Cooking With Emma

After seven months in France, we took a break from r-gargling and brie bingeing and visited Italy as part of our very brave eight-weeks-on-the-road-with-three-young-kids summer road trip.  Michael and I have been there done that in Rome, Venice and Florence, so we picked a small country village in the hills of Tuscany and a quaint terrace house in Nesso, Lake Como as our Italian destinations of choice.  For six nights in Tuscany, we stayed in an old stone relic of a house with those classic terracotta tiles you wish you could afford in a new home.  They would never look as good as they do in a house that has been lived in for hundreds of years … it’s the scratches, divots and dents and the smooth, worn down steps that give it such character.  I had a quick look on the other side of the ancient door that led…

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10,000 Miles to Home ~ Meeting my Italian Family Part 2 {Marc Knight}

So I was finally in Italy, a place I had tried to imagine in my dreams for many years.  No matter how many photos I saw or the endless surfing on the internet looking at where my family were from prepared me for the reality of the real thing.

Fresh off the train my cousin took me into the town of Arezzo.  I was instantly amazed.  This place is old I thought.  My mind started wandering trying to soak in the history.  In Australia we think 200 odd years of white Australia is old and all of a sudden I am looking at places that are several hundred years old.

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10,000 Miles to Home ~ Meeting my Italian Family {Part one}

Published with permission from Marc Knight.

As I met family I had heard about but never met. I was treated like they had known me forever and whilst they knew I existed they didn’t really know me? That did not seem to matter however, as their willingness to accept me unconditionally was just humbling.
I only got to spend a few short days with these people but I knew that something had changed in me I had finally understood the real meaning of family.

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