We just finished our 2 week stint in Florence, or Firenze as they call it in Italian (as far as I can tell the difference is because of how the original Latin name was altered as it made its way into English and into Italian). This means we also finished our Italian lessons, which didn’t get any easier. The toughest part is knowing which preposition and article to use. They don’t translate literally into English the same way we would say something. For example, you all know the expression “spaghetti al dente”. Literally translated, this is “spaghetti to (or at) the tooth”, not the same way you would construct it in English.
Food update:
Remember that post a long time ago from Norway, in which I said we weren’t eating or drinking as much as we used to? Forget that. We are in Italy now. We have been eating pretty well, but we have been eating a lot of the same things; pasta with tomato or pesto, pizza, caprese, prosciutto, bruschetta. We decided to take a break from Italian food one night. We we were missing the tastes of home, so we went out for Mexican food. (pause for either laughter or gasps of disgust) If you are thinking, “wow, you should know better than to do something like that”, well, you’re right. It was not good. We like to learn lessons through experience I guess.
We went back to Mercato Centrale and I had the lampredotto. If you hadn’t read the previous post about it, it is a sandwich made with tripe of the 4th stomach of the cow, and is a traditional specialty in this region. I won’t be ordering it again. Similar to the regular tripe I had before, it had a mild, and slightly gamey flavor. The spicy oil they put on it helps to mask the flavor a bit. The gray color wasn’t very appealing, but what I mostly didn’t care for was the consistency. It was kind of gelatinous, with some chunks of more fatty texture that was difficult to chew. I am glad to have tried it, but I think tripe is best ground up and mixed with other tidbits and stuffed into a sausage.
Yesterday, we enjoyed a wonderful, full day cooking class. We made two types of focaccia (rosemary and garlic, as well as basil and tomato), hand rolled spaghetti (called pici) with a tomato sauce, gnocchi with walnut gorgonzola sauce, fried calamari, calamari with beet greens, biscotti, and gelato. Our instructor, Luciano, was a riot. Jesslyn and I enjoyed his many off color jokes much more than one of our fellow students, who was there with his teenage daughters. This was especially true when one of them was rolling the dough for the biscotti, which was looking rather phallic, Luciano said, "touch it gently, like you would your boyfriend”. We used all fresh, organic ingredients either from the farm on the premises, or from local farmers. When we needed basil or rosemary, we went outside and picked it off the plant. Luciano told us about different types of flour and how the gluten content and bleaching of most modern flour causes digestive problems for people. He uses ancient grain flour which has much less gluten than others. He showed and explained how to prepare garlic and onions that won’t cause foul smelling burps. He often talked about how cooking with fresh ingredients is best for your health and gave specific examples. The food was great and we are no longer so intimidated to attempt making our own pasta and sauce.
Jesslyn preparing the potato for gnocchi
Future plans:
Spending 2 weeks in Florence and being in class in the mornings worked out well, so that we had time to plan more of the trip in the afternoons. We forgot how time consuming it is to research places, modes of transportation, and accommodations. We started planning our trip about 6 months before we left, and we only had about the first 6 weeks planned out. So we were at the point where we needed to book trains and places to stay. The monkey wrench in our plans was the Schengen visa rules. I suspect that most of you have never heard of that. Well, we never had either until we were speaking with another traveler at a hostel in Scotland. Basically, the rule is that you are allowed to be in the Schengen zone for 90 days out of any consecutive 180 days. The Schengen zone includes all of Europe, except for the UK, Ireland, and Croatia. How on earth did this never show up on our radar during our 6 months of planning? We had read articles and books on traveling the world, but it was never mentioned. We looked into which countries required visas. We knew we couldn’t stay in Italy for more than 90 days, but didn’t know it wasn’t just Italy, but that included most of the rest of Europe.
Since we had already made plans to be in Italy in October, it meant that we had to leave the Schengen for at least a week in September and up to 3 weeks since that is the gap we had between plans in Italy. We have heard good things about Croatia for a while, so it was on the list of potential stops. After learning about the Schengen rules, it is now firmly on the agenda. Croatia is part of the former Yugoslavia and is directly east, across the Adriatic sea from Italy. It has been a popular destination for German and British tourists for a while now, and Americans are just starting to catch on. So far we have booked accommodations in Rovinj and Cres, and are working on getting down to Dubrovnik and one of the islands in the south. From the research we have done, we are very excited for this part of the trip. It looks incredible.
Website:
It has recently come to our attention that some of you didn’t realize we have been sharing photos of our trip. If you are only reading the blog via email, it is easily missed. I will update the email template to include a link to the photos. In the mean time, you can go to the main web page (www.jakeandjesslyn.com) and click on the link for photos. We don’t love the way the photos are presented because we haven’t been able to put any text with them, so there is little context. We are working on it. If you have recommendations for a good way to share photos with text, please let us know.
Also, if you are reading this blog post from email, you may not realize you can leave a comment. If you go to the blog on the website, you can, and please do! We love to hear from everyone. I will also update the email notifications to make that easier as well. If you leave a comment, it won’t appear on the site until we approve it, so, give it about 24 hours before it is publicly viewable.
Ciao!
- Jake