Journey to Tasty Tuscany

Journey to Tasty Tuscany

Journeying to Italy usually includes visits to Rome, Venice, Florence and perhaps the well known hill towns of Sienna or San Gimignano.   For our vacation we chose the lesser " trampled by tourists" area of Tuscany called Palaia, not far from Pisa.  

We have selected Tasty Tuscany, a cooking school, complete with daily tours of the neighboring walled towns.  Our heavenly vacation begins high atop a hill to a villa we reach by climbing a windy dusty road.  Approaching the summit, all our cares of everyday life begin to slip from our overburdened shoulders. The villa is composed of two homes, one for Patricia and Paolo, the chef and tour guide respectively, and one where we will lay our heads for the next four days.  The kitchen is one any chef, or chefs,  would die to have, a stove top with eight gas burners, a huge slab of white marble to prepare and teach classes, two generous sinks, and multiple shelves and cupboards for storage.  There are pass throughs to the dining room and the outside where an Italianate tiled table, crowned by wisteria vines, overflowing with their lilac pedals, awaits for alfresco dining.  The grounds are ornate with the scents and beauty of the yellow Brush flower and Jasmine, tall cedars and multicolored flowers bloom all around us.   Our enormous room is bright tangerine, with a red and tan checkerboard floor and antique armoire covered in a colorful silk screen of orange, pink and purple designs.  We have a private bath in the hall nearby.  Outside, for our leisure, there is an amorphous pool for lounging.  The meditative silence and sounds of nature promise to soothe and nurture us for the days to come.

After a sound and well needed sleep, we awake to the sounds of the resident rooster.  Three dogs, eleven cats and many birds also reside here.  Our breakfast today is comprised of a hearty farrow grain and delicious oil sautéed Swiss chard.  In addition I spy freshly baked crusty bread, cereals with soy milk and fresh apricots.  Then it is off to our first day of sightseeing.  Paolo leads the way in his roomy van entertaining us with facts about the region.   Our first stop is to an uninhabited ghostly village.  

We learn about the Villa Saletta where the nobility lived in the lavish home and the peasants squeezed their families of sometimes thirty people into small apartments removed from the sight of the wealthy.  The nobility lived higher up from the rest, hence the Higher class.  There are two stone churches here, one connected to the villa and the other for the poor. The second son of the family becomes the priest of the nobility's church. Next to the peasant's church, the middle class, composed of the craftsmen, have a larger dwelling, denoted by more windows, than the poor.  Between the nobility and the poor is an all important deep well and a large oven.  The wealthy Higher Class control the poor with the well, doling out water only when the less fortunate do their bidding.  The poor never handle money, but rather trade using a barter system.  They only get the use of the oven one day a month and cook all their bread for the month.  Hard bread is used in a soup called Ribollito, which means boil again.  The brick buildings are covered with plaster and then frescoes are painted on them and we can see the remains of painted columns and the family crest.   Ancient mulberry trees are growing nearby with their sweet fruit.  They were here to feed the silkworms used to create lovely cloth for sale.  The uniformity and size of the cobblestones tellsôpi us the size of the wealth of the inhabitants as more affluent folk could afford more.  Not so different from today.   So much to learn from the remains of a once prosperous life, if you can decipher the clues.

Other trivia includes the use of the stately Cypress trees in Tuscany.  They dot the landscape and are utilized to denote boundaries of property, prevent erosion with their straight roots and keep headstones from being disturbed in cemeteries.  Andrea Bocceli built a theater called Theatra de Silencio in his town and returns there once a year to perform.  The fields of dynamic sunflowers are used to feed everything from birds to cows.  Gas is eight dollars a gallon.  Solar panels in villages are bought by villagers by the share, so everyone can benefit from them.  Delectable gelato is everywhere in the towns and impossible to resist!

We enjoy our lunch in the town of Voltarra.  It is a medieval village built high on a hill protected by three sets of walls.  In the town square we learn about the towers where the nobility would go in times of attack along with the servants lower in the tower and the army too.  A curvy path leads us to the original castle which is now used as an insane asylum.  Our lunch is at an organic vegan vegetarian restaurant called Dioniso Bistro.  We enjoy a thick soup of lentils, grain, mushrooms and broth.  Next is a lovely al dente pasta with a creamy savory tomato sauce.  Finally we have to sample the pizza complete with fresh zucchini, roasted red peppers and red onions.  Everything is fresh and colorful.  It is so pleasant to dine on one of the three terraces where we can enjoy some people watching.

Then it is time to head back for our first cooking class, which I will describe in the next blog entry.