyway.

Of all the mushrooms in the world – and fortunately I haven’t tried them all, because then I wouldn’t sit here and write anymore – I love porcini mushrooms the most. By far! Chanterelle are good too, but they take forever to clean. And porcinis seems to be the stronger flavor anyway. Big, bold, powerful. And not a lot of cleaning to do either. A win-win situation!

Being in northern Italy for the fall season is the best timing if you love porcini mushrooms. This area here is porcini heaven, every restaurant has porcini dishes, every store sells porcini something’s and vendors parked on the street don’t sell oranges like in California, but – guess what – porcini mushrooms!

In the last few weeks I made porcini risotto twice, I ate two porcini pizzas and I also had porcini ravioli today, with sage butter. Delicious!

Porcini risotto recipe

Arborio rice

Chopped onion

Chopped porcini mushrooms

White wine

Broth

Butter

Parmesan

Fry the onions in a pan until they’re transparent, then add the rice and the mushrooms. Fry everything until the rice starts to get some color.

Add white wine and stir until all the liquid is gone, turn down the heat and add broth, one half cup, stir until all the liquid is gone, then add broth, one half cup, stir until all the liquid is gone, and add broth, one half cup, stir until all the liquid is gone, and add broth, one half cup, stir until all the liquid is gone, and add broth, one half cup, stir until all the liquid is gone, and add broth, one half cup, stir until all the liquid is gone etc.

I always cook by listening to the rice. When you “hear” the rice while stirring, then you need more broth.

When you’re done, switch off the heat and stir in a good, a very good portion of butter. And a handful of Parmesan wouldn’t hurt either. Serve and enjoy with the rest of the white wine!

My sons loved this risotto! But since the color looks pretty ugly, a brown mess, they called this dish: prison food! And prison food they loved! Fortunately they never needed to go to prison to check if it’s the real deal 🤣

The our friend from California arrived: Laura! She wanted to spend one week to get to know Lago di Garda and buy a house with us. Both of which a major adventure!

Getting to know the lake, ferry rides across, strolling through little towns, shopping, hiking, of course eating and drinking, we tried our best to share our love of this beautiful part of the world.

Laura is fun, she is very enthusiastic and easy going, and she also fell in love with Lago di Garda. It is October though, the weather is a hit and miss, but the amount of people is a blessing. Almost none! No problem to get a seat anywhere, no problem with parking, every store owner treats you as if they depend on you. Nice!

With Laura we attended a cooking class in Lazise that was a lot of fun. Cusina by Fracca is the name of the cooking school and it’s run by Ivan & Mirco, two brothers, who really know what they’re doing!

We learned to make gnocchi that we ate with sage butter and tagliatelle with tomato basil sauce. Rose and red wine made us all feel like the pros and lots of laughter made this class a full success!

And while we were cooking, we listened to this: “Felicita” by Albano and Romina Powers – a classic / throwback to my childhood: Die Hitparade im ZDF

https://open.spotify.com/artist/1c0wBsDBu0NqpvxBqjYjZS?si=0cCdJIGURyKOqyxbnvYIUA

As a little treat, they even asked me (3 times) to work with them next summer – hahaha! I feel flattered 😎

Last little adventure of this week with Laura: Alpe del Garda in Tremosine, a cheese & butter production place that has a nice restaurant (Tagliatelle con fungi porcini was delicious!) and a quite big specialty retail store with local honey, truffle, wine, cheeses, porcini mushrooms, spices, pasta, meat & salami, olive oil and everything else you think you’d like to taste!

Our time here is filled and almost overflowing! Usually I teach 3 classes in the fall semester, 2 of which require Zoom meetings. But then I was asked to teach an additional class that requires 2 Zoom meetings a week. That means not only preparing a new class, but also teaching 4 classes on Zoom per week. And because of the time difference to California, which is 9 hours, I teach 4 times at night. That sucks!

The good busy is that we really enjoy our company here and, despite the rainy weather, we do lots of fun things together.

Our first week here in Muslone we shared with Jürgen & Anja, my brother & sister-in-law. We ate a lot, drank a lot…..

….. and we were busy house hunting!

Some of the “houses” were loaded with projects …..

….. and others had top notch gorgeous views!

It was a very interesting week, I can tell you!

One time we waited for a real estate agent in front of the church, when an old woman came out of the church and said “casa casa casa”. My basic minimal Italian language skills told me: this woman is here to show us a house. She grabbed my hand and pulled me to a house, but it was not the house we had scheduled to see. Well, since our realtor didn’t show up, we thought we might as well look at her “casa casa casa” and see what she has to offer. That house we actually really liked and had a closer look at few days later with the official listing agent. We also brought in Filippo, a local contractor, who only speaks Italian. And Donatella, a local interpreter, who only speaks Italian and German, then it was me, who only speaks German and English and Ted, who speaks English. Can you imagine Ted asking a question to Filippo? And Filippo answering? And Donatella and the agent exchanging the latest gossip in town and me having creative ideas that I gestured to Filippo while Ted and the agent try to talk about cost? And everything simultaneously in the typical high volume Italian language with an abundance of hand gestures and laughter?!?! It was a blast! With conversations like that you don’t need a hearing aid, you need ear plugs!