Under the Tuscan Sun

Mayes packs to return home to California, bringing truffle paste, olive oil, and chocolates. Ed adds grappa and chestnut honey. She recalls how customs agents once confiscated a friend’s sausages and weighs what to declare. The memory prompts her to think about earlier holidays, when she brought American ingredients like pecans and cane syrup back to Italy.

She contrasts the winter kitchen in Tuscany—robust aromas and hearty dishes—with the lighter foods of summer. Ed eats clementines and tosses the peels into the fire. She lays out a sequence of seasonal recipes by course, from bruschetta and wild mushroom lasagna to braised quail and lemon cake. Maria Rita offers advice on winter soups. Mayes’s notes track the rhythms of seasonal shopping and Tuscan traditions that shape the cold-weather table.

At the end of her spring semester, Mayes returns to Italy, feeling like she is fleeing work pressure in San Francisco. After an overnight in Pisa, two taxi drivers in Terontola argue over her fare. She reaches Bramasole to find that her visiting sister and nephew have cared for the house and garden. After they leave, and Ed arrives, she and Ed settle into their summer routines.

A rainstorm pushes them outside to stake the vigorously growing roses.