Summer Reads

Summer Reads

Summer Reads August 2021 I just wanted to lie down on the sofa and watch tv. I binge-watched some tv-series I had missed in the past years. I felt lazy, unhappy maybe a bit depressed after coping for the last year and a half with all that had changed in my life, and...
Teaching Adults

Teaching Adults

Teaching Adults The first meeting with a student is always decisive for how our teacher-student relationship will proceed. Getting it wrong means wasting a lot of time getting it right, and sometimes it never gets right. When I started teaching, I had only experienced...
Cultural Gap

Cultural Gap

A silent lesson When I want to explain the cultural differences between England and Italy, I tell two anecdotes I personally experienced. It was December 2004, and my husband and I were in London for a weekend. Our hotel was on the opposite banks of the River Thames...
Coratella: Traditional Recipe for Easter

Coratella: Traditional Recipe for Easter

Sfritt’. My recipe from the family I learned this recipe simply spending time, the days before Easter, in the kitchen with my family. My grandmothers, my aunts and my mother all cooked the Sfritt’ in a slightly different way, adding or taking out some...
Italian Easter : Cooking Legacy

Italian Easter : Cooking Legacy

If ever there were a week when Italians must do a lot of cooking, it’s the week before Easter.  When I was a child, lent fasting was a severe prescription for Catholic families. I remember my grandmother Modestina took it so seriously that only when the bells...