One week into the new year, on a bright winter day, I bumped into Saro on the street again. When I saw his face, a light went on inside me. I had finally surrendered to the fact that I couldn’t come at love from a defensive position—what I wouldn’t do, what rules I would have to follow. None of that had worked for me. I suspected I had to be open, as spontaneous and brave and intuitive as the woman who had chosen to come to Italy in the first place. Something inside me said, You’re in the most romantic place on Earth, if not now, when? Go for love. Without a moment’s hesitation, I threw my arms around him, American style, and asked, “Do you want to go out?” His face was warm and open. I noticed the slight curl of his lips for the first time. He had been hiding in plain sight. From Scratch features Zoe Saldana, who takes on the lead role of budding artist Amy Wheeler, while Eugenio Mastrandrea plays her on-screen husband chef Lino Ortolano. Italy had never been in my grand plan. The only grand plan I had at the time was becoming a professional actor after college. I had wanted to be an actor since I remember being conscious. It was the big-picture plan of my life as I could see it, even if I had, as yet, no specific road map as to how to achieve it. It would be a leap. Nor had I planned to leave Wesleyan and its sleepy college town along the Connecticut River, except that I had stumbled into an Art History 101 class at the end of a difficult freshman year. The class was taught by Dr. John Paoletti, a world-renowned Italian Renaissance scholar. On that first day of class, when the lights dimmed in the auditorium and the first slide came up, a Greek frieze from Corinth circa 300 BC, I found myself spellbound. Two semesters of college finally came into focus. Within three weeks, I became an art history major. The next semester I was studying Italian, a requirement to complete my major. By the end of my sophomore year, I had taken up a tepid but steady affair with my Italian TA, Connor. When I got to the window, flushed with anxious nerves, the first thing I saw was that it was pouring rain. Shit! Really? Could this be any worse? As I peered out into the night and looked down, there he was. My Saro. His coat was drawn tight, his hair was a wet, soaking mess. He was looking up at the window of our apartment. It wasn’t always easy, especially for the young immigrant. But they knew how to grind. They worked hard. And they had each other. They also had a fairy-tale wedding in a villa overlooking Florence.

Lino gives up his restaurant and life in Italy for California, but struggles to feel at home in America. Once in the narrow entrance, I made my way up to the hostess. Saro had told me to ask for her, Lucia. “ Mi scusi.” She looked up, took one glance at me, and sprang from behind her station at the end of the dessert bar. The smile on her face resembled that of a cat, after eating the canary. Tembi uses food and cooking throughout the book as symbolism for grief, healing, and resilience, from “cooking is about surrender,” (p. 69) to “life was separating my curd from my whey,” (p. 222). What was your favorite passage using this motif?After I gathered my duffel bag from the luggage compartment of the bus, our large group was divided and shuttled off to a series of pensioni near the train station for the first night or two until we would all be assigned and delivered to our Italian host families. The first thing I did after walking up three flights of a narrow stone staircase to my three-person room was put my duffel down and get into line to use the telephone in the main entrance. I did what every other girl did: I called home. Or two homes, actually—first my mom’s and then my dad’s—and assured both of them I had arrived safely. Then I called Sloane. The series also stars Judith Scott, Kellita Smith, Paride Benassai, Lucia Sardo, Roberta Rigano, and many more. Who produced From Scratch? Saro, in all his ease, openness, and attractiveness, was not the kind of guy I went for—stateside or in Italy. He seemed way too available, way too nice. My kind of attractive was aloof, noncommittal, and definitely hard to catch. After having had multiple on-campus affairs that had gone nowhere fast, I wasn’t looking for anything serious. I needed to focus on school, not men. But that was easier said than done.

There are many people, maybe even thousands, that you can love. But there are few people,” he continued, his words measured, “maybe only one or two on the planet, that you can love and live with in peace. The peace part is the key.” Ciao, mi chiamo Tembi. Sì, Tem-BEE,” I said in my best classroom Italian. I sounded stilted, as if I weren’t sure that the words were coming out right. My saving grace was an accent that wasn’t totally embarrassing and the fact that I could say my own name with relative ease. Amy leaves her home in Texas and halts her law degree to pursue her passion for art, which takes her to Florence, Italy for a semester. From Scratch started as a book, and speaking about her decision to write the memoir, author Tembi said: "This story had been swelling in my heart for years. Some of it even before Saro passed. I understood that there were aspects of our love story that were rare and beautiful.Huey, who remains close to both sisters and attended that idyllic Italian wedding, remembers Tembi as the most popular girl at Alief Hastings High School, a star of the school’s theater program. Attica was a freshman when Tembi was a senior, but they related to each other as peers. Banged Up 2023 cast: Meet the celebrities experiencing prison life first-hand, as the new Channel 4 reality show begins airing. I keep notes, I journal, and I use photographs and music to jump-start a writing session. I write in both spurts and longer periods of time, but rarely more than three hours of continuous writing at once. For me, small is big. Meaning short sessions often add up to a large output. And I write anywhere and everywhere. Seriously. I wish I could say I have a fixed place and set time, but my life doesn't look like that. I’ve written in parking lots. HA! However, occasionally I will go away for two-to-three days at a time, just me, and do a deep dive into the story. Those times are my favorite and keep me feeling sane as I work to finish a complete draft.

There are many great books on machine learning written by more knowledgeable authors and covering a broader range of topics. In particular, I would suggest An Introduction to Statistical Learning, Elements of Statistical Learning, and Pattern Recognition and Machine Learning, all of which are available online for free. Now in Italy, barely twenty years old, I was trying to decipher what made people come together and stay together forever. The idea that Saro had suggested, that a pairing could yield something great and lasting, was beautiful but untested. Still, when he said it, it felt real and possible. Even though I had extended my stay and I was set to return to America in a few months, Saro floated the idea that we could spend the summer together, that he’d come visit me at Wesleyan. One occasion after we had made love, he told me, “People eat all over the world. I can be a chef anywhere. You can only act in Los Angeles or New York. I will be at your side.” Yes, Tembi married her partner Robert in the summer of 2020, during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. IMDB has described the From Scratch mini-series as "an American woman falls in love with a Sicilian man while studying abroad in Italy."The couple head to Sicily for their honeymoon, so Lino can introduce his family to his new wife and show Amy his beloved home, but his father tells him not to bother visiting. By March, I was still renting a room in the penthouse apartment in Piazza del Carmine. One night I was waiting for Saro to get off work, and I sat up most of the night talking to a new American roommate, Cristina, from San Francisco who had filled me with stories like a tumbler of whiskey. By the time we adjourned, it was after midnight. My plan was to lie down just for a few minutes, rest, and wait for Saro to arrive in the piazza below sometime just after 1:00 a.m. It had been four months since he had bought me the bike and we had shared the ride across the Arno. We had a routine at this point that when he finished work at Acqua al 2, he left Florence’s center and rode across the river to Piazza del Carmine to wait outside my apartment. He would stand across the street from my building and wait for me to come to the front window. Upon seeing him, I would buzz him in. He couldn’t ring the bell because of one of my roommates, whom Cristina and I jokingly called “The Den Madame” but who was, in fact, a Canadian trust fund transplant whose name was on the lease on the rooms we sublet. She was famous for discontinuing the tenancy of any girl who took up with bothersome boyfriends. Ringing the bell after 10:00 p.m. qualified as bothersome. Nice to meet you both.” Saro shook my father’s hand and gave Aubrey a hug. “I was thinking we should have dinner together tonight. I’ve made arrangements at my restaurant.” That’s not necessary.” I now regretted my earlier lie. Hadn’t I played hard to get enough with this guy?

Sì, of course, I am off tomorrow.” It was effortless with him. “My friend is editing a film at a studio near the duomo. You like film and acting, no? Do you want to stop by the editing room and then have lunch?”First Tastes I exited the plane in Rome, jet-lagged with a gaggle of fellow college coeds headed for customs and immigration, my passport in hand. I was twenty years old, and it was my very first time abroad. My exchange program from Wesleyan University to Syracuse University in Florence had begun. The reward of jet lag is a new set of coordinates, a new language, and local delicacies. Italy did not disappoint. Eating my pastries as I looked out the window, on the bus ride from the Rome airport to Florence, I watched the passing cypress trees, hills, and farmhouses. It was like seeing a place for the first time that you felt you had known your whole life. When we finally made it to Florence under the midday summer sun, we stumbled out of the bus near the church of San Lorenzo. By then I realized I couldn’t wait to get away from the bulk of the girls on the exchange program. One transatlantic flight and then a two-hour bus ride was enough.