I have made it through my first week in Umbria, having suffered through a mild case of jet lag and uncomfortable travel shoes, to find myself relaxed, no longer pronouncing my Italian “gi” as two syllables and with a gullet continuously full of Prosecco and Chianti. This would probably mean that getting out the post about the last stateside soupapaloooza! from TWO weeks ago is kind of important so I can move on to the really fun Italy stuff like handsome famous butchers and hand forged copper pots; both of these things appealing to the true inner geek in me. But I would not be doing anyone any favors if I failed to mention the delicious American soup and the great party that we had back at the loft so many time zones ago.

I’ve never been a huge fan of corn. My mom, the Tiny Dancer, loves it and prepared it all the time when I was little, but I hated the way the silks would get caught between my teeth and there was something that, to me, seemed so undignified about the sloppiness of nibbling it off the cob. I was a fairly persnickety kid, shocking, I know. I also hated the way she considered corn a vegetable, which it kind of is not. “Kind of” because it’s a crop that is usually harvested to be dried and made into a grain, though the fresh corn we eat is technically vegetable because of how we eat it. It’s still sugary as all get out and I consider it more of a grain, and grains and sugars have a tendency to make me kind of grumpy, which no one needs to be around to see. I’ve generally steered away from the corn vendors at the street fairs and at places like Café Habana in New York despite their tremendous gravitational force.