Britt-Arnhild's House in the Woods

Under my local Tuscan Sun

@brittarnhild

Summer has finally arrived, and we spend many weekends at our cabin. In this week's video on YouTube I sit in our freshly started rhododendron garden at the cabin, dreaming back to my visit at Frances Mayes´ Bramasole, two years ago.

 

 

Tegamaccio, fish soup in a terracotta pot

@brittarnhild

From Cortona you can see lake Trasimero, a lake which is situated not in Tuscany, but in Umbria. The first day we met Frances we told her that we were planning to drive down to the lake. "You know there is a ferry out to Isola Maggiore" was her reply, and both of us knew that Isola Maggiore it had to be.

The day was very hot. We hoped that the lake would give us some fresh air, and it kind of did as long as we were on the ferry, in shade of the burning sun. Not so on the island.

Frances also told us that St. Frances of Assisi had stayed on the island, and we could still visit his church. Very intriguing of course, so we filled our water bottles and started an island hike. "Let us first walk around the island" I said, "then we can do the churches afterwards.

Cicadas filling the burning air,

colourful critters.......

.......and then we came to a dead end. Danger. Look out for slides. And we had to turn, walking back.

By then we were famished,  we walked back to the village and found Ristorane L´Oso. A good choice, a best choice.......if, I mean when I go back to Isola Maggiore, I know where to go to get my food.

We shared a seafood starter. Oh, is all this true? We looked at one another is disbelief before we started to eat, and soon the huge plate was empty, our smiles broader and broader.

But I still had the highlight. A fish soup. Tagamaccio, a traditional fish soup from Umbria, its name from the terracotta pot, tegame, in which it is cooked. A eat fish soup everywhere I travel, and like to believe that I know a little about fish soups by now. And believe me - this one is GOOD!

Food traveling is a great way to travel. To follow the seasons and the local specialties. I love foodtravel books, and a favorite food traveller is Tessa Kiros. Are you familiar with her? No? Then it is time to do something with that. Buy her books, follow her on facebook and on instagram :-)

I posted a photo of the soup on instagram, asking Tessa if she happen to have a recipe. Her answer, which came almost right away, was:
I don´t have that one - others yes, but different regions. Yours sounds amazing. Will look it up.

Another favourite food traveller is Frances Mayes of course. While I was texing Tessa Kiros, several food pictures appeared on her instagram page. While I enjoyed my tegamaccio, she was busy in her Bramasole kitchen, testing recipes for her next book, See you in the Piazza.

 

We never made it to the churches. I have to go back!

:::::::::::::::::::::::::

All this food talk, my mouth is watering.
Good thing our  gardenpizzas are just ready.......see you later.

Frances Mayes´blog

 The homepage of Ristorante L´Oso

Flavours and Traditions of Trasimeno

 

I open the blue book.......and walk into Bramasole garden

@brittarnhild

We had packed our suitcases and checked out from our Bed&Breakfast. But before leaving Cortona we had one more thing to do. Frances Mayes had invited us to come and see her garden. 

 When Terje and I arrived, a small bus was standing outside the gate and a dozen people were walking around, with their cameras. We waited till the bus had left, then walked over to the gate. No bell. No people to be seen. I had read in one of Frances´ books that from her second floor studio she could actually hear people talking from down on the road, so I started to small talk with Terje. Which was quite easy. We were standing in fromt of a wall planted with hundreds of lavendels, at least it looked like hundreds to me, an in all the sweet blue a million butterflies were swarming. How could we not talk about the butterflies.

 

And quite right, Frances heard us, leaned out of her studio window, called down to us to wait and not long after she came down and opened the gate, welcoming us inside.

In the preface of Under the Tuscan Sun, Frances writes: I open the blue book. Writing about this place, our discoveries, wanderings, and daily life, also has been a pleasure. A Chinese poet many centuries ago noticed that to re-create something in words is being alive twice

And not only being alive twice Frances. By writing about it and sharing with your readers from around the world, you have added life to so many people. Life, beauty, excitement, knowledge, dreams.  I am also alive twice through your books, and then, here the dream was unfolding in from of my eyes, walking in the garden of Bramasole, Terje at my side, you in front of us, together with us, pointing, showing, sharing, telling us about a plant here, an olive tree there. Life. I felt I should stop and ask Terje to pinch my arm, but it was no time for that.

Time was for looking into a little hidden reading place, for following your finger when you pointed out the path you walk down to Cortona for your morning coffee, for smelling your favourite rose, carpe diem.

The table on the terrace in front of the house. I have read so much about it, and here it was, a reality, just as I had imagine.

The area outside the kitchen, where so many dinners have taken place. The palette  taken right out of your books. 

Then you took us into the kitchen, where you the day before had been busy trying out new recipes for your next book, See you in the Piazza, which will come next spring, and further on into the hall, the dining room with the frescos of Lago Trasimeno, the living room with deep comfortable chairs, paintings, your little "museum". I took photos, but felt I was inside your privacy and it doesn´t feel right to share them here in the blog.

Everything has an end, or a new beginning, a new dream. Before we left I wanted a photo in front of Ed´s vespa. New dreams.

Then it was time for arrivederci.......new beginnings.

Now I look forward to read your recent book, Women in Sunlight.

 

Bramasole and Frances Mayes

@brittarnhild

Ever since I read Under the Tuscan Sun by Frances Mayes, some time around 20 years ago, I have been dreaming of Bramasole, and also of Tuscany. In 2000 we bought our cabin from my parents, and when making the cabin "mine", I was working with my right hand, Under the Tuscan Sun, and later Bella Tuscany in my left, always. Not that Rastarbo, our cabin is anything at all like Bramasole, not that I am Frances Mayes. But the dreams her books created in me. They were prizeless. They still are. I have these two first books of her at the cabin, but after a while I had to buy an extra set to have at home. I needed them. Just like I need bread in the mornings :-)

Bramasole, Cortona, Tuscany, has been a dream for me. Then, when I started to travel to Santa Maria a Ferrano, for the retreats I realized that Tuscany was not only a dream. It was real. The same thing happened when I became friends with Frances on facebook. She was not only a dream anymore. She became real.......well, almost real kind of :-)

Then, when Terje and were planning 10 days in Tuscany, just the two of us, before continuing our Tuscan days with the kids, I started to wonder. May be Bramasole is not only a dream? May be Bramasole is real?

Long story made short.......with the help of Frances we ended up staying four nights in the most charming B&B you can imagine, up on the rooftops of Cortona (more about that later.......may be), and on our first morning in this charming medieval town, we met Frances Mayes outside Bar Cafe´Signorelli, in one of the two piazzas in Cortona.

You must come and see my garden, Frances said. It is not difficult to find, everybody knows where it is.

I needed to keep my dream a dream a little longer. Truthfully, I was rather reluctant to drive up to the house, afraid my dream would vanish.

We did not go that day,

neither the next.

Then our last full day came. We were heading for Arezzo, and I knew we simply had to drive up to Bramasole on our way. Bramasole is actually marked on google maps, so we had no problems finding it. And I got my dozens of photos, and a full proof that this peach coloured dream of a building, and its lush garden, is not only a dream. It is truth as well.

The gate was closed, and we saw no people.

And after we left I put some of the photos I´d taken up on facebook.

I got a lot of likes. I am not the only one dreaming about Bramasole. And I got comments. One of them from Frances - .......you should have come in to see the garden! Let me know if you want to come back.......

Of course we wanted to come back. Of course we let her know.......and of course we actually came back!

 

But that´s a tale for tomorrow :-)

 

Never too late

@brittarnhild

We are still in Italy, now together with our two next generations. Before we drove west in Tuscany to meet up for our week together, Terje and I were invited inside Frances Mayes garden. The picture Terje  took of Frances and me will always be a reminder that it is never to late to follow my (writing) dreams.

Pen and paper (read computer), here I come!

A Fork in the Road

@brittarnhild

Some time last year, or may be it was the year before, I bought a Lonely Planet book, A Fork in the Road. A book filled with tales of food, pleasure and discovery on the road, tales written my a long line of well known food critics and travellers. Frances Mayes, the woman with Ynder the Tuscan Sun and a handful of other great books, is one of the writers, and it was Frances´recommendation which lead me to read the book. I planned to read it as soon as I got it, but somehow it hid itself in a stack of books, only to revealed again the other day.

I am slowly reading through the book now, savouring each and every tale. And as I read I start to remember my own food tales. My own forks in the road.

 

Two weeks in Laos in 2004 was a food eye opener for me. I had travelled to exotic places before, to Haiti, to The Dominican Republic and to Eritrea. Very carefully I had tried the local food, and got my share of stomach problems, but it was not until I came to Laos that I really dared to try the local food. Most of it completely new to me.

I travelled with Norwegian Church Aid, we were out in the countryside most of the time and if we wanted food to eat we had no other choice than eat what we were served. But still :-)

Noodles, vegetables, rice, greens and fish was on the menu every day, but from time to time we got other things.......

.......like bamboo caterpillars.

or fried critters.....

The strange thing - I loved what I ate.
And I ate what I was served.
All of it :-)

 As I continue to read the book there might me more food tales to share.

 

 

 

Blueberry season and travelling like Frances Mayes.

The blueberry season has started, which means that Marta is in seventh heaven. Our cabin is placed right in the middle of a blueberry hill, and though it is usually quite dry there which means fewer berries, there is always enough to make a 10 year old tongue perfectly blue.

Can you imagine more perfect images than a child's hand filled with juicy, blue berries, and the same child putting out her tongue as far as she can, crossing her eyes, trying to catch a glimpse of the sweet and tasty blue colour.

We love the west side of our cabin where we can enjoy the late evening sun. A few pieces of furniture placed on random, glorious nature as far as we can see.

Sunday night I was planning our day trip to Smøla, and Isat there surrounded by books and travel diaries. And in between I read pages from Frances Mayes' latets book, "A Year in the World". Now, almost 10 years after discovering Frances Mayes' writing, I still remember how it was to read "Under the Tuscan Sun" for the first time. At that time I had only been to Italy once, and travel litterature was a genre almost new to me, so the book opened up a new world. I had started to write my own travel diaries already then, I have quite a collection of them now. But Mayes taught me a totally new way to see things. I know that some people don't like her new book where she tells about alot of different travels. It can at times be too sketchily, only scratching the surface, and too much "just seeing the tourist part" of a place. Still there is something with her writing that hit my travel genes in a way that make them play a totally new song. The way she reflects on what she sees, the way she tells about authors and artists connected to the places she visits, the way she love to play with rare words to describe her experiences and feelings. I love it, and it makes me want to write myself, which I am doing more and more. Now I never go anywhere without a notebook, a diary or a sketch book. And when you first start to travel write, or photograph seriously, a new world opens. You see new and old places with fresh eyes, and travelling becomes a passion you can't live without.

Travelling for me is not necessarily to go to far away and exotic places. Travelling for me is to sit in my office and look out the window, it is the bus ride I do to and from work, it is a hike in the countryside behind our house, it is two weeks in Laos or a week-end to Prague. Of course my "art of travelling" could have developed without Frances Mayes, still, I know in the deep of my heart that I have alot to be thankful to her for. And I soon need to buy new copies of "Under the Tuscan Sun" and "Bella Tuscany". The ones I have are read over and over again and are worn out.

Pottery from Sperlonga.

I was in Oslo yesterday on a day meeting, and before and after the meeting I had a book chase, searcing for Frances Mayes' latest book: A Year in the World. I found it at the last bookstore I tried (of course), and then when I came out the the airport in the late afternoon this was the first book I catched my eyes on in the shelves.....:-)

I have loved Mayes' books since Under the Tuscan Sun came out many years ago. I have all her books at our cabin, and read them over and over again, took one of them to Venice last year and followed Frances' footsteps to The Accademia and the Ursula paintings, and have written page after page from our cabin life inspired by her.

Flipping through the pages of her book at the airport, waiting for a delayed plane yesterday, I started to read from the South in Italy chapter, and smiled broadly when she started with Sperlonga - one of my favorite villages in Italy. And of course - now I have to show you my Sperlonga pottery. Bought during several years and several visits.

Here is what Frances Mayes writes: Put Sperlonga on your list. A white village with houses like suger cubes above the sea, arm-wide cobbed streets running under Moorish arches, and outrageous flowers swagging off balconies like bright skirts of ballgowns.

One of the pottery girls in the photo has the name Marta, and we all loved it when my daughter Marta and my mother Marta came into the shop to enjoy her pottery. Three Martas in the small shop!

My most recent visit was in April this year, but no pottery was bought then. When we came to Sperlonga a little 4 year old British boy was missing. The parents had turned their eyes on something else for just a few second, and the boy was completely lossed. For two hours! The whole village took part in the search, and of course so did I. The last hour I sat on the piazza praying for a save reunion. The whole village could breath freely when the boy in the end was found down at the beach. Then it was siesta time, and my pottery shop was closed.