After a summer that left us a bit cooked — that August sun that didn’t know when to stop — we are finally in September. Hooray!
Ferragosto, Italy’s mid-August national pause, was the little bridge into cooler weather, albeit slowly. This month, some of us can still take a few days for a short trip. Most people are already home. For some it is back to work, for others back to school — or both. Either way, it’s time to ease into routine again.
Welcome to Open Celery! our monthly Vegan Friendly newsletter.
A four-handed gourmet adventure dedicated to Plant-Based Recipes, Cooking Insights, and Stories… Made in Italy! 🇮🇹 The fruit (veggie and dessert) of the collaboration between Simona (Personal Chef) and Orsola (la Gourmet Traveler+)
Published in Italian (cliccate qui per 👉 Apriti Sedano! Newsletter) and English, here’s happily edited and translated by Orsola (aka ockstyle) 😀
F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote, “Life starts all over again when it gets crisp in the fall.” We know he was talking about Princeton lawns, not a Roman market at 8 a.m. Still, he wasn’t wrong.
September feels as a soft reset: a New Year without the glitter. No prosecco required — though we are not ruling out a few “bollicine” (bubbles), drinks that may facilitate ☺️ a reflective pull toward pondering about life… Kombucha fizz, if that’s your thing.
A small prosecco at aperitivo, with a few stuzzichini (those little bites that appear when someone says “just a drink”), never hurt anyone. Nut bowls you did not ask for.
Say it in Italian: bollicine [bol-Lee-chee’-næ]; stuzzichini [stuz-tsee-Kee’-nee]
It’s time we look at the list(s) we left on the table — chores, projects, wishes — and decide what still deserves a seat. Routines can be special in their own right. Can’t they? OK. Getting a bit philosophical here.
The Chef puts it warmly. It’s September: laugh, love, eat good food, feed your soul with the pages of a “good” book, and surround yourself with people who lift you up. You know, the ones who love to laugh and share, who know how to say sorry, thank you, and I love you. Use every minute of your life to be happy. Those are the good intentions for this coming autumn.
“If you’re planning a trip to Italy in September, you’ve picked a sweet spot on the calendar. The searing heat of August has mellowed, the crowds have thinned, […] In short, it’s the perfect time to explore Italy. —Jason Brasier
The Traveling Chef
Use every minute of your life to be happy. Those are the good intentions for autumn. There, I said it again!
On that note — after eating well, the thing I love most is being outdoors. In Santa Teresa Gallura, in northern Sardinia, there is the Sentiero Natura, the nature trail that runs from the high part of town to Capo Testa on one side and Municca on the other. Municca is a tiny islet near Rena Bianca, the town beach — the beach I still argue is the most beautiful.
Capo Testa is a peninsula joined to the mainland by a long isthmus. Along the trail you reach coves, World War II lookouts, and belvederes.
I never tire of walking it, especially toward sunset. In summer the sun drops into the sea to the left of the lighthouse and the light thins out, slowly. La Ninetta, my fifteen-year-old dog, follows me even on the steep bits. Fifteen years old and still convinced the trail belongs to her. Fair enough.
That path is my heart-place. We always end at the lookout over Capo Testa. I sit, take off my shoes, and feel the day’s heat still held in the granite. La Ninetta — still a little anxious, as rescue dogs often are — circles me. Then the lighthouse clicks on. That, to me, is a way of living.
If you also want to eat well: figs are still the star. Desserts, jams — and crostini. Check the recipes corner for my easy fig crostini three ways.
But now, back to Orsola.
La Gourmet Traveler+
In August I stayed in Rome, for family reasons — not much of a plot. Also looking after my neighbors’ sick cat, who could not travel with them, and picking up the mail for my zia, my aunt. A stuffed mailbox in August is an invitation. The city empties; burglars notice.
Anyway, it’s September. The weather here is gorgeous, market stalls are full, and we still have that leftover vacation glow, minus the heavy heat. The best part? I feel like cooking again.
“Cucinare non è una pratica minore, ma stimola l’intelligenza […] La cucina può essere così assunta come metafora della vita – a meno che non ammettiamo che la vita stessa sia metafora della cucina.”
—Prof. Massimo Montanari (University of Bologna), in “Il riposo della polpetta e altre storie intorno al cibo” (Let the Meatballs Rest, and Other Stories About Food and Culture)
Cooking is not a lesser art, it trains the intelligence […] We can take the kitchen as a metaphor for life — unless we admit that life itself is a metaphor for the kitchen.
I am turning to the month the way one returns to a familiar table: slower, and ready for the next stretch. As a Latin maxim goes: Festina lente — make haste slowly.
Part of my routine is to go out at breakfast time, eight to eleven. For me it’s the best hour to walk the city and shop. When you can still tell the real smells apart, and enjoy them: cornetto and cappuccino (yes, all roads lead to espresso), bread just out of the oven, herbs on stalls already piled with fruit and vegetables. Yet, just around 11:30, a kind of cap of hot oil — often burnt — settles over most streets. A smell that turns my stomach, so I go home. I know. Very delicate of me.
I am all into raw fennel (it’s sweeter now), plain or in salad. Mushroom season is opening; I love them in every sauce. And figs (heavier with sugar), still, for dessert. Somewhere between the chopping board and the pan the month becomes a meal. Nothing to reinvent. Just the pleasure of putting things together and sharing them.
“Don’t be a slave to trends when they get in the way of a good meal” —Calvin Trillin
I may take same day off. Finally. And, by mid-month, at least in my family, we are already talking about the Christmas menu. Mid-September and someone has already said panettone or pandoro? Oh yeah!
When in Rome…
What to do and see this month? Here’s a short list of museums and/or shows I’d like to visit, before they close.
Ettore Scola. “Non ci siamo mai lasciati” (We never left each other) — through September 13, at Museo di Roma, Palazzo Braschi.
Ten years after the legendary Italian director’s death: drawings, scripts, Fellini’s trench coat from “C’eravamo tanto amati” (We All Loved Each Other So Much), and a Rome that’s lived-in, not “postcarded.” A Roman holiday about the city’s face, no cliché.
Tragicomica. Prospettive sull’arte italiana dal secondo Novecento a oggi. At MAXXI (Museo delle arti del XXI secolo) — through September 20
Tragicomic. Italian art from the late twentieth century to now. Over 300 works that explore the ironic element running through Italian culture. A useful counterweight to “eternal city” messaging.
Roma in moneta. Arte e potere nella storia della città eterna (Rome in Coins: Art and Power in the History of the Eternal City) — through September 27. Info at VIVE (Vittoriano / Palazzo Venezia).
A split show: ancient coins at the Museo Nazionale Romano, medieval at the Colosseum Archaeological Park, modern at VIVE. Power, money, and the city’s self-portrait over time.
Robert Mapplethorpe. Le forme della bellezza (The Forms of Beauty) — on display at Museo dell’Ara Pacis through October 4.
A large-scale retrospective of the American photographer, celebrating form, body, flower, classical line. If you have one extra museum morning, this is the one that still has time.
The Books
📚 Simona is reading “Sfidare il tempo” (Defying Time) by Marco Quarta.
“I’m glad to recommend this book my 82-year-old father lent me. Quarta is a scientist working on biotechnology and longevity — and the more I read, the more I am confirmed in what I have always believed. There is no magic pill, no single medicine, no remedy of remedies. A little tablet or a supplement, if you like. They cannot replace a whole-life approach to feeling well.
📚 Orsola is back to her much-cherished “Will Write for Food” by Dianne Jacob.
“If you write recipes, reviews, or newsletters, this is the book people mean when they say go learn the craft.
For two decades this has been the practical bible for humans (and now AI) who want to write about food without sounding like a press release. New editions keep landing on must-read lists because Jacob treats voice, ethics, pitching, and revision as kitchen work: a "soup-to-nuts" roadmap done at the table. I love her!”
The Recipes Corner
Eating with the season it’s the tastiest way to eat. Peak ingredients need little elaboration. It sounds as if the universe is saying, Mangia, darling — eat — and feel like yourself again.
Here are our main themes for the month.
Take advantage of seasonal and local produce
Fruit and leaves show up when we actually need them. Antioxidants, vitamins, minerals — seasonal is about timing. Leafy greens are finally themselves again. “August shopping in Rome was bleak, especially for salad: half-empty stalls, everything so limp and thirsty it gave me a lump in the throat.” (Orsola)
“Detox”: a loud word
Let’s use a quieter one. Eat more plants for a change. Don’t waste the month. Maybe next time we’ll hand you a magic recipe 🙃 Not today.
How-tos
A couple of guides for a vegetable kitchen:
How to pick and cut vegetables — start from the season.
How to cook and store them (the mighty veggies) — from steaming to sautéing, enough to start cooking with a steady hand.
“Just like the senses, passion is an essential part of food writing but difficult to get across. Strong feelings can mislead. It’s easier to tell the readers about your enthusiasm by stating it outright than by revealing it through the words you choose. The classic writing rule of ‘show, don’t tell’ applies here…” —Dianne Jacob
Easy recipes for busy times
Practical and adaptable dishes that align with the late-summer/early-autumn ingredients such as zucchini, tomatoes, figs… These recipes are for those moments when you just don’t feel like cooking… too much.
And now, for the breads and spreads, something juicy, something crunchy series, here are our recipes:
Figs Crostini Three Ways - Figs shine brightest in September across our gorgeous “stivale” — Italy looks like a high-heeled boot, so fashionable! This is peak harvest time for Sardinian’s sun-ripened green figs too — plump, honey-sweet, and abundant.
A free-form Italian Bruschetta build with seasonal ingredients, so easy to make you’ll want to sing while prepping 🎶
Vegan “Piadine” (this time made with einkorn flour) - The day the Chef didn’t have bread at home!
The Ultimate Gluten-Free Plant-Based Croque-Monsieur, our version of the classic French sandwich… 🎶 C’est si bon…
Just few inspiring words about recipes and cooking. As Marcella Hazan once wrote: “All these are now just notes on a page, waiting for you to bring them to life. When you do, don't just play the notes, please. Think taste. Make music.”
Bee Wilson encourages with: “That means finding the ways of cooking that work for you, no matter how anyone else does things.”
That’s all for now. Just think September as a table, pull up a chair and sit with us.
Open Celery! is a vegan-friendly newsletter published in English and Italian on Appetibilis and OttimoBlog. If you enjoyed it, share it (or restack it) with anyone still looking for a taste of Italian summer on the way back to work.
Baci e abbracci, XOXO, Simona and Orsola