Since Friday’s day trip had turned into a 24-hour marathon and I somehow woke up Saturday after only four hours in bed, the rest of the day was devoted to inexplicably sleepless recuperation.
Since Cassie’s roommates were gone for the weekend, she decided to host a potluck dinner party at her apartment, or rather her apartment building. It’s populated entirely with students and is rather like a dorm without an RA. Doors wide open, music blasting, smoke billowing, glass bottles clinking. Pretty awesome. Everyone delivered on the food and wine, so dinner was pretty awesome. It was served in her apartment, but we ate on the upstairs terrace, which is directly across from the church of San Lorenzo and overlooks its piazza. Between those locations, the guys-next-door’s apartment with the hookah, and the abandoned department store on the lower floor, the party was pretty hopping.
Small world syndrome again: I met another of Adrian’s friends. A kid named Nick, who is an alum St. Anselm’s and was Adrian’s conspirator Monsieur D’Arque in Visi’s production of Beauty & The Beast. Craziness.
Juan and I walked Helen and Marissa home close to the end of the party, and they gave me their birthday “pressie.” It’s one of those perfect gifts that the recipient would love to have but never buy for himself: crisp-outer-layer-soft-inside biscotti with almond slivers and a bottle of Vin Santo. It’s from the finest bakery in Florence. You dip the cookies in the sweet wine, a popular local dessert. We ate it accordingly after the girls heated up some pasta, which was amazing: Spaghetti with cream, sun-dried tomatoes, and porcini and button mushrooms. And of course Helen made a few proper cups of tea.
After that, Juan and I grabbed the remaining party guests (Jack, Anna, Joe, and gracious hostess Cassie) for a few quick games of pool at our favorite cultural association.
Sunday I actually slept in… and slept in well. I got online at the bar (café) and watched the Fiorentina game and caught up on e-mails and such. Anna and I then walked over to Cassie’s to join her and a bunch of friends on the terrace for beer, candy, chocolates, hookah, and vodka. Good times. At sunset, which came rather quickly – really past 8:30 but I woke up really late – Anna and I went to The House of Sizzle to break Passover. (We did stop by our building to have a primo piatto of eggplant pasta.) I got a "ranch burger" with cheese, lettuce, tomato, onion, and egg. Anna had asked for bacon on her burger, so the waiter offered some to me too. What a perfect burger. It was like a combination of breakfast and lunch for dinner. Jack and Juan joined us eventually for burgers and fries. And ketchup, which I’ve missed. Then we met up with some of the usual suspects at the cultural association for some really intense foosball (seriously) and, of course, drinks.
Monday our food styling class lesson of the day was “Cooking with Liquid Nitrogen.” My thoughts immediately turned to a famous scene at the end of Terminator 2: Judgment Day. But then our teacher referenced that same scene if anyone was unfamiliar with LN. Nitrogen has a subzero boiling point and consequently freezes anything it comes in contact with before it evaporates into gas. Since it boils when exposed to regular air, you can “fry” things in it – really freezing them. We made ice cream and, with the help of the LN, froze it in less than five minutes. One of the funnier moments of class was when Andrea (our teacher) was opening the tank of it and said “Andrew, don’t stand there” (meaning in the path of the gas/ice “smoke” like dry ice). So I moved. And like three idiots rushed into the place I was standing until a glare from Andrea sent them back. The other decidedly cool moment was when Andrea “fried” some milk foam in the LN. He took it out and handed it to me. It was so much colder and more delicate than I imagined. He told me to eat it, so I put it in my mouth, where it crunched but disappeared before I could chew it. And then I exhaled ice smoke.
Graphic design was much less eventful. Those of us who’d printed our restaurant menus and promotional cards were excused early. I spent the rest of the evening at aperitivo with Helen, Mindy, Hannah, Alison, Ashley, Giuseppe, and Henk. Then Mindy and I stopped by the cultural association to say hi to Sergio before hittin’ up the pub underneath school with Liz and Jess.
No comments:
Post a Comment