Cooking Vacations

Fare La Spesa
Doing The Shopping

Doing the grocery shopping in Italy, fare la spesa, is a daily social event, and there are a number of ways to do it. Italians shop by the day; buying bread, fresh cheese, pasta, fruit, vegetables, meats, fish & poultry. They do not freeze, nor store their goods, they shop for their groceries day by day. And relationships with local shopkeepers, and purveyors run deep. Vendors at the marketplace and local butchers, know each customer’s taste. Not only will they save you a loaf of fresh baked “pane integral cotto bene”,-wood-oven baked, multi-grain bread cooked well, but they will also pass along the day’s news. The local market is not only a place for buying groceries, but a meeting place to socialize and exchange a “buon giorno,”-good day or a buon pranzo,-good lunch.

Ai Mertcati
At The Market
And if shopping at your favorite little market is not enough, then head to the outside “mercati.” Weekly mercati, markets, fill towns and villages each day throughout the week with baskets of seasonal fruits, vegetables, meats, fish, poultry, olives, cheese, olive oils, breads, wines, honey, herbs & spices, and more. Stands are set up in straight lines piloted by animated vendors who shout out their special of the day.

Sagra
Food Festivals
Italians never seem to run out of things to celebrate about, and a sagra, a local festival celebrating a particular food, is just another one. There are endless sagras throughout Italy that celebrate a particular food, dish or recipe. From the season’s first porcini mushroom to Savigno’s most expensive tartufi, truffles, to the prize-winning fiori di zucca, squash flower, on the Amalfi Coast, to Roma’s famous carciofi,-artichoke sagra, that takes up an entire piazza, to Bologna’s sagra di cioccolata, a chocolate lover’s dream, to Positano’s famous sea side sagra di pesce, a fish festa that lines the entire beach with seafood delacies, Italy has a sagra for everyone!

^ Top

info@cooking-vacations.com