Beach holidays and mild planning for the fall

The details that make you feel in holiday, and a few questions for you

We have just returned from a week's holiday by the sea in Abruzzo. It was seven days in which—thanks to accommodation in a family hotel where the only decision we had to pick from a succinct menu to eat from day to day—I switched off my brain and did not think about work for a second.

In the rare moments when I wasn't playing at being at the restaurant with Livia on a unicorn sea-board or slathering her with 50+ sunscreen, chasing her with her hat, I began to map out what my beach holidays have always been. One by one, I brought into focus those details that make me realize that yes, I am on holiday, which help me settle into a state of almost total absence of responsibility, which free up a mental space that I need to get going again.

Beach holidays and rest are good for everyone, including Tommaso who took with his iPhone these beautiful photos that I am using in the newsletter today.

A seaside holiday has streets lined with oleander trees, dropping their pink and white flowers as bicycles pass by in the late afternoon. It has the scent of sunscreen, carefully applied in the early morning, under the beach umbrella, and gradually reapplied as the day gets warmer in a mixture of sand and dried salt.

During beach holidays I carry a women's magazine in my straw bag: crumpled, a few pages sticking to each other or wavy from getting too close to a wet swimming costume. This is one of the few times of the year when I indulge in frivolous reading, and when I tell myself that I should keep up this habit even when the days get shorter. In between features on how to manage curly hair or the fast fashion in leather sandals, I always find ideas for the next books to read, suggestions of holidays I would like to take one day, and a bit of lightheartedness that never hurts.

A weekly puzzle magazine often appears along with the women’s magazine, Tommaso's chosen pastime. I watched us from the outside, a couple sitting on a deckchair by the pool, she with a magazine in her hand, he with a green pen and crossword puzzles, leaning shoulder to shoulder, trying to complete the most difficult definitions: I found it reassuring and very sweet.

During holidays at the seaside, I return to reading books with the same voracity as I did as a young girl, when books were my lifeline, my connection to the world beyond the wooded hillsides of my home. What was out there? What was waiting for me? I prepared myself for adventures, for growth, guided by the stories that crowded my lazy afternoons in the summer. (At the bottom of this email I’m sharing what I’ve been reading recently, don’t miss it).

When I am on holiday, I have the taste of tomatoes, basil, and watermelon on my tongue. (In Italian we call a watermelon anguria, but I can't bear to call it like that, as it has such a round fun name in the Tuscan dialect that it is a shame not to use it, cocomero).

The summer seaside holiday has a gaze lost on the horizon, a relaxed forehead, without distressed wrinkles, and mild planning. It’s the moment to trace a tentative path to imagine the autumn to come.

Ever since I was a child, I have found that my walks along the shoreline, looking for shells or pebbles, are the perfect moment to think about what I wanted to be next, what I wanted to do next, once school started again, and now once the temperature will drop again and we’ll resume our routine.

Holidays at the seaside usually grant me mental space, a clear sky in which thoughts can finally flutter, and emerge from those corners where they get stuck during the rest of the year. It is like when you open the windows of a house that has been closed for months: slowly the dusty smell gives way to fresh air, and the house comes back to life in the golden light.

What are the details of your summer holiday? What makes you feel on holiday? What can't be missed?

To follow up with the spirit of this bland planning that makes me look forward to autumn with renewed curiosity, we have a few questions for you.

From September, this newsletter will take on a new rhythm. After three years and a half, and having spent a good deal of time thinking about how to improve your experience, we decided that we will focus on fostering our community, creating a safe, fun space where to interact, cook good food together, read cookbooks, and share stories.

If you can’t hop on a plane to join us for one of our cooking classes in our studio in the Tuscan countryside, well, here you will find the second best thing: well-tested recipes, personal stories and interactions, travel tips, online events, cookbook roundups, brilliant guests, and a warm sense of home and hospitality.

From my favorite restaurant in the area to the recipe for my family's birthday cake, beyond the paywall, you will find a space where you can connect with us and create meaningful connections with other like-minded people.

At the same time, we will rethink our Italian newsletter (Lettere dalla Toscana), which will take her own identity, focusing on a different perspective on food, that of an Italian writer trying to narrate her daily life to a foreign audience.

To work on the autumn planning, we’d need your feedback, to check if what we have in mind will also meet what you expect from this newsletter.

We only ask for a few minutes of your time, this would be incredibly helpful. Thank you ❤️

If there is anything else you would like to tell me or share with us that I forgot to ask, please let me know in the comments or reply directly to this email in private.

What I read in the past weeks:

• The Paris Novel, Ruth Reichl’s latest book. As much as I have loved all her memoirs, I found this second novel a little less convincing. I would have loved much more more food, much more Paris. Still, it was an enjoyable read, like an Emily in Paris set in the 1980s.

• A Year of Nothing.

  Emma Gannon
  writes one of my favorite newsletters here on Substack. With this book, published by The Pound Project, an independent UK publisher, Emma retraces her year of nothing, the months that brought her back from the depths of heavy burnout. She managed to turn it into a journey of awareness for us readers as well. Touching, I underlined so many passages.

• Eating to Extinction: The World’s Rarest Foods and Why We Need to Save Them, by Dan Saladino, one of the journalists behind BBC Radio 4's Food Program, THE podcast that any food lover cannot miss. I have only just started it, but I am already putting it on my list because it deals with a very topical issue that we food lovers should pay attention to. With globalization and the standardization of consumption, which foods are disappearing? What will we have to give up in the coming years? How much will we also lose in terms of culture, history, and knowledge if a grain, a cheese, or a vegetable becomes extinct?

• Come diventare Anna Karenina (senza finire sotto un treno), by Eleonora Sottili (in Italian). A creative writing course becomes an opportunity to rethink one's life: stories of people and characters are interwoven, novels and life are mixed up. Very entertaining, and at the end of the book there are also several hints and exercises for aspiring writers.