A trip down Italian Memory Lane

Two years ago at this time, I was on an amazing trip to Italy.  After a couple of days touring Rome on my own I meet up with friends for a wonderful wine and food tour of Tuscany.

Some of those friends are back in Italy again doing a food and wine tour of the Sicily area.  Thanks to the wonders of Social Media I am able to travel along with them through their facebooks posts,  I am also reminiscing as facebook memories pop up daily from my trip 2 years ago.

As I can't be back to Italy right now I thought I would at least enjoy the flavours of Italy by enjoying a glass of Chianti Classico Riserva while I browse this week selection  - an Italian Cookbook of course!

I didn't't buy The Tuscan Sun Cookbook by Frances Maves and Edward Maves while in Italy,  I never bought any cookbooks there.  I guess I was too busy doing wine tasting (sometimes 3 a day!), visiting olive groves and seeing how pecorino cheese is made to buy cookbooks.

Shortly after I returned home I bought The Tuscan Sun Cookbook as an e-book.  This is only one of about 3 e-cookbooks I own.  A novel is fine as an e-book but a cookbook really is much better as a hard copy :)

The Tuscan Sun Cookbook is the cookbook companion to the book Under the Tuscan Sun which tells the story of American Professor and Poet Frances Mayes journey as she buys a 300 year old property in Tuscany and falls in love with the local cuisine.  The book would later be made into the movie Under the Tuscan Sun starring Diane Lane.  I didn't realize the connection between the movie when I bought the book.    I bought the Tuscan Sun Cookbook as it had items that reminded me of my trip to Tuscany, with great descriptions of the food as well.

The beauty of the food I had in Italy was simple local ingredients combined together with care to create flavourful creations.    This was authentic Tuscan food, but just like in Canada you can find mass produced flavourless food in Italy.  Fortunately most of what I saw was the traditional Tuscany food.  I got to see the whole process from where it was grown, to how it was prepared to make wonderful multi-course meals that left you satisfied but not stuffed. And of course there was plenty of wine!.

I am looking forward to getting out my pasta maker,  having the smells of garlic, olives, tomatoes  permeate the kitchen and enjoying another glass of Chianti!  Let's get cooking.