Our trip to Ortigia was long and uneventful. We flew from Boston to Philadelphia and then on to Rome where we connected to our flight to Catania, Sicily. In Catania, Charles and I shared a simple ham and tomato panini while we waited for the bus that took us to Siracusa and Ortigia. Our apartment was just as we had left it and the Ionian Sea crashing against the sea wall provided the lullaby for a late afternoon nap. We walked to Zsa’s, a trattoria on Via Roma, and shared a mixed salad and pasta alla Norma for dinner.

My first two meals in Sicily, reminded me that a few simple ingredients carefully combined often result in a sublime meal. Pasta alla Norma, a Sicilian classic, is inspired by Mt. Etna. The chunks of eggplant suggest lava and the creamy white, ricotta salata cheese sprinkled on top represents the snow that I saw as the plane circled the still active volcano just before we landed.

Thursday morning, we set off to reconnect with the vendors at the market. With so many tourists passing through the market each year, I wondered if my return would be noticed. I needn’t have worried; we were warmly welcomed with hugs and smiles, bits of cheese, samples of olives and chunks of bread. The bustle of the shoppers, the raucous calls of the fish vendors and the bright colors of the fruits and vegetables energized the market. Inspired by the meals we had eaten since our arrival and by the limited resources in my Sicilian kitchen, I’ve decided to try to live, cook and eat simply for the next eight weeks.

We would begin with a market breakfast. I chose three pale yellow pears touched with pink blush, red strawberries in a bright blue container, three blood oranges with garnet red splotched flesh and three lemons still sporting green leaves. After we had found a loaf of crusty bread, a jar of orange blossom honey and fresh ricotta and yogurt we headed home for a late morning treat. Here’s how I made it:

 Creamy Ricotta with Fruit

I used a fork to combine a half a cup of ricotta with two tablespoons of vanilla yogurt and a teaspoon of honey. When the cheese mixture was smooth, I made fruit parfaits by alternating the ricotta mixture with layers of diced pear, blood orange and strawberries. Combined with the sunshine, a chunk of bread dripping with honey, the roar of the crashing surf and the warm Mediterranean breeze, breakfast was simply perfect.

Download and print creamy ricotta & fruit recipe with an ingredients list here.

Friday we spent the day deciphering bus routes, schedules and tickets so that we could get to the Super Mercato to buy a small toaster oven to go with our very simple, three burner cook top, the small fridge, and the non-existent electric mixer, toaster, blender and food processor. At the end of a long, wet, rainy afternoon we unpacked the oven and walked to the closest pizzeria for dinner.

Saturday, with a clear head and a lovely sunny day, I was ready to make dinner. Vegetables, cheese, fresh tomato paste made with sundried tomatoes and olive oil, all from the open air market, was all I needed to make pasta primavera. Here’s how I did it: … read more

Jellies, jams and conserves packed with sugar and spice are gifts that are welcomed by almost everyone. They bring glowing color to the table and add zing to savory dishes as well as to sweet ones. Consumable treats in recyclable jars are a sustainable way to say happy holiday and they don’t need to be dusted.

Even though berry season has passed, the wild grapes are gone and any apples still on trees belong to hungry birds or deer it’s possible to make preserves with dried fruits like apricots, peaches, raisins and seasonal fruits like cranberries, oranges, lemons and grapefruit. The addition of spices, herbs, vinegar or liquor makes these gifts from the kitchen special.

Bright, ruby red, cranberry-rosemary jelly is the right color and flavor for the Christmas season. The color comes from the cranberries and the combination of citrus and rosemary makes it compatible with pork, turkey and if a hunter helps supply your larder, with venison and game birds. Here’s how I made it: … read more

A gathering for a holiday or a family celebration that centers on a meal provides the perfect opportunity for a food fight.

I don’t mean the kind that involves a cream pie in the face, champagne sprayed around the table or peas slingshot across the room. I mean friendly, family disagreements about the best cranberry sauce. Should dessert be apple or pumpkin pie? Are creamed onions or a green bean casserole mandatory? Will there be chestnuts in the stuffing? Most picture perfect holiday meals exist only in magazines and movies, with a group of strangers presented as family, dressed by stylists, sitting at a perfectly decorated holiday table. Real holiday meals are an opportunity to share a favorite recipe and no one will complain that the second version of cranberry sauce has spoiled the symmetry of the table.

My favorite cranberry relish was inspired by a recipe from my friend Lynda. I added a chili pepper when I made it last year. Here’s how I did it: … read more

The delicate, white blossoms of spring have been transformed by sun and rain and with help from the bees into the bounty of red, green and yellow apples of early fall. They fill trees that have been planted in orderly rows in orchards, solitary trees carefully tended in gardens and trees growing wild in abandoned pastures and at the edge of the forest.

Nine months after we moved to Vermont, I saw branches of white blossoms on trees near a deer trail. I mucked across a muddy stream and discovered that our house had come with a long abandoned, five-tree apple orchard. The trees were growing in a hollow, overrun with weed trees, sumac and tall grass. We left our first harvest to the deer whose narrow paths had led me to these trees. The following year we rescued the trees from the weeds. Since then, we share the apples with the deer.

The first step in making anything with apples is harvesting them. I found a small wire fruit picker that looks like a basket with fingers at the hardware store and clamped it to a long pole. It made it possible to harvest the apples without dragging a ladder to the orchard. Apples have a natural, waxy coating that prevents dehydration so I don’t wash them until I’m ready to cook them. After I picked the apples, I made applesauce and apple jelly with the same pot of apples. Here’s how I did it:

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Wild grapes are sour and perhaps the Aesop’s fable, The Fox and the Grapes, is the reason that the proper name for wild grapes is fox grapes.

I hope that the possibility of encountering an animal doesn’t deter you from gathering grapes. I wouldn’t mind seeing a bear, if it were as friendly as the ones Sal and her mother saw. This year, the only animals we encountered as we picked grapes were a pair of birds who weren’t happy about sharing and three sleepy beetles that traveled to our kitchen sink on the vines.

Sponge cake, topped with a layer of jelly and rolled into a spiral is a special treat when both the sponge cake and the jelly are homemade. Here’s how I did it:  … read more

I was driving home from the library when a bear ran across the road in front of my car. It’s the third bear I’ve seen that wasn’t behind bars in the zoo. The other two were performing bears, dressed in vests and hats on the street in Istanbul. This naked, energetic, black bear brought to mind, Blueberries for Sal, Robert McCloskey’s book for children that combines the joy of finding and gathering wild food with the possibility of meeting an animal or two in the process. Although it was too late to look for blueberries, the sight of the bear reminded me that September is wild grape time in Vermont.

It’s easy to spot wild grape vines that have climbed trees, utility poles and wires to reach the sunlight and their yellowing leaves are the signal that it’s harvest time. When cooked with sugar, the grapes that Charles and I harvest each fall become an intense grape jelly. I made eighteen jars of jelly with this year’s harvest. We will spread it on toast, use it to flavor yogurt, give it to friends and enjoy the rest slathered on sponge cake in divine jelly rolls. With just grapes and sugar and a bit of water the jelly is easy to make. Here’s how I did it:

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