I have only missed a few farmers’ markets this summer, and I am outrageously proud of that fact. Current public health crises aside, there is nothing like supporting local farmers and walking the rows of booths piled high with mounds of golden peaches catching sunlight just so. Of course, it is an immense privilege to be able to patronize these markets, which I have to acknowledge. This also seems like a great time to recognize the labor of the farmers who grow our produce and get up at ungodly hours to transport it to the markets in the city. From the bottom of our urban dwelling hearts: thank you!

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As much time as I’ve been spending gawking at produce this summer, I haven’t been carting my camera along very much. Much like I noted in my spring flower photo essay, I sometimes find it distracting to capture photos while doing relaxing activities, and it does not help to mix in my grocery shopping for the week. But, as I did with the neighborhood flowers, I caved, and I’m so glad I did.

One phrase that’s been coming to mind a lot this summer, and in general, is “embarrassment of riches”. Reader, look at this abundance. It is overflowing; it is overwhelming; it is evidence that we in the Midwest are some of the luckiest summer shoppers around. Enjoy these photos, then go thank a farmer!

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See you back here next week for something special! Thanks for being here.

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A few winters ago, we packed our bags in the midst of a cold spell and spent a magical week in Mexico City. When we mention this trip, we invariably sigh and reminisce about just how good all of the food was.

You can read more about our entire itinerary here, but to spare you the extra click, I’ll just go ahead and tell you that the best meal we had all week wasn’t at a Michelin-starred restaurant or a hot new bar that came highly recommended. It was from a food stall on the side of the road called Jenni’s Street Quesadillas.

We had walked by the day before and noticed a big group of people clustered around a flattop grill, expertly managed by a few women, that was making the whole neighborhood smell divine. By the time we returned the next day and took a bite of the quesadillas, I had been thinking about those smells for a full 24 hours.

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My quesadilla was filled with squash blossoms and some of the most delicious cheese I’ve had. The blue corn tortilla was, of course, the star of the show, but I couldn’t stop thinking about the idea of a squash blossom taking center stage. The following recipe is directly inspired by Jenni’s beautiful quesadillas, though it doesn’t even come close to measuring up, I’m afraid.

When I finally saw zucchini flowers at the market this summer, I couldn’t wait to cook them, pairing their sweet, vegetal crunch with the light tang of cheese and a crunchy (sadly, not blue) corn tortilla. This is the moment, fellow Midwesterners! Go to the market and seek out the squash blossoms, then make this easy dinner.

One more thing before we talk recipes. In the last two years, to my great and unending delight, a surprising number of you have joined the Page & Plate 2.0 subscriber list. I’m curious, if you would indulge me: what sorts of content are you here for?

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I’ve talked a lot about the wonderful Stefania Spinelli and CasadellGrillo, her beautiful Ligurian home at which I’ve spent some time. Earlier this summer, Colin and I had the privilege of attending the Cena in Vigne (Dinner in the Vineyard) that she organized in collaboration with Cristina from Tour Divini.

The dinner was hosted at a vineyard called A Trincëa in Airole, a beautiful Ligurian mountain town tucked into the hills. Named for the World War II trenches that lined the hills where the vines now grow, the vineyard is one of the most dramatic environs at which I’ve had the pleasure to drink wine. If you look in one direction, you’ll be staring at the horizon that hovers over the Mediterranean Sea. Corsica, which sits 180 kilometers offshore, is visible on a clear day. If you turn around and look in the other direction, toward the setting sun, you’ll be looking over valleys in France.

The vineyard is uniquely positioned: the vines are terraced, growing into rock-lined steps that build their way up the sides of the mountain. This ancient technique, once used all over the Mediterranean, makes for difficult farming: getting equipment, water, and even a team of workers into the vines is difficult if not impossible.

When Dino Masala, the current owner, took over, the property needed work. He and his team brought the terraces back to life, rebuilding nearly 20 acres of the terraces using stones from the local terrain. He took the English-speaking dinner guests around the property for a tour and led us up a series of increasingly steep stone steps. When we reached the top, he showed us the retaining pond that he built, surrounded by fruit trees. He picked apricots off of the tree and handed them out for us to try. I felt like I was on top of the world.

After our heroic tour, we tasted the wines and listened to live music, then sat down to a beautiful dinner, enjoying regional favorites like barbajuan, a filled dough that gets deep fried. The sun set slowly, and as the stars came out, Lorenzo the freelance astronomer (real thing) set up telescopes in the vines around the table for us to take turns glimpsing at planets and stars millions of miles away.

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We are so grateful to Stefania, Cristina, and Camilla, as well as the folks at A Trincëa, for being such wonderful hosts and putting together this magical event. If you’re traveling in Northern Italy anytime soon, please get in touch with them to organize a special tour or visit.

See you back here next week for summer cooking! Thanks for being here.

File today’s newsletter under: things I am wildly lucky to do with people I am extremely fortunate to know. One of my dearest friends, who happens to be the editor and publisher of Edible Chicago, has coordinated A Midwestern Ferragosto dinner with two of my favorite Chicago chefs, Jason Hammel of Lula Cafe and Dario Monni of Tortello.

This event has been championed by another dear friend, the wildly talented cookbook co-writer, Jeanelle of . She wrote the following, which gives me goosebumps and makes me beam with pride for my city and my friends:

Chicagoans may not know it, but Ferragosto, a cherished holiday rarely observed outside of Italy, has a sort of kinship with this city. Sure, Italians are woven into the fabric of Chicago, as our architecture, infrastructure, and economy were all built in no small part by Italian immigrants in the 19th and 20th centuries. But even now, Chicago is known as a working town; a city for the people. She’s far from perfect, but she gets pretty damn close in summertime.

Ferragosto is one of Italy’s oldest holidays, celebrated each year on August 15. Its origins date to 18 BCE, when the Roman Emperor Augustus established the Feriae Augusti (“Festivals of Augustus”) to mark the end of the harvest season. After months of demanding work, farmers, laborers, and even their animals were given a well-earned day of rest.

While dishes and traditions may have changed over the centuries, at its core, Ferragosto still celebrates labor and its fruits by bringing communities together. Meals feature whatever is ripe and ready at long lunches, picnics, and barbecues — anywhere, as long as it’s outside. The dress code and menu are come-as-you-are and bring-whatever-you’ve-got: eating spaghetti in your bathing suit; cracking open a watermelon into craggy sections; grilling fish on a makeshift rack set across some rocks. There are plastic chairs and loud tablecloths; wine in solo cups and meat on sticks. The vibes, unsurprisingly, are immaculate.

It makes sense, then, to celebrate a Midwestern sort of Ferragosto in a city founded on principles of community and shared progress, in a region of fertile farmland, during a season of abundance.

I hope it’s clear by now: this isn’t an event to miss. One night only. A menu that makes me weep. The best people in the best city. We hope you can join us, on Saturday, August 15th at LOULOU by Lula.

Tickets are $195, inclusive of tax and gratuity and available here.

Come dine with us!

Menu Preview

FIRST COURSES
Tempesta mortadella, pistachio, stracciatella, pickled shallot— on Tortello focaccia
Pinzimonio of market vegetables
Celery salad with colatura, shaved local fennel, and cave-aged marisa
Burrata with Nichols Farm melon, ground cherry vinaigrette, purslane
Heirloom tomato panzanella

SECOND COURSES
Grigliata Mista from Slagel Farm
Parmigiana di melanzane
Roasted Gunthorp Farm pork “tonnato”
New potatoes in salsa verde

*menu subject to change based on market availability

See you back here next week for a photo essay! Thanks for being here.

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Okay, yes. At this point, you know that I went to Italy. I’m sorry to keep harping on it, really, but I ate something there that was so good that I just had to try to recreate a version of it at home. That something? Blueberry and fennel gelato.

I KNOW. If you know me, you know that I famously dislike ice cream. It’s not even a dislike, really. It’s just a very underwhelming…meh? If I’m eating dessert, I’d rather it be fruit pie or cookies or brownies or cheesecake or a piece of really good chocolate or literally anything else. But in Rome, it was hot as hell, and we found ourselves within a short walk of Otaleg, which has been on my saved map of Rome since I read Katie Parla’s recommendation list. We got in line, and I realized that they had some sorbets on the expansive menu. We went two nights in a row, and each night, I was bowled over by the dairy free options that relied on pure fruit flavors and stunned my palate into gelato-loving submission.

One of the flavors I had was mirtillo e finocchio: blueberry and fennel. The tart smack of the blueberry against the sweetness of the fennel stuck in my brain. I wanted to find a way to recreate this at home.

This galette celebrates those flavors in a slightly different context. The fennel isn’t overpowering at all, but rather plays an almost-invisible role in lifting up the rich sweetness of the blueberry.

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The recipe for the dough is loosely based on Paula Haney’s recipe from The Hoosier Mama Book of Pie. As you may remember, I worked with Paula on her second book, The Hoosier Mama Book of Breakfast Bakes, and there is no one I trust more with summer fruit + pastry. Enjoy!

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A few months ago, I spent the afternoon with my mom, going through boxes and boxes of family photos from my late grandparents’ collection. Many memories were re-lived. A few tears were shed. We laughed a lot, too. Our goal that day was to digitize an archive that reached back nearly as long as cameras have been readily available to American consumers. It was as overwhelming and tedious of a job as it was a precious exercise in memory and legacy.

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As we sifted through the first box, we came up with a system: there were three piles. One was photos to scan in and keep. One was photos to scan in and send to family members who featured in the photos. The third was the trash pile.

In the boxes of photos from my great-grandmother’s house, the photo albums were full of photographs of stuff: vases of flowers, presents beside their wrappings, birthday cakes. My great-grandmother, a woman who is little more than a faint memory of a floral soap to me, took photos of the presents they sent to her to include in her thank-you notes, as if to prove that the present had really arrived and that she really was enjoying it. We debated what to do with these photos. What pile did they belong in? They featured only things, whiffs of parties past and occasions long-forgotten, and yet they feel alive with her quirky spirit exactly because of the subjects. We kept them.

On the other hand, I surprised myself when I didn’t hesitate before chucking an entire album of photos from a trip my grandparents took to Ireland. It was funny, I thought, that these photos were important to them at the time, enough so to put into an album and keep on their shelf for decades. But the passage of time and a new set of eyes rendered these photos disposable, except for the few that they had of themselves, taken by strangers. Ireland is still there. My grandparents are gone.

I thought back to the albums of photos I had taken during our last few trips—landscapes, market pictures, and food photography. No more than a few pictures of Colin and definitely none of us together. What, I wondered, was the point of the work that I do if future generations might find it disposable and impersonal, unmoored and unattached from the memory of the maker?

I wrote snippets of this essay in the days that followed those hours in the basement with a scanner, trying to parse through what this new revelation meant for me as a photographer. I filed it away, unsure of what this really meant for me or for you. After all, this isn’t a diary, quite. It’s a collection of thoughts that all relate back, somehow and someway, to my work: photography.

I looped back to these questions recently during a visit to Villa Bardini in Florence, Italy. The tiny museum is tucked into a villa that boasts a gorgeous garden, and as such, it’s the perfect place to visit on a hot day: it’s been nearly empty and quiet on the three occasions I’ve visited its small but powerful exhibits. The exhibit that was on display during this trip featured photographs from the Archivio Foto Locchi, a massive archive of photographs taken by a small army of photographers who roamed the streets of Florence in the post-war years.

The archive, which contains millions of photos, is quite literally a treasure trove, and the fact that it exists at all and is able to be viewed by the public is due primarily to the generosity and care of its stewards, the Corcos family, and in particular, Erika Ghilardi, the fourth-generation director of the Archivio. The Archivio has also absorbed several other photography collections and partnered with the Italian Ministry of Culture to digitize and preserve them.

It’s hard to do a justice to what this collection means to Florence as a city and Italy at large. You can (and should!) read more about it here, but I’ll briefly editorialize: it’s hard to think about this project in just one lane. You can regard it as a testament to the power of local journalism and on-the-ground reporting in the moment. You can regard it as an example of photography craft, an era where it was considered a trade to be learned from practiced elders, rather than a hobby. You can regard it as a historical record, both for the visual nature of the archive it provides and for its subject matter. But while I was walking through the exhibit, marveling over the photos, I returned, over and over again, to the photos in my parents’ basement.

My grandparents had countless albums, stacks of them, filled with baby portraits of my siblings, my cousins, and me; various flowers in the gardens of their homes; alligators and moose in national parks; home renovations projects in process; pictures of the RV parked in the driveway; and landscapes from their many travels. Pictures of smiling strangers whose identity we could only guess at were placed on the trash pile after my mom and I shrugged at each other with guilt. I searched, hungrily, for what I really wanted: pictures of them, caught in their every day moments which I didn’t remember, which were clouded over with the years of their decline, years in which I only saw them for spurts at a time when I visited.

But those photos were few and far in-between. My grandmother rarely appears in any photographs, but when she does, she is always with one of the children or grandchildren. My grandpa, the keeper of the camera, was in very few of the photos I scanned that day. His voice is in the videotapes and occasionally he pops in for a group shot, but otherwise, I only see him in what he chose to capture. Of course, this has to do with who was holding the camera at the time and what they wanted to capture, but isn’t that the power of being the photographer?

Being a photographer—and by that I mean anyone who holds a camera, which in this day and age is everyone with a cellphone—gives you power. When you click the shutter button, whether it’s on a screen or a flashy mirrorless camera or a vintage film camera, you are preserving a moment in time. Immortalizing a feeling, commemorating a moment. Freezing something so it lasts infinitely longer than the thing itself. These days, it doesn’t take much thought to open your camera app and click the button. But when the photographers who were working at Foto Locchi snapped these frames, it was with great intention and without the instant gratification of digital feedback. It was with reverence and care, for the composition of the photo as much as their subjects. It was to create a historic record that would live beyond them to tell the story of their city.

The next time you click a shutter, pause a moment and think about this photo. What, or who, are you capturing? What story are you telling? What will someone, years and years from now, think when they see the frame you’ve just captured?

See you back here next week for a summer galette. Thanks as always for reading—you’re making my writer dreams come true.

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One of my favorite parts of travel is sharing meals with people all around the world. There’s nothing like experiencing something new and then bringing it home to your every day life—it feels like the best kind of souvenir.

Recently, in Italy, we stopped in at CasadellGrillo, one of our favorite places in Liguria. Stefania, our lovely friend and hostess, shared this recipe with us one morning as we were eating a leisurely brunch on her beautiful patio. (By the way, her house and story have been featured previously here!) Immediately, I was taken. Stefania generously agreed that I could share the recipe as she told it with you all here.

Like so many of the best summer meals, the beauty of this recipe is in its simplicity. Simple recipes are best celebrated with ingredients that are fresh and in-season, and if my farmers’ market is any indication, the best time of year for eating is upon us. This weekend, the market was absolutely bonkers, and I grabbed these tomatoes, basil, kale, zucchini, eggplant, peaches, blueberries, fennel, and some flowers. More beautiful, summery recipes are coming your way, but first: friselle!

This easy meal is built on a frisella, a traditional Pugliese bread that is twice-baked and therefore very, very hard, giving it a sturdy foundation that allowed the bread to travel well in the ancient days. For that reason, the first step in this recipe is to rehydrate the bread, which gives you a wonderful opportunity to infuse flavor and freshness, especially if you’re using juicy AF summer tomatoes.

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I could truly eat these all day, and, to be honest with you, I have been! When I have company in next, I’m planning on leaving out a gorgeous tray of friselle, chopped tomatoes, basil, salt, olive oil, and water and encouraging my guests to help themselves at will. How lovely does that sound?

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This is a post I’ve been wanting to write for some time but that I ended up delaying by an extra week because I was traveling in the land of its birth. This technique is particularly apparent to me when I’m traveling and working with the natural light available, and we’ll be talking a lot about it on the culinary tour that I’m co-leading in France!

Join me in France! 3 spots left

More to come on my recent trip to Italy, but in the meantime, please enjoy the nerdiest post I have written to date.

One of the first lighting techniques that I fell in love with is famously-hard-for-American-photographers-to-pronounce chiaroscuro. I first learned about this way of capturing objects and people way back in high school Art History class.1 Here we go into a mini art history and photography lighting lesson. Wheee!

What is chiaroscuro?

Now that I speak a bit of Italian, the technique is easier for me to explain: chiaro, in Italian means light. Scuro means dark. This style is all about harnessing the power of light to stand out against the dark parts of your photo to create depth and drama and help guide your eye through the composition of the painting to the subject. Contrast is the name of the game.

Extra nerd moment: there’s an extreme form of chiaroscuro wherein complete darkness (the color black or extremely dark browns) is used in contrast with a subject shown completely in the light. This is called tenebrism, which takes its name from the Italian tenebroso, meaning dark and gloomy.

Who did it first?

The name that’s most often associated with this technique is Caravaggio. A Renaissance painter with a penchant for trouble, this painter was famous in his lifetime for his dramatic paintings, many of which caught the attention and money of the powerful patrons of the time. Part of the allure was his striking use of yellows, oranges, and browns against black or dark brown/blue backgrounds to mimic beams of sunlight or candlelight. This technique, which quickly became Caravaggio’s calling card, still stands out today when you’re admiring his work, like this portrait of Saint Francis of Assisi, which is currently on display at the Museo e Cripta dei Cappuccini in Rome where I saw it recently, which finally motivated me to write this post.

Why is chiaroscuro and tenebrism so effective?

Using these techniques work on several different levels: the contrasting colors create dynamic canvases, to be sure, but they also allow the artist to use light as a compositional tool. I was really impressed by the signage in the museum that detailed exactly how chiaroscuro drives the composition in the above photo, which I’ve paraphrased here: The light is flooding into a dark cave or room from the upper left corner of the painting. It hits the back of Saint Francis, creating a strong line for our eyes to follow, then glances off of his cheek and down onto the skull that he holds in his hands, pulling our eyes down along with it. It’s a subtle thing that works behind the scenes in your brain to make a photo or painting appealing, and hence its genius.

How does chiaroscuro appear in food portraiture?

In case you’ve missed it, I’m wildly obsessed with taking techniques, compositions, and themes from paintings, particularly from the period right after my man Caravaggio was doing his thing. Dutch painters like Jan Davidszoon de Heem, Pieter Claesz, and Clara Peeters had this technique down, and used it to show off fruits, vegetables, meat, and cheese in dramatic lighting that gave these everyday items a profound status. All of the sudden, during this era, real life and simple, everyday objects were being celebrated instead of scenes from the Bible. It was a big deal!

Okay, but why do we care about chiaroscuro in food photography in 2026?

Because it’s still one of the most dramatic and fascinating ways to harness the power of light in food photography, and you don’t have to be an expert in artificial light to use it. Here’s a gallery of photos, using both natural and artificial light, in which I’ve put this technique to use to help highlight subjects, guide your eye as a composition technique, and add drama to food portraiture:

Thanks for being a part of Page and Plate. I have a big audacious goal to grow this newsletter this year. Can you help me out with that and forward to a friend so they can subscribe, too? See you back here next week for an Italian classic!

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Housekeeping

1. Only three spots are left for Kitchen Sink Studio’s inaugural culinary tour in Normandy, from October 17-23, 2026. This is going to be the trip of a lifetime, so make sure to reserve your room (all singles remaining!) here.

2. Order your copy of Garden Party, our latest zine, here. We only printed 50, so when they’re gone, they’re gone!

Summer heat is here, people. The days of luxuriously baking or making a pot of beans on the stove are a distant memory. We’re in the season of salads, dips for dinner, and ice as a luxury product.

If you, like me, will do anything to save yourself having to expend unnecessary energy in the heat of the afternoons, I have a perfect dinner for you. Need some wine recommendations to go along with it? Check out this post from Rachel at .

Anchovies & Butter Toast

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It’s no secret that I feel extremely, wildly lucky to do what I do, and I’m here today with another essay about just that. Last weekend, Emily and I led our third (!) annual retreat in the Driftless region of Wisconsin at the beautiful Red Clover Ranch.

This year held some sort of special magic. Did we prove that the third time really is charmed? We couldn’t have asked for a better group of people for year three, from fermentary school owners to pastry chefs to photographers to herbalists to wildly talented home bakers. They formed a special bond over the weekend and left talking about matching tattoos, which made me feel like a proud aunt.

Join us on our next retreat!

The weekend was lovely as always, full of cake decorating and foraging walks and the art of noticing. This year, we added a fun activity that focused on color stories, too. Each guest was assigned a color to search out over the weekend. By Saturday night, they had to send me 6 photographs that encapsulated the weekend as shown through their color. I printed them off for us to admire over breakfast, and I was absolutely spellbound by how wildly different each person’s interpretation of the weekend turned out to be.

Of course, I couldn’t help but play too. More and more, color is how I organize my work. I assigned myself brown to write into a color story, which you can see below. I was pleasantly surprised by the coolness of the browns that I found around the ranch, and I love the way the color story shows the equal parts nature and human nurture that I have come to associate with our time at Red Clover.

Because I couldn’t resist, I also put together an orange/pink color story. To me, that’s the color that best captures these summery, magical weekends in Wisconsin—maybe because it reminds me of the gorgeous sunsets we see nightly at the ranch.

This activity was so sweet and so fun. I can’t wait to do it again, in France, when we embark on our next adventure. Imagine the colors to come!

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A million thank you notes: to Red Clover and the amazing team there for welcoming us back for the third time. To Chef Dani Lind and her team for keeping us well-fed, well-hugged, and well-caffeinated. To our sponsors (!) for the weekend for generously supporting a weekend of art and baking: Nielsen-Massey Vanillas, Club Backdrops, and Plugrà Premium Butter. To my co-host, Emily, for asking me to do this in the first place. And, of course, to our attendees. You made our dreams come true!

Want in on the fun? Join us in October in France.

See you back here next week for a recipe! Thanks for being here.

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This recipe is a day late (again!) because I was busy getting back to real life after yet another magical retreat in Wisconsin. More on that next week with a photo essay to boot, but in the meantime, we’ve got cobbler to discuss.

I’ve been saving a bag of frozen sweet cherries since last summer. It’s my food version of saving for retirement. When I snagged some rhubarb from my parents’ farm a few weeks ago, I knew that it was time to cash in on my freezer cherries and make a cobbler.

This is a variation of a recipe I’ve shared before. It’s tried and true and deeply rooted in my family lore. I hope you love it as much as I do!

Tips

1. This recipe is miraculously easy to adapt: I’ve made it without dairy, without gluten, without eggs, and without dairy, eggs, OR gluten. A one-for-one substitution with your alternative of choice is the way to go.

2. This recipe works equally well with fresh and frozen fruit. Just follow the directions regarding the water in the fruit mixture, and you’ll be grand, as they say.

3. I feel I would be remiss not to remind you to play with different spice blends and fruit combinations while you’re doing all of these other fun substitutions. There’s a whole world of fabulous possibilities out there!

   

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Need a cocktail to enjoy while you read? Might I recommend this negroni?

I.

Look up from the fields of Apulia and there is only sun.

Here at the heel of Italy’s boot, the landscape is nothing like the Tuscany of travel posters. There are no cypress-lined hills and no terraced vineyards climbing toward stone farmhouses. This is flat agricultural country, stretching toward the Adriatic in almost every direction, growing olives, tomatoes and over half of Italy’s total table grape production.

These table grapevines in Apulia are trellised high, with big clusters hanging beneath a canopy of leaves, heavy and loose. They are generous in a way that Trebbiano and Sangiovese, the tight-berried wine grapes of Tuscany and Emilia, never are. Big, fat, sweet uva da tavola are thin-skinned, high in water content, grown for eating out of a cold bowl on a hot day. They are unlike uva da vini, the small, thick-skinned, intensely concentrated grapes destined to be something more.

To even an untrained eye, a table grape is not easily mistaken for a wine grape.

But when either is pressed into must — the raw juice that becomes wine or balsamic when cooked down — the two grapes become harder to tell apart.

Balsamic, born in the cellars of Modena and now found in virtually every Western kitchen, is nothing but must. Unlike wine, which uses must as a starting point and then transforms it through fermentation, balsamic is simply cooked must, reduced, concentrated and aged. The quality of the must reflects the quality of the balsamic.

As late as 1987, fewer than 3,000 bottles a year left Modena — the city where the word balsamico first appeared in the ledgers of the Este ducal court in 1747. But by 2002, that number was 100,000. By 2017, 90 million liters were being produced annually, shipped to over 120 countries. By any measure, it had become one of the great success stories of Italian food.

But over three decades of growth, the market had never faced the one question it couldn’t answer: What happens when the harvest fails?

In April 2017, frosts crept into the vineyards at night across much of Italy, forcing farmers throughout Tuscany, Puglia, Umbria and Sicily — among the hardest hit — to light candles and burn hay bales between the rows to save the emerging buds. In July and into August, a heatwave forecasters named Lucifero drove temperatures past 40°C (104°F) for several days across the peninsula, shriveling grapes on the vine before they could be picked. In Puglia, where the balsamic supply chain began, frost had cut the potential crop by as much as a third before the summer even arrived, the heat decimating what remained. Harvests that normally began in September started in July, and by the end of the season, a quarter of the country’s normal output was gone — the worst harvest to hit Italy in more than half a century.

The balsamic market had grown too fast and too far to absorb a harvest failure quietly. Producers under contract to supply supermarkets in a dozen countries faced a choice: tell their buyers there wasn’t enough, or find another way.

So, someone found another way.

In March 2019, less than 18 months removed from harvest, officers from the Nuclei Antisofisticazioni e Sanità — a specialized division of the Carabinieri dedicated to food fraud — fanned out across five regions, executing 21 search warrants at wineries, processing facilities and transport companies as part of Operation Global Wine. The warrants had been ordered by the public prosecutor’s office in Foggia, the city at the heart of the scheme.

What they were tracing was a supply chain assembled to pass off table grapes as wine grapes. According to documents uncovered by NAS, a processing facility in the Foggia area pressed table grapes into must, then moved it through a network of intermediary companies south into Sicily, then back north through Campania and Lazio. A company in Salento performed further adulteration (tampering with the original) before the product continued north, arriving at balsamic producers in Emilia with documents declaring it had been pressed from Trebbiano and Sangiovese. By the end of the searches, investigators had seized €15,000 in cash and 91,000 quintals of counterfeit must and wine products worth €15 million.

A year earlier, the Ispettorato Centrale della Qualità e della Repressione Frodi (ICQRF), Italy’s national food fraud inspectorate, and the Guardia di Finanza had already seized more than 13,000 hectoliters of table grape juice being sold as grape must in Puglia. The infrastructure for this fraud, it turned out, had been quietly operating for some time.

For Stefano Vaccari, the head of the ICQRF, the second offense was a sharp wound. “This is not just a health problem,” he said. “The problem is the reputation of products that are made in Italy. This is what we must defend.”

II.

When a product in Italy is suspected of not being what it claims to be, the matter does not remain theoretical.

The NAS operates 38 territorial units across the country, staffed by roughly 1,000 officers who carry both the authority of a health inspector and the powers of the judicial police. They can enter a facility, pull samples, examine documents and make arrests, all in the same visit.

A significant portion of their work concerns food: adulteration, fraud, mislabeling and counterfeit products moving through the supply chain. The same unit that executed 21 search warrants across five regions in the spring of 2019 is also the unit that monitors olive oil, fake Parmigiano Reggiano, and counterfeit Prosciutto di Parma. In Italy, the integrity of what a thing is called is not a marketing question but a matter for armed officers.

Where the NAS operates under the authority of the criminal justice system, the ICQRF functions as a quality watchdog, monitoring whether what is on the label corresponds to what is in the package. Together, the two bodies represent something with no real American equivalent: a permanent, nationwide infrastructure built on the premise that food fraud is not a regulatory nuisance but a crime against culture.

For more than a decade, the effort to defend these products abroad has been coordinated at the highest levels of the Italian state. The Italian Trade Agency operates several offices across the United States, running educational events, trade show campaigns and consumer outreach aimed at a single goal: teaching American buyers to tell the difference between what is Italian and what merely sounds like it.

In 2015, Italy established a Permanent Observatory on Italian Sounding. In 2019, it created a National Council for the Fight Against Counterfeiting and Italian Sounding, which coordinates public agencies and industry groups concerned with imitation of Italian foods. Italian agricultural organizations estimate that the global market for so-called Italian-sounding products — foods marketed with Italian names or imagery despite being produced elsewhere — generates roughly €55 billion annually.

The legal foundation for the existence of bodies like the NAS and ICQRF is a European framework built around a deceptively simple idea: that where something comes from is part of what it is. The EU’s system of geographical indications creates two tiers of protection. A DOP — Denominazione di Origine Protetta, or Protected Designation of Origin — means that every stage of production, from the raw ingredient to the finished product, must occur within a defined geographic area according to strictly regulated methods. A PGI — Indicazione Geografica Protetta, or Protected Geographical Indication — requires that at least one significant stage of production take place in the designated region.

Parmigiano Reggiano is a DOP, as is Prosciutto di Parma. Balsamic vinegar of Modena exists as both: a DOP for the traditional product aged 12 to 25 years, and a PGI for the broader category. Together, Italy holds more geographical indications than any other country in the EU.

The system invites a reasonable objection. If a cheesemaker in Wisconsin has spent 30 years perfecting a hard-aged cheese using traditional methods, why should they be prohibited from calling it Parmesan? If a vinegar producer in Baden has been making a sweet-sour condiment from local wine since 1868 — longer than some Modena producers have been in business — what exactly is Italy protecting, other than market share? The geographical indication system, critics argue, is protectionism dressed as heritage. It reserves premium pricing for incumbents, forecloses competition, and tells producers in other countries that no matter how good their product is, the name belongs to someone else.

But this misreads what a geographical indication actually protects. It is not a brand or a recipe that can be licensed or exported. It is a set of conditions — soil, climate, tradition, accumulated knowledge — that cannot be replicated elsewhere because they did not develop elsewhere.

The Baden producer’s vinegar may be good. It may even be made with care and craft. But it was not made in the attics of Emilia-Romagna, where summer heat and winter cold drive the slow evaporation that concentrates the must year after year. It was not tended by families who have been doing this for five generations, who inherited barrels their great-grandparents filled, who are already filling barrels their grandchildren will empty. And when that product — or something far less carefully made — borrows the name, the flags, the hills, and the language of a place it has nothing to do with, it doesn’t just misrepresent itself. It shapes what a consumer reaches for at a grocery shelf, and what they believe they’re reaching for when they do.

Within the EU, Italy can at least fight on legal grounds (or can try to). In 2015, the IGP consortium took a Baden producer, Balema, to court for labeling its local wine-based vinegar balsamico. The case wound through German courts for years before reaching the European Court of Justice, which ruled in December 2019 that Aceto Balsamico di Modena was protected as a whole, but balsamico alone was just an adjective — generic, not geographic, available to anyone with a barrel and a label. Two years later, Slovenia announced it would standardize its own vinegar production, allowing any wine vinegar mixed with fruit juice to be sold as balsamico.

The word, in both cases, had been hollowed out, with no single body being big enough to stop it.

The challenges are even greater in the United States, one of the largest markets for balsamic vinegar outside Europe. American demand accounts for a substantial share of global imports of Italian balsamic vinegar, according to trade analyses compiled by the Italian Trade Agency and EU agricultural reports. It is also a market where the European Union’s system of geographical indications has no direct legal authority.

A bottle labeled simply “balsamic vinegar” can therefore be produced anywhere so long as its ingredients comply with U.S. labeling regulations, which focus on safety and disclosure rather than regional authenticity. Geographic food names can be protected in the United States through certification marks — the mechanism behind labels like Idaho Potatoes or Florida Oranges — but only when a producer group registers and enforces them through trademark law rather than through a national origin-protection system. In the U.S., a name evokes a place, but the law does not require that the product come from that place.

For years, the authentic product’s greatest obstacle in the American market was visibility. Most consumers had never encountered it and had no reason to seek it out. Now it faces something even more challenging: price.

In February 2026, after a U.S. court ruling struck down key elements of earlier tariffs on European imports, the administration responded by introducing a new 10 percent global tariff on a range of imported goods, including agricultural products, through a separate trade authority. In short a few months, the proceeds from those tariffs are now being refunded back to businesses, though producers will likely be last in line to get back what’s theirs.

Italian agricultural groups were direct about what sustained trade pressure would mean. It would not make imitation products worse, they argued — it would make authentic ones more expensive and scarcer. The country’s largest farmers’ association, Coldiretti, has repeatedly argued that tariffs and trade barriers tend to penalize authentic Italian products while leaving imitation “Italian-sounding” goods largely untouched.

A consumer who might have been persuaded to try the real thing — a 100ml bottle, a gold cap, a price that already requires justification — may now find that bottle costs more, on a shelf where the $3.99 alternative has never been easier to reach.

In Foggia, someone had decided the definition was flexible enough to absorb a substitution — and the machinery of the Italian state ground into motion. The system, imperfect as it was, recognized that something had been misrepresented and moved to correct it.

In the United States, the same substitution requires no network, no intermediaries, no false paperwork. The rolling hills are not evidence of fraud but a design choice. The caramel coloring is not an adulterant but an ingredient. There is no paperwork to falsify because nothing is being claimed that the law requires to be true. The definition is not being stretched here — it was never established in the first place.

See you back here next week for fruit crisp! Thanks for being here.

Despite my tendency to obsess over the way food looks, there are times that I simply throw up my hands and resign to my fate of less-than-optimal-looking food. This is one of those times.

When I made these buckwheat breadsticks, I was pleased. They tasted exactly as I wanted and were a quick way to get an interesting carb on the table. And yet. They look like fingers. Just look for yourself:

I mean. Yeah. I debated for a while—should I change the format? Make them crackers instead? Rework the vision for the entire recipe? Scrap this entirely and keep my finger-shaped bread a secret shame?

I woke up a few days later with clarity: I love my finger breadsticks. And I hope you do too.

Tips

• Fun fact: buckwheat is not an ingredient that produces gluten, which is why these breadsticks use so little of it compared to the all-purpose flour. What I’m really trying to say is: it’s there for the flavor and the aesthetics! But if you must take it out, take it out.

• I love the way the fennel seeds taste here, but I think sesame seeds, poppy seeds, or some combination of all of these would also be delicious here.

• If you prefer your breadsticks crispier, I’d bake these for about 3-4 minutes more than the recipe suggests. As written, the breadsticks will turn out with a bit of soft give, which makes them ideal, in my opinion, for dipping and munching, even the next day.

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Seeded Buckwheat Breadsticks

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I’ve been walking, finally, after itching to do so for months and months. Every morning that I can, I trace the same path around the neighborhood, sharing the sidewalk with the neighborhood kids on their way to school and the neighborhood grown-ups on their way to work. Over the last few weeks, I’ve watched the greens of spring emerge from the earth, the blossoms of the magnolias burst and fade, and the wide, expansive sky of winter fill in with an umbrella of green.

Follow along on Instagram!

My rule on these walks has been not to take my camera with me or to wear headphones. Starting the day listening only to the birds and the sidewalk chatter and the drips of spring rain does me good. So does not having the camera that becomes an extension of my eyes, a lens through which I see the world, but one in which I can get trapped. Not having that lens forces me to use my eyes, to let them wander greedily over gardens and to soak up the magnetic colors and textures.

My own thoughts have echoed around in my brain, too, louder and more free. This hour in the morning has become a time to get drunk on the flavors and colors of spring and let my thoughts run wild and bold. This is my spring ritual, and it is holy.

Finally, though, I broke one rule. I took my camera with me, and I’m so glad I did. When I edited these photos, I texted and said “My camera and I are friends again.”

Does everyone want to photograph flowers in the spring or is it just me? I’ve gone for too many walks lately without my camera in hand, only to feel the pang of a picturesque encounter at every corner. Is spring not the most sumptuous of seasons, dripping with sensuality and lush colors and smells and textures? If you didn’t already think so, page through the gallery below and let me know if I’ve changed your mind.

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A few quick housekeeping notes:

Learn how to take photos like these with me in France! Just three spots left for our weeklong adventure in Normandy.

Dive further into spring with Kitchen Sink’s latest zine, Garden Party!

See you back here next week for grissini! Thanks for being here.

PS: Thanks for your patience here—I’m a day late with this post, but really wanted to get some pictures to go along with this recipe.

Once upon a magical trip to Italy, I ate the world’s most delicious eggplant lasagna. It was thick and hearty and as close to perfection as anything I have tasted on this Earth. When I expressed as much to the chef, Beatrice Arweiler of Corvagialla Wines, she gracefully accepted the compliment and then told me how much she wished we were there in eggplant season so she could have made it with her own eggplant. I can only imagine how transcendent that dish would have been.

To be very clear, reader, this is not that recipe. This is barely fair to call an approximation—to get close, you’d need to hop on a plane and go visit Beatrice, her son Niccolo, and their beautiful wines.

All that said, here’s my best take (which, I must admit, is pretty good). I’ve tested this four times over the past few months, trying a variation or two and inevitably ending up right back where I started: a simple yet multi-step recipe that gets you a hearty eggplant lasagna.

Tips

• This is a recipe that is unexpectedly fussy. Usually, I chafe against labeling food as such, but this one takes a while and has different components and and and…is so worthwhile despite all of that. I tested this recipe for the freezer too, and I’ve been pleased with the results, so if you feel like making double and freezing the rest, that’s a good way to buy-one-get-one, so to speak.

• I tested this with no-boil noodles and the regular kind, and I am deeply sorry to report that I strongly (STRONGLY) prefer the regular kind. Make sure to cook them very, very under so they don’t get overly soft in the oven.

• Lasagna, to me, is all about the texture. I like to hit mine with a quick broil right at the end of the cooking process to crisp up the edges and add some nice color to the cheese.

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Eggplant Lasagna

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Some of you may recall the magical commission I received a year ago that took me to Central Italy to capture a natural wine tour led by ’s Rachel Signer. Today, it’s finally time to tell you all about the other thing I was doing there: capturing the on-site photography featured in her new book, How to Drink Natural Wine, which comes out very soon on May 26, 2026!

Preorder here!

I learned so, so much from Rachel on this trip. The places we visited and producers we met helped me understand natural wine more deeply than ever before, and I’m so honored that my photos are now a tiny part of helping others learn through this book.

The photos from this trip, both the ones in the book and the ones that Rachel has generously shared over the past year in her newsletter, mean the world to me. They remind me of a journey filled with joyful, meaningful conversations; hospitality that went far and beyond that which I had experienced until then; and some of the most memorable bites of food and sips of wine I’ve had in my life. I hope you get a glimpse into that by reading this incredible book (and booking a spot on one of Rachel’s future tours!).

If you’re in Chicago, I’d love for you to join me and the BottlesUp Chicago team on Thursday, June 4 at a book launch party featuring wines from Loci Wines. It’s going to be such a fun night, and there will be some special swag giveaways happening, too!

Here’s what the publisher has to say about the book:

Everything you ever needed to know about super-trendy natural wine, from acclaimed natural wine journalist and winemaker Rachel Signer.

Natural wine has entrenched itself in the bistros and bars of global cities. A movement founded on organic farming, artisanship, and minimalism in the cellar, it is a complex world of colorful, modern labels and surprising blends.

Through stories and photography from vineyards across the world, journalist and winemaker Rachel Signer introduces readers to the wild, global journey of natural wine. Discover the established styles of natural wine from orange wine to pét-nat, and the iconic producers you should try. Learn how natural wine is made and why it's so special.

Preorder here!

See you next week for a recipe inspired by these travels! Thanks as always for being here.

Last week, I shot a cookbook. As most cookbook shoots tend to be, this one was a marathon: 35 recipes in 4 days, plus an extra 2 hours on day 5. We shot the book at the author’s house, which made for a comfortable set, and the author styled most of it herself (!). All in all, nothing too insane, but still a (very fun!) exercise in endurance.

As with many of these cookbook projects, I can’t share more about it right now, but when I can, believe me, I will! I have a whole behind-the-scenes post lined up, and I already can’t wait to share. What I can share today is what I eat when these long production days wrap.

My husband, a saint on Earth, took the reins for dinners last week, cranking out some truly delicious dishes that were well out of our usual line-up. Then he left for a trip, and I found myself desperately hungry and needing to eat, but also not wanting anything less than to cook dinner.

So, what is a photographer to do? Welcome to the world of bowl dinners. Since this isn’t a real recipe, per se, I’m sharing my basics and removing the paywall. May this serve you well on a busy night!

Bowl Dinners

A bowl dinner is more of a vibe than a recipe, but here are the rules I try to play by:

• Essential components of the bowl include: some sort of green vegetable, sourdough bread, a crunchy something, and a creamy something.

• Sauces are great, but the rules of the bowl dictate that you must not make the sauce that night. This is a meal of ease!

• As the name suggests, all components must be served together in a bowl. It’s the eater’s choice whether the components are eaten separately or stirred into one mass of perfect bites.

Some recent bowl dinners include:

1. Green lentils, quick-pickled fennel (made ahead!), sourdough croutons, and crumbled goat cheese.

2. Tofu, edamame beans, leftover rice, drizzle of Nam Prik Pao.

3. Roasted broccoli, farro, tinned sardines, tahini lemon dressing (made ahead!).

4. Cottage cheese, peas from the freezer, leftover party nuts, kale chips.

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Housekeeping

1. There’s only a few single rooms left for Flourish, which is coming up soon from June 11-14, 2026 at Red Clover Ranch. Snag your spot before we sell out! This is sure to be another magical weekend in Wisconsin’s Driftless Region, and you don’t want to miss it.

2. Only three spots are left for our October 17-23, 2026 inaugural culinary tour through Normandy. This is going to be the trip of a lifetime, so make sure to reserve your room (all singles remaining!) here.

3. Order your copy of Garden Party, our latest zine, here. We only printed 50, so when they’re gone, they’re gone!

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   See you back here next week for an exciting book release update! Thanks for supporting Page & Plate.

Before we dive into books, some housekeeping:

1. There’s only a few single rooms left for Flourish, which is coming up soon from June 11-14, 2026 at Red Clover Ranch. Snag your spot before we sell out! This is sure to be another magical weekend in Wisconsin’s Driftless Region, and you don’t want to miss it.

2. Only three spots are left for our October 17-23, 2026 inaugural culinary tour through Normandy. This is going to be the trip of a lifetime, so make sure to reserve your room (all singles remaining!) here. Payment plan options will decrease on May 1!

And now, to books!

This year so far has held a wild assortment of books. I’ve read a lot so far this year, oscillating between fiction and non-fiction pretty evenly. As always, though, you’ll notice that the books that stuck with me the most so far this year were non-fiction. There was one standout fiction book that might just make my “best of all-time list,” though. Keep reading to see which one!

As always, these highlights are just that: a quick sampling of my favorites so far. What are you reading and loving right now? I can’t wait to hear.

Notable books of 2026 so far:

When in French: Love in a Second Language by Lauren Collins

I’ve put off reading this book—for some reason, I thought it would be a bit more fairy tale/love story than I wanted it to be. I was pleasantly surprised when I picked it up over the weekend and crushed it in less than two days. It’s a witty take on the struggles of learning another language, living in a foreign country, and how relationships change with language. I walked away from it feeling determined to join the bilingual club.

Somebody Is Walking on Your Grave: My Cemetery Adventures by Mariana Enriquez

This book caught my eye in a bookstore because of its wild, neon cover. I’m so glad it did, because this book was a treat. Part memoir, part travelogue, part meditations on what it means for your memory to live on after death, this book hit on a bunch of different levels for me. Read it!

I’m Mostly Here to Enjoy Myself: One Woman’s Pursuit of Pleasure in Paris by Glynnis MacNicol

I’ll be honest: I fully expected this book to be pure smut. Instead, I found myself enjoying a really moving memoir about aging, friendship, love, travel, and confidence. This was such a lovely read that I actually found myself feeling sad as it ended. I wanted to keep reading about MacNicol’s adventures and reflections for longer. Highly recommend.

The Librarianist by Patrick deWitt

The only fiction book of the round-up is one that’s going to claim a spot on my favorite fiction books forever list. The Librarianist was recommended to me by a friend who voraciously reads only fiction. I was absolutely floored by how much I enjoyed this book. It was slow and charming and witty and filled with lovable characters that feel like people I’ve known all of my life. If you’re looking for a book that will stick with you long after you’ve finished it, this is your pick.

The Tenth Muse: My Life in Food by Judith Jones

Judith Jones looms large in the world of publishing overall, but her legacy in cookbooks in particular is larger than life. This memoir about her career felt like required reading for any women in culinary publishing today: it feels extremely relevant and insightful despite the decades that have passed since Jones published Julia Child’s books. This is one to make you think.

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What’s next? Let me know!

Note: the links above are affiliate links for Bookshop.org, a website that allows you to purchase books online from independent booksellers across the country. Not only will your purchase be a vote in favor of small, locally-owned businesses as opposed to the giant-online-retailer-who-shall-not-be-named, but I’ll receive a tiny portion of the sale at no additional cost to you. Thanks!

I love a peanut butter cookie. I love the lip-smacking richness, the almost-overpowering peanutty-ness, and the way it teeters on the edge of salty and sweet. This version is crumbly and delicate, yet feels like a formidable baked good to have on your counter. Over the last week, as these sat out, I’d eat my first with a cup of coffee, then take a few bites as lunch dessert, then before a run, then after dinner. It’s an all-day cookie, okay?

Tips

• These cookies are incredibly soft. I happened to make them on one of the most humid days of the year so far, and I noticed that it really affected the integrity of the cookies. They were delicious nonetheless, but make sure not to move them before they’re cool and stabilized.

• I regret to tell you that Kirkland brand peanut butter (my go-to!) is not going to work. You need a classic, creamy peanut butter to make these cookies.

• I love topping these cookies with pretzel crumbs and some Maldon salt, but I also like my baked goods to edge salty versus sweet. You could also shave on some chocolate or replace the honey with a white chocolate drizzle!

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The Peanut Butter-iest Peanut Butter Cookies

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Today, Kitchen Sink Studios ( and I!) are excited to share Garden Party, a zine all about edible flowers and how to grow them.

Garden Party is the second edition of quarterly zines from our new creative studio, Kitchen Sink Studio. Each full-color zine contains 32 pages stuffed with thoughtful, garden-inspired recipes and illustrations from Emily, how-to instructions for starting seeds and steeping herbs and flowers, essays on gardens and plants, guides to edible flowers, and more, all vividly captured by moi.

Why edible flowers?

Edible flowers have been at the root of Emily’s pastry and herbal practice for years now. She’s well-known for her pastries that lean on edible flowers and herbs for flavors, colors, and garnishes. We wanted to celebrate that while also providing instruction for anyone looking to start their own garden adventure.

This zine is stuffed full of helpful information. Whether you’re a novice gardener looking to plan your first plot or an experienced grower looking to add more edible flowers to your repertoire, there’s information (plus recipes!) for you here.

What’s inside?

Our last zine focused on wildly saturated colors and bold fonts. For Garden Party, we went a little more demure, a little more mindful. Aside from photos that are set in a vintage garden party-inspired explosion of seed packets, vintage dishes, and art supplies, there are also plenty of illustrations from the multi-talented Emily. These illustrations, showcased both digitally and in photographs of her sketchbooks, show off the delicacy and detail of the edible flowers.

Why a zine?

Emily and I are both cookbook collectors, passionate about the value of a printed recipe and the magic of holding something in your hands as you create. After we published our first zine, Earth Tones, late last year, we fell even harder. Now, there’s a new stack of zines for you to buy.

At Kitchen Sink Studios, we’re all about seasonality. Believe it or not, we’ve already planned out the next year of zines for you, featuring all sorts of amazing material, from toxic ingredients to guides to Paris bakeries. We can’t wait to share all of this with you, but before we get too excited and ahead of ourselves, please enjoy Garden Party, an ode to the gardens that nourish our spirits and bodies!

Buy Garden Party here!

PSST! If edible flowers or foraging feel of interest to you, you should jump over to learn more about the retreat we’re running from June 11-14, 2026. To learn more, please visit WeTravel.

See you next week for cookies!