During the weekend of 15 August “ferragosto”, a bank holiday in Italy, Careggine, is filled with a festive atmosphere and scents alltraditional, characterizing each year “in the Apuan Feast“.

The cheese. It is one of the many protagonists of the basket of Lucca, sheep milk cheese, goat cheese, dairy cheese .. typical products of tradition. Is produced for the most part in Garfagnana and from here marketed. But its use is not limited to its consumption. If I told you that cheese is sport, challenge, bet, aggregation? And not as regards its preparation, its consumption, its sale .. but .. its launch.

The Extra Virgin Olive Oil has come to town, within the walls of Villa Bottini, in two days of meetings involving all lovers of good food. Meetings with experts and nutritionists, challenges and cooking demonstrations by chefs, who use the extra virgin preparing their best dishes.

CRUMBS AND crotchets, ON THE TRAIL OF THE GREAT MASTER

The term pasimata has two possible derivations: from Latin pasimatum means “bread baked in the ashes,” or the Byzantine pasimet“unleavened bread”. It is a typical Easter bread of the Lucca area, which can be prepared in different ways.
According to tradition, is prepared the day before Easter and, together with the eggs contained in a little basket, is brought to the morning Mass, to receive the blessing.

Unce upon a time people used to put the bottle in the corner of the fireplace. The beans, soaked in water, cooked so slowly, keepingall their flavor. Cooked over a flame, in special flasks of tempered glass, a little EVOoil, a sage leaf and a clove of garlic, beans are an excellent side dish. If accompanied by leafy vegetables “rehearse in the pan“, a tasty and healthy dish, suitable for everyone.

They are the typical Christmas cookies of the holidays tradition, they were given away in small bags to the boys and girls of the villages who went round singing “Befanate” door to door in the evening of January 5 went to announce the Epiphany,

Today “befanini” are prepared in many regions of Italy during the Christmas period and there is no breakfast or snack where they can miss.

A group of boys of Viareggio, regular costumers of the Casino’s cafe, one day decided to organize  a parade of carriages festively decorated in the Via Regia, to celebrate the last day of Carnival. It was February 24 of 1873. Since then, the parades have continued to change and grow up to become what they are today: parades of colossal foats of papier-mache, a riot of color, music, dance, that form what since long time is considered the largest carnival in Europe.