Tuscan Food

One of the highlights of a trip to Tuscany is the region's many culinary delights. The Tuscan diet is considered a Mediterranean style diet, so it's relatively healthy.
Breakfast is often a cappuccino or expresso accompanied by a sweet pastry and prosciutto or salami.
Lunch is light and can be a smaller version of dinner or a pannini. The basics for lunch/dinner include raw or steamed vegetables, such as asparagus, artichokes, fennel, spinach, arugula and cannellini beans. They're accompanied by rice, pasta, gnocchi or bread for starches and pork, chicken, wild boar or rabbit for the meat dish. Fish also is served, especially near the coast.
Pecorino cheese, a specialty of Tuscany, might well make it into the meal, as well a scrumptious soup made from bread and vegetables.
Should you still have room, dessert could be a delightful pastry, cannoli, tiramisu or that heavenly Italian ice cream called gelato.
No discussion of the foods of Tuscany would be complete without a mention of the wines that accompany them so well. Chianti is the wine most people associate with Tuscany, but it is far from the only worthy wine. Brunellos from the small region of Montalcino are highly prized - and very expensive. Most of the wines, such as Tignanello and Sasicaia, are reds although Sauvignon and Chardonnay are also made.

Thumbnail Sketch of Tuscan History

Historians tell us that the ancient Etruscans entered Tuscany from the east during the 9th century BC, possibly attracted by the plentiful food sources such as the still popular wild boar. Lingering evidence of the Etruscan occupation can still be seen in many places, such as the underground water system of Chiusi, the necropolis at Cerveteri and the tumuculus tombs at Populonia. They called their region Etruria. Etruscan society was progressive for the time, as women appear to have had great freedom and were treated as the equal of men in many ways, even when it came to politics.
The Romans arrived in Etruria in the 3rd century BC, but they received an unexpected defeat at the hands of the Eutruscans at Lake Trasimeno and decided to give them Roman citizenship. The Romans then established or expanded such vital Tuscan cities as Lucca, Pisa, Sienna and Florence.
Although political and religious changes of many sorts transpired over the centuries the next earth-shattering change didn't occur until 570 AD when the Lombards conquered Italy as far south as Florence. including Tuscany.
Tuscany eventually became divided up politically by such competing families as the Guelphs, Ghibellines and Medicis and those who followed until Italy became united as a country under Victor Emmanuel II in 1871.