An ancient map of Umbria taken at the Vatican.

Ciao a Tutti,

What a summer we are having here in Umbria!  We have had one violent thunderstorm after another for several weeks.  A storm threatens at this moment and another one is expected to arrive tomorrow.  The storms destroyed a friend’s computer and two of his television sets and another friend lost his telephone.  The lightening has done something to my wireless internet set-up.  Neither my neighbor nor I (we share DSL) have been able to get online for most of July and August.
The temperature has dropped from the mid 90s to the mid 70s.  The sunflowers are spent and the days are shorter—now it starts to get dark at 8:30.  Mornings have been crisp and cool, perfect for my morning bike ride near the Tiber River or walk in the hills above my house.
Summer is the season of the Sagra—festival.  Every town seems to have one or two this season.  Last Sunday, I went to a small town near Perugia for a festa.  There were a half a dozen people in costumes from the middle ages doing the work common to that epoch—grinding flour, spinning wool, carving wood and stone.  The central piazza was lined with picnic tables and a band played in an upper piazza.  We ate a traditional dinner, served by waiters and children dressed in costumes from the 1500s.  It tasted as though someone’s grandmother had made each dish—gnocchi with goose sauce, garbanzo beans and pasta, beans and pork rind, torta with sausage.  Everything was delicious, including the wine.  I am trying to decide which festival to go to next weekend.  There are too many choices right now.

My tutor, Mario, during harvest--in the family's winery.

I work on my book every day except Sunday, but work is what I came here to do. My book proposal is almost out the door—all 150 pages of it.  I am in the final stages of making corrections and proofreading.  Tomorrow I hope to select the sample photos that I will include.  The next step is to send the proposal to agents until someone takes on the project.  I hope that all happens quickly.  Of course, it is far from over when I find an agent—a publisher has to buy it (if you know a good agent, let me know).
My head is swimming with all of the wonderful things I need to put on paper.

The pizza class I mentioned in my last letter was fabulous.  It was a professional class with only 6 students. The instructor has a bakery in a tiny town near me.  He has 20 years of baking experience and had a lot of very interesting, unusual things to say about flour and making dough.  The pizza was exceptional, but so were the breadsticks, the olive focaccia, and the dinner rolls.

Scaloppine with black truffles from the cooking class.

A couple of weeks ago, I was invited to a truffle class by a couple who produce a truffle sauce and sell other truffle products.  They taught us about the different kinds of truffles and showed us how to cook a few truffle dishes—scaloppini with truffles, frittata con tartufi, mashed potatoes with truffles rolled in a crepe. My favorite tartufi are the precious white truffles from Umbria, but they are not around until the fall.  I hope to go looking for black summer truffles next week.
In July, I spent three days at a local artisan butcher.  They make their own prosciutto, pancetta, guanciale (pancetta made from pork cheeks), and fresh sausage. One day I stayed at the butchers while they made fifty prosciutti and an equal number of pancetta.  I came home smelling like vinegar and garlic even though I had not touched anything but my notepad and camera.

Umbria's pork sausage--yummy.

The sausage here is squisita—ground pork, garlic, salt, and pepper—simple but fabulous.  And the guanciale! —sautéed and put on a piece of toasted Umbrian bread with olive oil.  Just about everyone here can afford to buy these gourmet products that in the States are a splurge.
I recently went to Citerno to learn about making vin santo (holy wine), a dessert wine that Umbrian’s love to dunk their cake and cookies into.  At harvest, the man and his wife hang wine grapes from the rafters in their attic to dry until the grapes are withered.  Some time in January, they will press the grapes and make wine.  The wine goes into a small wooden barrel with a bit of  “mother” wine, where it stays untouched for three years.  Delicious.  I am going back to help them hang the grapes in the fall. His wife has promised to teach me how to make the wonderful cake we ate with the vin santo.
In mid July, I made a trek to the southeastern tip of Umbria to a place called Campi.  I learned how the family has been making pecorino cheese for five generations.
Coming up next is a visit to a man who cultivates saffron, the onion festival in Cannara, and the lentil harvest.
I’m off to close the windows…the wind, arriving with the approaching storm, is slamming the doors shut throughout the house and blowing the pages of my book all over the floor.
Have a good rest of the summer.  Ciao, Suzanne