Roots in the Boot

This blog post is a little departure from food and gardening but I wanted to give you all a little background. Vazzano, Italy is our family's ancestral home. It is a small rural agricultural village of about 1,100 in Calabria, the southernmost region of Italy, the "toe" of the boot. The town dates back to the Roman Empire when it was called Subsicium. My great grandfather, Bruno Fuscà, came over in 1895 with his brother and two friends. He worked on the Pennsylvania railroad doing grunt labor for the next three years and saved his money. In 1898 he sent for the rest of the family - my great grandmother Marianna Nicolina DePalma,and my grandfather Domenico Antonio and his two brothers,Giuseppe and Francesco. They settled in Pittsburgh where Bruno bought a building which he converted into a combination grocery store and home. The store was on the ground floor and the family lived upstairs. At some point early on, due to an error in some important paperwork, our last name was mistranscribed from from Fuscà to Fusia. They decided to keep the new American name.

 

Vazzano, Italy

Panoramic video of the olive tree filled countryside around Vazzano

Out on a walk around Vazzano by Micuccio Caloiero

Just in case, some day, someone might want to visit Vazzano by flying to Naples and driving to Vazzano, here is a link to the directions - 
                                           

Driving Directions from Naples to Vazzano

Michael Pollan's Book - "Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation"

Michael Pollan on his book "Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation"

How to Build Super Garden Soil

Proper soil preparation is the key to a good vegetable garden success. Here are a few articles that tell you what you need to do to have nutrient rich soil for your veggies.

How to Build Super Garden Soil

The Geometry of Pasta

I found this great resource web site for pasta, The Geometry of Pasta, and want to share it with you. This is their self description - 

"Geometry of Pasta shows you how to develop an instinct for matching the perfect pasta shape with the perfect sauce. 

Pasta is a simple thing but getting it just right can be tricky. We explain how to get the very best combination of taste and texture and to turn you from an average into a great pasta cook."

This website is a taste of what you will find in our book and our app (coming soon) also called The Geometry of Pasta."

There are plenty of on-line sites devoted to pasta, the history and background of the various shapes and sizes and how to sauce the different shapes the best way but I like how these folks put it all together. Clever and entertaining. 
  
Here is the link to their site - The Geometry of Pasta   Enjoy!

Fresh Produce Seasonality Guide

Eat seasonally and buy locally grown whenever you can! 

Here's a convenient cheat sheet to help you do that. It's a seasonality guide to fresh produce, listing the basic stuff that you can find in most grocery stores, as well as some uncommon specialty items, by the time of year they are typically available "in season". That's when they're the freshest, most flavorful AND the cheapest. It's nice how it works out that way. 

Spring	Summer	Fall	Winter	Year Round
Apricots Artichokes Asparagus Broccoli Chives Collard Greens English Peas Fava Beans Fennel Fiddlehead Green Beans Honeydew Mango Morel Mushrooms Mustard Greens Oranges Limes Pea Pods Pineapple Ramps Rhubarb Snow Peas Sorrel Spinach Spring Baby Lettuce Strawberries Sweet Corn Sugar Snap Peas Swiss Chard Vidalia Onions Watercress	Apricots Beets Bell Peppers Blackberries Blueberries Boysenberries Cantaloupe Casaba Melon Cherries Crenshaw Melon Cucumbers Eggplant Figs Garlic Grapefruit Grapes Green Beans Green Peas Honeydew Melons Kiwifruit Lima Beans Limes Loganberries Nectarines Okra Peaches Persian Melons Plums Radishes Raspberries Strawberries Sweet Corn Summer Squash Tomatillo Tomatoes Watermelon Zucchini	Acorn Squash Apples Belgian Endive Bok Choy Broccoli Brussels Sprouts Butternut Squash Cauliflower Celery Root Chayote Squash Cherimoya Coconuts Cranberries Diakon Radish Garlic Ginger Grapes Guava Huckleberries Kohlrabi Kumquats Mushrooms Parsnips Pear Persimmons Pineapple Pomegranate Pumpkin Quince Rutabagas Sweet Potatoes Swish Chard Turnips Winter Squash Yams	Apples Belgian Endive Bok Choy Brussels Sprouts Cherimoya Chestnuts Coconuts Dates Grapefruit Kale Leeks Mushrooms Oranges Parsnips Pear Persimmons Pummelo Radicchio Red Currents Rutabagas Sweet Potatoes Tangerines Turnips Winter Squash Yams	Avocados Bananas Cabbage Carrots Celery Lemons Lettuce Onions Papayas Bell Peppers Potatoes

How Cooking Can Change Your Life - Michael Pollan

Author Michael Pollan argues that cooking is one of the simplest and most important steps people can take to improve their family's health, fix our broken food system, and break our growing dependence on ready made processed food.

Just a 20 minute video. Please watch. Very enlightening.