CHEEEEEEEEESE

Today we went to to a cheese factory and I got to see how cheese was made! It was pretty awesome. I had no idea how the process was. So much milk is used to create cheese but only a small amount of cheese is created from all the milk used. It's nuts. After we went through a tour of the factory we were able to try 4 different types of cheeses and also sip wine and eat bread while we tried them. (It was 10 am and we were drinking wine, i fell asleep asap when we got on the bus to Padova) We also tasted some salami that the owner of the factory also makes. Everything was so good. We tried different aged cheeses and there was one unique cheese that was called "Formaggio Briacho" which is translated to Drunk Cheese. They call it this because they add wine to it when they make it. When I tasted it, there was a definite taste of wine it is infused with. My favorite cheese we tried was the first one, which was a "young" cheese. Meaning it was more than a couple months old. Fyi, the younger the cheese, the whiter in color it is and the more holes you can find in it.
Anyway, that experience was really interesting and one of the top things I experienced and learned about while in Italy.

.Nutella.

Tonight we all went back to the Cappa Cafe to hang out. When we were there we each tried different drinks. I had an orange spritzer which was pretty good but doesn't really compare to the strawberry one that I ordered before. Erica ordered a dessert that had Nutella on it. We had no idea what it was from looking at it on the menu, but she oredered it anyway, because if Nutella is on it, it can't be bad. So when her dessert arrived it was a huge loaf of bread (like a very large piece of toast) that was covered in nutella and topped with nuts. It was SO GOOD. The bread was warm so it made it taste even better. That dessert was really good but filling. I was all set with one piece. The best part is that its simple enough to make if I crave it when I go back to the United States. YUMMMM.

dont judge me.

I have been going psycho for candy and am having a hard time finding any I like. It's gotten so bad that I see a child walking down the street eating some delicious treat and I think about mugging him. Luckily, today I received a package in the mail from my boyfriend that contains about 8 packages of sour skittles. ...i couldnt control my urge and I devoured half the loot within 36 hours. Needless to say, today was a sad day in my Italian cuisine world.

la dolce vita

I was in Florence today and I didn't get a chance to eat any food from the city but I did manage to stop by a small cafe in between my shopping. I went to this cafe mainly because I was on a mission to find cannolis... AND I DID! Me and Vicky both ordered cannolis and 2 cappuccinos. We were having a great time. The cannolis were delicious. So after finishing the best little cafe break we could have had it was time for the bill. We thought maybe it would be around 7 euros each. Maybe the drinks would be 2 euros each and the cannolli would be 3 euros. NOPE! we were dead wrong. The place was basically a delicious little tourist trap. Our bill total (which included 2 cappuccinos and 1 cannolli each) came out to 31 euros!!!!! the pastry was 4.50 and the drinks were 5.50 each. so i paid 15 euros for my coffee and dessert. what does that translate to in American dollars? basically a little over $20- each. Over priced? yes. -however- delicious? asbsolutely.

chef food part 2

Today was our last time meeting with the chef. After 3 hours of learning how to cook we came up with a variety of meals to devour. First off, the chef created this quick little appetizer that I have never tried before. It was fried zucchini flowers. I was starving so i devoured them and they tasted good, I don't know if I would have been so eager to eat them if I wasn't so hungry, but they were good. Then for the second dish he made trout with a sweet and sour sauce that had vinegar and raisins and other ingredients in the sauce. The third dish was rizzotto. The rice tasted so good! That was my first time eating rizzotto. The third dish was a pork meat wrapped up like a cinnamon roll with a meat mousse in between the layers. As for dessert, we had baked a lemon meringue type of pie. The whole meal was delicious but personally, my favorite meal was the one that we created the week before.

cafe

I decided that I love the "bars" here. The bars are actually coffee bars were people go and order a cappuccino or any other usually caffeinated drink ( which is one size) and stand there and drink it and then leave. It is quick and most of the places have great drinks. Mostly all the drinks cost 1 Euro it's really cheap here too because coffee is so popular. It's so different from home where Starbucks basically serves the same thing for $6. And in the states iced coffee is really popular but it's not like that here. Although some places do offer "cafe freddo" (iced coffee)- you dont usually see anyone drinking it.
I have become addicted to this coffee machine that we have in the building that our classes are in. Every morning before class starts I go to that machine and it automatically dispenses a small cup of cappuccino for me and it only cost 50 cents. I have that every morning and this chocolate bar that has rice puffs in it (like in rice cakes). Those taste awesome and I want to buy out all of the ones stocked in the vending machine. That's probably going to be one of the biggest things I miss about Italy- the cheap awesome tasting coffee and those chocolate bars.

dinnertime

Me and Vicky went to the Pam today to get food for dinner. We decided we were going to make eggplant parmesan and pasta. I was in charge of making the pasta so I cooked the pasta with olive oil and cut up pieces of garlic, red pepper, lemon bits, and chicken to add to it. I bought dried out red peppers at the Pam, they must have been gourmet peppers or something because the little prepackaged bag that I purchased was the most expensive thing I bought at the grocery store. I was 4 Euros for something so small. I couldn't complain though because they made the pasta taste really good. I also prepped the marinara sauce for the eggplant and added crushed garlic and onions to add flavor to the sauce. We then layed out the eggplant and mozzarella/parmesan cheese to it and through it in the oven and baked it for about half an hour. The prep time was also about half an hour as well. It ook a while to mak eit but in the end it was worth it. It was probably the second best dinner I have had since I've been here (the chef's was the best). All that was missing was beer. That would have made it perfect!

cool pastries

Today I walked around the Piazza Bra and came across a really fancy pastry shop that has all sorts of desserts and cakes on display. It's probably the best one in the area. They had so many sweets shaped into animals like fish, elephants, frogs, and so on. I took a picture of it so that you can see what I'm talking about. The other desserts looked so good. There was an orange small caked with chocolate designs on it placed for display outside the shop. Other desserts were mainly breads with chocolate fillings and also more desserts with custard and fruit on it (like the one i photographed at the train station). Everything looked awesome and fattening so I ran out of there ASAP once i photographed what I needed... I might go back there later this week and actually buy something to pig out on.

im a pro chef now

So tonight we all went to a culinary school and were taught how to prepare amazing dishes. We all had aprons and chefs hats on and we prepared all the food with the head chef. He supposedly is a big deal in Italy because he cooked for the Pope and Prince Charles. So we made an appetizer dish which was a stuffed tomato filled with diced veggies. That tasted really good. And then for our second dish we made spaghetti (from scratch) and had it covered in a lemon sauce that had bits of turkey and chicken throughout it. The third dish consisted of veal and mushrooms. And the last dish was a custard that was covered with strawberry sauce and berries. My 2 favorite dishes were the pasta and the custard dessert. It all just tasted so good! It was the best meal I have had since arriving in Italy. Immediately afterwards I regretted eating so much because of how full I was. We are supposed to have a second food class with this chef next week so I can't wait to see what we prepare then!

P-P-P-P- PASTA

I was very hungry when it came dinnertime and did not feel like going out to experiment and buy something different. I didn’t want to end up being disappointed. So, today I made my own pasta sauce! I used olive oil, garlic cloves, onions, tomatoes, peppers, tomato sauce, and seasoned ground beef. While that was heating I prepared the spaghetti in boiling water with a dash of olive oil and about 2 handfuls of salt. When everything was just about done, I started to prepare the garlic bread. The large bread was cut in half, and then into smaller pieces. I crushed garlic cloves into very tiny pieces and let them settle in olive oil. Then I spread the “garlic oil” onto the bread and let them sit in the oven until they were a golden brown color. After all this was finished I felt like an Italian wife cooking for my husband… in this case the “husband” was my roommate, Vicky.

hola? burrito?

So I'm starting to miss my mom's Mexican cooking and theres only so much Italian food I can eat before I start to get sick of it. So for dinner me and my roommate, Vicky, made a serious Mexican meal. We had chicken fajitas. This consisted of a medley of vegetables such as peppers, onions, and tomatoes. The chicken was seasoned and cut into small strips and we had store bought tortillas to wrap the chicken and vegetables. I then contacted my mother on how to make Mexican rice and created a large pot of it. The rice consisted of plain white rice, veggie or corn oil (in this case we used olive oil) tomatoes, onions, and a clove of garlic. All of the ingredients we used were very fresh so everything tasted great. I was very surprised with myself because the food came out almost as good as my mom's! Then to wash it all down we had purchased a white wine at the Pam (the local supermarket) which was ehhhh... okay. It was cheap so what can we really expect? but either way, it made me very happy to have some of my home cooking.

spritz this

Last night me and a bunch of the other students went out to Cappa Cafe. It was a really nice bar/restaurant area that had couches and pillows everywhere and were decorated by lit candles everywhere. We heard how popular the spritz drinks were so a few of us ordered some spritz drinks and others chose other wine and mixed drink options. I ordered the "Friendly Spritz" which consisted of fragole (strawberries) , lime juice, and red wine. That was probably the best drink I've had since I've been here. It tasted really good and the wine wasn't over-powering at all. In the drink there were chunks of strawberries that settled to the bottom, therefore they served the drink with a pick so that you could pick out the strawberries once the drink was finished. Along with my drink i had an order of "Bruschettone" which was a large order of Bruschetta. My bruschetta had a light tomato sauce topping, olive oil and garlic, and it was covered with cheese. It was very similar to a pizza. That was really good to but it was also very filling. I could only eat up to 3 pieces before I started to feel huge. When I get back home that's going to be an appetizer that I would like to re-create. It seems simple enough.

yucka.

Today we went to Lake Guarda. It was nice and the area was full of shops. For lunch we went to a small restaurant that served Italian foods but was owned by a German franchise. I was pretty hungry so i opted for a larger dish instead of the regular panino. I ordered a dish called "Dely." It was chicken breasts with salad and sliced cherry tomatoes. I HATED IT. It was not Italian at all. It was just dry chicken breasts that were probably deep fried. They had no flavor at all and I felt like a rabbit eating the lettuce and tomatoes. It's different eating salad here because there are no Italian dressings to add flavor other than just the 2 options of balsamic vinegar and olive oil. So what I did to "enhance" flavor was just grab the balsamic vinegar and dump it all over everything. Needless to say I couldn't wait to get home and make my own dinner instead of experimenting with other restaurants. So after lunch me and Jenny walked around and we found a pastry shop and i purchased a croissant that had a chocolate filling. The other option for the croissants were ones filled with Nutella. Therefore the foods I tried that day weren't completely miserable, because those croissants were AWESOME. I chowed down on them and bought one for breakfast the next day. Then on the way back I took pictures of a deli and all of the pieces of meat that were hanging on the walls for an interesting display of food. I will post pictures up later once i get my camera pictures uploaded...

olives= evil

When we went to the train station there was a small food shop in the corner that served sandwiches, desserts, coffee, and booze. I was in complete awe/disgust that they baked olives into their bread. Awe= because I have never seen anything like that before. Disgust= because I absolutely cannot eat olives. I hate them. Nevertheless, I still took photos of the bread and I entitled it, “The Enemy.” And not too far from the breads were some biscuits that were covered with a layer of custard and then adorned with fruits. Those were pastries I had never seen before as well. They looked really good but I didn’t get any. There were other sandwiches that looked good but most of them were either vegetarian or the meat used was ham, and I am not a big fan of ham. I would prefer turkey breast, but I haven’t seen anything like that here. It seems that the most popular meat in Italy is ham. So when it came time for me to order, I just stuck to the usual, a cup of cappuccino.

KEBAB-O-RAMA

Today during class time we went and explored some of the kebab shops in Verona. It was my first time trying these kebab sandwiches and they tasted great! I was a sloppy eater and had them spilling everywhere. The contents of the sandwich i created were: bread, lamb, lettuce, tomato, ranch dressing, ketchup, tabasco sauce, and some other red hot sauce that looked like buffalo sauce. Those were just the topppings i selected. Additional toppings were: onions, mayonaisse, and cabbage. It was neat to see the inside of the shop because you could see that it wasn't pre-selected, packaged meat that was applied onto your sandwich. Instead it was a VERY LARGE chunk of lamb on a rod that was slowly turning in an oven to keep the pork warm. The man creating the sandwich would razor off chunks of meat from the lamb and then let you select the toppings, much like a Subway shop. Unfortunately, I forgot to photograph my meal but i found a very similar image of what I was eating- except this image is of a thinner kebab- Mine was a fatty.