Every Day in Tuscany (33 page)

The last secret revealed to me is that “seasonal” means more in the Tuscan countryside than my passing up strawberries from Chile in winter, a chef’s credo on the menu, or appearing at the Saturday farmers’ market. The time for the gathering of wild asparagus segues into the two weeks for crunchy green almonds. Then we’ll be picking wild cherries and young nettles and borage. Our neighbors get up before dawn to gather snails from the stone walls. We’re all hunter-gatherers, we’re foragers. Want to see the dentist? He’s out picking his olives. The carpenter? Gone hunting. Here’s the polar opposite of selecting green peppers coated with wax, soft apples plastered with stickers. No pre-washed lettuce compares to raunchy wild field greens. The porcini and chestnut gathering in fall signals the beginning of long winter dinners by the fire. This foraging—not only does it yield the delicious gifts from the land—the practice brings with it a deep-rooted connection to the earth. On even the tiniest plot behind, beside, in front of an Italian house, someone tends tomatoes, basil, zucchini, lettuces, and garlic.

Maybe you’ve accepted an invitation to a Tuscan dinner, a long table under a grape pergola. The plates don’t necessarily match and the wine is poured into tumblers. The table is laden with garden-fresh food, bread baked this morning, and wine that tastes of the Tuscan sun. This dinner never will be only dinner. Often it seems to me that a pact exists among the guests: Everyone will shine; everyone will ensure that others are cosseted, flattered, that they will laugh. The intimate society of diners creates this bond over and over. You are crowded together because the table seats only twenty and twenty-five have arrived. Friends play musical chairs throughout the evening so they get to visit with everyone. They may sing or play cards, get up to dance, even smoke those awful stubby cigars. The butcher may leap on the table and begin reciting Dante. Someone may fire a shotgun into the air. A dog will graze among the legs. Someone may shout out a proposal of marriage.

You never know what will happen in the course of a big night under the stars in Tuscany. You may even find yourself belting out “Unchained Melody” into a karaoke mike, as I did. When the ordinary leaps beyond ordinary, you follow. This table, at my neighbor’s house, is set for the best life has to offer.

So, Willie. The long table. Shoes off. Fork poised. Pull up the extra chair for the stranger. Always, the garden. A basket by the back door. Let the butterflies and lizards and neighborhood cats have the run of the house. Windows open, heart and mind open. Fall into the round of giving melons, beans, jars of tomatoes. You participate in something larger than yourself. Salt the pasta water. And expect to be surprised. Always surprised.

O
SSO
B
UCO

Mario Ponticelli owns Trattoria Etrusca—a few tables inside and a few tables outside. We’ve eaten what he’s served either way. This is his osso buco, and polenta is the natural partner.

Serves 4 to 6

3 pounds osso buco, 4 to 6 pieces

¼ cup extra-virgin olive oil

2 onions, chopped

1 carrot, chopped

1 celery stalk, chopped

3 garlic cloves, minced

1 28-ounce can of tomatoes, chopped

Thyme

Oregano

FOR GREMOLATA

Parsley, chopped

Lemon zest

5 garlic cloves, minced

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.

Sauté both sides of the osso buco in the oil, 2 to 3 minutes per side, lightly browning. Remove, then add a little more oil and the chopped vegetables. Cook for 5 minutes, then add the tomatoes, thyme, oregano, and after 3 minutes, the osso buco. Cover and cook 2 hours until tender—actually falling off the bone. Serve the gremolata on top. Italians prize the marrow as much as the meat.

W
ILLIE
B
ELL’S ICED
T
EA

Iced tea in the South goes with any meal. Two or three glasses send me on a caffeine high. I make this in Tuscany but must admit I use fruit-herbal teas and no sugar. Still a refresher.

Serves 6 in big glasses

Brew a pot of black tea, about 6 cups—using maybe 6 tablespoons of tea. Cool slightly and pour into a pitcher with ½ cup sugar, stirring until it dissolves. Squeeze in the juice of 2 lemons, then drop the lemons in. Stir in an 8-ounce can of pineapple juice. Serve with several mint sprigs and crushed ice.

Another Willie Bell refresher: Put a big handful of mint sprigs in a pitcher and crush with a pestle or the back of a spoon. Fill with lemonade and serve with crushed ice. She smashed her ice in a pillowcase with a hammer!

A Larger Freedom

WE THROW THE LAST BEST PIZZA PARTY OF THE
summer. Chiara brings an orange falcon kite for Willie, and the children run up and down the hills beneath its haphazard flight. Placido and Teddy break my
bocce
winning streak and gloat. They’ve been humiliated to be beaten by a rookie American. The two bigger boys are cannon-balling the water out of the pool. I’m trying to sing the lyrics to “I’m Yours” so Lina can learn it for the Ferragosto party. The men are playing cards. Chiara, stunning in a green and white bikini, stretches out in the low rays.

When the sun falls behind the chestnut grove, Ashley and I bring out platters of antipasti and everyone gathers at two linked tables. Inside the
forno
, the fast flames look almost liquid. Ed shoves aside the coals, and Domenica, Ivan, and I begin to turn out the pizzas. The children don’t linger. Claudia takes Willie’s hand and they’re back in the water, riding a raft as if it were a horse. I pass the salad as the margherita arrives, followed by anchovy and caper, then a sequence of other thin-crusted pizzas.

Dessert is the famous snowball meringues (cream-filled clouds) from the town bakery, Ivan’s dense chocolate cake, and a watermelon I’ve cooled in the bathtub. I take out the limoncello from the freezer and the grappa, turn up the guitar music of Ottmar Liebert on the way outside. Everyone is laughing—some joke I missed. So much laughter. I will always be amazed.

When I gather Willie up for bed, he seems exhausted. “Franny,” he says, “I want to stay here forever.” He smells of melon, grass, pool water.

“I know, sweetie. But you have to go back to Rocco. He’s in his run right now thinking, ‘Where’s Willie?’ And soon you have school—first grade!—and your friends …”

“But … I like living
here
. It’s different.”

“Yes, you’re so right, my love.” He visited for the first time when he was six weeks old. I thought even then he was unusually alert and happy when propped on cushions under the lime trees or wheeled to the piazza, where he was greeted as “baby Jesus” because of his blond hair. (
All
babies are worshipped in Italy.) At two, he cried when he had to leave. At that age, can you sense the spirit of a place? This boy, I must stay mindful, is experiencing the mystery of childhood that will endure his entire life. I count to twenty in Italian, then back down, tickling his back, and before I get to zero, he’s asleep.

N
O ONE SHOULD
travel in August, but we always forget. The four of us take the train to Florence and wander about in the heat and throngs. Ashley looks in a few shops, but it’s too stifling hot to contemplate winter. The summer clothes look like the leftovers they are.

We take a taxi to La Specola, the natural history museum that displays one of each animal, fish, fowl collected in some dim past. We’re enthralled, even though the taxidermists’ black stitches show and there’s dust on the noses of the tigers. We’ve come for the wax models of human bodies made for medical students at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Ed and I have been before and thought Willie would be interested. We’re the only ones here. I’m struck by the framed anatomical drawings, which I don’t remember. The intricate and exact livers and spleens seem to have a faint backwash of diluted blood. Willie is most interested in the spiderwebs of veins on the écorchéd model showing the vascular system. When I point out the splayed woman with twins inside, he says, “Gross.”

We feel splayed ourselves by the heat. We go back to the hotel for rest, air-conditioning, showers. Before dinner, there is a consummate moment. On the rooftop terrace, we order drinks just as a copper sheen of light hits all the rooftops and domes around us. The four of us linger in that radiance and I try to make indelible in memory the faces of the three I love best with the city of Florence behind them.

The hit of the trip is the History of Science museum. Who would not be wide-eyed to see the lenses of Galileo? With them he found four moons of Jupiter. With his new, improved telescope he determined that the Milky Way was made of stars. Less enthralling—a bit of one of his fingers is also on view. Looking at the artistic design, lustrous woods, embossed metals of the astrolabes, medical tools, and clocks, you realize that science and art were once complementary. Those Medici patrons wanted not only useful globes, compasses, microscopes, balance scales, and barometers, but works of art. So much invention was lavished around the skill of telling time. Water clocks, hourglasses, and best of all the sundials and meridian lines. “What’s this?” “How does this work?” Willie asks a hundred times. Italy is completely fabulous for children. Last year he loved the Boboli Gardens and walking along the Arno and the confectionary Duomo. Next year—San Marco’s monastery and a climb to the top of Giotto’s bell tower. Equally miraculous—to be in Florence with a child. He stares at the sidewalk artists re-creating masterpieces in chalk, points at muskrats along the shore of the Arno, loves the names of pasta, designs on drains, the variety of motorcycles, gelato displayed with a fan of pineapple, a split coconut, a crescent of watermelon. And so we marvel too.

O
NE REASON
W
ILLIE
is fascinated with the sundials is that he has just learned to tell time. His frequent bulletins on the correct time of day remind me that this vacation has flown. For the last few days in Cortona, we scale back activities just to spend hours swimming, talking, picking the remaining sunflowers and strawberries, and drawing. He’s hoping the blackberries will ripen before he leaves, but they are still hard and pink. We pick Genovese basil and he makes the pesto himself, as he did last year. We cook potatoes with rosemary. I teach him to roast whole heads of garlic, then spread the hot garlic on bread, something he devours, squeezing out the pulp “like toothpaste.” He and Ed read and take off from the page into other imaginary realms where they are skunks or horses and there are dangers to be escaped. They swim at night; they check on our water tanks and cistern. At least one irrigation outlet is always sending up a geyser.

I never love Italy more than when Willie is here. Everything good about living here magnifies. Everything just ordinary takes on the aura of his interest. Which theologian said that religion should feel like a larger freedom? I like the idea and connect it with love as well. Having this boy in my life offers many large gifts and the best is an expansive sense of largesse. Maybe freedom comes when you can feel your best self way out in the open.

A
UGUST 15
, A
SSUMPTION
—the day the Virgin Mary was whooshed into heaven. We celebrate this greatest holiday of the year by gathering with friends to eat
bistecca
together. The town has a Sagra della Bistecca, with an enormous grill set up in the park and droves of people lining up. Considering the crowd, the food is remarkably good.

Our friends Ombretta and Piero, like hundreds of others, have their own private
sagra
. The party on their terrace above their olive grove ends with dancing. Ashley makes sure every year that her vacation includes this evening with many of our friends, including Claudio, the handsome
carabinieri
marshal who’s also a good dancer. Everybody brings a steak and Placido presides as grill master. There are platters of
salumi
, ripe tomatoes, baskets of bread, wine—that’s it. Piero brings out his karaoke equipment and Lina, who has a big, great voice, sings. As the evening progresses, several of us take a turn, including me. I’m especially looking forward to this year’s party because Lina will sing my favorite song of the summer.

At seven we set off to meet Melva and Jim for a pre-party glass of prosecco at Bar Torreone. Leaden clouds are gathering. As we sit under umbrellas, a few drops fall. Luca moves us inside just as the clouds tilt and all the rain that has not fallen in August spills as though from a giant dishpan. The hot street turns into a torrent and starts to steam. Lightning careens around the sky and the thunder rattles our backbones. “Is it raining there?” Ed calls Placido.

“No, I’m lighting the fire.”

We settle back and chat with our friends’ American guests and other people in the bar. In ten minutes, Placido calls back. Canceled. The storm quickly crossed the valley and Ombretta scooped up the place settings. She’s drenched, the fire is out, no sign of letup.

You don’t just stroll into a restaurant on Ferragosto. They’re jammed. We call Riccardo and Silvia. We know Il Falconiere is booked, but maybe their newly reopened Locanda del Mulino outside Cortona has space. Yes, they can seat the eight of us, even join us for dessert. We dash out into the storm and soon are welcomed at the cozy inn. No one will be singing “I’m Yours,” but the goose sauce for the pasta is rich, the steak just fine. Willie gets to order potatoes cooked in the ashes, which appeals to him. The creek out back—dry this morning—is roiling past.

We’re all, I suspect, flashing on the evening we missed, Ashley especially because she loves to dance. Riccardo and Silvia appear after dinner and we share the excitement of opening their first champagne-method prosecco. Riccardo shows Ed how to hold the bottle and slash down with a special sword, lopping off the cork, the top of the bottle, and letting out the yeast. Spectacular. Let’s hope the spilling bubbles wash away any bits of glass. Theirs is the first champagne ever made from Sangiovese grapes. It’s rosy amber in the glass and spritzy and spicy to the taste. A treat to be with the Baracchis for this inauguration, as we were for the first vertical tasting of their Arditos.

In Tuscany, it seems, if something is taken away, something else is always given.

The Ferragosto party will be tomorrow night instead. Too bad for us. We leave early for Rome.

On this day before Ashley and Willie fly home, we take the two-hour train ride and check into a small hotel that is new to us. Our usual haunts are full. Plain but pleasant, our rooms have step-out balconies with ailing plants and the requisite rooftop views. The terrace across the way is derelict except for garlands of purple morning glories swooping down from the railing. “Morning Glories on a Roman Balcony” I paint in my mind. Nothing else in nature, not the grape, the iris, Venetian velvet, or the amethyst goes as deeply into purple as these flowers with their white star hearts. The color is so intense, so saturated with itself that tears come to my eyes.