The sight of him coming down Via Calzaiuoli and filling Piazza della Signoria with his presence was enough to make me adore him just a bit more and also wonder what the hell I had set into motion.

I gained 7 lbs in 2 weeks, as she made me eat everything that I saw that I said something positive about. With that he released the brake on his Vespa, and I stood in perfect stillness as I watched his figure recede into the crowd as he headed across the Ponte Vecchio.It was too late for breakfast, the only type of food we kept in the house, and I was too worried to go out for lunch. The food sounds amazing – and I actually think I will try making a recipe from the back of the book. Dad arrived in Florence in full Texas regalia, complete with cowboy hat, denim pants, and alligator boots.

When I told my father during one of our weekly Sunday conversations from Florence that I was seeing a man, the mere mention of it when I was so far away from home, so young, set off his parenting alarm. Tembi describes their relationship in the book with luminous prose: “He soothed the places I hadn’t known needed soothing, seemed perfectly willing to embrace the parts of me that were wanton, unsettled, unfinished, and contradictory. I also dropped the curtain on the third and final act of my operatic drama with the stonemason Il Diavolo. We were standing in front of Vivoli, which, I had been told, made the best gelato in all of Tuscany.The whole thing was doomed and I knew it, but every time I saw him, somehow I found my way back to his place. It is a strange story showing, mother, child and mother-in-laws way of coming to terms with grief, but it is beautiful and maybe a learning lesson for those of us who haven't yet been in such a situation. She launched her podcast, "Lifted," which features dynamic women sharing their stories of what and who have lifted their lives.

I stood up, tingling with a kind of excitement I hadn’t ever felt, and began to make my way upstairs to the main dining room. It is a little heavy since it’s about grief, but it’s also so full of love and maintains a really uplifting and hopeful tone. With lyrical writing; sensual descriptions of Italian food; and a powerful love story that transcends barriers of language, culture, and more; readers can’t help but feel everything with Tembi as she guides us through her journey.

The bridge was lit in amber, and the waters reflected the night hues that shone from streetlamps and a smattering of windows. There was just one problem: Saro’s traditional Sicilian family did not approve of him marrying a black American woman, an actress no less.

Then I watched as the snow fell further and melted away as it landed on my scuffed boots, the chill of the marble steps beneath me penetrating the soles of my feet. Safe enough to take a risk on something no one in my family had seen coming—a potential long-distance relationship with an Italian man twelve years older, without a college degree, who was banking on “cooking” as the means of supporting our future together. Booths wrapped the circumference of the intimate candlelit dining room filled with communal butcher-block tables. From Scratch: A Memoir of Love, Sicily, and Finding Home is a poignant and transformative cross-cultural love story set against the backdrop of the Sicilian countryside, about how one woman discovered the healing powers of food, family and unexpected grace in her darkest hour.What he didn’t tell me, but what I sensed, was that he had every intention of looking a certain Italian man in the eye. From Scratch chronicles three summers Tembi spends in Sicily with her daughter, Zoela, as she begins to piece together a life without her husband in his tiny hometown hamlet of farmers. Below, the Locke sisters — who co-wrote the script — walk us through the true story that inspired the show, as well as the major differences. The clatter of cups hitting saucers, spoons clinking against porcelain, plates being stacked, the aroma of coffee and fresh pastries, seduced me.