What does it all mean? I’m still trying to get down my elevator talk about this experience, its a tricky one to sum up. It is juuust a bit more more than just saying I had an amazing time eating and talking about food. I spent ten weeks with nine courageous, exciting, smart, challenging, fun,…

Spending nine weeks in our little Valledolmo made it feel like the center of the Italian universe, so when we took the mini bus on our Big Trip, I was (for some reason) surprised to see another version of Sicily. The coast! Yes, of course there were more vineyards and citrus groves, but there were…

This week began thinking about gardens. They’re a way to connect botany with the public and history with the present, made clear when we visited Kolymbetra and the Valley of the Temples in Agrigento. This place dates back more than 2500 years where citrus and agriculture flourished because of a subtropical microclimate nestled in the…

View from the kitchen window The final week of the carnival celebration culminated in not one but two days of thunderous parades up and down the corso until after midnight complete with music (who knew Valledolmo has 6 DJS?!), confetti, tractor drawn floats, costumes, and more young people than I ever knew lived in this…

Our school is located on Tenuta Regaleali, more than 900 acres of vineyards, olive groves, pasture, and wheat fields. Of this 360 hectares are dedicated to vines for wine production for Tasca including 17 varieties, international and native to Sicily. For the last several weeks we’ve seen a line of Fiat Pandas along a side…

A proper February day to stay in drinking tea and writing- feels like home! We’re getting blasted by a snowstorm and it’s been snowing all day with at least 5” accumulation- a gross difference from being on the beach in Cefalù last weekend! It feels lovely to lounge around Valledolmo this weekend and stick close…

Beginning on a sweet note, the week started with back to back honey tastings. The differences in the dozen we sampled were incredible for something that seems so straightforward. Barnyard, caramelized fennel, chicory, and floral were just a handful of the tasting notes from Mieli Thun’s single single flower honey from the linden or rhododendron…

Figu aka the best cheese I’ve ever tasted- presented gorgeously wrapped in a fig leaf This week began with my discovery of the most wonderful cheese and ended with a Sicilian afternoon barbecue. Giacomo Gatí is a self taught breeder who brought back the Girgentana goat back from the brink of extinction and created a…

Barking dogs with muddy paws was a highlight of the week. We visited Filippo a local shepherd and third generation cheesemaker and a hoard of milky white puppies could be seen up the hillside. Four month old lambs were eating in a barn paying no attention to us and a tank of fresh milk was…

(Aka the best week yet!) With a 6000 year history, the story of Sicily can be traced back to wheat. It was the breadbasket of the Roman Empire and is still important today. It ties people to the land, is one of the crops well suited to the weak soils, slopes, and difficult climate of…