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When Travelers Can’t Travel

Posted on June 9, 2020 by Kathy WoodJune 12, 2020

When travelers can’t travel, what should we do?? Make lemonade!

“When life gives you lemons, make lemonade” is a proverbial phrase used to encourage optimism and a positive can-do attitude in the face of adversity or misfortune. Lemons suggest sourness or difficulty in life; making lemonade is turning them into something positive or desirable. (Wikipedia)

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It seems a lifetime ago. On February 29 and March 1 we were at the Atlanta Travel & Adventure show, interacting with hundreds of enthusiastic travelers about our small group tours in Europe. People were interested in talking about joining us on one of our few remaining openings this year, on one of next year’s trips (which had just been announced), or in the future. There were a few questions about the coronavirus, but it wasn’t a major issue. On Saturday evening we had a fun happy hour with European Experiences travelers from the Atlanta area.

A few days later I flew to France to spend time in Provence getting ready for this year’s trips, participate in a special tour in the Loire Valley, and attend the big annual conference sponsored by the French tourism organization in Nantes.

At the Atlanta Travel Show (Feb 29) and in Provence with friend Jenny (March 12)

How quickly life changed after I arrived in France on March 5. A few days after I arrived the tour and conference were cancelled, and then the US border was closed. I flew home early on March 17, the first day of the very strict lockdown in France.

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Fast forward to June 2020. The world we knew it at the end of February is a very different world today. We’ll always remember 2020 as the year of the coronavirus, when our lives changed quickly and dramatically. This is definitely a year when life handed everyone lemons. The challenge is to take advantage of the lemons to make lemonade… and for those of us who love travel to find joy in other ways.

The coronavirus has impacted everyone around the world, and everyone’s experience has been different. We cannot forget that more than 7,000,000 people have contracted the virus worldwide and 400,000+ have sadly lost their lives. We think about how they suffered and the impact on their family and friends. Although many people could work from home, millions of people have lost their jobs and their livelihoods. Some businesses ended up closing forever. Our hearts go out to all those who have dealt with devastating losses.

If you or your family members are on the front lines in health care or essential services, we applaud and thank you. And if there’s been an impact on your family’s finances, we hope you can navigate through those issues until our national and global economies are back on track.

The inconveniences and uncertainties most of us face seem minor compared to those who have lost lives, loved ones, jobs, or businesses.

My last blog post Seeking Simplicity was eight weeks ago, and here we are… still at home. In that post, I reflected that this unusual time of our lives was a hardship of sorts but also perhaps a gift… an opportunity to reflect on what’s most important in our lives: the blessing of good health, the love of family and friends, the beauty of God’s world, the simple pleasures of living.

Most of us have more freedom now than we did last month. Many people are now venturing out to shop, have a haircut, visit family and friends, or take a vacation by car, but others continue to stay close to home. The travel industry has been in a tailspin with a slow recovery expected, especially for international travel. International borders are still restricted, and many people hesitate to get on an airplane to go very far. Many long-anticipated vacations have been cancelled or postponed… plenty of “lemons” to go around!

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I reached out to several of our frequent European Experiences travelers to find out how they’re using this unexpected time at home. What do these travelers do when they can’t travel? How have they coped? How are they fulfilling some of their wanderlust? Have they made lemonade from these lemons?

Freda from North Carolina has been fortunate to travel internationally for many years and joined us for three trips in the last three years. Since she had to postpone her 2020 travels until 2021, she’s found ways to appreciate her past trips.

Freda is a very talented “leisure painter,” and is working her way through a selection of photographs from her travels, attempting to paint each one.

“While painting, I’m experimenting with different methods and unusual colors, rather than painting exactly like the photos. It doesn’t matter whether every painting is a success, as I find it quite therapeutic and a way to keep my mind off the news,” she told us. We loved Freda’s paintings from her Return to the Cotswolds trip with us last year.

Freda’s beautiful watercolors, inspired by the Cotswolds

Freda recommends the Footloose series (Amazon Prime), travelogues filmed by a British couple as they travel around Europe. She’s currently watching “McLeod’s Daughters (also Amazon Prime), a series set on a ranch in Australia.

Eric from Oregon and his husband Lorn have been with us on two trips and had been looking forward to number three. Eric is a retired Physician Associate and enjoys a busy life including volunteer work, photography, and travel. During the last few months, he’s used Zoom to reconnect with friends and family, sometimes reaching out to people he hasn’t connected with for 50 years! Eric told us he lost friends to COVID and wanted to support their families from afar. “Because I’m a photographer, I’ve created online albums to share to honor their loved one’s memory. I’ve also printed a portrait, had it framed and shipped to the spouse of someone who has just died. Being unable to travel to be with them during COVID, for me that is the next best thing I can do.”

Happy days in Alsace, June 2018 (Eric on the far left)

Eric has also worked with a local hospice to create a virtual camp for children who have lost parents/grandparents during the past year, and recently started working with a senior center, delivering food and essential supplies to homebound seniors. He was featured in an article in the New York Times for his volunteer work during the pandemic. Out of Retirement, Into the Coronavirus Fight

And although his April trip with us to Cornwall was cancelled, he recently took their motor home to the central Oregon desert to enjoy wildlife and nature’s geologic wonders.

Carol from Georgia has been with us on seven trips and would have been on our Chianti Experience trip this week… for the second time. She works for a major brokerage firm and has been able to continue working at home.

Carol told us that she’s enjoyed watching programs on Netflix and Acorn, but has tried to find calmer types of shows these days. She recommends “Anne with an E” and “Somebody Feed Phil” on Netflix and “A Place Called Home” on Acorn (set in Australia in post-World War II years). She also recommends the book, “The Little Paris Bookshop,” as a way to do some armchair traveling.

Even though she wasn’t able to go to Chianti again this year, Carol ordered some of Francesco’s Vallone di Cecione wine, and she’s used Stefania’s Pasta Al Pesto cookbook to get some cooking ideas.

Canoeing on the Dordogne (Carol, far left) / Carol’s dreams of Chianti

Ginger from Wisconsin has been with us on four trips and has the unique experience of raising her nine-year old grandson. She admits she’s struggling quite a bit because many of her interests are things she cannot do now: travel, concerts, plays, musicals, getting together with friends. “Even though Ben’s school has been great about connecting via the internet with videos of lessons and weekly class Zoom meetings, it is really hard to homeschool. Any nine-year old boy would much rather be with friends than stuck at home isolating with their mom or dad.”

Ginger offers this advice: “Everyone’s exhausted! Be kind to yourself and enjoy that morning cup of coffee or tea. Have a glass of wine nightly. Ditto with the extra pounds. It’s OK! It’s a pandemic!”

She’s also been working on a project that has been “nagging at her forever.” She finished a quilt that she started a year ago and also picked up knitting again. (She’s on her second pair of socks!)

Ginger (center) & friends in the Luberon / Ginger’s wonderful quilt

Ginger recommends “Dawn Wall” (Netflix), a documentary on rock climbing. “There’s adventure, romance, terrorism, friendship, and a great story. Watch the credits. You will love it!”

Steve and Linda from California are both retired and had planned a year with a lot of travel, internationally and in the USA. They’ve been with us on six trips in six years, and we will miss seeing them this year. Linda has been working on photo books of their travels over the past five years… so far she’s completed six books with many more to go. Although Linda would much rather travel, she says it’s “fun to be reminded of all the wonderful places I’ve had the good fortune to visit.” She’s also working on several “boring projects” that she would normally put off, like deleting emails and sorting through files.

Steve and Linda spend an hour each day walking Teddy, their two-year-old Labrador. (Teddy is really enjoying having them at home.) Steve also spends a lot of time working on their vegetable garden.

Steve & Linda in the Luberon / Zoom class with grandson Elliott

One of their most interesting projects is doing a weekly “school day” through Zoom with their five-year-old grandson Elliott in Washington, D.C. A former high school teacher, Steve says he tries to “search deep into my 35 years of teaching to find fun activities to enrich Elliott’s learning. We have made slime, and recently constructed a toothpick building. I have worked on math activities using a ruler, Cheerios and pennies. Last week Elliott read them an eight-chapter story. Steve says “Zoom has helped keep us sane since we haven’t seen Annie, Brandon and Elliott since Christmas and that is a long time to go without five-year old hugs.”

Steve and Linda have also been movie-watchers during this time. They recommend 1917 (amazing cinematography), Little Women 2019, Ford v Ferrari, and Harriet.

Sarah from Missouri is another traveler we’re used to seeing every year… also six trips in six years. She’s keeping busy working from home, but because of cancelled vacation plans, she’s ended up with time for other projects. Sarah reorganized her home office and joined Ancestry.com to start work on a family tree. She’s cooking more than usual, including a special “high tea” for a family Zoom call, in lieu of a trip to England. She and husband Fred are also training a new puppy, Sheldon.

Luberon Walking Week (Sarah, far left) / Sarah’s high tea

Sarah’s reading more, a mix of new releases and classics. She highly recommends “The Splendid and the Vile” by Erik Larson, a saga of Churchill, family and defiance during the blitz and “Dandelion Wine” by Ray Bradbury.

It was good to catch up with Michell from Louisiana by phone this week; she and her husband Bobby have been with us on two trips and are hoping to join us in Puglia in mid-October… we hope so too! Her family has been impacted directly by COVID-19, since her son and daughter-in-law both contracted the virus. Fortunately, they both recovered, but her daughter-in-law was quite ill.

Michell has been keeping busy with various projects. She’s been cooking and baking (even made mozzarella and ricotta cheese!) and says her garden has never looked this good.

Baking brioche / making masks / Michell, right, in Alsace (Christmas Experience)

A retired registered nurse, Michell worked with a church group that made face masks for health care organizations and at-risk individuals. She made about a hundred masks, especially important in the early days when they weren’t widely available. She and Bobby participate in a weekly Zoom call with travel friends and also enjoy going out for drives.

She recommends two favorite movies that relate to France and food: “The Hundred Foot Journey” and “Julie and Julia,” both on Netflix.

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Charley and I are also trying hard to “make lemonade” during this unexpected spring and summer. Charley retired from most of his European Experiences involvement at the end of 2019 (see our October 2019 blog post, Celebrating Charley), but we planned to co-lead our Cornwall trip together in April and then celebrate our anniversary with a week in London before I headed to the Luberon. Instead, we’re together at home in East Tennessee through the end of August. This is the first summer we haven’t made a trip to Europe in almost 20 years! Although the impact on our business has been very challenging, we’re staying positive and optimistic. We appreciate having this unexpected time at home together.

I’m working most of every day on European Experiences… working in my home office instead of being in Europe with our groups. I’m coordinating with our travelers and our European partners and looking ahead to the future.

My home office, surrounded by travel books and memories

Like others, I’ve had time for a long list of projects: cleaning out my office, setting up the new computer I bought a year ago, organizing digital files, and converting old family 35 mm slides to digital. (I keep managing to avoid the closet-cleaning-out project.) I participate in a few webinars a week, and we enjoy Zoom sessions with groups of family and friends. I’m having fun gardening and cooking, and most weeks I prepare a special meal featuring a menu from the area where I would have been that week. (Read about these on our Facebook page and also see our daily “travel dreams” photo.)

European Experiences - coronavirus summer

New window boxes outside my office / Preparing a Chianti meal

Charley is hard at work on a new book, this one set in Alsace. He’s continuing with his weekly Mobile Meals route; he’s been a volunteer for 20 years. This regular contact is especially important to homebound seniors these days. And he always enjoys playing the piano, and nowadays occasionally shares a special song online.

My series recommendations: “Somebody Feed Phil” and “Chef’s Table France” on Netflix. We both recently finished the newest “Bruno” book by Martin Walker, set in the Dordogne. We highly recommend this series, but definitely suggest starting with the first book—“Bruno, Chief of Police.”

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We would love to hear how others are “making lemonade” during these difficult times, including any recommendations for books, movies, and shows with a travel theme.

This year when travelers can’t travel, let’s make the best of our time at home. It can be a gift! Savor the memories of the places we love and look forward to the day we’ll be traveling again.

(And for European travelers, if you don’t care for lemonade, here are some other alternatives!)

Kathy and Charley Wood lead European Experiences, week-long “slow tours” in some of the most beautiful areas of Europe, including The Luberon Experience in Provence, France. National Geographic Traveler magazine named The Luberon Experience one of their "Tours of a Lifetime" for 2012, the top 50 tours in the world.

Kathy and Charley host Experience weeks in the Luberon, the Chianti region of Tuscany, Alsace, the Dordogne, and the Cotswolds. They also offer two longer trips: The European Christmas Experience (12 days) and The Cornwall Experience in southwest England (10 days). Kathy will host a new trip The Puglia Experience in southern Italy in October 2020.

Kathy and Charley have been traveling in Europe for over 25 years and love sharing their special places in Europe with other travelers. They've hosted 120 Experience groups since they launched in 2006. They now live part-time in their beloved village of Bonnieux in the Luberon. Read more about Kathy and Charley here.

Slow Travel Tours is an affiliation of small-group tour operators who offer personalized trips in Italy, France and other European countries.

Memories of Clocks, Cakes and Steaks in Prague

Posted on May 31, 2020 by Anne & Kirk WoodyardMay 31, 2020

Anne & Kirk Woodyard – Music and Markets Tours

We’re imagining where we would be right now, if Covid-19 had not kept us all from traveling…
We’d be in Prague for the annual Spring Festival (online only this year), how about you?
Here are a few memories from a previous Music and Markets Prague journey:

What’s on everybody’s must-see list when they come to Prague? The striking of the town hall clock, of course! So we join the crowd to watch the action (skeletons, Moors, apostles, and all) and, after all that hard work, stop for coffee at the world’s only Cubist Café (Cubism took shape uniquely in architecture in Prague). From the staircase, to the chandeliers, to the coat racks, the interior is adorned with those distinctive diamond patterns and faceted edges, particular to Cubist design. But the coffee and cakes are pure decadence…Viennese coffee and a Black Forest Cake to share, please – now we’re fortified for some shopping!
And before we know it, it’s time to continue our international cuisine theme with the best Steak-Frites outside of Paris – at the delightful little Café de Paris across the river. Tucked into a cobbled corner of Malta Square, it’s quite popular with the French embassy staffers, who work just around the corner. Four of us can’t finish all of the steak and fries – but oh are they fantastic! And that secret sauce….the best!
There’s more to see on this side of the river – pretty gardens, the many embassies and ministry headquarters, and the Lennon Wall, begun in the 1980s and still going strong, evolving daily.
Back at the hotel, getting ready for tonight’s event, we spy a balloon floating over the old city – what fun that would be!As the sun sets, we complete our day with an interesting Spanish Baroque concert in the Rudolfinum – well, it’s certainly been an international day!
Next year we’ll once again be there in person, enjoying this magical city with our Music and Markets guests.

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The best way to describe us (Kirk and Anne Woodyard) is that we’re interested in the stories that make the places we visit come alive.

We’ve visited Europe more times than we can count, learned some entertaining stories there, and met some warm and helpful people who also enjoy the wonders of music and life in Europe. We look forward to sharing these stories and friends and experiences with our Music and Markets guests.

Since 2003 we’ve hosted Music and Markets tours in France, Italy, the Netherlands, the Czech Republic, England and Spain, and in 2019 added Wonder Tours with a more intentional concentration on art and architecture, local culture, food and wine, and less time dedicated to concert-going.

We also design and host custom private tours – previous locations include many French, Spanish, British and Italian regions.

Between our music-related travels, we split our time between our homes near Washington DC and the south of France. While both of us have experience in organizing travel and music groups, Kirk’s background is in project management and competitive writing, and Anne is an accomplished pianist with over forty years of teaching and performance experience.

Diary of a Dinner

Posted on May 24, 2020 by Erica JarmanMay 25, 2020

This blog appeared first on 4 April 2020 on my website. Italy was in full lockdown, and I had the luxury of more time to cook.

Some dinners are tweets: heat up the leftovers and pour a glass of wine. Others are more like short stories taking more time and connecting you to other people and places.

FRIDAY MORNING

I take the kitchen compost down to the orto (vegetable garden). The cavolo nero is beginning to flower. I’d better use the remaining leaves. I ponder what to cook as I walk back up to the house. I settle on infarinata. I’m remembering the infarinata we had at the Vecchio Mulino during the Advanced Salumi course that had just ended.

Cavolo nero in full bloom. I hope the leaves aren’t too tough.

FRIDAY AFTERNOON
I have a good idea of the ingredients — broth from cooking biroldo (a blood sausage which I can get at my village shop, but not the broth), beans, cavolo nero, some odori (onion, carrot, celery) and cornmeal. Since I’d never made it at home, I decide to check a couple of my local cookbooks.

The Recipes of Marilena: Flavours of the Garfagnana

I bought Le Ricette di Marilena many years ago from the inimitable Andrea Bertucci at the Vecchio Mulino.

Andrea & I at his Osteria Vecchio Mulino, Castelnuovo di Garfagnana (photo: Jeff Blaine)

Marilena is from Fosciandora, which is on the southern edge of the Garfagnana. When I think of that area, I think of Marina Donati, the weaver to whom I take guests on my Tastes & Textiles tours. Marina is a courageous woman who decided to preserve the traditional woven patterns of the Garfagnana instead of creating her own. She sold her scarves, tableware, rugs and handbags at weekly markets, packing and unpacking her van and setting up her stall single-handedly.

Besides these rugs, Marina weaves table linens and scarves. They make great gifts which easily fit in a suitcase.

Marilena wants me to throw dried beans pre-soaked overnight, finely chopped cavolo nero, squashed garlic, potato and onion both finely chopped, a stock cube (which I refuse to use) and salt and pepper into a pot of water and boil for two hours. Halfway through I’m to add some pork stock. After two hours I whisk in the cornmeal and stir continuously for 40 minutes and serve hot, seasoned with a drizzle of extra-virgin olive oil, or leave to get cold. The leftovers can be cut into little squares and fried.

The other cookbook is one I bought when I first arrived in Lucca in 2004. The author Emiliana Lucchesi was a researcher and collector of recipes. Her book includes recipes gathered from the mountains of the Garfagnana to the beaches of Viareggio. It ranges from recipes of the peasants to those of the well-to-do, from home cooks to restaurant chefs. She relates stories and legends. I’m very fond of it.

Emiliana’s recipe is similar yet different. She wants me to use fresh borlotti or scritti beans, which are summer vegetables, and basil, which dies at the first frost. Yet she herself states that infarinata is a robust and tasty winter dish. She suggests adding some pork skin, which might give a hint of the missing broth from biroldo. She cooks the beans separately, sautés the odori (which include carrot and celery) to which the beans and their liquid are added. There’s a nice touch about drizzling the olive oil on the hot dish in the form of a cross.

Even the name of the dish is inconstant. Marilena calls it ‘farinata’ and includes in brackets the alternatives ‘menomatoli’ and ‘pacchiarini’. Emiliana calls her recipe ‘infarinata garfagnina’, but also notes that at Pietrasanta and Querceta on the coastal plain it’s known as ‘intruglia’ or ‘incavolata’. She prints ‘L’infarinata’ which gives the whole recipe in verse in the Garfagnana dialect (or perhaps Garfagnana Italian).

Of the pig, one knows, you throw away nothing; One eats it all, cooked properly. When you’ve cooked biroldo, if you have it in mind to make a special dish, take that broth, beans, potatoes, odori, lots of cavolo nero…

And to complicate matters further, if you ask for ‘farinata’ at Massa, you’ll get what we in Lucca call ‘cecina’, a chickpea flour galette cooked in a shallow copper pan in a wood-fired oven. I recently found Mauro Agostini who makes the pans, and we’ll be going to visit him during the Tastes & Textiles: Wine to Dye For tour in September. Not only will we learn how the pans are made, but also how to make cecina and enjoy lunch cooked by his son-in-law Jimmi in a battery of copper pots.

Mauro and a cecina pan. He explains why the copper is beaten. I thought it was decorative, but it has a function.

Besides being the cook, Jimmi is the sales rep for his and Mauro’s business.

By now I’ve spent a pleasant hour or more (who’s counting) exploring the variety of traditions of a single dish in the relatively small area of Lucca Province. That’s what Italy is like: confusing and endlessly interesting at the same time. I don’t know where the idea of a single Italian cuisine came from.

SATURDAY MORNING
Up to the shop to do my weekend shopping. I ask Eugenia, the owner and one of my cooking mentors, how she makes infarinata. She starts with lardo (fresh pork back fat) minced with odori. I must remember to tell participants on my salumi courses about this delicious confection which you can use when making minestrone or spread on hot toasted crostini.

Bruno, who we usually meet at his metato (chestnut drying hut), is mincing pork back fat with onions, carrots, celery and parsley.

She sautés more odori in the melted lardo, adds the pre-soaked and boiled borlotti beans and then proceeds more or less like Emiliana, but without the basil and pork skin. Since I’m in Casabasciana, I decide to proceed more or less with her recipe.

I go down to the orto to pick the cavolo nero leaves. What will become of it this year? I think about Penny, my friend who does more of the work than I do but is locked down in England. Rolando who digs it every spring is locked down in his own village in the valley. (I’m happy to report now that Italy is coming out of lockdown, Rolando has been up to do the digging, and I’ve planted the vegetables.)

SATURDAY AFTERNOON
I put the beans to soak. I’m slightly embarrassed. The beans aren’t from the Garfagnana; they’re ‘Cera’ beans from Agriturismo San Cassiano, the farm where we stay during the mozzarella course. It’s in southern Italy, in the region of Campania where you have to go for the best mozzarella di bufala. Andrea the farmer and his mother Rosanna the cook share precisely my philosophy about agriculture and food. They are affectionate and generous to me and my guests. I always load up with their beans and Rosanna’s jams, both of which taste intensely of themselves. I was especially sad not to be able to see them due to having to cancel the mozzarella course at the end of March because of the coronavirus.

Andrea in his squash patch explains that it’s pointless trying to get rid of the weeds. You’ll never win. Concentrate instead on making your plants healthy and they’ll reward you.

Rosanna, knife in hand, teaches us how to make her zuppa using Andrea’s vegetables and wild leaves we’ve foraged around the farm.

SUNDAY MORNING
I simmer the beans with a crushed clove of garlic and a few sage leaves.

Fagiolo Cera

SUNDAY LATE AFTERNOON
I unhook my copper paiolo from next to the fireplace. The paiolo has a slightly rounded bottom and a sturdy iron handle by which you hang it over the fire. It’s ideal for making soups, stews, polenta and infarinata. I bought mine in one of my favourite shops in Lucca in Via San Paolino, nearly opposite the church that the Puccini family frequented. It’s stuffed full of every type of home, kitchen and agricultural implement you can imagine, mostly made of metal, but not all.

Sautéing odori in my paiolo. Untinned copper is not toxic, but don’t leave food in it overnight.

I chop the onion, carrot and celery and sauté it in olive oil. I add cavolo nero and potato, the beans and their liquid, some strips of skin from prosciutto (which Renato, Eugenia’s husband gave me Saturday morning) and more water and start them simmering.

Next time I’m going to chop the potato and cavolo nero finer.

I light the fire in the kitchen fireplace.

When the vegetables are cooked, I slowly add the farina di formenton otto file (flour of eight-row maize) which I got last time I visited Ercolano Regoli at his water mill in Pieve Fosciana.

Formenton is the Garfagnana word for ‘corn’. It has eight rows (otto file) of kernels around the cob.

Ercolano owes his name to Beato Ercolano, a 15th-century Franciscan friar who founded what is now Agriturismo Ai Frati, where we stay during the Tastes & Textiles: Hanging by a Thread tour. Most people in the Garfagnana have nicknames, but Ercolano is so kind and good, the essence of a saintly being, that he is always called by his real name, Ercolano.

Saintly Ercolano. You can almost see a halo floating over his head.

Formenton otto file flour coming off the millstone (photo: John Morrison)

I stir with a spurtle, a turned wooden stick used by the Scots when making porridge. In reality, polenta is also a porridge, a mush or pap which can be made from many types of flour. In the Garfagnana we also make polenta dolce (sweet porridge) from chestnut flour. As I stir, I think about my dear friend Sarah who gave me the spurtle. I’ve known her for decades, from her days as administrator for the Academy of Ancient Music, then tai chi lessons together which led her to study the Alexander Technique which she now teaches in Edinburgh.

Polenta is traditionally stirred with a stick, although not usually so elegantly turned.

I learned from Alvaro Ferrari, master polentaio (polenta-maker) of the Garfagnana when I first arrived here, that 40 minutes is not long enough to adequately cook our whole-grain formenton otto file cornmeal. It requires a minimum of 1 hour, and he adds, if your guests are late, all the better. But the best secret I learned from him is that you don’t have to stir your polenta continuously. Just drape a damp cloth over the top of the pot, cover it with a lid and simmer as slowly as possible for an hour. No stirring! You can get on with preparing the rest of the meal. Whether this method would work with a stainless steel pan, I can’t say. When cooked in copper, it doesn’t stick to the bottom.

Here’s Alvaro (on left) on my very first tour in 2005. Hanging behind him are both yellow and red varieties of the formenton. (Photo: Marion Edwards)

I hang my covered paiolo on the hook in the fireplace, making sure the cloth isn’t hanging down the sides (my cloth is singed and reminds me not to make that mistake again).

I’m so lucky to have a fireplace in the kitchen all kitted out with the chain and hook for cooking. I wish nonna were here to show me how she did it.

SUNDAY EVENING
I open a bottle of Alessandro Bravi’s Garfagnina Rosso wine. Alessandro makes it below Camporgiano, north of Castelnuovo di Garfagnana, the administrative capital of the Garfagnana. His sangiovese grapes grow in vineyards even higher in the Garfagnana and don’t ripen until the end of October or early November. Alessandro likes a challenge.

Alessandro explains that at the cantina he has exactly the right micro-climate for the pinot nero grape. His wine isn’t burgundy, but it’s excellent all the same.

During courses and tours we go to his cantina (winery) to tour the vineyards and cellar and eat dinner cooked by his dad Stefano.

The aromas and flavours of the finished infarinata are beyond my powers to describe: the pungent scent of this season’s olive oil as I drizzle it over the hot infarinata, the intense flavour of corn and beans, the slight bitterness of the cavolo nero and the throng of friends who have been present along the way, if not in body, then in spirit. A happy ending to a short story.

And now it’s time to say arrivederci. I’m retiring from Slow Travel Tours in order to have more time to design, promote and lead my courses for food professionals and keen amateurs (cheese, olive oil, gelato and salumi). I’ll still be running a few tours too. Sign up here to receive occasional newsletters and here to get my blogs directly in your inbox.

I wish everyone safe and happy travels as soon as it’s safe!

Erica Jarman invites you on inspiring culinary tours of life behind the scenes that you won't find in any guidebook — get to know the food artisans and craftspeople of Tuscany and Sardinia. Come join me and my Italian friends and dip into a lifestyle where lunch is more important than business. Find out more at Sapori e Saperi Adventures and follow Erica’s own adventures on her blog.

Slow Travel Tours is an affiliation of small-group tour operators who offer personalized trips in Italy, France and other European countries.