🥂Cheers to Our Honeymoon

We’ve romanticized the Italian lifestyle for years.

So of course that’s where we chose to spend the bulk of our honeymoon.

Tuscany completely met every expectation that I’d envisioned for years, which somehow led to a surprising reaction…

I figured I’d come away, completely obsessed. Dying to go back every couple of years until I can figure out a way to move there.

And because it was literally exactly the way that I’d been envisioning all these years, there was some level of underwhelm…

Not because it wasn’t incredible! And not because I’m not still obsessed with Italy’s beauty and natural lifestyle…

But because of my obsession all these years, I’ve already implemented so much of this lifestyle at home.

It all felt very normal, although with a bonus level of beauty because the landscape there is absolutely insane!

But traveling brings a whole host of challenges that I wasn’t surprised to face, but at the same time, I came away from the whole experience with a completely different feeling about my future than I expected.

So Levi and I are chatting today about the entire trip:

• Our favorite and least favorite moments

• Differences between European and American lifestyles

• Our experience of vacay in the countryside vs. a big city

• & how the trip clarified our plan for our future together

Enjoy the conversation and cheers! 🥂

My favorite wine from Italy:

It’s hard to choose a favorite because every wine we had was great. So here are some off the top of my head:

• Chianti Classico from Villa Le Corti (2022 & 2019)

• Chianti Rufina Riserva, Puro Rosato, & Puro Chianti from Fattoria Lavacchio

• Chianti Classico 360 and Furbacco from Savignola (Furbacco is a super light, casual drinking, lightly chilled red and it’s named after their puppy, Bacco, that we played with for hours there!)

I’m not sure how easily you can ship wine directly from these wineries into the U.S. so if you want to try traditional, natural wine from Italy or France without traveling there or doing your own research on each specific wineries’ practices, order online from Kermit Lynch.

In the episode, we talk about this incredible cooking class we took in Tuscany so I wanted to share the very first course in the 4 course meal!

This asparagus risotto is so dreamy and was actually so easy to make. It’s a perfect demonstration for how simple and luxury Italian cooking is with it’s simple but incredibly fresh ingredient list. *No packaged foods ingredients! Produce picked straight from their garden. & parmigiano sourced from a local artisan.

That’s my kind of cooking.

Dinner recipe from our cooking class: Asparagus Risotto

Listen to: Our Honeymoon, European Lifestyle Lessons, & Homestead Clarity

🤍🤍 Jaclyn

P.S. I always link to Spotify, but Cheers to Growth is also on Apple Podcasts and YouTube. Listen where you like to!