Barbara Goldfield

A Passion for Presepe –

Click to view article at Italian Notebook In Italy, in cities all around the country, families are foraging through stuffy closets, garages and cellars. They are looking for certain old boxes wrapped with tape and string; once found they carefully place them on the living room floor. Now the ritual of Christmas can finally begin […]

Pressing Matters.

Pressing matters, a phrase with two meanings: one defines ‘an issue of crucial importance’; the other acknowledges that how something is pressed, matters.  Both are very relevant to the subject of olive oil.  On a metaphysical level olives symbolize Peace, a fragile concept. But in reality olives are rugged and hardy trees, with roots that extend […]

The Three Wise Salad Men

My mother has always prided herself on her huge american-style salads which are a combination of everything available at the market-place including lettuce, tomatoes, carrots, cucumbers bell peppers, fennel, sprouts, onions and radishes.  And if it happens to be taking the place of a meal, she’ll add some form of protein such as cheese, tuna […]

Faith Stewart-Gordon (2)

On return from her second visit in November 2010 – which included an exhibition of her art at the Polo Culturale Gastronomico in Montesarchio – Faith wrote: “We are back home and I have just opened the wonderful CD you made of Benevento, S. Agata and my art show. What a thrill! What great memories! […]

Suburban Baths at Herculaneum

[slideshow=67] Text and fotos by artist Penny Ewles-Bergeron Courtesy of Italian Notebook Few ancient sites have the power to thrill like Pompeii and Herculaneum – the cities Vesuvius destroyed in AD79. Here are history and beauty on a overwhelming scale. But should you ever succeed in becoming blasé about wandering the streets of a Roman […]

Lucky!

[slideshow=66] I found the little puppy on a morning walk with my dog. He was curled up by a gate, miserable, wet and all alone. As often happens in this part of Italy, he had been torn from his mother and siblings and then simply thrown away. I picked him up; he was breathing heavily […]

A Campania Wedding Banquet

[slideshow=65] versione italiana It would be hard to argue that Italians love to eat and I had heard many accounts, which to me seemed totally out of proportion, about the amount of food served at weddings, baptisms and first communions in Campania. So when my husband and I were asked to interpret for friends coming […]