Join Mary Taylor Simeti as she and her four grandsons cook their favorite summer dishes and prepare a birthday dinner for their grandfather. The author of the highly acclaimed 'On Persephone's Island' welcomes us once again to the Simeti farm in western Sicily, and to the dinner table where three generations of her family gather each summer to celebrate their multicultural heritage with good food and great affection.
Author Biography
Mary Taylor Simeti is a New Yorker who has been living in Sicily for over fifty years. For the past twenty years Simeti and her husband have been living full-time on the family farm, where together with their daughter they produce wine, olive oil and organic produce. She is the author of 'On Persephone's, Island: A Sicilian Journal' (Knopf, 1986), a history of Sicilian food entitled 'Pomp and Sustenance' (Knopf 1989), published in England as 'Sicilian Food', and co-author of 'Bitter Almonds' (Morrow 1994), the memoir of a pastry chef who learned her trade in a convent orphanage. Her most recent book is 'Travels with a Medieval Queen' (Farrar Straus Giroux, 2001). Simeti has also published two books in Italian, and has written travel and food articles for various American and British publications. For years she contributed regularly to the Sunday travel section of the 'New York Times' and to its Sophisticated Traveler supplement, and also to the Arts and Leisure section of the 'Financial Times'.
