While in Italy, don’t miss joining in a village food festival – la sagra! It’s easy to find la sagra from springtime to late fall.  These festivals showcase highlights of the area’s culinary specialties and visitors and locals alike partake throughout the day and night, typically concluding their sagra experience dancing to live music.

Recently, Pino and I took our farm friend, Peppa, to the sagra Amici de Montagna (“Friends of the Mountain” in Umbrian dialect) just up the hill from her farmhouse. A huge tent had been set up adjacent to the mountainside church there (Santo Stefano where Pino and I were married) and volunteers cooked up the local specialties in the ambiences adjacent to the church.

We arrived at 7 p.m. with many other groups of festival goers. Outside the food tent, the band was setting up and ballroom dancing was set to start at 9:30 p.m. Our smiling young volunteer server, Jacob, brought us the first of our foods: prosciutto e melone for me, suppli (rice croquettes) for Peppa and lamb stew with cooked greens for Pino. Peppa relished their gnocchi, too.

All around us, groups of families and friends shared buonissimi local specialties. The Presidente della Regione Umbria, Stefania Proietti was there, too, as she grew up on the Assisi mountainside. Assisi councilwoman Donatella Casciarri and her husband also shared the mountainside goodness.

Jacob and other young volunteers served table after table, after picking up their orders from the improvised kitchen. At the entrance to the food tent, guests could order beverages from our neighbor Claudio and daughter, Chiara, amici de montagna, both volunteering for all 10 days of this sagra. Many other amici de montagna volunteered.

Tributes to our dear rural neighbors, truly our amici de montagna, lined the food tent walls – almost all of them deceased now. Our friend Paolino’s papa’, Tito, was among our amici de montagna remembered in one of those photos. Backdropping the diners, the photos of our mountain area rural friends truly made this sagra a tribute to them.

And this sagra beautifully linked us all, amici de montagna, past and present.

• Sagra Food Tent Sagra Food Tent
• Diners enjoying the... Diners enjoying the...
• Paolino’s papa’, Tito,... Paolino’s papa’, Tito,...
• Amici de montagna... Amici de montagna...
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