The Tastes of Tuscany

So I think it's about time I told you a little about the scrumptious food over here in lil' Italy.
Let me just start off by saying, I have not yet eaten anything I didn't like. Everything here is delicious!!

Let's start with drinks:

Cioccolata Calda

The first day Francesca and I arrive in Florence, we walked around the city, and after getting cold from the rain, stopped in a cafe by Ponte Vecchio for a pick me up. We got cioccolata calda, which is hot chocolate. But let me tell you, Italian hot chocolate is nothing like American hot chocolate. American hot chocolate is not even close to being in the same league!! This hot chocolate is rich and thick and creamy and warms your whole body. None of that watered down American nonsense. This drink is definitely going to be one that I will miss when I leave Italy.

A couple weeks later, when I went to Venice and met up with my two friends Rachel and Julia from back home, we stopped in a cafe and got cioccolata calda. I wouldn't let them leave Italy without trying it first. They also thought it was amazing- if they didn't I would've slapped them!

Cappuccino 

You haven't had an Italian coffee until you've had a cappuccino. I mean, what else is there! Now the rule for cappuccinos: you drink it in the morning, but NEVER any later in the day. Want a coffee after lunch? Drink an espresso. People will look at you like you're crazy if you order a cappuccino in the afternoon or at night. It's just one of those social faux paus. 

Espresso

Now I don't have any pictures of any of the espressos that I've had to drink, but you know what it looks like. You get about a shot of it and can add sugar if you want. This is very common to drink here.  Yeah yeah I know- you know that, it's Italy. c'mon daiva. Whatever. It is. This you can drink at lunch time or breakfast or at night! Pretty much all the time. When I was staying with Anna in Milan, we had a shot of espresso in the morning, and we added a little milk to it. Then at lunch, we would just have a shot. When you go to a bar for an espresso, the most common way to drink it is standing up at the bar, pastry optional. It's my regular drink now in the mornings, sometimes with milk, sometimes without. 

The way you make an espresso is the most interesting, and at first scary, part. You take this machine that has three parts: a bottom, a filter, and the top. 1. Pour cold water into the bottom part unit lit reaches the little vent on the side. 2. Put the filter in the bottom part. This filter looks like a funnel, so the funnel part goes into the water. 3. Add coffee grounds until you have a mound above the edge. 4. Screw the top on. The top part will hold the finished espresso. 5. Put on the stove and wait. 

How it works is when the water boils, it pushes up through the coffee grounds, then up into the top container. It's kinda antigravity cool. 

Wine

What's Italy without wine? Italians drink wine all the time! For lunch, apperitivo, dinner, late at night… it's definitely a big part of the lifestyle. And here in Florence is there perfect place to drink it because most of the wine is produced in the Tuscany region, like the famous (and delicious) Chianti. Ooolala!                                                                                                                This picture of wine, however, is from Rome. My friend took me out to a restaurant and the dessert wine was called "sexy wine", and baby, sexy it was. It tasted like strawberries and smelled delicious!!

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Ok, now on to food!!

Pasta

I mean what's the first thought you have when you think of Italy? Pasta. Now the secret to why Italians can eat so much pasta without gaining a whole bunch weight is in the way it's cooked: you need a big pot of water, and once it boils, put an italian pinch of salt in, then the pasta. Now you don't want to cook the pasta until it's soft like we do in america. This pasta is cooked al dente, so it still has some texture and strength to it. Why this is better is when you cook the pasta in a big pot, the water extracts all the starch from the noodles. If you keep the noodles in there longer than al dente, they reabsorb the starch. Thus, fatty noodles. Interesting huh?

I'll keep these short:

- In Rome, at a small cafe for a late lunch, I had spaghetti alla bolognese, which is a meat sauce. Oh baby it's good. 

-Same meal, one of my roommates had the traditional spaghetti alla carbonara, which is an egg sauce with panchetta, and italian bacon type thing. 

- This is penne with a zucchini cream sauce- it was very interesting to see, and it was so good!

- This was a pasta we had when we went to Padua for the weekend. We stopped at a small farm outside the city where everything they grow is organic, and everything they serve for meals is grown on the farm. This pasta was another ragu sauce, which is the same meat sauce. So good!

- The same weekend we went to Padua, we spend the day in Venice, and what else do you eat in a city in the Mediterranean? Sea food of course! We stopped at a restaurant and has the most delicious sea food! I had spaghetti with clams, mussels, and prawns. 

Pizza

Now, the second thing you think of when you think of Italy… go! If it wasn't pizza, you've got problems. Mamma mia this pizza is delicious!! The thing I think I like the best about it, is it's all so simple. There are only one or two toppings on it including cheese. I had this one pizza one night called a diavolina that did not have sauce, and just had parmesan cheese and spicy sausage. It was probably one of the best pizzas I've ever had!! 

The pizza here is pretty thin. I wouldn't say it's as thin a new york style pizza, but it's not as thick as regular, blackjack pizza. It's thin and light, and flaky almost. In other words, it's delicious!!

Here are some picaruskies:

Going through my pictures, I've noticed that I do not have a lot of pictures of pizza… so I will try in the future. But it's probably better that I'm eating it instead of taking pictures, right?

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Now the cooking class that I am taking is called "Trends in Italian Cuisine", so I thought when signing up for it I would be taking a class in which I learned about the food of Italy, but also how it's changing and how to adapt it. But instead, the first day, our teacher said that this was not a beginner's cooking class, and we would be learning how to decorate the food using the ingredients we use within the dish. What?! So exciting! So that's what we've been doing, and it has been an absolutely amazing experience! Mama, Tete, thank you so much for letting me take this class!

Week 1:

The way the class is set up, is the first hour is lecture about some part of the history of Italian food and/or the preparation and where it comes from. It's very interesting. I have learned so many fascinating things about italian food that I never would have even thought to be true! Like, did you know that Caterina de'Medici was actually the one who invented crepes? Yup. She was a great cook and when she married the prince of France, she took all her recipes with her, and they became popular over there. Whudda thunk?

Then the next hour and a half is spent cooking! After we cook all the food, our teacher decorates one or two plates for each dish we make. And she is spectacular!

Anyway, so week one was probably one of my favorites. We first made panna cotta with a strawberry sauce and a blackberry sauce. Decorations courtesy of Milva.

ooolala!

Then the next thing we made (well we actually make everything at the same time, then decorate it all towards the end), was this delicious creation of heaven. We took  turkey, pounded it out til it was thin, then put cheese and artichokes (that we already cooked up) inside, rolled it up, and wrapped prosciutto around it. Then, after cooking some spinach, we put that in the bottom of a baking dish, then put the turkey rolls on top, poured a little cream over the tops of all of them, and baked them for 15 minutes. Goodness- I cannot describe to you just how absolutely delicious this was!!

Week 2:

Oh boy baby this week, we made a Chocolate Soufflé with a melted inside….

…. and a pumpkin risotto and spinach risotto….

These risottos….probably one of the most amazing things I've ever eaten!!! And it's so simple to make too! They always serve it in such fancy restaurants, but it's really not that hard to make. It takes a while, but I think I have made it… 4 times in my apartment since making it in class. So simple! And so rich and creamy and warm and smooth and delicious….

Week 3:

This week was pasta week. We learned about the differences between dry and fresh pasta, and used both in our dishes. One dish was a pasta with a sauce made of sun dried tomatoes, spinach, pepper, and goat cheese:

mmmm-mmmm it was delicious!

Then we made some spinach pasta, which we then added to a soup. Oh it was so good!

Week 4:

This week was all about the Italian apperitivo. This is usually taken around 7:30 in the evening and consists of little appetizer-size foods with drinks. So we made three things. The first was a leek stuffed foccaccia:

The next was a soft cracker-cookie like thing with a slice of sautéed apple and mortadella, an Italian sausage:

and third was a chicken and leek mixture wrapped inside of puff pastry. It had a little asian flair to it:

mmm delectable!

I haven't uploaded my pictures yet from this past week, but we made ravioli and a cream dessert! You have no idea how happy I am to be in this class!!

Well there's a little taste (hee hee) of what the food is like here in Italy. Absolutely magnificent. That is all I can really say about it.  You just really need to come try it….

To Dana...

My dear friend Dana from Colorado asked me if I even go to class here since I've been writing all these things about traveling, so I decided to tell you all that yes, I do go to class thank you.
 *Attention*- there will not be many pictures so I'm sorry if it's not entertaining

First off, let me lay out my schedule for the week:
Monday: Psychology 9-11:30
               Marketing 12-2:20
               Italian 4:30- 5:45
               Macroeconomics 6-7:15

Tuesday: Italian 4:30- 5:45

Wednesday: Trends in Italian Cuisine 9- 11:30
                     Italian 4:30- 5:45
                     Macroeconomics 6- 7:15

Thursday: Italian 4:30- 5:45

So it's a busy week! Monday is definitely a struggle, but it's nice to get the hardest day out of the way quickly.

My favorite class is probably my cooking class. I know, big surprise there, but it's fantastic! For the first hour we have a lecture on some part of the history of Italian food, which is always very interesting. [I'll regale you with those facts when I write my food post :D, they're very interesting]. Then our teacher quickly tells us everything we need to do to make the dishes for that day. After that we set off to work! It's been so fun being able to cook all these fantastic foods, but also to learn about it! Now a big part of the class our teacher told us the first day, is to be able to decorate the food using the ingredients within. So she will decorate one or two plates to show us how it's done, then we can either follow suit, or just eat. It's so fun!

I also really like my marketing class (which is good since that is now my major)! It's basically just lecture the whole time (with a break thank goodness), but every class has some of activity involved. Sometimes its reading  case study from our book and talking about the different marketing aspects of it, or doing a group activity like coming up with a new brand of shampoo. I really like it because we kinda get to play the role of marketers and plan something up and analyze a company. Also throughout the semester we have been working in groups on starting our own company. Every once in a while our teacher will give us an assignment we have to complete to add to the overall bunch of things we need to do for the company. It's been fun!! And every monday a few students at a time have to give a presentation about an article our teacher gives us the week before. I went this week with a kid from my class (we worked together).

My Italian class is really fun too- it's a 6 credit course of Intermediate Italian 1 and 2, that's why we have it every day. There are only 9 of us, so it's a really fun class. We only speak Italian, which is nice because it makes us practice, and I feel like I'm understanding it so much better! Even though I've already taken intermediate 1, it's nice to have a review and our teacher also explains it really well, so I think I understand it a lot more. Yay italy!

My psychology and macroeconomics classes are….eh. It's hard to concentrate in them just because the teachers both (wow I just realized how similar they are) ramble on and get off topic very often. It's hard to stay focused. But I must be doing something right because I got an A- on my first economics test! woot woot!!

So those are my classes! for each one that is one day a week we get to miss 2 before our grade starts going down, and for my italian class I can miss 3. The school is actually very strict about attendance and everything. But I'm proud to say I have not missed one class!

That's really all I have to say without rambling and giving pointless information about things you won't care about. I have midterms this upcoming week which I have to say I'm kind of nervous about, but I have the whole weekend to study, so I think I'll be ok.
Nevertheless, wish me luck!

The City of Escalators

continuing on from my last post…

Kelsey and I woke up at 7:30 on Saturday morning, but of course, we didn't actually get up until 8. We grabbed breakfast at the hostel, then were on the metro heading to our first stop at 9.

chink chink chink…errrr. -Sagrada Familia- 

Our first stop was right outside of the famous cathedral, La Sagrada Familia. Now there were two different reactions to this building when we walked up to the outside. The asian girls in front of us started screaming excitedly like girls do, while Kelsey and I just said "what". This thing was amazing! I've seen pictures of it before, sure, but man. The detail is ridiculous.  

We didn't go inside because it cost more than we wanted to pay. In fact, everything in Barcelona was more expensive than I thought it would be surprisingly. But no big deal- the outside is the big part. Antoni Gaudi took over the design and building of it in 1883, but died before he could see it completed.  The entire building actually wasn't finished until the mid-1980s. And when we were there, it looked as if they were still building on the sides. It was beautiful

Across the street was a little lake and garden area where we sat for a little, then walked down the street to something we saw on the map, but didn't know what it was. The Plaza del Toros Monumental. 

It was a gorgeous building, with mosaics on the sides. There were a lot of stars of David, so we thought it might be a temple, but when we got to the front, we realized that this was where the bull fights happened! It makes sense because of the shape of the building, but we do not understand the stars. Nevertheless- so cool!

From there we took the metro a couple stops over to see the famous Gaudi houses.

…errrr. - Paseo de Gracia -

We got off at our stop and started walking down the main street until we came to the first house, Casa Amatller and Casa Batllò.

This is Casa Batllò - so cool! The design is so strange, yet so intriguing. There is mosaic all over the face of it, and the roof is supposed to resemble the back of a dragon. But, like before, it was too expensive to get in, so we were happy just gawking at the outside. 

We walked down a little more until we came to Casa Milà, or La Pedrera, as it's better known. 

It was built in 1905, and was meant to have sculptures on the top dedicated to the Virgin Mary, but it was never completed. The design of the building are meant to make it look like waves going back and forth. Pretty coolio. 

We walked around the street some more and saw a few more Gaudi buildings, then we hopped on the metro to get to Park Güell. 

…chink chink errerrr. - Vallcarca -

From 1910 to 1914, aristocrat Eusebi Güell commissioned Antoni Gaudì to build a garden for the bourgeoisie on one of his estates. It's amazing! There are a few houses at the entrance, then staircases and mosaics and fountains and winding paths and green. So much green. Here are some pictures!

the entrance

mosaic covered fountain up the stairs

Hundred-Column Hall

ceiling of the Hundred-Colum Hall

cool plaza and benches on top of the hundred-column hall - funny story about the benches. When Gaudì was designing them, he had a naked man sit and make a mold in order to get the perfect form. hee hee...

the Washerwoman's arcade- I'm not really sure how he made this, but it looks just like rocks piled up and twisted. It's like its dug into the walls because on the top are paths to the top of the hill. However he made it, it was stunning!

This is a panorama from the top of the hill:

You could see from one end of the city to the sea!

After we spent a good hour and a half at the park, we got on the metro again and went to Cituadella Park.

…chink chunk choonk…errr -Cituadella Villa-Olympica-

Now going to this park was sort of a last minute decision, but BOY were we glad we went!!

This was probably my favorite thing we saw while we were in Barcelona. Inside the park was an open area next to a gorgeous waterfall called Plaça de la Cascada. This fountain was built in 1881 by Josep Fontserè and Antoni Gaudì. It is a copy of the fountain by the same name in the Longchamps palace in Marseilles, France. Whatever it copies, it is stunning!

The water was the perfect kind of blue-green, and the gold of the statues stood out even more because of the fantastic weather. This picture definitely doesn't do it justice.

Also within the park there is a zoo, more gardens, a greenhouse, geology museum, zoology museum, lake, the Catalan Parliament, and the old Governor's Palace. It is a very big park.

From there we walked down a long road towards the Arc de Triomf. The roads were lined with palm trees and it was just perfect. That's the thing I really enjoyed about Barcelona - even though it was a big city, it still had that "beach town" feel to it. Everything was really relaxed and open. The streets were really wide and the atmosphere was just so casual. And the great weather helped too!

After we reached the Arc, we stopped in a bakery and got water and pastries (YUM), then took the metro to get on the gondola (?) to get to Montjuïc Mountain.

…chinkalink…err  -Paral-lel-

Now looking at the map of this mountain, there is so much to see its ridiculous. But we decided to at least see the castle before getting dinner. Instead of paying to take the gondola, we decided to just walk up, and I'm so glad we did because it wasn't even that far away! It was just very steep…

So we got to Montjuïc Castle, and I understand why, when reading about the history, it had be conquered so many times by different people. You could see everything from the top! It was right on the water, and overlooked the entire city! Even more so than the top of Park Güell! It was awesome- looking out, you couldn't tell what was water and what was sky.

Later, after we enjoyed a dinner of tapas and sangria, we took the metro to the other side of Montjuïc Mountain to see the Magic Fountain. ooo….

To get there, you have to walk down a long street lined with a long pool of water that shoots up the water every few feet. Then at the end, up the stairs is the Magic Fountain, and behind that, up some more stairs, you are at the bottom of the Palau Nacional de Montjuïc - the National Museum of Art of Catalonia. The museum has a huge fountain running down the front of it, and looks more like a place than an actual museum. I'm tellin' ya, people centuries ago did not think small.

Anyway, the fountain runs from 7 to 9 and every, say, 10 minutes has a new show. Music plays and the fountain changes colors and shoots water everywhere! It really is a sight. Here's a picture from in front of the museum. It's not the greatest quality because I had to take it with my iTouch because my camera died:

ooooo…….ahhhhh……

So we wanted to go to the top of the stairs to get to the top of the fountain of the museum, and what did we find waiting for us? An escalator. This is why I have dubbed this city the City of Escalators. They were everywhere! Earlier when we went to Park Güell, we had to climb up this ridiculously steep hill and halfway through, we could either take the stairs or an escalator! Outside, just randomly in the street. It was hilarious! Thus, the city of escalators….

After we saw the fountains, we went back to Las Ramblas and got a drink, then back to the hostel to get some sleep. The next morning we got up early, threw some clothes on, and went down to the beach to see the sunrise:

It was the perfect ending to a great weekend.

Barcelona

So last weekend my roommate, Kelsey, and I went to *snap snap* Barcelona!

We got off to a rocky start when we flew in on Friday. We took the aerobus into the city center, and because we were tired and it was raining, we wanted to just take a taxi to our hostel. It was outside of the city, and more specifically in Badalona rather than Barcelona. So we get into the taxi and show him the address, and he starts driving like he knows exactly where to go. He drops us off, we pay, and then we're like….ok….
Where is it?
we walked up and down the street, then up and down the cross street.
Um…
We finally go into a cafe and ask them where it is, and they say oh you have to be in Badalona- you're still in Barcelona!
….
Crap.
The taxi driver tricked us and took us to some random place on the road that was similar to the road we had to be on [Alfonso XII rather than Alfonso XIII].

So after we had our cliche "American" experience, we finally find our way to the hostel. It was really nice because it was a block from the metro which made it really easy to get to the city. I've never really had to travel by train in order to get around a city, but, if i do say so myself, by the end of the weekend I was a pro at it!

So the first night, after we checked into our hostel, went into the city and walked down Las Ramblas- one of the main streets in the city center that is lined with shops and restaurants. It's one of the big tourist attractions in Barcelona. We found a restaurant on the street and because of the day we had, didn't really care that it was there and might not be totally "authentic". We ordered a paella menu which included a salad, paella, and dessert for 12 euro, then we also ordered a pitcher of sangria. It was so good!! I got the mixed paella, which had chicken, mussels, shrimp, oyster, calimari, and probably some other seafood as well. It was absolutely delicious!

After a very very good dinner, we walked down the rest of the street until we reached the water- it was such a sight! We saw the Monument to Columbus and the port next to it. He's at the top pointing towards America.

It really did feel like a beach town even though its such a big city. The atmosphere was just so relaxed and warm. It was so nice. Then after that, we walked back up the street and got a drink on the street to people watch and talk. It was such a good way to turn around the trip.

We decided that night to wake up really early, grab some breakfast at the hostel (it was free! well, included), then go around the city to see as much as we could. Because it was such a long day, I am going to have to make another post about it. So that is coming tomorrow! Brace yourself!