All the foods of Italy

Hello loyal fanbase (Hi Mom!).....I know I've been absent for awhile.

I spent the past few months in Italy, not eating brains. iZombie by the way...very popular in Italy. It was the front page of every DVR, on demand thing. I spent months traveling and staying with host families mostly in small towns surrounded by vineyards...and in one case mountains. I have many stories to tell, but since this is my world of cooking, I am eager to focus on the food!

I took pictures of some of the best things I digested, albeit with some difficulty, as you know from the blog I don't normally eat cheese or white bread. I didn't take any pictures of the home-cooked meals, but I will describe the memorable ones to you.

Possibly the best thing I ate in Italy.

This is a pesto lasagna. Rich, creamy pesto between layers of fresh lasagna noodles. Don't believe it had meat, but chicken would be a good addition.

Can't wait to recreate this one.

Pizza with whole wheat crust---I'm a happy camper.

Pizza Farina Integrale.

With pumpkin, radicchio, and sausage (yes, I ate meat. I ate everything. I only said no to "licorice super alcohol" and when I was ridiculously stuffed)

The cheese was gourmet, too, but I forget the type.

My dessert with my first night with my host family. We had straight grappa. Whiskey with pineapple. Whiskey with gelato. Straight whiskey.

I told my host dad that one of my favorite drinks was whiskey ginger ale. He took ginger root from the fridge to try to serve it to me.

Meringata

Italian custard and meringue cake. So light and fluffy, cold and delicious.

Cornetto

Italian King Cone/drumstick

Very popular, comes in WAY MORE flavors than any drumstick you'll see in the states.

This one is white chocolate cherry.

This pizza is just spinach and ricotta...but boy was it fresh and delicious.

So fresh...

So delicious...

Dessert at a fancy restaurant. Limoncello and cookies. And the chocolate version of limoncello...which I never got the name of, but I drank a lot of.

Hmm, dessert tends to be alcohol, no?

Viva Italia!

This gets special attention because it represents a piece of Italian culture. This is aperitivo, but it's so much more than appetizers. Okay, it's appetizers.

Italian happy hour has trended in the last few years to include aperol spritz and all-you-can-eat appetizers. Seriously, they will keep bringing them. I'm a snacker, so I'm tempted to call that dinner. But no, it just whets your appetite for what is sure to be a 4-course meal anyway. Here we have punch and our first few plates of appetizers. Notice there is a full plate of pasta in the middle...but it's still not dinner.

This was a particularly fancy chocolate cake I had in the same restaurant that served the above aperitivo. Since the waiter thought of the servings as appetizers, he did not expect me to want this slice of cake...but I did. Oh how I did.

Gelato

I did not take many pictures of gelato on account of it melting fast and you know...me wanting to eat it.

This I took a picture of because it was my last day in Italy, and because of the beautiful mountain backdrop.

I ate this gelato in one of the smallest and oldest towns in Northern Italy, Valley of Suza. Don't fact check me.

This is the best gelato flavor I tried: pane e marmellata. Bread and jam! THAT was the BEST flavor I had. I can't describe it.

Here are some flavors that came close:

Ricotta

Dark Chocolate and Pistacchio

White Chocolate Pistacchio

Italians don't do big breakfasts. In fact, in the morning, they do very little resembling cooking.

I was lucky to get "toast" or a breakfast panini from one of my families.

Otherwise, it's breakfast cookies, yogurt and jam or cereal.

This is why you microwave these pancakes for a hearty "canadian breakfast". I mean, we have pancakes, too...but I'm guessing the canadian brand is doing better right now overseas.

Also, Canadians have authentic maple syrup, which is what these tasted like...and shocked me because these tiny individually wrapped in plastic, microwaveable pancakes were the best pancakes I'd ever eaten.

Or maybe it has been too long since I've had a solid pancake.

More pizza...last pizza.

This is salmon and some fancy white cheese....also looks like asparagus.

It was amazing.

Here are some things I ate at my host families' houses that I made a note of:

Fried ricotta cheese

zucchini---just zucchini. They cooked it so well and so often.

torte di sale: My host sister was excited to google translate everything she could find for me...especially the menu. She told me that tonight we would have a "salt cake" and her dad cracked up. He knew we had no such thing as a "salt cake".

Sort of like a quiche but without the egg. A salty, buttery crust with veggies and cheese on top. NOT a pizza.

Cucumber tomato salad: gluten free and easy to make

I snapped a pic of the meal planning my host mom did for the week I stayed. I wanted to look up the recipes later. We had an amazing pistachio shrimp dish.

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And now for something completely different...my trip as if summarized by Lemony Snicket.

Dear Reader,

You are about to read the tale of a girl brave enough to leave her world behind in exchange for all the food she could eat, a couple euro, and two or three Italian phrases to yell at children. Of course, this isn't the whole tale, for the whole tale is often impossible to tell, but a mere summary of a series of interesting events. If you want a deep cultural analysis and thinkpiece, read a different blog. If you are expecting a wild and crazy blush-worthy adventure, read a different blog. I am bound to record these events, but you of course, may shut your computer and call your mom.

Our story begins with a hotel filled with Canadians, where our heroine meets a girl in a farm dress, a three-man running club and no one her own age. She quickly discovers this isn't going to be a crazy pants-off European soiree, but a subdued learning experience. This first chapter is instead marked by a great big hill, a club with no music and a sexually-charged soccer match.

A long bus ride takes her to the town of Onigo, which if the roads were any wider, could be mistaken for Western Washington. This was the place she was the fullest, the most understood, and the most comfortable. Here we encounter a rainy golf course, a bleak historian, and a night that caused two best friends to quit speaking.

With the knowledge tucked away in her belt that she is too old for such nights (and was not one of the best friends) and perhaps either wizened up or mellowed out, she leaves the land of Prosecco for Cassina De' Pecchi, which apparently means cassina of sin, but not according to the natives. Here the stage is set for a champion gymnast, an aggressive peacock, a cloak and dagger library and a night of grappa and accordion music. Bella ciao!

From here we can only go forward to a valley of blistering heat and missed communications. Here lack of time, did not mean lack of substantialness, a word which here means substance but is spelled slightly different. Things came together here, between the mountains, and maybe because it was the shortest week, the urge to make time stand still was all the more strong. And so we have a list instead of a 3-item thesis.

This week supplied the girl with:

A roman aqueduct

tied-together shoelaces

An aggressive canadian

Brioche every morning

A Monopoly cheat

A hot ferrari

A large pointy thing

Kids who cheated death

A salt cake

A water fight underneath storm clouds

A love letter

An over-eager mom

And lastly, a trip that never was.

And because this post had several drafts, I'm tempted to leave you with: A centrifuge with her name on it.