THE SPOKESMAN-REVIEW
Couple cooks up a dream house and business on 20 acres in Green Bluff
Cheryl-Anne Millsap / Staff writer - 2005
The formula is basic and simple: Natural ingredients are selected and blended, mixed with mouth-watering color and seasoned well. The result is warm and organic, and it feeds the soul as well as the body.
This was the recipe for the rustic barn-like house that sits upright and solid at the edge of a flat oat field on Green Bluff; it's the recipe for the hearty pasta dishes, redolent with the fragrances of garlic and spices that are made there. And for Davide and Stephanie Trezzi - the man and woman who built the house, and prepare and package food in it - it is the recipe for a good life.
The Trezzi Barn is less than a year old, but the rough, weathered siding makes it look as though it has been there for a hundred years, like so many of the surrounding farmhouses and barns have been.
The wide double doors open into a small reception area that is painted a vivid yellow-green and is furnished simply. A small window frames the view to the west so perfectly it appears to be a mural painted on the wall.
The couple lives upstairs, in the loft that runs the length of the building. A plush, comfy sofa at one end of the room, and a long glass table surrounded by chairs upholstered in colorful fabric, define the spaces within the space.
A tall, rolling wall, built to surround the bed and provide storage for clothing, is a bedroom on wheels. It can be moved around the loft to suit the seasons and the changing view.
There are no extraneous items anywhere. The room is quiet and serene. The ceiling is high, and the large window that fills the rear wall opens onto a view of rolling fields and mountains.
But it is the kitchen that sits at the center, at the very heart of the house. A tall stainless-steel freezer and refrigerator stand on either side of the room, and a wide, steel island fills the center. Huge pasta pots boil on the heavy stove. With rich ochre walls, it is a clay cave of a room.
Davide and Stephanie Trezzi have been partners, in marriage and in business, for 12 years. They met in a in a cafe in Italy, when Stephanie, a graphic designer, was vacationing there.
“It sounds... I know it sounds silly, but have you ever looked into someone's eyes and you knew?" Stephanie Trezzi asks. "You just knew?"
After spending the remaining two weeks of the holiday together, Stephanie returned to San Francisco.
“I couldn't really speak any Italian, and Davide couldn't speak English," she says. "But we would spend hours on the phone. We loved the sound of one another's voice."
Davide Trezzi flew to San Francisco to see if the spark they had felt in Italy, and fanned over the phone, was genuine. “On vacation, romance is... easy," he says in heavily accented English.
"But when the holiday ends? Well, it is not always the same." But it was the same. The couple married and moved to Sonoma, Calif, where Davide launched his catering career.
Trezzi isn't a trained chef. He cooks what he calls country Italian food. The food he ate as a child; food that had been prepared by the women in his family.
The business was successful. But the couple grew unhappy with the pace of life in California: They wanted more, and less. A friend suggested they consider Spokane, and told them about the Green Bluff area. They flew in to investigate.
They drove up to see the parcel of land that sits on the southern face of the bluff. As they got out of the car, Stephanie turned to Davide and said the property was nice.
"I said to my Stephanie it was not just nice," Davide says. "I said to her This Is gorgeous. This is it.”
And it was.They purchased 20 acres, designed a building to be their home and their workplace, and hired a contractor to build it. Then in January of this year they moved in. Working in the cold, unheated, building they sculpted the interior. Cement floors were stained and walls were painted in vivid hues.
The kitchen and store rooms were outfitted with commercial equipment and the couple poured their own concrete vanity in the master bathroom. "The day the heat came on, it was the best day of my life," Davide says.
Now the house is warmed by visitors.
As word of Davide's pasta specialties spreads, each weekend more cars pull into the gravel driveway and more customers carry frozen lasagnas and containers of rich pesto away with them.
This summer the couple traveled to antique fairs, festivals and farmers' markets to bring their food to the public, and to promote their business offering, which they call "community catering."
“What we provide is very good, very affordable, family-friendly food," Stephanie Trezzi says. "It's perfect for schools and other organizations that need to have an event to raise money."
The first year in the barn has been a busy one. The days are growing cold again but the man and the woman in the busy kitchen don't mind.
They're cooking up a dream.