Gap Year, Week 2: food in Italy!!
I’m writing from outside of Sofia’s school volleyball practice. The school is a block-wide, bright pink building kitty-corner to the house.Okay, Mrs. Florsheim asked me to talk more about food in this blog post which will not be an issue for me!
Every Sunday, there is family lunch at the Nonna’s house. She is an excellent cook! This is how all of the meals are laid out: the first course is pasta, followed by meat, and then salad, fruit, and sometimes dessert. All are served separately; they leave the next dish in the kitchen until everyone is finished with the current one. On the table, there is water, usually wine, and chunks of bread lying around. If you want some bread you just rip off a hunk from the chunks and leave the rest on the table. The bread is especially used for soaking up sauces.
So far, some of the pastas I have had are penne with bolognese, pesto with spaghetti and corkscrew with a tomato sauce. Mmmmm, so delicious! For meat, there has been pot roast, and meatballs. The meatballs are oblong and served with an olive oil, white wine, and onion sauce. It is SO GOOD! They never put meatballs on their pasta- I mentioned that a typical American Italian dish is spaghetti with meatballs and they looked at me like I was crazy! I asked the Nonna if one day she will have Sofia and me over to cook, so I’m hoping we learn how to make these incredible meatballs.
Then, there is a salad: usually butter lettuce, cucumber, tomato, shredded carrot with lots of olive oil and sprayed on balsamic vinegar. The tomatoes here are sooo good- they are so sweet and much more flavorful than the ones at home. The salad is followed by fruit: usually melon and stone fruit. I love the melon here: it’s a local variety, less flavored than honeydew but similar. It’s very refreshing in the hot weather and after a meal. For dessert, we have had tiramisu, moose cake, and of course, gelato!
Breakfast here is very small- they usually have cookies and coffee while I opt for yogurt (the best I have tried so far is lemon). Now, let me talk about the coffee here. They love it. Guilia gets around three each day. I don’t drink coffee, which they don’t really understand!! But twice now I have tried orzo, which is fine if there is chocolate on top and at least two sugar packets! Orzo is a coffee-like drink, caffeine free, made with barley. It was invented during WW2, when Italy couldn’t import their beloved coffee beans. I think it has a lighter flavor.
There is a bar a five minute walk from their house which Guilia goes to every morning. Here, a bar is the same as a coffee shop. They serve coffee and pastries in the morning, and pizzas, calzones and drinks at night. There, Guilia orders her coffee and reads a newspaper. The kids can go get whatever they want and they pay when they leave.
The bars like this offer another type of food, which I have also loved trying! This includes the thick crusted square cheese pizzas, calzones, focaccia (dough with fillings in the middle- think if you made a sandwich with dough and then baked it), and these deep fried rice balls filled with tomato sauce and cheese. Yum! We also went to a pizzeria one night to get the thin crust pizza- it was TO DIE FOR! We had to wait around an hour because it was busy, so when my buffalo mozzarella margarita pizza arrived I devoured it in two seconds.
And for the gelato, I have had to correct the family many times when they call it ice cream (an insult to the gelato)! If you don’t know the difference, basically, the main thing is that gelato is kept at a warmer temperature, has a lower fat content, and is much more dense. This means it is much more flavorful and rich, and because it is warmer, you are able to taste it better. I love to get stracciatella, which is cream with chocolate drippings. I also have been trying all the Kinder-inspired flavors, such as bueno. And I love the fruit ones- lemon and mango and peach! As you can see I have had plenty of opportunities to find my favorites!!!
The way they purchase food is similar to what I experienced in France. Different stores for everything; bread, dairy, fish. An open air market for produce- and it’s cheap! 25 cents for an eggplant, and for a loaf of bread. They also have a grocery store if you want to save time, but quality is much better at the smaller stores.
Guilia told me that it is becoming trendy to eat “old fashioned” foods. One of these is called frisa (freeze-uh), and it is dehydrated bread! You dip it In water and then douse it with olive oil, topped with tomato and cheese. It’s quite good if you don’t soak it for too long- then it falls apart. The cheese I love here is very mild and creamy. Kind of like a gourmet version of babybel! It’s called Bel Paese.
Copertino (the town I’m staying in) has a Saint, Saint Joseph. There is a major festival to honor him on September 18th, lasting three days. The kids get school off and many people take work off. I’m not exactly sure what this entails (stay tuned to find out!), but for 10 days leading up to it there are masses to honor St. Joesph. I have gone twice- I’m not religious, but the masses are held outside due to the heat. It’s a beautiful old church, and Sofia and I hang out with her youth group friends, handing out church flyers and trying to sell church posters. There are chairs everywhere, on every side of the church; people fill the inside as well- plastic chairs added to all the hallways and small rooms. It seems like the whole town comes!
Interestingly enough, Cupertino, California, is actually sister cities with Copertino and they have a student exchange program. A Spanish person exploring California named a stream after St. Joesph and that lead to the town being called Cupertino. It’s funny because my grandpa made jokes about the similarity of the name, and it actually has some truth to it!
The other thing I did this week was explore Lecce. It’s the bigger town 20 min from Copertino. Sofia and I were walking around when it began to DOWNPOUR! We were dripping wet from running from one store to another. So, we camped out in a bookstore (they had Matilda, which she very reluctantly read when I told her to and of course she ended up loving it!!).
Lecce is often called the Florence of the south due to the Baroque style. They even have a Roman gate still, one of the original four entrances to the city.
It’s strange to think that my time in Copertino is half way up! The lifestyle is much slower here, I have been reading a ton and taking afternoon naps, but at the same time it seems strange to think it has been 2 weeks! I am doing my best to soak it up. Thanks for reading!
Originally published at http://anniereller.wordpress.com on September 14, 2019.
