Nights of home made

On Monday night we eat in a Nick was our cook. He said that he would surprise Sara and me with some kind of pasta dish. When he arrived to our apartment he had vegetables, cheese, olive oil and some other ingredients. First, he lightly fried a small piece of meat. Then, he sautéed red and green peppers until they turned almost black. Right after, he cut the meat into strips and mixed it up with the peppers. Separately, he made a cream and cheese sauce. This sauce was mixed with fresh pasta. At the end with ended up mixing the pasta with the sauce and the meat. It was a marvelous combination. We had wonderful time hanging out and cooking dinner.


On Tuesday night, Rala invited Sara, Rachael, Erica and I to have dinner at her house. As we were getting comfortable in her house, we introduced ourselves to Erica, who arrived earlier that day. She was a little jetlagged and we were trying to keep her awake. Throughout the course of the conversations, Rala put to use her culinary skills. She prepared a three course meal of real Italian food. First, she prepared a pomodoro sauce with sautéed vegetables. In addition, she cooked gnocchi, which were obtained at that great ravioli store by Piazza Isolo. This was our primi piatti, gnocchi with pomodoro sauce and mozzarella. Another thing that Rala had on her pan was ground meat. This meat was in the form on meat ball. At the end they looked like hamburgers shaped like balls. As contorno we had string beans. As people know by now, I do not eat vegetable, so I mixed the gnocchi with pomodoro with the meat balls. It was a great combination I must say. For desert we had a kind of corn meal with almonds cookie. We had a wonderful dinner, thank you Rala.

Pasta and Bread

Today I did some walking around the town. In my travels I encounter a bakery shop that in addition to sweet baked goods had different types of pasta. I was surprised to find pasta of diverse types and colors. I know that the yellow pasta is made out of eggs and that the green ones are made with spinach, but I do not know what the orange or brown ones are. The brown ones are made out of wheat, bran or farro, but I cannot figure out the orange. My most educated guest is carrot. I am interested but at the same time afraid of trying this different types. As I mentioned before, I am a very picky person and it frightens me to try new food. The yellow pasta came in so many different shapes. There were bow ties, fettuccini, angel hair, penne and many more. So far my experience with pasta has been limited. I had some pasta with tomate sauce. There rest of the pasta that I had had has been accompanied by hot dogs and bolied eggs. Very appetizing, but not very Italian. I have not tried any other variety and sadly, I doubt that I will try any.

The breads in this bakery were diverse as well. They were all shaped differently and I guess that they tasted different as well. There were also pastries which looked very apetizing. Personally I like the frech baguettes. I like other breads, but that one is my favorite. In Italy, I have had the rolls and the baguette; is still have to try more. I have not encountered flat breads yet. These breads are supposed to be very common in the Mediterranean region, but I still have to find them or try them.

New experiences

One of the greatest challenges of this trip in my particular case is the fact that I am a really picky person when it comes to food. I do not like vegetables, fruits or fish. That makes it particularly difficult since everything in Italy is in part made with a variety of these items. From the pizza to the sauces to deserts, all these ingredients always come into play. This challenge has been good to me in a way. Now, if I want to eat out I have to try whatever the Italians have in their menu. I actually was faced with this challenge last night. I order ravioli and I thought that they will be filled with cheese. Well, it turns out that they were filled with spinach. This dish came with a creamy cheese sauce as well. It also had ham. Since I saw ham in the menu and I love meat I even thought that the filling may be ham and cheese, which would have been a treat to me. To my surprise, all the cheesy goodness overshadowed the taste of the spinach, and I did not even know that I was eating spinach. The sad part is that I still think that spinach does not taste good. Maybe in the future I will try it again and enjoy it more.