I’ve been thinking about Tuscany lately, and berating myself for being yet another middle-aged white hippo, playing my lyre and warbling vibrato about Italia. But here I am, standing naked in the cannoli, and vibrating with joy at the mascarpone surrounding me.
Italians know how to eat. They don’t feel guilty—they don’t give a fuck. They eat, they drink. Each time of day prescribes its appropriate beverage and accompanying snack. Every area of Italy features its own pasta, sauce, cheese, and vino. Some villages even produce special booze, lovingly made in their own bathtubs. Italians stop on their way home from work to enjoy wine and crostini with anchovies, cheese and tomatoes. Italians stop in the middle of the day to eat five-course meals, drink glasses of wine, then take a three-hour nap, only to wake up just in time for dinner.
When my husband, Steve, and I were staying at the Agriturismo Cretaiole near Pienza, we and other guests helped the family pick wine-grapes. That day threatened rain, which might have rotted the grapes, so time was of the essence. Nearing noon, the decision was made that lunch trumped slimy grapes, so we stopped picking and went inside for lasagna, vegetables, bread, wine, and pigeon that only days before had been warbling in the family’s coop. Nothing was permitted to interfere with lunch.
These are my people.
There are rules: cappuccinos must be drunk only in the morning; bread cannot be eaten with pasta, but used only to shovel the pasta onto a fork and into your waiting mouth; never drink wine with pizza, only beer. When you pull off the autostrada into a service station for coffee, you don’t get it to-go. You stand at the counter, or one of the high round tables, and drink it there, from a real espresso cup. And, the espresso there is delicious.
Such bounty: whole shops devoted to wheels of pecorino of varying sizes; mountains of gloriously decadent gelato swirled to perfection, topped with dribbles of chocolate sauce, slivers of pistachio, or candied rose petals; magnificent rows of pastries in a local coffee shop, with a variety of luscious fillings like fior di latte, crema di riso, fruitti di bosco, cioccolato, Nutella. Dipped in my morning cappuccino, a breakfast of dreams.
Regionality is taken very seriously.
We stayed near Pienza, a town known for a certain pasta called pici, a shape that’s hand rolled into thick ropes and served with Bolognese. In all the local restaurants the only pasta they serve is pici. A few miles away, they make a different kind of pasta, and would never dream of eating pici. At Cretaiole, they eat only local food. When we asked Carlo, one of the owners, if they eat lamb, he said no, because it’s not from Pienza. The prosciutto is from pigs they raised, the wine from grapes grown on their land, the olive oil from the family’s trees, and the pecorino from their own sheep.
Each town will argue to the figurative death about whose pasta, pesto, or olive oil is better.
Certain sauces go with certain pastas. When Isa, Carlo’s wife and Cretaiole co-owner, suggested to Liliana, her mother-in-law, that one day they try pici with pesto sauce instead of Bolognese, Liliana needed smelling salts and a glass of vino to the face before she sharply declared, “Non!” When Isa asked why, Liliana snapped the ruler across the Ten Pasta Commandments and said, “Because pesto goes with gnocchi.”
All the food is simple, made from a few select, perfect ingredients.
We asked Carlo what the sausages he was grilling were made of, and he said, “Pork, rosemary, garlic. Basta.” That is enough.
Steve and I had stayed at Cretaiole several times, when I was thinner. But this visit, I took up more acreage, stood my ground more firmly than before. Luciano, the boss, the head pasta-crown, the Patron of Cretaiole, was in his late seventies, with a leathered face and huge, dry, sausage-hands cracked from decades of hard work and no hand cream. Luciano and I had a special bond.
Before traveling to Italy, I had enthusiastically studied Italian and tried it out on everyone I could. Luciano’s strange accent befuddled many a listener, but I seemed to understand a lot of what he said, though now I think I mostly nodded knowingly, said, “Si, si,” then translated to other guests what I thought he had said. Most of the time, I had no idea, and just made up what seemed appropriate. Luciano’s English was almost non-existent, so he also nodded knowingly, confirming what I had said was correct. People would ask me to translate for them and I eagerly complied, waving my arms, nodding my head, saying random words that made sense in English, but probably only bore a passing similarity to what Luciano had actually said. No one cared. A good conversationalist, I kept up both my and Luciano’s end of it, and everyone was happy.
Luciano was a flirt, and brought me figs that had fallen from the trees, studded with bees so sodden with juice they couldn’t fly away. He brought me eggs from their chickens, ricotta from their sheep, and instructed me to blend the blob of ricotta with a jar of Nutella and stick it in the fridge. Smooth velvet, this ricotta blended with the Nutella in illegal ways, making the most delicious concoction I had ever tasted. I ate it with a spoon, smiled with helium balloons in my cheeks and a heart floating in a bowl of Vin Santo. Luciano did, in fact, brew his wine in the bathtub, as well as a Grappa so strong it could melt your eyeballs with one sip.
The ricotta in Italy is better, the Nutella is better, and together they are divine. Everything you put in your mouth is better there, and you are meant to eat it, and enjoy it, in all its delectable simplicity.
Basta. That is enough.
received her Master of Arts degree in educational theater from New York University. Her script “Maze” reached the Quarter Finals of the Academy Nicholl Fellowship for Screenwriting in 2007. She was an actor and theater teacher for 20 years in Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, Charlotte, and San Francisco. Jocelyn’s love for cats and dogs led her to create Boo Boo’s Best, a successful treat company that she sold in 2022. Her writing is published in Steam Ticket and MacQueen’s Quinterly.
