Learning Italian Cooking in Tuscany
Saturday, August 7th, 2010
Plans are being drawn even
as I write, between my
beloved wife and our dear
expatriate New York friends
now living the suntan life
in San Diego, e-mails flying
back and forth to choose
exactly the right cooking
course at exactly the right
place, Tuscany, of course
at precisely the right time, spring
so we can meet as a foursome
to learn how to cook spaghetti
and lasagna and pizza and
ravioli and cannelloni and cannoli
washed down with the right
wine, Italian, of course
studed and lovingly prepared
in Tuscany on tomato-spattered
stoves, sweat dropping into
the mix of whatever’ll be mixed
all ours for the price of $3995
a head, when I’d just as soon
go out and get, and I’d better
get to getting A-sap, an Italian
cookbook, one of the fancy ones
with a recipe for everything
Italian we’d ever want to eat
cook and eat, I should say
at the bargain-table price
of $50, marked down from $75
by the very same gal who’ll teach us
Italian cooking in Tuscany.
(Published in the Spring 2003 issue of Nanny Fanny Poetry Magazine)
Note: I didn’t buy the cookbook, we took the more expensive means of learning instead. Did we love Tuscany? Yum-yum, how could you ask such a silly question. Irene and friend Joanie literally looked at over 500 potential courses we might have participated in in Tuscany, finally chose the best one, offered by a young lady who lives just miles from us in Boulder – Peggy Markel, “Corso di Cucina al Focolare,” 17 miles NW of Florence. Again, yum-yum.
