Potato, Potato (this time with inflection!)

Did you know it was possible to eat six different servings of potatoes in one day? Only in Austria. And three of my six servings were served with some kind of garlic condiment, like garlic glaze and garlic-infused sour cream. It was 20 degrees in Vienna this past weekend, but I was too busy eating potatoes to notice.

Actually that's a lie that I wish was true. Truth is, I was so cold I had to stuff myself with steaming potatoes to try and keep myself warm. It was a survival tactic. I swear. Otherwise, why would I ever eat anything as disgusting as garlic-glazed potato pancakes? 

Just look at that pool of spicy garlic glaze gathering at the perfectly crisp edge of this savory slice of potato heaven. 

Disgusting. 

Essay Time

The following is a short essay I wrote in response to the prompt: "How have you integrated yourself into Italian society?" Note the title. Pretty much sums up the extent of my integration. 

An Italian Meal

Sitting alone in the trattoria, I scrutinize the menu, seeking out whatever sounds the least foreign. I spot il girello arrosto con le patate. I had forgotten Rick Steves’ pocket menu translator, so this was basically going to be a shot in the dark. Il girello arrosto con le patate, sounds good. I think.

After a few minutes of intense concentration on making eye contact, I get the waiter to come over, and I order my il girello arrosto con le patate with a big glass of vino rosso della casa, trying to remember that it’s vorrei, not varrei. A moment later, a gentleman walks in, also dining alone, and so the waiter places him at the same table, right next to me. These Italians are clearly not clued up on the idea of personal space. He says buonasera; I mumble it back to him. With my hands in my lap, I twiddle my thumbs – then I remember I probably shouldn’t do that.

Insight time: most of the differences between Italian and American culture, I believe, can be observed at the dinner table. Starting with where you put your hands. I’m still reeling from the rigidity of keeping your hands resting on the table and not in your lap, a concept developed because, as my host mother explains it, “Your hands can do all kinds of things down there.” And then there’s the whole “eating dinner in three courses” thing, which probably relates to the idea of il dolce far niente. Il dolce far niente, a phrase I first came across in the aforementioned Rick Steves’ pocket menu translator, refers to the quasi-mythical Italian art of doing nothing. A daily three-course dinner simply allows Italians time to de-stress after a long day of riding Vespas and talking emphatically with their hands. For me, however, these three-course dinners are anything but il dolce far niente; I have a fear of choking on my spaghetti and dying a slow and painful death by asphyxia. Thus, I chew each bite 22 times before I swallow, turning any three-course dinner into a very time consuming ordeal. Too time consuming even for the Italians; I’m always the last to finish every course, chewing those final bites frantically in the face of certain death. No, not il dolce far niente at all.

I take a sip of my vino rosso, and in my head I pronounce it, “pretty good.” The gentleman next to me also pronounces the wine to be pretty good (he does so out loud of course; mind-reading was not something we’ve covered yet in Italian 101). Pretty good, he says, but a bit too cold. Not a particularly thrilling proclamation from the mouth of a gentleman, but what’s important to note is that this gentleman said it in Italian – and I understood it. I understood it! I translated it all without the help of an online translator. I take another sip of wine in silent celebration.

I’m on a constant quest for authenticity, something to write home about, but I usually chicken out whenever I find a way to experience it. The Italian Way is just too different, too cloaked in foreign ritual. Do I order a caffè at the bar and then pay? Or do I pay first and then order? Unsure, I often end up ordering no caffè at all. So, sitting here alone in a trattoria, with no amici to aid me in butchering the Italian Way, is a big and scary step. So far I’m handling it pretty well. But then the gentleman’s meal comes out; it looks like a steaming, sweating pile of tapeworms, and smells even worse. It must be tripe. Oh god, I hope I didn’t order tripe. I’m pretty sure vomiting in my napkin is not the Italian Way. Just bring out my meal and let’s get it over with already.

My anticipation builds. The gentleman eats some more tripe. My anticipation builds some more.

At last, the waiter comes over to my table with a steaming, foreign plate of … roast beef and potatoes. I love roast beef and potatoes. Sometimes the Italian Way can be surprising – not because it’s different, but because it’s strikingly familiar. The gentleman looks at my plate of hearty beef and potatoes. Buon appetito, he says.

Grazie, I say.

A Thanksgiving Feast

I was pretty bummed about being stuck in stupid Italy for Thanksgiving. But then I remembered that what I love most about Thanksgiving is the food, and there is plenty of food to be found in this country. In fact, there is plenty of food to be found at the convenience store right around the corner from my home stay. As illustrated in the photo below, that convenience store is now frantically restocking their cookie shelves (or as I like to call them, "The shelves with merchandise targeted at lonely, single women").

That bundt cake thingy is about the size of my head.

Truly a Thanksgiving feast. Ahead of me lies a night of internet T.V. and slowly eating my way to euphoria.
Thank God for that.

Intellectualityism

Tonight I had to interview a young Italian writer for a new article about, well, young Italian writers. He was late though, but he made up for it with a great excuse: "I was at the bar and after two glasses of wine I briefly forgot about our appointment." And when he leaned in for that kiss-on-each-cheek thing (omg, Italians actually do that?!), I got a pleasant whiff of wine and cigarettes. Also, he was wearing a red handkerchief as a headpiece. Oh these writers; will this be me in a few years? Sounds awesome.
Our topics of discussion included dialectics and the literary canon. Two years ago I would've thought that "literary canon" referred to a heavy piece of artillery that fired all those extra copies of War and Peace at enemies. Ah ha ha, not anymore. That Davidson education is paying for itself.
And when he made a passing reference to graffiti-artist Banksy I was able to nod along in recognition of that name, even if I only know who he was because of my familiarity with the website "Stuff White People Like."
So as we were chatting over espresso in the Guibbe Rose, this smarty-pants writer was telling me all about how the big shots of futurism would come here and write manifestos on the napkins. But not so much anymore -- now it's just a tourist haven. A sly smile from Smart Guy as he confides,"You and I are probably the only intellectuals in here."
Me? An intellectual? Well I guess you're right. I did solve a brain teaser yesterday in less than three minutes.
Now can we please discuss the latest episode of Gossip Girl? This whole Chuck-and-Blair thing has got me in the mulligrubs.



Bonus post on my host brother's views on theology:
"I believe in God, just a different god. I believe that I am a god."

"What if God was gay? I think God and Jesus Christ were boyfriends."

Freshly Pressed Olive Oil

Served at our table in a wine bottle, cause that's what they handed over to be filled up at the olive oil-filling up place. Just thought you should know.

Sh** My Host Family Says

I don't really feel like writing "Eurotrip Part 2," in which I was going to complain about all the rain we encountered in Verona. I know you'd love to hear me wax poetic on the sub-par weather patterns of northern Italy, so I apologize.
Instead, here's a round-up of recent quotable quotes from the dinner table:

Host mother Judith on growing up on a farm: "Around afternoon, I would go get the eggs just laid by the chickens. I would watch them come out of the chickens, and then I'd take an egg from one of them and poke a hole in it and suck out the insides. And the insides would still be warm."

Host mother Judith on table manners: "In Italy, you never put your hand in your lap, because your hand can do other things."

Host brother Tommaso on a positive self-image: "Look at me. I am perfect. I am not joking."

Politics as Usual

In honor of all the voting I didn't take part in today (yes, I know, I'm a bad American), here's a run down on the current Italian political situation, as told by my host brother, Giacomo:
1) Prime Minister Berlusconi was recently caught hanging with prostitutes, one of them underage.
2) My host brother Tommaso wants to be Berlusconi.
3) When Berlusconi was asked about being found in said compromising situation, he basically told the press: "Sure I like to have fun. I love life. They're just prostitutes; at least I'm not gay."
4) Predictably, the Italian leader of the democratic party, who just so happens to be gay, took offense to this. His response to Berlusconi? "You may be beautiful, Berlusconi, but at least I'm intelligent."
5) My political insight of the day: they're like four-year-olds!
6) A recent article in a respected news magazine rated countries on their level of corruption, with one being the least corrupted. Italy came in third from last. This might be related to the fact that Berlusconi owns three of the seven national television stations and one newspaper.
And finally, number 7) My host brother asked me about Marco Rubio today over dinner. How, and why, does he even know who Marco Rubio is? All I could tell him was that Marco looked rather handsome in his television adds.

Euro-trip Part 1

Ah, Venice. It's even better than in the movies. I'm only postulating here, because I haven't seen any movies set in Venice. And if there aren't any movies set in Venice there should be, because it looks like this:

Oh yeah, and this too:

Never mind that our one-star hotel only had one shower. Never mind that I've literally subsisted solely on pizza for the past five days (and here I'm using "literally" in the literal sense of the word). Venice was wonderful. A decaying Disneyland.*
Venice glittered in the sunlight, beckoning to the jaded traveller who's seen too much plain old brick and stone. Venice put on airs of mystery beneath the moonlight. Then it glittered some more.
I spent the first three days of Fall break eating gelato underneath the blazing sun beating down on the 170 canals that make up the lagooned-locked island of Venezia. At one point while walking through Piazza San Marco, one of the mini-orchestras employed by a piazza-straddling café began to play a familiar show tune, and I just closed my eyes, savoring the moment -- and smacked right into my friend's back while she stopped to take a picture. Oops.
Pardon all my waxing poetic, but no amount of clichés can capture the beauty of the floating city. But perhaps Longfellow put it best in his poem that went a little like:
Something something "Swan of cities"
something something "illuminated spires"
And then something about "illusions."
So what I'm trying to say is that when the pigeons stole my bread crust right from my pizza box it was a-okay, because my bread crust was stolen while in Venice.

*I'd love to claim credit for this nifty turn of phrase, but I think I stole it from Rick Steves.

Rant

Can I just say that I cannot wait for November 1st, aka the day northern Italians are LEGALLY allowed to turn on their heaters?! I am tired of wearing two pairs of socks to bed, tired of sleeping with my head under the covers, tired of stealing my roommate's hair dryer and blasting hot air over my toes (although, I admit, that feels reallly good). I am from Florida. I cannot take this.
Okay, rant over. Nothing like the thought of little Roma children sleeping outside under the cold, stone arches of Piazza Annunziata to put it all back into perspective for me. Kind of.

Unrelated: Link to my story on truffle hunting published in The Florentine, the English Language newspaper here. Look ma, I'm a real food writer!

Bought a One-Way Ticket

To Venice! For fall break. After school, I made the long haul over to the Santa Maria Novella train station, such an exhausting journey that a pit-stop for gelato had to be made. And then, of course, navigating the self-service ticket kiosks at the station was quite the feat, even though there was an English language option, but the English language is hard to deal with some times. After the daunting task was completed, my friend and I high-fived in between train tracks to commemorate this moment of travel-savvy. 

The result of all our hard work? A shiny, freshly-printed ticket:

Points to anyone who can read the impossibly small font on this ticket --
while I'm holding it upside down.

I'm excited.
Too bad gondola rides are 80 euros.
But that's what photoshop is for.

Well-Fed

If you asked me what gnocchi was a week ago, I would've said, based on my experience in Davidson's dining hall, that it's a slightly underwhelming, gummy potato-based pasta. If you asked me now, after Wednesday night's cooking class, I'd say that it's one of the best things I've ever tasted.
Quick instructions on how to make gnocchi: boil a ton of potatoes (skin-on to keep them from soaking up the water). Peel them while still hot, difficult to do without burning a finger, and then mash the potatoes with a super sweet potato masher that makes the potatoes come out looking like spaghetti-shaped strings of play dough. Lacking said super sweet potato masher, use a fork. Add one part flour to four parts potatoes, and throw in a heap of grated parmesean cheese. Knead until just combined, and then STOP kneading. Roll out the dough into cords about as thick as a virile Italian man's finger, then cut into pieces slightly less than an inch long. Next, roll the little lumps of dough with the tines of a fork to create grooves that will make it easier for the sauce to cling to the pasta. Throw into boiling water and fish them out when they float to the top.
Presto!
The result: little pockets of potato heaven that practically melt in your mouth.

For secondi piatti, we had roast pork stuffed with rosemary, garlic, sage, and BUTTER. A girl at our table said she didn't eat red meat, so her lack of meat knowledge meant more pork for the rest of us. 

And for dessert? Warm apple tart with rum-infused whipped cream. 

Oh, you know, just a typical Wednesday night meal. 

I Don't Think We're In Pompeii Anymore

The street had no sidewalk. No road signs either. Not that Italian road signs would really help four directionally-challenged American girls who were lost and and just wanted their mommies. Or at least I did.
Our trip to the ancient city of Pompeii started off alright. We spent a few hours wandering around the well-preserved ruins; the city was buried beneath the ash of the Mount Vesuvius explosion in 79AD until it was discovered and subsequently excavated 1,500 years later.
But really, we just came to see the famed ancient brothels. All we wanted to do was stand and giggle in front of ions-old naughty wall paintings.  We traversed that whole dang city looking for said brothels and ended up walking to the very edge of the complex, where we found a bike trail. We decided to walk down the bike trail, because maybe the bike trail would lead to the brothels.
The bike trail did not lead to the brothels. It basically just led to a dusty fork in the path, with the Pompeiian ruins sprawled out on the left, and a dirt road leading away from the city on the right. We had to make an executive decision on which way to turn, and the decision was this: Oh yeah, a 1,500 year old city is cool and all, but this dirt road looks waaay cooler.
The dirt road was not cooler; it was rather hot, and dusty, and lined with glass from broken beer bottles. The occasional car that rolled by would always honk at us, either because a) we were obviously young American girls, and the Italians' favorite pastime is honking at young American girls, or b) we were in the way.  It was often both, so in order to let the car pass by we had to walk sideways with our back to the fence, as if we were scaling the side of a mountain.
About 40 minutes into our walk to nowhere, I started getting that panicky feeling, and thinking things like, "That dog over there lying under that car looks pretty rabid." "Am I less likely to get snatched into a car if I'm walking in the front or the back of my friends?" "That hotbed of Mafia action, Sicily, is just a mere 400 miles and one ferry ride away. So if we just keep walking, WHO knows where we'll end up."
The dirt road, thankfully, did not lead us to Sicily. Rather, it eventually morphed into an overpass that traversed a six-lane highway.

We could deny it no further; we were no longer in Pompeii (unless the Romans were way more advanced than previously thought). 

Because if we were still in Pompeii, it would look like this:

Moral of the story: don't go to brothels.

This is How I Always Want to Spend My Evenings

The other day, I walked out of the apartment in an incredibly giddy mood -- blue sky, homework done, chocolate wafer in my pocket. I was so happy, in fact, that I started humming the theme song from Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood. My mood soon worsened, however, when I remembered that Mr. Rogers is dead.
You know what's not dead? The art of Tuscan cooking.
Last saturday night, following the recommendation of her Italian host sister, my friend and I sought out a certain trattoria for a cheap and hearty meal on a cold and rainy night. This trattoria, quite literally a hole-in-the-wall with a doorknob-less door, had paper place mats, backless wooden chairs (known as "stools" in some parts), and paintings of busty, naked women lining the wall -- all the marks of a spot to get authentic Italian grub. And the food smelled promising, too -- at least we thought it was the food we smelled, because at this point we were still standing outside, stumped by the doorknob-less door. Perhaps   Florentine sewage is naturally laced with the scent of roasted rosemary and sauteed garlic.
Irregardless* of smells imagined or real, the food was delicioso (FACT: this is a real Italian word, not an impostor made up by an English student too lazy to look up the translation. I promise.) For primi piati, I ordered a dish composed of stewed bread and tomatoes. Price? Two euros. (TWO EUROS? All I can normally buy for two euros is half a pack of gum, which probably wouldn't taste nearly as good stewed with tomatoes).
We both got the same thing for our main course: roast beef and potatoes. After three weeks of copious amount of pasta, we needed some red meat. And our roast beef was very red; the center of each tender slice was as bright as my inflamed cheeks after I down a glass of Chianti. Once our plates were cleaned, we sat there in an iron-induced stupor, mumbling silly but true things like, "I can't remember the last time food has made me smile."  
Having saved a few euros by opting out of wine, it was just too easy to justify an after-dinner trip to the gelateria Grom. Grom, according to many Florentines, is like the McDonalds of Italy, if McDonalds used only fresh, organic ingredients cultivated on its own farm.

Pro Tip: "Caffe" in Italian actually means espresso, so
beware of ordering "caffe" gelato at 10 o'clock at night.

I chose a combination of cioccolata and caffe; food made me smile a second time that night. 

Our evening could have only gotten better if we had happened to stumble upon a Tunisian street-style dance-off. And, what do you know, we did.  Up on a raised stage in Piazza Republica were about 10 bandana-clad youths engaged in a fierce dance battle, stomping it out while images of Tunisian deserts and mosques flashed on the screen behind them. The crew combined street moves a la Step Up with traditional Tunisian dances, so it went something like: snake hands snake hands FIST PUMP snake hands snake hands HIP GYRATION.

Our further wanderings led us down to the Arno, where we perched ourselves on the ledge of the bridge, the one whose name is not important cause it isn't Ponte Vecchio, and contemplated the inky water below. We dangled our legs over the edge, trying to forget the story told to us during safety orientation about the drunk girl who fell into the river and drowned.
We spent a few hours talking of the philosophical and metaphysical and spiritual, of boys and how soon until it would be acceptable to return to the previously mentioned trattoria. The breeze picked up, though, and I could only stand the shivering for so long. I scooted back around and jumped off -- just in time to see a shooting star jet past the tower of Palazzo Vecchio. This is real life.
That night, walking back together through Piazza Annunziata, no gypsies eyed our bags greedily, no hairy men tried to convince us that the oregano they were hawking was really weed, and the homeless stayed sound asleep under the awning of the church.
 I arrived back at my apartment in an incredibly giddy mood.


* Were any English majors irked by the inclusion of this "word"?

The Brothers

Tonight marked the arrival of the eldest Ficari offspring, Giacomo. Giacomo is 25 and tall and thin and quick to smile, making him a little less intimidating than his fashion-forward, playgirl brother. Less intimidating, that is, until we got to talking. He told me about his recent graduation from the toughest economic school in the country, his thesis on private versus public energy companies in California, and how his girlfriend turn down her acceptance into the Harvard MBA program.
We also talked about politics, American politics, i.e. about people like Ron Paul and Mitt Romney, people I pretty much forgot existed after November 2008. Yet here was this Italian guy, analyzing the relative merits of Ron Paul's economic plan. The only European head-of-state I'm slightly familiar with is France's Nicolas Sarkosy, and that's just because I think it's mad awesome that he married a former Italian supermodel.
Right as Giacomo launches into a description of his first internship with Procter and Gamble, in walks Tommaso, full of swagger in his Valentino suit, shirt practically unbuttoned down to his navel. Giacomo looks up, smirks, and asks, "Ah Tommaso, so which of the men unbuttoned that third button?" Tommaso had just gotten off work.
From what I understand, Tommaso's after-school job mainly involves hanging out with the filthy filthy rich. Tonight said filthy rich were oil big shots, and I mean BIG shots, from Lebanon and Colombia -- a distinguished group of gentlemen who finished off 15 bottles of vodka at their afternoon meeting. Keyword "afternoon." Tommaso, prized by the company he works for because he can speak four different languages (!), books clubs and cars for these bearers of wealth, but he's often present at the "meetings" where lots of booze is drunk and business is done. Even with his love of Tom Ford and Valentino, Tommaso's still often shocked by the nonchalant attitude toward money affected by these men. That night, one Colombian oil lord spent 750 euros on roses for the hostess. Tommaso continued to talk of excess of wealth but I didn't catch all of what he was saying, mostly because it was all in rapid-fire Italian, but also because I was still in shock over the fact that this 20-year-old was wearing a pocket square.
Tommaso was only making a pit stop at home to eat dinner before joining the men later that night. He took a phone call from one of them now. Everyone at the dinner table grew hushed as we all strained to hear what Tommaso was saying -- "No, I do not think it's possible to book the whole club." "Yes, I will see you later, ready to drink." "A whole bottle?" These men are in their fifties.
Now Tommaso was calling escorts for them; I did not ask him how he knew the number. The holy wine we dunked our after-dinner biscottis in (which made me say, "Holy sh*t, this stuff is strong") was going straight to my head, and I kept thinking this world -- of money, drinks, hookers, money -- is so strange and tantalizing and terrifying, but sadly (and thankfully) it is a world I will probably never know.

An Assignment

Yesterday I had a meeting about an internship with The Florentine, the english language newspaper here that publishes every two weeks. In preparation, I came up with a list of seven (7) terrific ideas to show my potential editor so that she knows that I'd be an active, aggressive, creative, on-the-ball, all-around awesome intern. After reading off my list (while using emphatic hand gestures, because words alone did not capture how terrific these ideas were), my potential editor stared at me blankly for a moment and then said, "Is that all?" 

Okay, so my list of ideas didn't quite make it to the double digits, but it's about quality over quantity, right? And I had some pretty good story suggestions -- some of my ideas (i.e. more than half) were so good that they had already been published in previous issues! For some reason my potential editor saw this as a bad thing. 

But I still got the internship. And my first story is due in seven (7) days. And it's supposed to be about mushroom hunting. Specifically, my personal experience in mushroom hunting. Which is kind of a problem, since I have never been mushroom hunting, and I am way too poor/unwilling to pay 120 euros for a mushroom hunting guide. I also do not have a mushroom hunting license. 

So ... does anyone have advice on illicit mushroom hunting in the immediate Tuscan area?

P.S. 18 people have died in the last 10 days while hunting for mushrooms in Northern Italy. I am SO excited about this assignment. 

Ay, Carrara!

Marble comes from mountains. Today, we visited the mountains from which the best marble comes. The place where Michelangelo hand-picked his slabs. The cliffs of Carrara.
But first, a quick stop in Pietrasanta, one town over and a few hundred feet further down. Pietrasanta, "sand stone," has become a bit of a sculptors' colony because marble is so cheap there. The town's dramatic backdrop is the Apuan Alps, which have been providing the world with beautiful white marble for the past 3,000 years. Marble is made of condensed shell, bone, and such -- or as our chipper British tour guide put it, "If we were to die right now and sink to the bottom of the sea, we would eventually become marble."
Said chipper tour guide gave us an inside look at one of the area's sculpture workshops. The men who chip away at the slabs of stone here aren't artists per se, but artisans -- very skilled at their craft of carving, but they carry out others' commissioned designs. During the night, however, I'm told many slave away over their own artistic visions.

Love the paper hat. 

A thin layer of snowy white marble dust covered everything -- the kind of dust that ends up in our tooth paste and parmesan cheese because it's rich in calcium carbonate.

The mosaic makers were in the next shop over, busy working with Venetian glass. Walking into the studio was like stepping into Olivander's Wand Shop, except the rows upon rows of dusty brown boxes were packed with bright squares of glittering glass, rather than phoenix feather-filled wands (yay for Harry Potter references). 

Curly Hair in the back corner also models for Giorgio

Armani. No Joke. His mosaic-making specialty is lively-

colored skin tones.

At midday, we all piled back on the bus for the 30-minute ride to the mines of Carrara. Up a steep incline, through a tunnel, and the next thing I knew we were out of the tunnel and it looked as though the bottom had fell out from beneath the bus. There was nothing anchoring us to either side except a thin asphalt bridge stretched across the deep ravine. And in front -- the Carrara marble quarry.

In the winter, if you look up at the mountain you can't tell where the marble ends and the snow begins. The mountain is too steep to build big hair-pin turns for the marble-toting trucks to travel on, so special zig-zag roads have been built so that a truck travels forward up the first zig, then reverses and travels up the next zag while facing backwards. We did not travel on the zig-zag road.

This quarry is unique in that the miners cut away the marble from the inside out, rather than cutting into the mountainside. This means we got to travel INTO a mountain -- after a brief trip through an underground tunnel, we stepped out of the vans into giant gray caves of solid stone. The marble is so porous that the day's steady rainfall dripped down to the quarry floor, turning the marble dust into gray mud. Damp, cold, and dead-silent, like Peter Jackson's vision of the Mines of Moria (an HP and LOTR reference in one post, too much?) 

Look Ma, I'm in a marble quarry!

We took a brief tour and snapped funny pictures of each other standing in front of heavy machinery before heading back up to the earth's surface. I didn't leave without first snatching up a little piece of renegade marble, though. I stuck it in my pocket, where it stayed the whole bus ride back, cold and gleaming like crystal.

Do Do This At Home

What goes on behind this door?

This is where I live, 4th floor. I think that's my host brother's red vespa out front.

Good cooking, vegetables aside. Today we had bruschetta. Real bruschetta. Pronounced BRU-SKE-TA. This is how it went:

First, my personal chef/ host father Ferdi (who doubles as a surgeon) pan-grilled fresh slices of italian bread. The bread was given to him by a friend; it's from the south of Italy, and it takes a whole week to rise, not a few hours like yeast-infected bread. Ferdi then cut up chunks of garlic and showed me how to rub the garlic directly on the toasted bread. Toasting the bread hardens the outside, so that when I ran my piece of garlic all over its surface it was grated away to a sliver. Next, of course, comes the olive oil. Pour it in "C" motion for even coverage without over-dosing. 

Two big spoonfuls of Ferdi's tomato concoction go on top. Stewed tomatoes, still warm, mixed with garlic and just two other spices that I forgot the name of. Delicious. After the fit I threw in my last post, one might be tempted to say that vegetables are growing on me (not literally, that'd be weird), BUT tomatoes here are so so sweet they hardly count as vegetables. 

Finally, basil on top, shredded with my own hands, fresh fresh fresh.  

Serve with Pecorino white wine. Not related to the cheese. I think. This wine is also known as the best wine I've ever tasted in my life.   

Eat, savor, repeat.

Vegetables, Smeshtables

You all know me well. You know I like to beat the evening rush at the dining hall. You know I take forever to tie my shoe laces. And you know I don't like vegetables. Even if you don't know me well, you still might be familiar with that last character quirk. I am open about my feelings towards the lowest of food groups. My host mother, however, is not exactly in the know.
Host Mother Judith buys only organic. She wakes up early every morning, goes to the market and hand-picks the freshest produce to whip up into a delicioso dinner later in the day. I should be grateful to partake of such wholesome nightly repasts, you say? (I seriously hope none of you would ever say a sentence like that). Well I am, but spinach has been a major player at dinner all week.
Spinach and I go way back. Back to that night at the dinner table when Mom practically force fed me the stuff, and I, in an act of defiance, promptly threw it all up. I've been slowly reintroducing the leafy green back into my meat-and-potatoes diet, but only in small doses, and only raw.
Tonight we opened with spinach and pumpkin soup. Hot and steaming. Puréed all together, like it was trying to trick me into thinking it was just a bowl of green goop. Which I'd rather eat. But you can't really tell that to the woman who is opening up her heart and home to you for the next three months.  
I swallowed my first spoonful. It was thick, it was fragrant, it was so so spinachy. Each new spoonful triggered my gag reflexes. And I couldn't even discretely spit a mouthful in my napkin, like I do back in the good ole' USA, because Judith's napkins are cloth.
I powered through it, though. In Italy, even a regular Monday night dinner is served in several courses. And my family couldn't start the next course until I finished that dang soup. These people were counting on me.
Finally, it looked as though I drained the bowl. "Are you feenished?" Judith asks. "Si, grazie."
She gets up and walks over to me, looking into my bowl. She picks it up, tilts it a little, then scrapes what's left of the soup up with my spoon and then sets it before me again. "Where I grew up, I always had to feenish all my soup."
Fine, okay, but where I grew up, being extravagantly wasteful is practically a pastime. But I'll feenish your dang soup.
And so I did. Or so I thought. She walks over again, inspects the bowl, and still finds something to scrape off the sides and into my well-worn spoon. The only thing that got me through that last spoonful was knowing that I already marked up my map with the locations of all the gelaterie in a three-mile radius.
Ah. Basta. Full. Of vegetables.
Am I now a carrot convert? No. But I will fake it until I make it. Potluck at my house in three months; I'm bringing the spinach dip.  

* Full Disclosure: the soup wasn't that bad. It helped that it was followed by steak.

A City Awash in Olive Oil

I've almost completed my first week in Florence. That I will be here for the next three months definitely hasn't hit me yet. We've all been doing circles around the city, wafting through the sea of tourists, marking off the list of must-sees we've all composed in our heads; the Duomo, check, Ponte Vecchio, check. I need to slow down.
I do that over dinner. For the next three months, I will be eating pasta nightly with my host family, the Ficari's. Already they've taught me an easy way to become instantly Italian: pour olive oil on everything. Everything. Slathered on bread, sautéed with pasta, tossed with salad. They even poured it straight from the bottle into my bowl of vegetable soup.  It is Italy's answer to American ketchup. Although I doubt red cabbage salad would taste good tossed with a big douse from a bottle of Heinz.
The very first night here, I was served a main course of pork rolled with spinach. My host father, Ferdi, poured a big dollop of oil over my slice of meat. My host mother, Judith (pronounced U-dit), didn't think that was enough and my meal was drenched again.
All this oil is okay though, my hosts say, it's healthy. High in Omega 3. I just have to get used to a food pyramid thats been turned completely upside down.

I felt it would've been awkward if I took pictures at the dinner table, so here's an unrelated photo of the view from my bedroom window.

A Final Photo

You might not believe this since I'm currently typing from a McDonald's while currently listening to Michael Jackson, but I will miss this foreign city. A lot.

Lists

If there's one thing I've learned living in Paris alone, it's that sometimes you just gotta go with the flow. Can't read a word on the menu? Just go with the flow and point to something. Got off at Les Halles metro and found yourself in an impossibly large underground shopping complex?

Yeah, I got lost in this thing.

Just go with the flow, and ride around on some elevators (seven, to be exact) 'til you find a way out. Your local boulangerie is out of pains aux chocolat? Cry a little, and then just go with the flow and order a croissant. Then smother it in Nutella to compensate.Your place of residence, your home for the last month, refuses to let you check out on a Sunday? Just go with the flow, begrudgingly, and find a new room to crash in for the last two nights. A room that won't be nearly as cool as your little room in the 15ème. Having to find new accommodation on such short notice really made me realize how much I don't want to leave this family-friendly neighborhood I've grown so accustomed to.

With two days left, here's a list of things I will/won't miss about Paris in general and the 15ème in particular.

This city sucks. I certainly won't miss:

1) Living next to a hospital. Ambulances here have a siren that's higher pitched and generally more friendly-sounding than their U.S. counterparts, so whenever I hear one rolling down the street, I'm always like, "Oooh, where's the ice cream truck?!" You don't know how bitterly disappointed I am once I realize it's just another emergency vehicle on it's way to some lame emergency, that probably doesn't involve ice cream at all.*

2) Being clueless about cutlery. While lunching recently in Giverny (more on that later), I managed to use my fork, knife, AND napkin incorrectly. And I also poured my wine in the water glass. Took care of that though by pouring the wine back into the carafe as soon as the waiter wasn't looking. Classy.

This city rocks. I'll definitely miss:

1) Living 100 feet away from THREE different baby clothing shops. And all their baby-patrons.

2) Eating a pain au chocolat every morning without having to answer to anyone.

3) Beautiful boys on bikes. And not on bikes, for that matter.

4) Wonderful little "lost in translation" moments. Like how Tina Fey's movie "Date Night" is called "Crazy Night" here; they probably changed the title because, based on the amount of PDA I've seen, every night is date night in Paris. Oh, and Waldo of "Where's Waldo?" fame goes by Charlie here. Probably because Parisians just can't fathom how anyone could come to have such a dopey name like "Waldo."

5) Taking a 40-minute train ride into the countryside, and promptly forgetting that the city even exists.

Poppies and hills in Giverny, where Monet once reigned as man-about-village.

6) The drinking age. I think I'll finish off that Bordeaux now ... And I find it quite amusing that the standard "the abuse of alcohol is dangerous for your health" warning is printed below most lists of beers in the cafés I've frequented. Never, however, have I seen this message accompany a list of wines. Not surprising for a country that collectively spends 15 percent of it's annual income on the luscious liquid of the grape.

7) All the roses on steroids. Seriously, what are they feeding these flowers?

Climbing roses in Auvers.

And thats about it, besides other things like the art and the architecture and the pastries and the poulet and on and on and on. Please note that the will-miss list is over three times as long as the won't-miss one. Yep, that sounds about right.

*Well, probably not as disappointed (and/or dead) as the person who actually needs the ambulance.

YUM

Lunched at Le Pied Au Cochon today. I had the house special, which was, you guessed it, le pied au cochon. Don’t know what that is? For my non-French speaking readers, here’s a hint:

Yep that’s a pig foot. It tasted like … a bunch of skin and fat. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not really complaining, I love skin and fat as much as the next clinically overweight American. But I kept pushing this thing around on my plate look for a hunk of meat that I had to be missing. Nope – my main meal of the day consisted of pig skin, fat, bones, and one giant hoof. Oh, and French fries.* French fries always make everything go down easier.

As with the other slightly exotic meals I’ve had here – andouillette, rabbit, duck liver pâté – my queasiness over the couchon was late to set in, but set in it did. When I’m at the dining table and a steaming plate of intestines is set in front of me I’m totally gung-ho, but, in time, my stomach always turns sour. At first I’m like, “Oh hey, look at me being all culturally immersive.” And then, three hours later, I’m wondering if anyone would notice if I vomited discreetly in the corner of the metro car. I don’t know if my stomach’s that sensitive or if it’s all just psychological. Either way, I don’t have the guts (or the intestines) to try the motherload of nausea-inducing standard Parisian fare: la tête. The head, or more accurately the brains, of any four-legged creature. I have two nights left in the city; should I go for it? In the mean time, I’ll stick to the pastries featured a few posts back.

*But they’d be better with KETCHUP, not the weird aioli stuff you gave me.

It's Party Time

A typical evening for my usually involves picking up some dinner before heading back to my room, where I promptly change into my pajamas. Which means I'm usually wearing flannel pants by 7 p.m. Okay, sometimes 6. And there was that one time the pajamas went on at 4:30.

But not tonight. June 21st marks the summer solstice, which in the Gallo-Roman days was celebrated with lots of music, dancing, and human sacrifices. Forever honoring tradition, not much has changed about this celebration in Paris (although they've toned down the whole human sacrifice thing).

Today was designated as the Fête de la Musique. Concerts, both planned and impromptu, crop up all around the city, but things don't start really heating up until nightfall. And because I resisted the warm and fuzzy calling of my p.j.'s, I decided not to let my effort go to waste and jumped on the next metro to Pont Alexandre III. People on the metro were singing, and all the teenagers were huddled together blocking walkways while talking excitedly about all the concerts I'm not cool enough to know about.

Then coming up the elevator of Metro Convention (my home turf), I heard guitars and singing and clapping -- the concert they were setting up when I left was now in full swing. A crowd squeezed into the little square, made up of all those too young and too old to go to whatever hot international act was playing at the Champ de Mars. Middle-aged mothers encouraged their children to get up the guts and go dance in the front, leaving them to sip their rosé from quart-sized water bottles in peace. The band played some crowd favorites (although I couldn't tell you what they were), and coincidentally some of my favorites, including a delightful rendition of Britney Spears' "Toxic." Oh, and the singer even tried rapping some old-school Eminem (I'm going to file that away under "one of the top ten funniest moments I've ever witnessed in my life").

I'm tired, it's well past my bed time, so all I have left to say is that it was really cool. And I'm looking forward to being serenaded to sleep by whoever is playing the saxophone outside my window.

Pastry Roundup

So the Fates must've been pretty ticked that I managed to write an entire blog post yesterday about death without ever really talking about death -- nothing meaningful or meditative here. I say this because when I visited the Musée Maillol today in the 7th, I was confronted by skulls in every room, of both the human and artistically manufactured variety. The exhibition was called "C'est La Vie!" Don't be fooled; it wasn't about life, but rather death and how death is a part of life -- you know, memento mori and all that jazz. Standing in front of a sculpted skull* by Damien Hirst, I was unexpectedly filled with a saddness/scaredness/relief in recognizing my own immortality. But of course that's not what I'm going to write about tonight; that would be too un-superficial of me.

Musée Maillol is situated in a pretty ritzy part of town, and walking through the streets of the 7ème most definitely had me lusting after all I saw in the windows -- Prada, Diane Von Fustenburg, Yves Saint Laurent, etc. And while I can't afford those designer do-dads, I can afford designer pastries (well, some of them). Here's a roundup of what's been tickling my tastebuds lately.

1)

While only from my local patisserie, this guy still looks (and tasted) pretty good. This tower of chocolate-filled heaven is called a Religeuse, aptly named becuase eating it is what convinced me there must be a God.

2)

This here is a Saint-Honoré Chantilly, purchased at one of the several "Dalloyau: House of Gastronomy" locations in Paris. What you're looking at is a big dollop of Chantilly cream resting on some pastry puff thingys. And the inside is filled with something that tastes as good as the outside looks. There also might be some caramelized sugar involved. Can you even caramelize sugar? (Clearly, my food-writing skills need to be further developed).

3)

Pictured above is a macaron. But not just any macaron -- it's a milk chocolate and passion fruit Mogador macaron made by zee one and only Pierre Hermé. I couldn't eat the thing without pursing my lips and raising my eyebrows, not so much because it's sour, it's just surprising. Like "I never knew this flavor existed" surprising. Mmmmm.

Now excuse me while I go into an confectionary coma, for I actually bought both of the last two sweets today and tried to eat them back-to-back. Which also means I spent a third of today's food allowance on dessert.

But don't worry, I'm still keeping it real by picking up greasy plats a emporter (take-out) like this for dinner:

Note the tiny fork provided for the fries; the French absolutely despise touching their food. I used the fork, but still ended up smearing ketchup all over the side of my hand.

*Sculpted of what, you ask? Why resin and thousands of dead flies, of course.

When I'm Dead and Gone

Spending my Saturday night listening to my collection of country music (currently playing: Brooks and Dunn's Hillbilly Deluxe. Ohhh yeahh.), and since I can't bring myself to write about anything uniquely Parisian in this context, I'll wax poetic on something a little more universal: death. More specifically, how I want to be commemorated in stone once I'm stone-cold dead, inspired by the sights of Cemetière Montmartre.

Here's how I don't want it done:

Here lies Emily (Insert hot husband's name here); may she rest in peace while

forever scaring little children and anyone remotely suspicious of clowns.

It's Russian dancer Nijinsky's tomb, so I guess the clownish costume is kinda appropriate, but can't you just imagine a pair of Parisian lovers out on a midnight stroll through the otherwise tranquil cemetery getting the bejesus scared out of them by the strange little man with the sunken-in eyes chillin' on a tombstone? 'Cause I totally did, and it was three in the afternoon.

Oh, and I definitely do not want anything like this:

Here lies Emily (Insert hot husband's name here) beneath a pile of rocks.

I'll hopefully have contributed something to society worthy of a commemoration a little more refined than that (fingers crossed).

This is more of what I'm looking for:

I'm referring to the tomb on your right, not Edgar Degas' poor excuse for eternal housing on the left, nor the phallic symbol between them. This tomb is home to Contesse Marie Potcka, Princesse Soltikoff. Here's a better angle of the the wonderful (and I'd say absolutely necessary) gilt-work.

I deserve a tomb fit for a princess, right?

... right?

Mounting the Mont

Headed over to Montmartre today and made the mistake of getting off at Abbesses, also known as the metro station with the most steps to the exit. I should have known it was going to be bad when I actually saw elevators next to the stairs.

Quite a hike later and I was at the foot of the Basilica Sacre Cour. Since it's Greek (or Roman, or something slightly exotic like that), there was a Friday morning service going on, which gave me the perfect opportunity to rest my feet at the end of a pew. I walked in right when the priest guy was about to eat a wafer of bread, symbolizing Christ's transconsurmation* or something like that, but to someone who skipped breakfast this ritual invoked less spiritual rumination and more hungriness.

So I left the confines of Christ's abode in search of duck confit, which I found at a little café that served the canard accompanied by golden-fried potatoes drenched in garlic butter. Suddenly wasn't so jealous of the priest's snack.

Saw some weird stuff in Montmartre, including a fashion photo shoot involving a dapperly dressed monsieur wearing a frighteningly realistic horse mask. Also, this:

No, this is not a statue of a priest, but a man dressed up like a statue of a priest and then offering to pose for pictures in exchange for a few euro coins. Somewhere up above God is probably getting a kick out of this.

And I carefully traced my walking route the night before I headed out so I could be sure to avoid all the sleaze and the sex shops cloistered around the Boulevard du Clichy, but still somehow managed to walk past the Moulin Rouge (yes, that Moulin Rouge). Oops.

* This is a made-up word, made up just now by me.

Note: this post probably would have been longer and more informative if I hadn't just spent most of my time "reading" up on the hottest French soccer players. You know, for cross-cultural research.

The Naming of Cats is a Difficult Matter*

Not much to blog about today, besides the fact that I'm quite full from eating some of the most famous bread in the world. So I took a look at my photo archives, and I noticed some themes popping up in my amateur photography: rose bushes, bathroom fixtures, and ... CATS! Without further ado, the cats of Paris.

This here is Butters; he kept me company when I lunched on rabbit a while back on the Ile-St. Louis. He refused a front-facing photo because he swears he looks better in florescent light.

I met Simon, above, when I was strolling through the streets of Auvers-sur-Oise yesterday. While settled at the bar counter in Le Comptoir, we shared stories and a pichet of merlot (vintage Margeaux, 1976). Turns out Simon's claim to fame was that he inspired the character of the Magical Mr. Mistoffelees in Andrew Lloydd Weber's moody musical, Cats. He called for another round after grumbling something about never getting those promised front row tickets. Probably should've cut him off when he tried to show me one of his magic tricks (pulling a coin out of my ear didn't go over well, as you can imagine, since it's pretty hard to handle a coin without posable thumbs).

And here's Heathcliff, who I also ran into in Auvers. He declined to join Simon and me for a drink, so I don't know much of his back story.

And since I didn't have fast enough reflexes to whip out my camera, I had to settle for taking a "mental picture" of the man walking his cat, who I saw from the window of the airport bus into the city. Let me repeat: he was walking his cat. On a leash. And this was my first introduction to Paris. The cat's name was probably something like Pierre, and he probably would like you to know that he was actually taking his "owner" for a walk, and not the other way around.

*It isn't just one of your holiday games. You may think at first I'm as mad as a hatter when I tell you, a cat must have THREE DIFFERENT NAMES! (I was too lazy/uncreative to think up three).

Above the Fruited Plains

I was all up in those amber waves of grain today in Auvers-sur-Oiese, a tiny hamlet physically just north of Paris, but metaphorically many miles away. Van Gogh must have been pretty depressed to spend 10 weeks in Auvers and then still commit suicide. Temporary getaway for Van Gogh, Pissaro, Cézanne, and others, this sleeply town, filled with slopping side streets and climbing rose vines, markets itself as the "cradle of impressionism."

Thomas Kincade wasn't making this stuff up.

Even with all the obvious self-promotion (most local signs are labelled in a brush stroke-y font), the town doesn't feel like just one giant tourist trap. Perhaps this is because I caught the earliest train* possible to avoid the loathsome other tourists. Worked like a charm (even though I arrived before the tourist office was even open), and I had all the wheat fields to myself. I was so alone, in fact, that I didn't even have to sneakily snap a MySpace-style photo. I left my finger lingering on the camera button for as long as I liked.

Wow, it's not blurry!

I understood immediately the draw of Paris's surrounding countryside on the impressionists; these fields were like softly swaying beds of gold. For men obsessed with capturing the subtle nuances of light and color, the fields provided an obvious opportunity: the wind rides over the rows in waves, each new breeze revealing tawny, sea foam, lavender.

I was so in love with Auvers that I didn't even mind the foul smell emitting from my andouille sausage-filled (aka tripe chitterlings) crepe. But perhaps that's just the absinthe talking, sipped at the world-renowned Absinthe Museum* (just kidding, they don't give out free samples. I asked).

And even though I was the only one in the museum, the fields, and the cemetery (!), I never got that chilling "Oh God, I'm completely alone ... or am I?" feeling. Not even when I saw this:

Because Children of Korn and Jeepers Creepers haven't already covered the whole

"you're gonna die in a rural farm setting" thing.

Guess these fields really do have a medicinal effect, as Van Gogh claimed.

*A note on today's transportation:

When I jumped on a random train for my return trip from the Auvers station, did I know what line the train was on?

No.

Did I know where the train was going?

No.

Did I even have the right type of train ticket?

No.

Did I get home safe and sound?

Yes.

Am I invincible?

Guess so.

*True story: one of the museum's prized absinthe spoons made a cameo in Francis Ford Cappola's Dracula.

WTF Art

Today, I'd like to share with you a little sample of all the WTF art I've encountered lately. WTF Art (Weird or Terrifying Fine Art) is everywhere -- from confrontational pieces in chic galleries to statuesque statues* in stately museums. Wherever installed, this type of art is forever making viewers stand back and say, "WTF?"

1) Piece: Greek/Roman statuette of a man gutting what may be a cow.

Place: the Louvre

While it no doubt took some ancient dead guy great artistic skill to carve out this little slice of life, who thought it was a slice of life that needed to be preserved for all of eternity, forever making museum goers throw up a little in their mouths?

2) Piece: Les Vitraux des Innocents by Sarkis

Place: Centre Pompidou

What you're looking at is an Orc action figure (from Lord of the Rings) that Sarkis photographed in his studio and then transferred to stained glass, elevating this 6th-grade craft project to Art by titling it something vaguely sounding like it came from the Bible.

The informative plaque placed next to the piece sheds some light on it's brilliance:

Behind the explicit violence of this bloodbath is the paradoxical question of who the innocents actually are. Are they the one in the Vitrine being attacked by the warriors? Are the Orcs of the Vitrine transfigured by the stained-glass panel? Does the warrior become a saint? Are they transformed into innocents by the stained glass?

Is Sarkis out of his freaking mind?

Excuse me while I go arrange headless barbies in shadow boxes in the name of Art.*

3) Piece: Nude Study of Balzac, by Rodin

Place: Musée Rodin

How often does one see the study of a fat man? And a supremely smug one at that? Enter Honoré Balzac, muse to Rodin. I'm loving the haughty lift of the chin, the smartly crossed arms, the tastefully obscured man parts (or perhaps they are just hidden by the overhanging belly). Balzac gazes down at the viewer from his perch on the pedestal, and it's like he's saying, "Why yes, I broke new literary ground with what are now considered timeless masterpieces and because of it, my hefty form was sculpted by the hands of the undisputed master of modern sculpture. What have you done today?"

Mocked you in my blog, Balzac. So take that.

*I wouldn't describe a statue any other way.

* I shall call it: Walk through the Valley of the Shadow of Death. Get it? Cause it's a shadow box.

Identity Crisis

Fill in the blank:

The 8 ème's Parc Monceau is ...

A) a recently unearthed center of Roman conquest, revealing the most important (and in tact) archeological wonders of the past half century.

Including this here arcade of crumbling columns.

B) a place for the surrounding wealthy residents to go when they just want to "get away from it all."

It's tough living in a posh 19th century hôtel particulier, but someone's got to do it.

C) the inspiration for smash-hit Nintendo video game "Duck Hunt."

Shoot!!

Answer: All of the above, clearly. But if I had to choose, I'd go with A, 'cause nothing else explains this:

No, this is not some ongoing construction project -- under closer examination, I concluded that the large cement blocks inexplicably scattered around this (insert whatever this pyramid thing is here) were actually supposed to look like that. As in, like the crumbled remains of some ancient civilization. Leave it up to the French to wax nostalgic over the Gallo-Roman days.