Cooking courses in Italy

The restaurant uses only locally sourced produce that is organic where possible. Giovanni, the chef at the restaurant seeks out local producers, who are often unaware of the merits of their produce. The village is particularly famed for its chickpeas and sucking pigs, for example.

We seek to encourage the local community of artists (of which there are many) by only hanging local art-works in the houses and the Anatra Grassa restaurant and commissioning special pieces. We provide information for visitors on where they can buy the artists' work.

We strongly encourage visitors on our cooking courses in Italy experience to use local transport if possible. We provide detailed instructions on the best way to reach the village by public transport and otherwise lay on a taxi service so that guests can avoid the need to rent a car.

Environmental:
We try to minimise energy use by using energy efficient light bulbs and the most energy efficient household appliances. We also have showers and half-flush toilets. We change sheets and towels once a week. The walls of our larger property are 3 feet thick and provide wonderful insulation, meaning we do not need air conditioning or fans in summer and hardly any heating in winter (though we do have gas-fired central heating). We recycle using the local bins, though this does not amount to a lot as we are a small-scale operation.

We run a paper-free operation as far as possible and conduct all bookings and administration for our cooking courses in Italy, via the internet as far as possible. The British end of our office is run by Juliet out of a garden office in Twickenham to avoid transport pollution and Pucci, who runs the Italian side, also works from her home very close to our accommodation and the Anatra Grassa restaurant. We give our guests information about local conservation, in particular informing them of local rubbish and recycling arrangements and of local bylaws about when they should dispose of their rubbish and about making noise late at night and so on.

Community:
The properties are owned and administered by Juliet, who lives in England most of the year but has a long association with Capena, having lived there for a few years more than 20 years ago and now a very regular visitor. The properties are run from day to day by her friend Pucci, who has lived in the village for many years with her teenage boys and is a much-loved and respected member of the local community. Pucci speaks English and is also wonderful and infinitely patient with our guests and has even been known to take them on days out, inviting them for meals in her own home, introducing them to the locals and generally making them feel part of the local community.

Capena, like most of Italy, now has a large and hard-working Romanian community who are now free to live and work in the country since the EU enlargement became effective at the beginning of 2008. Our Romanian cleaner Lumi lives right next door to one of our properties and is responsible for cleaning both the houses and bossing us about in the nicest possible way. She and her Romanian husband Mariano (a builder who has also worked for us) originally lived alone having been forced by circumstances to leave their small boy, Cosmin, in Romania with his granny. But now, in a heart-warming happy ending, he has at last been able to joined his parents and started school in Capena.

Our properties are both newly restored but despite this, it is amazing how many odd jobs need doing all the time. Stefano, our odd job man and friend is more than a little special because he can turn his hand to anything from mending a leaky pipe to fixing the internet and is frequently called upon to do both. He is particularly appreciated for his willingness to help out at the drop of a hat even in the evening or at weekends. But then again, he only lives around the corner.