024: Thanksgiving Italian Style — turkey in a brick oven and NO pasta!

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How do they celebrate Thanksgiving in Italy? Well, they don’t. But WE do! So we invited a bunch of friends and family to join us for an American Thanksgiving here at Villa Cappelli. They were all terrified to come as there was no pasta on the menu, but….

Topics we cover

• Paul’s new favorite drink for winter, a Manhattan
• Why we say the “locusts have descended” when the Italians come to eat Thanksgiving here
• How the turkey here in Italy broke our first oven
• A telemarketer calls, and we reveal our experience with them in Italy
• Just how big the turkeys are here in Italy
• Why Paul prefers I call our pizza oven a brick oven
• How the turkey cooks in the pizza…oops, brick oven
• Paul vents a little about his mother, like all Italian sons who love their mother
• The range of people we had this year
• How the Italians were afraid to come as there was no pasta on the menu
• How we arranged the buffet using makeshift heating trays
• Our challenge with cranberry sauce and how we made it this year with dried cranberries. Here’s the recipe we essentially followed. I didn’t use any cranberry juice, just all water with a bit of lemon juice and orange zest.
• Why the mash potatoes are so good to the Italians
• Why some types of vegetables are so hard to find for us here in Puglia, Italy
• Heirloom carrots grown locally here in shades of purple, yellow and orange
• And why carrots are mostly orange today
• Desserts, including a chocolate cream pie, apple pie, pecan (or any nut) bars and brownies
• We finished the meal with our Limoncello and Nocino
• The destination wedding we had at the villa the week before
• How the couple we know is from our reality show The Pitch.
• How the flourist suggested the perfect spot for the wedding
• Our latest product which makes a great gift: Red Wine Sea Salt

 

Some pics from the wedding