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.