Stephanie says

Meandering through the busy streets of Orvietto, I admire the Italian custom of evening strolls.   It’s a small hill town dating from Etruscan times, built on tuff cliffs towering above fields and vineyards, those cliff walls an ideal defense.   Tuff is a porous stone and Orvietto is known for the caves carved out beneath the city; wine cellars sure, but also pigeon coteries in event of a siege. The pigeons provided communication, meat and eggs.   I so admire good planning.   We’d arrived mid-day by bus, delivered to the station at the bottom of the hill.   Rather than schlepping our bags, we splurged on a taxi for a thrilling ride up the cliffs, through narrow streets, the taxi whizzing along barely clearing the spaces between buildings, and certainly at the peril of any pedestrians.   A tossup between sheer terror or adrenaline – it was definitely a buzz. Orvietto was the Italy I’d come to see.   The rave is always about Sienna; I couldn...

I’m not particularly into corn.   I admit it tastes good eaten in season.    Clad in a many-leaved husk, hydrated by corn silk, and requiring careful shucking to get to the yellow starchy kernels, is only worth my while in season.   I typically eat one ear of corn-on-the-cob per year.   I’m pretty much the same with potatoes, although the potato season isn’t as clearly defined.   We don’t grow a lot of potatoes in Douglas County.   Home gardens, yes, but that’s about it.   (Now don’t be Tweeting me if I’m wrong.)     My grandfather grew three crops in his large vegetable garden:   strawberries, corn, potatoes.   He’d dig up a pail of new potatoes for Grandma to cook into a trough of creamed potatoes and peas.   I don’t know where the peas came from.   I don’t think frozen peas existed in the mid 1950s, yet I have no memory of coerced labor shelling peas.    My grandmother was not a skilled cook. ...