MAG TRAVEL

Certain vegetables have a majestic quality to them that requires you to address them with a level of respect. I feel that way about eggplant, and I’m fascinated not only with dishes made with it but with when and how it came to us. Several varieties of eggplant are now available at the market, including the familiar purple oval one and the purple globe eggplant, which is called Tunisian eggplant in Sicily. There are long and thin purple, lavender and white eggplant called Japanese or Chinese eggplant. There are white eggplants that look like  large eggs and there is a round, ribbed eggplant called the Italian Rosa Bianco. The...

Why is it so hard to be simple these days? Everywhere I go I see people stressing and worrying, suffering in their faces, and yet, they have it better than a lot of other people, and countries for that matter. Sometimes I too get into the rat-race, don’t get my wrong, but the orto puts it all into a different light. A farmer spends everyday preparing for the next; cultivating, tending, tilling, planning, chopping, cleaning, watering. Once the harvest is done, as we are doing this month, we are already planning next season’s crop. Often, farmers seem so stoic and wise to me, their eye wrinkles and hands tell so many ...

We are inundated with tomatoes. This is a new experience for me. After planting 3 different kinds I still can’t believe how many sweet and tasty pomodori we have! I’ve never canned for preservation before. After a week of research and questioning people wiser than me, I realized that canning is perfected by trial and error. The first batch at canning took me 6 hours. The second took me 3. Canning is a project in which you truly understand that everything dies. You learn the age old process of cheating death – at least until winter. The thing is, cheating of death by preservation is to realize that death will occur and...

Growing up in Northern California, I was very spoiled with fresh produce and frequently would drive to Monterey to visit my Grandparents who had veggie gardens and on Highway 1 drive, we would always stop at the trucks for artichokes, plums, cherry juice, or walnuts, depending on the season. Not surprisingly I still have this fascination with seasonal veggies and fruits and despise oranges in summer or figs in May – it just doesn’t feel right! Living in Tuscany was easy- there was only seasonal! But the past 10 years in Rome, things have changed, we are cosmopolitan, and it is the city, so people eat from gr...