All In a Day's Eat

My sister humors me.  I'm actually kind of spoiled because when I visit her in the Portland area, she asks me what I want to do and, for the most part, we do it.  That doesn't happen all of the time when I visit other people and I pout.

My desires for my trip there in April:  eat, art musuem, eat, finding art to hang on my wall, and...I don't think there was anything else but food and art.  What else is there, really?  The highlights:

First thing off of the plane was to get a French-inspired lunch.  The food was fantastic, but all I have are pictures of the sweets I didn't have.  Next time!

I love art museums, and for all of the times I've been to Portland, I had never seen it's museum.  So out we headed on a rainy day to add a little culture to our lives.  Even Henry had moments of liking the art (though only for moments).  It was a really fun museum in a great part of downtown Portland that is fun to walk around.

Art made us hungry.  Blue Star Donuts answered our calls, and it was a new stop for us.  There were only five donuts on the menu that day, including a lemon curd, a passion fruit, and a chocolate ganache.  The lemon curd was the best. The passion fruit stirred no passionate feelings in our souls.  

Claudia lets me chance my photographic fantasies.  She drove all over town trying to find a place for me to take a picture of the Portland skyline.  I know she loves me because she will honor the most ridiculous requests so I can take pictures in the rain.

Downtown day!  I love downtown day!  But this time, instead of doing some light shopping in the boutiques along 23rd street, it was all about the food today.  Ken's Artisan Bakery, Little Big Burger, and later on the food carts on 9th.  We were STUFFED.  It was the funnest of all the days.

I like doing things I've never done before.  Besides eating, out walk back to the car allowed us to explore a park and the grounds of this beautiful synagogue. 

To go with the bread Claudia bought at Ken's, we also had to stop at the cheese shop to sample and then buy a few varieties (for another day, of course!).  It was just one more food adventure for this trip.  

For my wall-o-art at home, I wanted a piece that was typically Portland, ad the Saturday Market seemed like the right place to look for something relatively inexpensive.  There wasn't anything that piqued my interest for the price, but it was fun to have a half hour with Claudia, running through stalls looking for just the right piece.  The stop wasn't a total bust - the cinnamon pecans were to die for.  

Oh, these kids.  I love them so much.  And they like me, thought sometimes I think it is just because I look like their mother.  I mean, I get bossy (a carry-over from my other nieces and nephew who I used to tend a lot), I don't play with them a whole ton, and I don't spoil them rotten with toys and such.  I'll just enjoy their love for as long as I can until they realize how uncool I really am.  But they sure are fun to smootch and snuggle.  And I'll keep going back to visit as much as their parents will let me.  

Eating in Italy - Rome

I've already confessed that my first meal in Rome was a quarter pounder with cheese, fries and a coke from McDonalds.  As if this didn't hint at my foodie explorations in Rome, I will just say that of all the places I visited, I ate the most poorly in Rome.  That doesn't mean it was without adventure, that it was unexpectedly bad, or that I didn't have any good meals here - I was coming to terms with what wasn't left of my budget, I wasn't in the mood to go searching for a good meal, it was a lot more about limited time and eating on the go, but I still had a few worth talking about.  So here is what Rome offered me and what I partook of:

I can't believe this is my final food post and I haven't talked about the AutoGrill:

 

 

The AutoGrill is Italy's answer to a rest stop.  There are basic electronics, groceries, coffe and tea, sandwiches, bakery items, and other things you'd find at a rest stop for quick purchase.  AutoGrills also have a sit-down, cafeteria-style restaurant in them.  Since our Rick Steves group bused between locations, AutoGrills became a regular stop for us.  On our first night in Rome as Ann, Melanie, Cathy and I were strolling, we came across an AutoGrill in the middle of Rome, and we stopped and got a gelato there. I got a panini once (they'll ask you if you want it hot or cold, so know those words), a doughnut, fruit and a potato quiche in the cafeteria, sometimes just a juice or bottle of water.   To eat something behind the counter, the M.O. is to go to the counter, tell the worker what you want and pay right away, and you are then handed a receipt.  If it is not busy, they'll get your food right away.  If they are swamped and you want a coffee or juice, as the coffee counter usually is, you take your receipt and, Roman style (all over Italy), you fight your way in to the front of the counter.  You hand your receipt to one of the baristas when you get his/her attention.  They will usually rip your receipt, hand it back to you, make your drink, and then it's up to you to remind them who you are when they are done.  You drink standing up either at the counter or at standing tables.  While I never ordered a coffee or tee, I thoroughly enjoyed a spremuta, a freshly squeezed orange juice.  Man, talk about refreshing!  In the picture at the bottom right, in between the man in the striped shirt and his companion, there is a white machine where the barista will insert whole oranges and our squirts your juice.  Ahhhh!

Our tour officially ended after our second day in Rome.  To celebrate our travels and new friendships, most of the members of our Rick Steves tour group opted to have dinner together.  Virginia arranged for us to eat an authentic Roman dinner at Target.  The following four pictures were not taken by me, but I found images that looked identical to what was placed in front of me.                                                                                                                                

After the bread was an arugula, fennel, olive, mandarin salad.  Honestly, I don't love the first three ingredients of the salad, but if I could get all four items in the same bite, it was pretty good!   

The first (pasta) course was pasta all'amatriciana, which uses a tomato and peccorino cheese based sauce with cured pork jowl.  It's probably better that I didn't know exactly what I was eating when I was eating it - the thought is kinda weird.  Pork jowl is chewy, so it was totally noticeable that there was something strange in the sauce (which didn't taste like American tomato sauce, by the way...was it the pork jowl? The pecorino?).  It wasn't until I looked up the restaurant menu to remind myself of what I ate that I realized how authentically Roman this dish really is (I thought they were dumbing down a generic spaghetti-like recipe for us uncultured Americans).

The second (meat) course was veal saltimbocca, another Roman dish, of lightly pan-fried veal cutlets with prosciutto and sage and a wine-based gravy.  It reminded me a lot of Thanksgiving because of the sage.  It was pretty good.  Then dessert!  panna cotta with raspberry sauce.  :)

Rome and Florence have a lot of take-away restaurants more than smaller towns do (obviously) to accommodate business people on the go.  These places stay open into the dinner hour as well, but see their biggest crowds for lunch, and sometimes those crowds are more like mobs.  Some are primarily pizza-by the slice places, others have a variety of sweets and sandwiches (as the one below did).  Again, they are the Italian fast food place.  If you take it to go (food) or stand at the bar (drink) it is cheaper than if you sit down.  I had a few meals at these places, both pizza and sandwiches.  They are pretty average (what do you expect for pre-made fast food?) but that it OK and the locals eat at these kinds of places too.  They aren't America's fast food prices though - cheaper than restaurants, but still not "cheap."

My favorite meal in Rome (though I'm not sure how authentically Roman it was) started with a caprese crostini...

followed by the BEST pasta dish I have ever had - fettuccine with pesto (and I'm sure there was butter in there too), shrimp, and grape tomatoes.

 Ann had a delicious ricotta and spinach-filled ravioli with a butter sage sauce.

 For dessert I had a chocolate mouse.  It was fitting that my first restaurant dessert in Italy was chocolate, and my last restaurant dessert was chocolate.

 Add another Margarita pizza, a pizza pocket kinda thing from a food cart (on left) which was pretty crappy, more coconut gelato, and suppli (REAL Roman street food on right), which is a fried ball of rice with tomato sauce and mozzarella cheese (or vegetables or meat), and that rounds up my Roman food adventures!

The Storm After the Calm - Rome

Sigh. How do I say this nicely...Rome and I...we didn't click. I am a worrier, but I need to go back a little farther for that comment to have any relevance on Rome. The trip started with me forgetting most of my underwear. Washing my underwear in the sink every other day was lame. On a seperate note, it was brought to my over-sight that I would be started work on August 7 and I wouldn't even be leaving Wisconsin (by car - a two day drive) from my brother's upcoming wedding until that day. I stressed about these things for days. And then my dream destination, Venice, began to sink in. I ate wonderful food, met fun people, saw beautiful scenery, and had fun shopping over the following 11 days. I had 4 days left of the trip of a lifetime (2 days with the group), and while Virginia played Dean Martin's renditions of "That's Amore," "Volare," "Mambo Italiano," and "Return to Me" as our bus pulled onto Roman soil, my eyes got a little moist and I had to put on my sunglasses rather quickly as I was overcome by the building nostalgia of a trip I wasn't even done with yet.

But then Virginia started telling us how to cross the street in Rome (you are basically taking your life into your hands). And how there were 7 cars to every 10 people. And that the subways don't open until 5:30 am (I have to be at the airport to check in by 4:30 am). And that if we never wore our money belts anywhere else in Italy, we HAD to put them on now because we would constantly be walking targets by the most skilled pickpockets known to humankind. And our bus driver Dino was narrowly missing cars and buses and scooters and people as he drove us as close to our hotel as possible (not because he was a bad driver, it's just that tight of a drive). And, and, and...My stomach began to churn. I had four days to figure out how to get to the airport, but it became an all-consuming worry. At 2.8 million people, it was not the largest city I have been in, but I felt overwhelmed seeing the floods of people walking down the streets, the cars parked in road medians two rows deep because of lack of parking space, streets so closely packed with parked motorcycles and scooters that you wouldn't be able to walk in between them...it was OVERLOAD. Add in emergency vehicle sirens every few minutes and rude tourist information office attendees, and that about paints it right. And if I was tired of looking at maps before, Rome was the most confusing city to navigate of them all if we strayed from a main streets - the names of streets are long and often change every few blocks, and on a map of a city this large, SEEING the street names on the map could be near impossible. Without Venice's canals and bridges and Florence's more frequent piazzas to supply a frame of reference, I felt lost most of the time. And not in a good way. This city just pissed me off. Was I tired? Yes. Was I ready to go home? Yes. Were my feet done? Yes. Was I done washing my clothes in the sink? Yes. Was I suffering from major PMS? Absolutely. Did I take it out on Rome, and worse, Ann? Yes. Did I still see amazing things? Yes. Do I need to go back? No.

Taking an opened-top tourist bus was the first thing we did to help us get oriented to the city, but it didn't help much. I know I have a smile on in that picture, but I really just wanted to go back to Assisi or home or anywhere but here.

The round trip ride took almost 2 hours, but it did little to impress or calm me. I felt like there would be no saving this city for me, and was sad that I would be spending my last days and the longest amount of time in a place I already felt so much dislike for. I was mad at myself for being so grumpy inside, and confused as to why. Luckily and unbeknownst to me, my soul would be put more at ease by something unexpected.

You know what it was? This...and do NOT judge me for it!!!!

So what if my first meal in Rome was a quarter-pounder with cheese, a small fry and a small Coke! Why was it so helpful in helping me relax? Not the 9 Euro price tag (almsot $12). The familiarity of it, I think, is what did the trick. I have spent a months worth of Europe time over the last 4 years and have passed many US fast food chains. This is the first time I have actually eaten at one. It was a moment of panic, a moment of desperation, and a moment of weakness. It also helped me to snap out of it. Thanks, McD's!

 

 

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Eating in Italy - Tuscany and Umbria

Tuscany and Umbria are two regions centrally located in Italy.  These two regions have quite a lot in common; even when I asked my waiter one night what the difference was, he shrugged his shoulders, said they were a lot alike, and then with a wink said Tuscany was better (we were in Florence, which is in Tuscany).  While Tuscany gets a lot more attention, in the kitchen, there isn't much of a difference between the food eaten in these parts of the country.  This is olive oil and wine country.

As our group bused from location to location, our tour leader would fill us in on the foods we should try for each stop.  Understanding Italy's history was key to not only understanding the country, but also the prevalence of so many surviving Medieval towns, the attitudes, and the regional specialties of each place we visited.  Virginia explained that Italy was basically still a third world country up until the 1950's when they experienced what Italians consider an economic miracle which helped turn the country around.  Because of Italy's historic poverty (says Wikipedia, "The Renaissance was not a period of great social or economic change, only of cultural and ideological development. It only touched a small fraction of the population"), their relatively recent identity as an actual country (during most of the 1800's were revolutions and civil wars that ended around 1870), two world wars, and the fascists in there, their food was simple and an "eat everything" attitude lingers even still today. While in America we think of pizza and pasta as Italian food - and come on, they are - it's surprising how varied it actually is, even within the pasta category.  Bread, beans, soups with beans and bread (especially days-old bread) in them, stews, simple meat dishes, crostini (dried/toasted bread with toppings), tripe, fried brains, and farrow based dishes are common in both regions.  In these dishes, one can see the influence poverty had on the food Italians ate when they had to, but how it's carried over today now because they choose to.  I didn't eat all of these foods (TIME!), but here is what I did.
**I must note that I was lucky enough to try more food than I would have been able to otherwise because at every meal, the women I dined with were awesome about letting me try everything.  So while not every plate on here was my own, I did get to try all of these dishes, and some of them more than once ;)**

FLORENCE (Tuscany):

For appetizers, I had a pear and pecorino cheese salad.  Cathy ordered a mixed-crostini plate:  one had tomatoes, basil and mozarella, another white beans and spinach (my favorite), one with crushed black olives and olive oil and spices, and a fourth with a liver pate.

Ann's chicken cacciatore; Interesting side note: cacciatore means "hunter" in Italian, so if you see any dish  on a translated menu that says "hunter style", it means it is prepared in a tasty, stew-like way with onions, peppers, tomatoes, herbs, and sometimes wine

chicken milanesa...SOOOOO good!  I ate a good quarter of this dish.  No joke.   Luckily, Cathy was so full on  her appetizer that she was giving it away to me.

I ordered the pasta and rabbit stew, rabbit being a regional specialty and also something I'd never eaten before.  It was very simple, very good, and very comforting (it tasted a lot like chicken noodle soup without the soup part)

I walked past so many gooey looking pizzas in Florence.  I had to get one (it had been a few days anyway).  This was a four cheese pizza.  I'm not sure what all of the cheeses were, but it was good.  Another interesting note - pizzas are brought out to you uncut.  I watched Italians eating them and some just dove right in, with no rhyme or reason to their eating.  Others did the triangle thing.  Some ate with their hands, others forked and knifed it the whole way.  I tried all ways of eating my Italian pizzas. As they were so large, I usually skipped the crust to save room for all of the good cheesiness.  I tried to just dive in randomly, but usually found myself drifting back to the triangle cuts even though I ate it with utensils.  And that fruit platter back there?  Those grapes were the biggest grapes I have ever eaten in my life.  Like, it was best to cut them in half, they were so big.  Strawberries are in season, so there were cups of cut strawberries for sale at every fruit and snack and truck stop that I stopped at throughout the country.

Any guidebook will tell you that when in Florence, the souvenir you should be shopping for for yourself is leather, and they're right; it's everywhere.  But with all of that leather, what would you expect one must-have meal to be?  If you guessed steak, you're right.

Sirloin steak with grilled vegetables; On our last night in Florence, I went up to the tower to catch the views of the city  yet one more time, and Cathy and Melanie were up there chatting away with the owner of the hotel, Stefano.  We asked him where to go to get a good Florentine steak, and he said he would take care of it for us.  He called down to Nicolo working at the front desk and had a quick conversation which none of us understood, and said it was all taken care of and that we were going to Giovanni's.  I got nervous - this guy owns multiple hotels in Florence, so his budget and my budget are, I'm sure, very different.  When we went to get directions, Nicolo agreed that it was the best, and off we headed to have our steaks.  When you order a steak in Florence/Italy, they don't ask you how you want it cooked because they cook it the way they think it is best, Stefano informed us.  Knowing that, I ordered my sirloin, and the other ladies their filet minions.  My steak was great, and the price was no more than any of the other restaurants I had been to.   Done and done!

SAN GIMIGNANO (Tuscany):

Another Tuscan and Umbrian specialty is wild boar (who'da though?).  One way that it is prepared is in salami.  

Panforte, which is an Italian version of fruit cake.  But it has lots of almonds, which I love, and this kind was a chocolate version, which I also love.  It is sliced off of a huge round cake.  The two dense slices I ordered lasted me and Ann for a few days of pleasant snacking.

Following Cathy's lead, I went into a shop to order myself a boar-salami sandwich.  The woman is preparing it for me - just the roll, pecorino cheese, and salami.  I should have bought a round of that cheese to take home, but which kind?  The one covered in ash?  Crushed grapes?  Various spices?  But which spices, because there are five different spice-covered pecorinos?  Oh, and look at all the pastas on the other wall...wow, those are a lot of types of olive oils...hmmm, how do you pick a good balsamic?  Too many choices.  This lunch choice though was only 4 Euro.  It was the cheapest meal I had in all of Italy.

Just one of your local boar/salami/pasta/truffle/saffron/olive oil/vinagrette/wine shops

 ASSISI (Umbria):

After all the snacking and the sandwich in San Gimignano, I wanted simple food for dinner.  Pasta with tomatoes and fresh mozzarella did the trick quite nicely.  

After dinner, our little group walked.  We crossed over teh threshold of the cutest cookie bakery, which doubled as a gelateria.  I picked out a bunch of different cookies, but was too full from dinner.  So naturally I ate them for breakfast the next morning.  

Assisi is full of hills, some of them quite steep.  After hiking around and visiting  the Basilica of St. Francis of Assisi, I was hungry.  On a quiet street a few blocks away, I walked into a pizza by the slice place.  I had to pick this one, though I had no idea what was on it, because it looked so strange.  Turns out it is hot dog and potato slices.  Wow.  It was different.  No tomato sauce or anything.  The crust was good, the closest think to Pizza Hut's crispy, greasy pan crust that I had while there.  I didn't dislike it, but I don't need to eat it again either.  

About an hour later, I gave lunch a second try.  This is a pork (boar) sandwich on foccacia.  It was pretty good, especially the bread.  I was tricked into buying a balsamic glaze too (I thought she was asking me what I wanted on my sandwich, but when she started bringing out the truffle relish, I knew I was being worked over because those things aren't cheap!), and while it is delicious and I can't wait to open it up, the flavor of my sandwich had soured a little.  Dinner was a crappy pizza, but I knew it would be and knew I needed to watch the funds a little and so went the cheep route.  It wasn't worth a picture.  The chocolate chip gelato I had to make up for it, bought from the cookie shop, was worth a picture in taste.  Imagine it.

If you've hung on this long, you are either, bored, a foodie, or bored.  Thanks for playing.

Eating in Italy: Cinque Terre

Culinarily speaking, the Cinque Terre is known for a few things: anchovies and seafood in general, lemons and foods and drinks based on it, focaccia, and pesto. I sampled a little of each. Here's what was on the menu:

There is a focaccia shop right along the main shoreline promenade with a variety of flavorings, and toppings. I chose the focaccia with cheese. I'm not sure what kind of cheese it was, but it was soft and creamy and mild. Sooo good! You tell the person at the counter what you want, they ask if you would like it warmed up, you say yes, and a few minutes later you have a perfectly warmed piece of perfect snack. I was hooked from the first bite of this snack food.

 

 

In Riomaggiore, I got two things to "snack" on: focaccia with pear and Gorgonzola, and a mixed cone of fried seafood- calamari (whole and rings), a large prawn, a piece of cod, muscles, and anchovies. The anchovies are fresh and large and unsalted. They taste a lot like sardines, which is awesome.

 

 

 

 

My dinner the first night was spaghetti with sardines, olives, tomatoes, and capers. When the waitress brought it out, it was covered with a thin dough, which she lit on fire for a minute, then extinguished, peeled back, and served. It was quite the production, and quite delicious.

 

 

Oh, and vegetables are a separate course. This is just mixed veggies. No big deal.

 

Since my dining is totally breaking my budget, I decided after a day of walking around so many towns and up so many hills that a night in would be superb. I went back to get another piece of that cheese focaccia and some cookies I saw there, and then ran to the grocery store and bought a pear and some ham. Simple and perfect.

And for dessert, Ann got me a slice of a lemon tort cake with a lemon cream in it. It was really light and refreshing. How do the Italians get their cakes and breads to do that?

 

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