Breaking with tradition: we are not going to talk about wine. This is the Lent period in preparation for Vinitaly: time to give things up, purify, detox, and get ready for the biggest wine event in Italy, held every year in Verona. This year, from Sunday, April 15 to Wednesday, April 18, tens of thousands of exhibitors and happy fair-goers will descend on the Verona fairgrounds to sip their way through the best that Italy has to offer in wine and spirits.
So what am I doing to prepare? As I take my notes and plan my day-to-day schedule, I am sipping this:
This is actually a modified Golden Milk smoothie, with – you guessed it! – curcurma, otherwise known as turmeric, the miracle spice.
But most of my detoxing looks like this:
There are simply no descriptors adequate for relating those colors. What happened to ruby, garnet, lemon or pink? It’s not easy being green… (and if you don’t know that fabulous Sesame Street jazz hit, click here!)
Of course it depends what you put into the juicer… A nice piece of fresh ginger is always good. Carrots, too. Don’t forget the green apple, Granny Smith by name.
But broccoli, kale, celery, pink grapefruit all work nicely too. I won’t even try to describe the color this next bowl produced. Let’s just say, it was unphotographable!
Some people call this green juicing, because the green ones are high in chlorophyll.
This is how I celebrated Saint Patrick’s Day:
You, minion, are too saucy!
– William Shakespeare, The Two Gentlemen of Verona
It doesn’t get much greener than that!
So, are you looking forward to Vinitaly as much as I am? See you in Verona!
Suzanne Branciforte's Italian Grapevine 