Capers are flower buds that are either pickled in a brine solution or preserved in sea salt.  If you’ve never had capers, they have a distinctive flavor that is highly prized in southern Italian cuisine.  Capers that hail from the island of Pantelleria, part of the region of Sicily, are said to be the finest […]

Consuming greens or green leafy vegetables is undisputedly beneficial to your health.  Italians love greens (verdura), especially bitter greens like escarole (scarola), chicory, and curly endive.  I ate greens frequently as a child.  My parents extolled the virtue of eating greens, claiming that they purified the blood and were good for digestion.  When I was […]

Neither my husband nor I like turkey.  I think it was standard protocol, back in the day, that a turkey had to be cooked for hours until it was bone dry.  Nearly everyone I know cooked it this way.  A couple of decades later, and we now know that turkey doesn’t have to be cooked […]

Last month I went to the farmer’s market and purchased several large pumpkins to decorate the front of our house with for the holiday season.  Pumpkins, you may know, are edible and come in a variety of shapes and sizes.  After Halloween and or Thanksgiving most pumpkins usually end up in the trash.  A true […]