#3 - A weekend in Umbria

Our February You Pick Two even took place last weekend and it was a great success.  We invited our good friends Meena and Chris, who brought two people we had not met before.  I chose a theme based around a vacation we took with Meena and Chris, and other friends, to Italy back in June 2010.  We rented a villa on the Tuscany/Umbria border for a week and took lots of day trips to small towns in the area, but mostly we hung out at the house and ate and drank fantastic Italian wines.  It was one of my favorite places I have ever been.  So with that in mind, I tried to challenge myself with some Umbrian dishes.  All but one of the recipes came from the Umbria section of Lidia Bastianich's cookbook called "Lidia Cooks from the Heart of Italy".  The book was a gift from a close friend of ours for my birthday one year and I have been dying to make some of the recipes.  It's organized by region and it served as the perfect inspiration for the meal.

I will post some of the photos of the food and recipes in the coming weeks.  And, I have to say, the meal lived up to my high expectations.  I absolutely love Italian food and these recipes showcased the ingredients so well.  Nigella once said that French cooking draws attention to the chef while Italian cooking draws attention to the food, and I think there's a lot of truth to that.  I also tried to incorporate the simplicity of Italian food and design in our table setting.  I was thrilled to showcase a footed bowl that I purchased in Montepulciano (which is technically in Tuscany) during our trip.  I bought it at this amazing store where you descended down into this former Etruscan tomb that had beautiful pottery everywhere.  Here is a photo of the store:

Our mystery guests were Tara McKelvey and David Brunnstrom.  Tara is a friend of Meena's and an extremely successful reporter and writer on a variety of international and security issues (not to mention a mother of three!).  Seriously, just google her name - it speaks for itself.  David is also a reporter for Reuters and lives in Washington, DC in the thriving 14th & U street corridor.  Needless to say, a lot of our conversation revolved around national and international events, politics, human rights, international security, and the Petraeus scandal (more on that below).  In a previous career, I came to DC for an internship at an arms control think-tank/non-profit and tried to pursue a career in international relations.  I gave up on that career and went back to school for environmental science, but I still enjoy meeting people in that field and talking about it.  Both Meena and Chris are part of the scene, Meena worked at the State Department and later the National Security Council, she is an expert on Afghanistan-Pakistan issues.  Chris works for the Center for Naval Analyses, speaks fluent Arabic, and has traveled the Middle East extensively.  Unfortunately, Kevin has little to no experience in this area and was not able to participate much in the dinner conversation, which was unfortunate.  The upside of that was that I got a lot of unexpected help in the kitchen when getting the food ready for service. :)

From left: Meena, David, Kevin, Chris, and Tara

One interesting story that we talked about was the Petraeus scandal.  We  live across the street from the house where Paula Broadwell holed herself up during the Petraeus scandal.  It's a huge, yellow mansion up on this hill that her brother owns.  Previous to that scandal breaking, there were lots of very posh events during the summer there, complete with bodyguards and lots of black sedans and SUVs.  Turns out interestingly enough, Tara had actually attended a couple of those events!  If only we had known what those parties were for at the time.  Washington is such a small town sometimes.