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When our 78 year old neighbour Dina was a girl, la gente andava giù al fiume a fare il bucato (people went down to the river to do their washing). The freshly washed clothes were left stretched out on big rocks to dry in the sun. Dina remembers that ‘i panni lavati così erano tutta [...]

It was about 20 years ago that I discovered that my cousin Simona, who is two years younger than me, had become a vegetarian.  Simona was very fond of her pet rabbit, so one day when she opened the fridge to find a dead, skinned rabbit inside she was so shocked that she decided to [...]

The Italian preposition su (up, over, on) expresses the concept of being above (or on top of), as well as indicating mastery or influence. Some examples of prepositional phrases beginning with su include: Sulla cima dei monti c’è ancora neve; La tazza è sul tavolo; Pretende sempre di avere la meglio sugli altri..

Every now and then I publish una ricetta italiana (an Italian recipe), and if you browse through my recipe blogs you will notice that they all have one thing in common: they are senza carne (without meat). That’s because Geoff and I are vegetariani. Is it unusual to be vegetarian in Italy? Well, you’ll have [...]

Napoleone Bonaparte, who was born in Corsica in 1769 and died in exile on the island of St. Helena in 1821, was once the Emperor of most of Europe. In 1814 he was forced to downsize somewhat, becoming instead emperor of the little Isola d’Elba (Island of Elba) 10 km  off the Tuscan coast, which [...]