For the Romans, February was “februare”, i.e. “to purify” from the feasts’ excesses and start again with new colours and flavours. This month is a feast of taste, with its many and typical Carnival sweets. Each Cesarina jealously keeps her special recipe. Many of these are so similar that only their name changes, such as the most famous Carnival fried knots, said “chiacchere” or “sfrappole”, depending on whether you are in the South or in the North of Italy. In Emily, the “castagnole” are always present: they are little balls of fried dough filled with custard or wild black cherry jam, following each family’s tradition. Sweets are really tasty, but also the lunches or dinners with our Cesarine are inviting events, occurring in the dates indicated in the following programme. Perhaps, one of them will make you a present of her traditional Carnival sweets.

For details, please contact the Association by phone (+39 051 220797) or by e-mail (info@homefood.it).
If you wish to learn to prepare traditional dishes,
you have only to attend the Cesarine’s cooking lessons in Bologna.

If you wish to share ideas with them, you can find the Cesarine on Facebook,
looking for “Cesarine HomeFood”.

Have a look at our calendar of events!

The Association for the Safeguard and Exploitation of the Traditional Gastronomic-Culinary Wealth of Italy, with its Home Food project sponsored by the Ministry of Agricultural Politics and various Regions of Italy, and in co-operation with the University of Bologna, exploits and spreads the traditional food culture strictly linked to the culture of the typical products and territories.

In this spirit it is possible to become guests of the Italian families and taste foods cooked by the Ladies of the house, real repositories of the old culinary ways and methods.

The Guests (see To become a User Partner), as are the Ladies of the house called Cesarine (see The Cesarine), are members of the Association.

The Cesarine, whose number constantly increases, are available from North to South of Italy (see The Italy of Home Food).  

Since its foundation in April 2004 more than one thousand gastronomic Events have been organized.

The Association for the Safeguard and the Exploitation of the Traditional Gastronomic-Culinary Wealth of Italy has also founded the Home Food Editions, whose mission can be resumed in “good food for good thoughts”. Typical traditional foods become symbol and metaphor of a good way of being together, and this is the main objective for which Home Food was born, with the desire to encourage and promote the development of the “good” at different sense levels.