A roast pheasant holiday recipe, gift guide preview, pizza and art

The holidays are beginning here in Italy

This newsletter is packed full of stuff for you! Looking for something in particular?

Click the topics here to navigate:

• Holiday gift ideas to get you started

• A roast pheasant holiday recipe idea

• UNESCO world heritage sites in Italy + Italy on the intangible world heritage list

• Italian painting unveiled after a three year restoration: The Nativity - a Christmas card favorite - by Tuscan painter, Piero della Francesca

Holiday gift guide!

Here are some gift ideas to get you started. The brand new 2022 Flavor of Italy holiday gift guide will be on the website this weekend and in the meantime take a look at these great ideas!

Roast Pheasant for your holiday meal!

I've come full circle with pheasant from my first encounter as a kid living in Oakmont, Pennsylvania until just recently with my seven-year-old grandson.

Reflective glass windows are confusing to birds. Either they see the window as transparent and nonexistent and fly straight ahead towards it. Occasionally we find sparrows and robins and other birds on the ground just outside the giant picture window in our living room. Oftentimes when I pick them up, I find they are simply stunned and manage to awaken on their own and fly away. Sometimes they don't survive the impact. Depending on the time of day and the light, windows show up as a reflection of outdoor scenery so birds might see the window as a tree, or some other scene that's reflected in the window.

Back when I was around the same age as my seven year old grandson I headed down to breakfast one morning to come upon a startling sight in our dining room. A huge pheasant had flown into our dining room window and broken through the glass. The pheasant was entangled in a mass of glass and hanging draped inside our dining room curtain.