By Mother Martha Confetti are traditionally almonds from Avola in Sicily’s province of Syracuse coated in a hard outer shell of sugar. They are ubiquitous at many Italian (but not only) celebrations as a symbol of good fortune and prosperity. At baptisms the confetti are obviously pink or blue; at first communions, confirmations and weddings, white; [...]
By Mother Martha In 2004 Egeria di Nallo, a prolific author and professor of anthropology, political science, sociology and marketing at the University of Bologna, with a group of commmitted citizens, founded the Association for the Protection and Enhancement of Italy’s Culinary Gastronomic Heritage under the auspices of the Ministry of Agriculture and the University of [...]
By Mother Martha In 1300 Pope Boniface VIII proclaimed the first ordinary Jubilee, or Holy Year, with the Papal Bull, “Antiquorum Habet Fida Relatio.” Since then, they have taken place either every 50 or every 25 years. 2025’s Holy Year is the 27th. It began on Christmas Eve 2024 and will last through Epiphany, January 6, [...]
By Mother Martha The ancient Romans were the world’s first gourmets. They owe their obsession with food, at least in part, to fellow citizen Marcus Gabius. Better known as Apicius, he was a wealthy decadent epicure who in the first century wrote De Re Coquinaria (Concerning Culinary Matters), the world’s first cookbook. He specialized in [...]
By Mother Martha Theaters of Pompeii with Mt. Vesuvius in the background When Mount Vesuvius erupted in 79 A.D., at least 3,000 of Pompeii’s some 15,000 inhabitants were killed, buried under continuous waves of 700° ash-containing toxic gas. The deceased were either the wealthy who didn’t want to abandon their valuables or the [...]
By Mother Martha Portrait of Heinz Beck by Adriano Truscello, courtesy of Barbara Manto & Partners For my “Food For Thought” column of October 2014, Heinz Beck, Rome’s only chef with three Michelin stars, told me: “During my 20 years at La Pergola my cuisine has passed through several styles: from traditional, to creative [...]
By Mother Martha In almost all family-run trattorias in Rome and in southern Italy, when the restaurateur presents the bill at the end of the meal, he or she offers the guests a choice of digestivi. These are after-dinner drinks meant to help digestion. Many, like grappa from the Veneto and Friuli, Abruzzese centoerbe or Sardinian [...]
By Mother Martha During the past five years, among its numerous titles, all available from its website, The Sophia Institute Press has published three cookbooks, The Vatican Cookbook (2016, $34.95), Cooking with the Saints (April 2019, $34.95), and The Vatican Christmas Cookbook (September, 2020, $34.95). Mother Martha has reviewed all three in “Food For Thought” (August/September [...]
The entrance to the famous restaurant With a double article about the history of books in this issue’s “Of Books, Art, and People,” what more appropriate time to suggest a visit to Rome’s Caffè Greco! Here for more than 200 years the great minds of art, literature, and music have been meeting around [...]
L'Orto Di Maramao, a "rural" oasis in central Rome During the Middle Ages, Campo de’ Fiori (“Field of Flowers”), today Rome’s oldest open-air fruit-and-vegetable market, was the commercial and touristic center of the city as well as the site of public executions. The most notorious was that of the Dominican poet, philosopher, mathematician and [...]
