We recently had the opportunity to spend the weekend with Jody Ness and Kevin Fox of CNBC's Wine Portfolio. Jody and Kevin are actively involved in creating Wine Portfolio, a half hour television show of wine around the world for CNBC, shown in over 40 countries worldwide and have just completed their first season to rave reviews. Jody and my husband have been friends for many years after first meeting in Jody's great Toronto, Canada restaurant called Wildfire. When we heard that Wine Portfolio would be filming in Italy after a whirlwind cruise on the Holland America cruise ship, we invited them to come stay with us in Umbria. We were excited to show Jody and Kevin a little bit of Umbria and it's wines but were not sure where to start, so we called up an expert on Umbrian wines, Mark Stafford of Gusto Wine Tours to help us plan the outing. A full day of touring Umbrian cantinas was initially planned for Saturday with Mark's help, but at the last minute plans were changed and the visit was moved up to Friday.

I am very excited to offer this amazing contest giveaway through my partnership with Wholesale Italian Food. The company has just started selling this wonderful artisan pasta and contacted me about running a contest to stir up a little excitement. Pasta is my favorite food so I know this is a great prize for all pasta lovers! The lucky winner of this contest will get a year supply of Mariella bronze die pasta, or what amounts to a whopping 100 pounds of pasta! I myself will include a 6 quart Cuisinart pasta pot plus a great pasta sauce cookbook called 50 Great Pasta Sauces written by Pamela Sheldon Johns to help you create an entire year of great pasta dishes for your family.

Why is Mariella Pasta special? Mariella Artisan Pasta is made with great care, skill and patience. Their highly experienced pasta maker selects only the best wheat available and oversees all aspects of the production process. After the hard durum wheat flour has been milled and the dough kneaded, it is pushed through a wide variety bronze dies to produce many types of pasta shapes.

Cavatelli is a curved, short pasta resembling a hot dog bun with a long rolled edge which helps it to hold thicker sauces. A product of Sicily and southern Italy, these noodles are traditionally made by hand, although they are also commonly found frozen in North American Italian specialty stores. Traditionally, cavatelli is made by hand using a semolina flour dough. In North America, it is possible to find dried cavatelli shaped pasta made with semolina, as well as a softer form (often sold frozen) made from either a ricotta or potato based dough. Although cavatelli is sometimes confused with gnocchi, generally gnocchi dough is much softer than one used to make cavatelli.

Minestrone may well be the most popular Italian soup made today. It is now in fact, as well known to the world as pizza or pasta. Minestrone means "big soup" and is in fact a large vegetable soup that reflects both seasonal and regional variations. When one thinks of minestrone, generally one tends to think of a thick soup made with a variety of vegetables. Due to its unique origins and the absence of one traditional recipe, a bowl of minestrone can vary quite a bit from region to region depending on traditional cooking times, ingredients, and most importantly, the season. Minestrone may range from a thick and dense texture with boiled-down vegetables that may be enriched with pasta or rice, to a more broth based soup with large quantities of diced and lightly cooked vegetables that may or may not include meats.