Three Years Later
My afternoon is erupting in beautiful, exhilarating chaos.
I’m running late and nothing is going quite to plan.
My cell phone keeps ringing as I attempt to do five things at once.
I’m texting, answering calls, trying to dry my hair and slick on some lipstick, and find my good leather Mary Janes.
A TV station from Milan is coming to do an interview about the farm and our most famous product, our Cedro di Salò Oro, in twenty minutes and I’m not even close to being ready.
The baby is crying. At a year old, he’s teething, his face red and his dark eyes wet with tears.
Aurora’s face keeps popping into my screen as she calls me repeatedly.
She’s started a new project making baby swaddling blankets by weaving wool from her sheep and using natural dyes from vegetables in her garden, and she wants to send me a blanket to try.
I send her a hurried text with my thanks and race to the bathroom, trying to apply makeup with one hand while jiggling a fussy baby Antonio—we call him Tony after my dad—on my hip.
Finally managing to get my face and hair in order, I shimmy into my goldenrod-colored mod print dress and find my shoes under the bed.
Too late I notice the hefty squish of Tony’s soggy diaper, decide there’s no time to change him, and hurry down to the kitchen, where Nonna is teaching a cooking class.
She looks up as I come in, pausing her instruction.
There are three chicly thin Upper Manhattan women clustered around a pan of Nodo d’Amore, devouring the delicious love knot shapes with ravenous, slightly guilty looks. They glance up at me, forks poised.
“Sorry to interrupt, it’s just the film crew will be here any minute and I can’t get him to stop crying…”
“Come here, my sweet bambolotto.” Without missing a beat, Nonna swipes the baby from my hands and pops the tip of a whole, unpeeled carrot in his mouth.
Instantly, the crying stops. Tony looks startled, then cautiously curious.
He grabs the carrot in his chubby little hand and starts to gum it with enthusiasm.
“Thank you!” I mouth to Nonna, blowing her and my now happy, gurgling baby a kiss as I hurry out the door.
I need to make sure the patio is in order and ready to be filmed.
The film crew from Milan is coming today, and then tomorrow a food writer from the New York Times is flying in to interview us.
Since the Barefoot Contessa Ina Garten herself recommended our agrumato last month in People magazine, things have gone absolutely nuts.
She named Cedro di Salò Oro, our citron and Casaliva olive oil agrumato, as her must-have new ingredient of the fall.
“The name translates to citron gold,” she explained under the photo of one of our bottles.
“It’s subtle yet alluring with the zing of the citron zest and the bright herbaceous notes of the olives. It’s simply sublime.”
The Barefoot Contessa called our citron olive oil sublime.
I can now die happy.
Nonna continues her instruction as I fly out the door.
She loves what she does, teaching these cooking classes to guests who travel from all over the world to stay with us on the farm for a week or two.
They swim in the lake, sunbathe, work in the garden, sample the local olive, citrus, and wine harvests, and take classes in local cooking from Nonna.
And they pay a lot, leaving happy and full and suntanned.
And occasionally, for a special guest who has a hungry, searching look, Nonna will pull out the cookbook and have them open to a recipe just for them.
She picks and chooses who she thinks the book will help, continuing the legacy of hospitality, assistance, and welcome that is the backbone of our family. I am proud of her, proud to be a Costa.
Surprisingly, Lisa was our first guest. She took one bite of Nonna’s pasta her first night staying with us and almost swooned.
True, she only took that one bite since she doesn’t eat carbs, but it was enough.
As soon as she got home, she started spreading the word, and suddenly, we were swarming with wealthy Upper East Side women eager to taste “a little bite of heaven,” as Lisa labeled Nonna’s tagliatelle.
We have her to thank for helping us get started.
Now we attract visitors from all over the world.
It has been a hard three years filled with long hours, setbacks, and often just barely scraping by.
But now it is finally all starting to pay off.
As of this year we are one of the ten top places to stay in the Lake Garda region.
I credit Alex’s social media savvy for most of it.
A few other things have helped too. Two years ago, I got Nonna on Pasta Grannies and she rocked her segment on Tortellini nodo d’amore.
Turns out everyone loves the idea of love-knot tortellini.
And my cookbook, which I barely managed to finish on time with a lick and a prayer, surprised everyone by doing pretty well.
It wasn’t a New York Times bestseller, but the publisher was happy enough with the sales numbers that they offered me another cookbook deal.
And I was happy enough with the advance they offered that I said yes.
The advance paid for some much-needed repairs around the farm and a good used car with room for the baby.
Now I am collaborating with Nonna on a new cookbook, an exploration of family and tradition through the favorite recipes of local families around Lake Garda.
I adore what I do, and although it often means a lot of work and little sleep, there’s a new roof on the farmhouse and our bank account has a fat little cushion in it that makes me sleep easier at night.
This frenzy of media attention for the agrumato recipe has taken us by surprise, however.
I just got an email this morning from Gordon Ramsay’s personal assistant letting us know that Gordon would love to sample a bottle of our Cedro di Salò Oro and is considering featuring it on Gordon Ramsay: Uncharted .
It’s amazing news, and I’m feeling overwhelmed and grateful and a little anxious about it all.
Things are moving so fast these days. It’s making me a little dizzy.
I climb the stone steps to the patio, glancing over the silvery olive groves and down to the lake.
Nicolo and Lorenzo are somewhere out in the groves, getting ready for the harvest. It won’t be for a few more weeks.
The sunshine is still warm and golden in mid-October, but I can feel the chill in the air.
Soon we will enter a quieter period after the bustle of the summer and the long days of the olive and citron harvest. As if summoned by me thinking about him, Nicolo pops out of the tree line and comes over to the table where I am tidying up.
He is sweaty and dirty. He has never looked happier.
He drops a kiss on the top of my head, and I close my eyes and press my lips to the warm stubble of his cheek, savoring him for a moment.
He smells like amber and cedar overlaid by sun-warmed soil and almost-ripe olives. In a word, delicious.
“What are you doing out here, amorino mio? Aren’t the television people coming soon?” he says with a chuckle. I nod, leaning into him, eager for his touch but not wanting to muss my camera-ready hair.
“They’ll be here any minute.” I wipe away a few stray olive leaves from the table.
A car crunches up the lane, but it is only Tommaso in his disreputable old Dacia, dropping off Alex after school.
As Alex predicted, Lisa was more than happy to have Alex finish out high school with us.
She enrolled in the local high school and discovered to her delight that Tommaso was in her class.
Now she is in her fifth and final year of Italian high school, studying at a classical and linguistically focused school.
She’s doing amazingly. She’s made a nice group of friends, speaks Italian like a local, and wants to either go to law school or be an interpreter for the UN.
She’s planning to study linguistics at university in Milan next year. We love that she won’t be too far away.
“Ciao, Jules, ciao, Nicolo.” Tommaso rolls down the window and waves to us, and Alex hops out of the car and grabs her heavy book bag, all long ash-brown hair and dark slim pants, chattering and laughing with Tommaso.
Gone are the baggy, angsty clothes and the guarded demeanor.
She has blossomed in Italy. I feel a lump in my throat as I watch her.
When she leaves for university, we will all miss her terribly.
But to see who she is becoming is a gift and a great joy.
Tommaso drives away and Alex turns and sees us, calling over her shoulder, “Be right there to get footage for the socials. Just let me drop my books.”
“Take your time,” I call back.
“How’s our bambino?” Nicolo asks, straightening a chair.
“Cranky and cute as ever.” I stand back and survey the patio. There, all is ready.
“Good,” Nicolo says approvingly. “He may be named for your father, but he is my son for sure.”
“Because he’s cranky and cute?” I tease.
Nicolo grins. “Exactly.”