Our friends and neighbors at Locanda Demetra started their farm-to-table restaurant a few years back. It used to be easy to show up and get a table. Not so a...

This all started innocently enough. Lisa Jane's mom and dad, Linda and Mario, invited us to dinner at their house in Siena. Mario, or Chef Mario, is a retire...

Now we have two chefs to indulge our pleasures at Villa Palazzetta. First is our adopted nonna, Chef Paola, who makes traditional Montalcinese fare just like...

If you've never eaten Bolognese tortellini in brodo you simply must add this experience to your culinary bucket list.

We bought Villa Palazzetta because of its incredible location only five minutes walk from the historic city center. We also bought it because of the 270 degr...

We arrived this spring on April 7th after visiting Matera, an ancient town in southern Italy that was just named one of the Cultural Capitals of Europe for 2...

In March our first official guests visited Villa Palazzetta. The note they left in our guestbook says it all. But Maryellen, one of the guests, took time to w...

If you been to an Italian hill town then you've seen Piaggios. After WWII Piaggio invented this small engine, three wheel vehicle as an inexpensive vehicle f...

Another fall means another olive oil harvest. Matteo Turchi our fantastic groundskeeper did a fabulous job with this year's olive crop. We have just under 1...

In October several of took a lovely day trip on a 45 foot sailboat from Portiglioni to Elba. It was a perfect day. We left Montalcino at 8am and were under s...

Caprese is what the Italians call a mozzarella and tomato salad. Sounds so simple, right? Well, not exactly. Suffice it to say that there is nothing quite as...

When Lee and I went to Montalcino this last August, we had a job to do. We had to photograph our newly finished Villa Palazzetta for the new website we were ...

When we restored Villa Palazzetta one of the things that was on the top of our list was a real wood-burning pizza oven. Fortunately our Italian architect, Ma...

Last October we had our first olive harvest as the new owners of Villa Palazzetta. The harvest took place in late October. We harvested more than 2500 kilos...

Ever heard of Risotto Milanese? Well, here's the real thing from Milan along with a beautiful plate of ripe cherry tomatoes and burrata. Who could ask for more?