Left in Tucson

  Image of Sicily   This is my paraphrase from something I discovered while reading "Midnight in Sicily," by Peter Robb. When visiting southern Italy and Naples in particular, the author came to the conclusion that coffee is a "Neapolitan drug."  The sugar that Neapolitans put into their coffee with such care may in fact be tied to the "cult of coffee" throughout southern Italy. Naples was one of Europe's first and biggest importers of sugar.  According to Fernand Breudel in his book, "The Mediterranean,"  in the single year of 1625, when sugar was barely known in the rest of Europe, Naples imported "the "unbelievable quantity" of 15 hundred tons of sugar.  In the same year, Naples also imported 15 hundred tons of honey.  This huge consumption was recorded 50 years after coffee first arrived form the East.  The Venetians first imported coffee in 1580 from Constantinople, where it had arrived 30 years earlier from ...

Soul of Sicily - Cooking Tour, April 27-May 5,  2012 I chose to memorialize my 60th Birthday with a trip to Sicily, a gastronomical adventure through Sicily and the surrounding area. My NJ friends, Mary and Patty made the experience all the more memorable.  Escorted by our very knowledgeable and extremely patient guide, Renee, along with famed chef, sommelier and restauranteur, Pino,we gained entre into the operations of some of the best artisanal purveyors of Sicilian wines, cheese, meats, fish, breads, pastries, pastas; and sea salt, too. When not eating or cooking, we also took in some of the most interesting sites in the local area. On our second day in Sicily, with Pino as our guide and Renee as our translator, our first stop was, to see one of the most intact Greek temples to be found in Sicily in its classical surroundings.  In the 5th Century BC, Sicily passed from the Greeks, then to the Romans, with lots of...