A thousand days in Tuscany - Marlena de Blasi (Italian Memoirs #2)

Over these past three years that Fernando and I have been together, our journeys have always ended with our coming back over the water to our funny little house by the sea. But there's no more beach house waiting for us now. We've exchanged a beach house for a stable.

Two hundred villagers, ancient olive groves and hot Etruscan springs. On a forgotten patch of earth where Tuscany, Umbria and Lazio collide, Marlena de Blasi settles with her Venetian husband, Fernando, in search of a new life. The routines they establish are not that different from those of villagers centuries earlier. They wake at dawn to harvest grapes, gather chestnuts, forage for wild mushrooms. And they climb trees in the cold of December to pick olives, one by one.

Yet it is the friendship of the mesmeric Barlozzo, a self-styled village chieftain of sorts, that leads them deep into the heart of Tuscany. Barlozzo shares his knowledge of Italian farming traditions, ancient health potions and artisanal food makers. But there are some secrets he doesn't reveal — and one of them concerns the beautiful Floriana.

Recipes included.