In October Roberto Galati and I started Film Night in our medieval hamlet Casperia. I was expecting crowds to show up for free films but Roberto knew better. We had about 4 people and turn out has continued to be small unless we turn the night into a potluck dinner party. Then even friends of friends come. We couldn’t publicize our weekly films except by word of mouth, because showing DVDs to a group, even in our own homes, broke intellectual property codes, unless we wanted to pay a stiff tax.

Italy's most famous fish stew, Brodetto, comes from the Adriatic Coast near Ancona. Mangiare Bene's New Year's in Recanati with the Cinti family was all about Italy's delicious food and wine traditions. The trip report with recipes is posted on Slow Trav:
http://www.slowtrav.com/tr/tripreport.asp?tripid=1436

Mangiare Bene learned all about artisanal olive oil in Rome's Sabina countryside. Slow Trav posted the article: http://www.slowtrav.com/italy/lazio/sabine_olive_harvest.htm

Lately I’ve been experimenting with pizza bianca recipes. This crunchy, tasty pizza crust with a topping of dribbled oil, salt, and fresh rosemary makes a delicious bread accompaniment to any meal. Baked at the last minute and served piping hot, its appetizing allure will disappear fast from the bread basket, so be sure to prepare plenty of dough. Some of your guests will enjoy helping you stretch the dough, and some might ruin it, but the baked results of their botched stretching won’t be inedible.

While visiting our Berkeley home in January, I took a tour of the Martin Luther King Jr. Middle School’s edible garden, founded by Alice Waters in the early 1990s. After about fifteen years of development, the garden and kitchen classes run flawlessly with new projects always in the works. The day of my tour, a mound of mulch had just been delivered to the edge of the garden; steam was puffing out of it, as if from volcanic fissures, and the aroma was heady, like a fermented brew.

This is Mangiare Bene’s ongoing chocolate tasting blog, and your suggestions are welcomed.

I’ve found that for my palate the best-tasting chocolate bars have 70% or higher cacao content. In the 55% cacao bars the sugar taste, or sweetness, overrides the rich, pure chocolate flavor of darker products.

On a recent business trip to Zagreb, Croatia, I tasted some of the best food of my life. I couldn’t help but think: Mangiare Bene cooking classes should set up a sister-program here. It wasn’t just the delicious food that was instantly noticeable, but the food culture—the Zagrebians were as attuned to their cuisine as the Italians. They liked to talk about food and wine, they liked to cook, and they liked to eat.

Making "rosso" with Vincento and Secondina is posted on SlowTrav.

See http://www.slowtrav.com/italy/lazio/making_rosso_with_the_canalis.htm

The train ride from Piano di Sorrento to Pompeii is easy and direct. The views from the windows are breathtaking, and when you arrive you are at the entrance to Pompeii. With my interest in how people structure society, Pompeii leaves a lasting impression of how sophisticated a society could be in AD 79 (before the disastrous eruption of Mount Vesuvius).

What joy for travelers the Sorrentine Peninsula! With Amy, Bob W., and Henry visiting for Thanksgiving, we made an overnight trip to an agriturismo in Piano di Sorrento (the high plain above Sorrento with a view of Positano on the Amalfi Coast). The Sorrentine Peninsula is the mountainous foot of land curving around the Bay of Naples and almost touching the eastern tip of Capri. Its cliffs soar above the sea on both sides—the bays of Naples and Salerno. The natural wonder of this rugged, deeply ravined territory has mesmerized travelers for thousands of years.