Happy Thanksgiving weekend from Rome! 🎉
Special savings, seasonal wine pairings and more fantastic recipes enclosed
In this newsletter you’ll find:
🥳 Happy Thanksgiving and a very happy beginning to the joyous holiday season! Isn't it great to be back in the full swing of socializing? I don't know about you, but I missed people during lockdown!
⚫ It’s Black Friday weekend and the perfect time to share my three favorite deals for great holiday gifts (or a gift for you)!
🍷 The wine you should serve over the holidays with some of the complicated seasonal ingredients like chestnuts, truffles, artichokes or porcini. I've got you covered!
🌱 Plus a few must-have recipes if you have vegans at your holiday table.
ℹ️ About Substack… a few more details to think about!
Let's start off with three great Black Friday weekend deals!
The best part about Thanksgiving weekend is food, family and friends, but let's face it: Black Friday is a great way to get a jump on your holiday shopping. Or maybe it's shopping for some special items you've had your eye on.
I'll share a holiday gift guide with a more extensive list of gift ideas but for now here are my top three Black Friday deals you really shouldn’t miss.
1. Italian Language Course with Davide
I've known Davide for a few years now and of all the Italian language classes I've seen offered his are the best. He offers beginner, intermediate, and advanced but his technique and content are what really sets him apart.
Once you purchase the course it's yours forever. You can start whenever you want or repeat a course over and over.
You listen to Davide's pronunciation and everything he teaches you are practical, down-to-earth language skills that you will actually use.
Some other courses teach information that you’ll probably never use in a real life setting – not the case with Davide's classes.
I've recommended his classes before and everyone who's gotten back to me has been super happy.
His Black Friday language course offer is a great deal - a huge 50% off his complete course bundle - so if you're thinking about learning Italian, get the course now and follow it whenever - and wherever – you want. All self-paced to fit your schedule. Have a look at his classes here:
2. Roscioli Italian Wine Club
I share a lot of information with you about Italian wine in my newsletters, on my website and podcast. I think I've mentioned that Italy has by far – meaning hundreds more – native grape varietals than any other country in the world.
The Roscioli Italian Wine Club selects some of Italy's very best wines for its wine club shipments and many of these feature Italian wines made with fabulous native grape varietals.
If you're into wine and you love Italian wine like I do, this is the only wine club for you. I've recommended the Roscioli Italian Wine Club in the past but since we are right in Black Friday weekend this is the time to jump on board.
With Roscioli, it's not only about the wines that come in the shipment: Roscioli sommeliers travel all around the country sampling wines and creating great videos. Once you're a Wine Club member you have access to hundreds of videos so you can meet the producers and visit the wineries virtually. It's one of my favorite features of this wine club.
For this weekend only, save 20% on your first membership payment by using code VIP20 at the checkout - click below to learn more and get started:
3. A Vitamix Blender
This is a big ticket item so no better time than Black Friday to purchase a Vitamix.
I've been wanting a Vitamix blender for years and now that it's available at a great price I'm going for it!
To call a Vitamix a blender vastly understates what this workhorse of a tool does. You probably know someone who has one; ask them what they think. Outside of my KitchenAid mixer I think this will be the single most important small appliance I have in my kitchen.
There are two Black Friday Vitamix options:
Here are a few Vitamix reviews:
“The hype is real! Worth the splurge.”
“…this blender is nothing short of AMAZING! It seriously blew my mind….product hype oftentimes ruins it for me…I assure you, that will not happen with this Vitamix!”
“This is seriously the best thing I’ve ever bought.”
“I only wish I’d bought it sooner! The bottom line Is that Vitamix is in a different category than any other blender”
Seasonal wine pairings - what you need to know
This week’s podcast episode was all about wine pairings with seasonal ingredients that are sometimes a challenge: think chestnuts, both savory and sweet recipes, or porcini mushrooms, artichokes and truffles. And then what about pumpkin and other squash that we serve savory or in delicious sweet pies? Each recipe calls for just the right wine to bring out the best in what you're serving.
Sometimes you might think that a wine like a Nebbiolo would be just right for a dish like a porcini mushroom risotto. But be careful: an impactful wine like that, for as delicious as it is, can overpower your dish. You want to serve wines that create a perfect balance between the wine and your hero ingredient.
Have a listen below and check out the blog post for the lowdown on the wines that will work best for these seasonal holiday ingredients.
Last week I shared with you that this newsletter - my subscriber only Substack newsletter - is now my de facto newsletter moving forward.
I'm loving the Substack chat feature! This past week some of us were chatting about pies and different pie ideas and one of my subscribers who has a lot of lactose intolerant and vegan friends and family members shared her pie idea. She uses oat milk instead of dairy and says it's a fabulous ingredient substitute. I'll be honest, I've never tasted it and I'm not sure how easy it will be to find here in Rome but I'll definitely search it out!
To access the Substack chat feature, just download the Substack app from the iOS app store today!
I thought a lot about it and started to do some research and found this pie recipe that uses oat milk. I hope you give it a try and then jump into the chat and share your feedback on this recipe.
If you already use oat milk in your recipes, please tell us how you use it!
PIC credit foodnetwork.com
The above recipe calls for a classic pie crust, but if you want to take the oat idea even further, you can make a scrumptious oatmeal pie crust! Here's a recipe for it:
An oatmeal pie crust recipe makes an easy, naturally gluten free pie crust using only 4 ingredients and no rolling or chilling! Ideal for both bake and no-bake pie recipes - an effortless alternative to graham cracker or traditional crusts.