Italiani a cuore

I love to cook.  I love to eat.  I love to read.  I love to travel.  I am a foodie.  I should have been a writer for a food travel magazine.  I would have taken Joanie, one of my closest friends along as the photographer, because I am visual and she takes incredible photos!  I think God is AMAZING in creating each of us so uniquely that we come alive with passion sometimes at the simplest things.  This all started a few days ago when I picked up the latest issue of the Food Network magazine, their Italian issue. (I cannot leave a store without purchasing an Italian issue of anything).


I took their "How Italian Are You?" quiz before launching into browsing this incredible periodical.  Now I lived in Rome for close to three years in the latter seventies/early eighties and have been back to visit Italy about half a dozen times since then.  I absolutely LOVE this country....it's people, culture, history and, of course, it's food. I am sure I have Italian blood in me somewhere!!  Well, I did pretty good on the quiz...falling in the "You are Italian at heart" category.  I would have been placed in the first grouping if I'd had an Italian "nonna" (grandmother) but alas, that was not to be.  I was pretty happy though because I always thought I was "Italiani a cuore".  Anything Italiano makes me come alive!


Looking out over my coffee table, I am staring at issues of "bon appetit", Intermezzo, Afar and Budget Travel, along with the aforementioned Food Network magazine.  I was pondering how much I love to create and cook all these delectable dishes that are arrayed in beautiful color on their pages....and reading the travel magazines, I can almost smell the scents and walk the streets of the countries, people and cultures represented.  Yes, I should have been a writer of food and culture.  My shelves are stacked with cookbooks, many of them international, and my husband gets to reap the benefits of my culinary interest.


Which led me to begin a new book.  For those of you who read my previous blogs, I had a few books to read while my husband is away on a trip to Russia.  Suffice it to say, in my love of reading, I often read several books at once.  I finished one, and am in the middle of two (which are stacked beside my bed...one used in my devotions and prayer time and one for inspiring me).  But I also read to just relax....so I picked up a book I ordered a while ago and I am now lost for good.  If no one sees me in the next few days...you can find me on my couch with a nose in this literary journey.  "A Year in the World...Journeys of a Passionate Traveller" by Frances Mayes.  Ms. Mayes wrote "Bella Tuscany" and "Under the Tuscan Sun".  Yes, they are about Italy....didn't I warn you? This book is her journaling story of visiting Spain, Morocco, Portugal, Burgundy, southern Italy, the Greek Isles..... I hope I can finish this before my husband returns home...not a good thing to have my nose stuck in a book when he returns after three weeks.  Of course, look at it another way....he could have bowls of pasta awaiting him when he walks through the door!


Just a little taste (no pun intended :) of a segment of this journey we call life that I love.  I hope you also have hobbies and areas of interest and activity you take time for that reflect the beauty of our Creator and the simple things that make you relax, dream, create and enjoy.