FOOD PHILOSOPHY
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We love good food, and we love valorizing it in the dishes we offer. Raw ingredients are central to our cuisine; vegetables are only seasonal and mostly sourced from our own garden; they are the leading actors of our menu, which is mostly vegetarian. Whenever possible and depending on the season, we add wild vegetables from our fields and woods, practicing mindful and sustainable harvesting.
We cook for groups who rent the entire property for retreats, but upon request we can also arrange special dinners for guests of the farmhouse. The kitchen is reserved for our guests only and is not open to outside customers. In warm weather, meals are served atop our hand-crafted Italian family-sized table in the garden terrace overlooking the sea. In chilly, rainy weather, we make use of the spacious Levante lodging’s dining room where the crackling fireplace adds a cosy feeling of home.We use dishes hand-crafted especially for us from the ceramist artist Irita Tīlane-Pakalniņa.
VEGETABLE GARDEN, WILD PLANTS
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Our garden knows no poisons, only love and care. We cultivate it in every season, preserving what we can for future use. We love discovering local and unusual varieties and bringing this wealth to the table in many different ways.
Our care goes beyond cultivated plants: for over 10 years we’ve been promoting wild flora awareness, organizing foraging days in collaboration with our friend Claudia Renzi, creator of the project granosalis.org We forage and cook as a family tradition, deeply rooted in the ancient agricultural and farming traditions of these hills. Cristiana is the main custodian of this knowledge in our family, knowledge that she has also translated into a small book on Alberelli plants available to our guests.
SUSTAINABILITY
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We are located within the Monti Livornesi Nature Reserve, and we approach the surrounding nature with the respect it demands, striving to tread as lightly as possible on the land that hosts us.
We grow our olive trees without harming the air and soil, just as we do with lavender. Our portion of the house is heated exclusively by solar panels and a wood-fired boiler, with wood that we obtain from our own forest with minimal impact on its growth. We also use wood to heat the sauna and hot tub in the forest, a wonderful refuge on cooler evenings. We never wanted a swimming pool: the generous Tyrrhenian Sea is just few minutes away. Our buildings have thick walls and we have carefully renovated them, ensuring always cool spaces during the summer and avoiding the need for air conditioning. We collect rainwater to irrigate our crops, but we do not irrigate our lawns, which naturally follow the cycles of the seasons.
