blue Monday

Probably more like gray Monday given the rainy weather. Pretty chill day. Food styling we made a veal liver pate on fig crostini that could be served in a variety of ways. Either blended with cream and gelatin like a terrine or blended with butter to a more foie-gras-ish consistency. My mom would have probably loved the former and my dad the latter. Lisa, Jack, and I made it as an appetizer-size serving and also as an amuse-bouche. We ultimately decided that since it was so tasty and rich, it was better as a single bite amuse-bouche.

Graphic design was centered around making promotional material for the restaurant we dined at last week. I drafted a modernized (in looks, not in dishes) menu, the pdf of which is at school. I'll upload it later if I remember.

After that, it was rainy and I was tired and didn't want to be sick. So rather than go to aperitivo with Marissa and Helen (tempting as that was), I went home and crashed. I woke up to my roommates, Jack, and Juan hanging out in the apartment. We just drank some wine and chilled. Around midnight, they went home and I was wide awake. So I borrowed one of Henk's Italian films, I Cento Passi, which was quite good.

And now it's Monday, April 15th.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, MOM! I LOVE YOU.

Otherwise, today has been a continuation of chill. But tonight, it's on like Donkey Kong. At midnight, I will be 23 years old. And I want to have had just enough wine maybe not to remember.

Florence still rules, thanks.

Tuesday I noticed in pictures that my hair was getting shaggy, so I stopped by the haircutting place on my street. I told them to “leave it as long as possible but clean it up” since I didn’t want it short until spring on the 20th. But they cut it all off.

That’s cool. I can deal. Plus my friends’ reactions are varied but generally positive. And entertaining. “You look good/younger/Asian/Italian.”

When I got home, Giuseppe immediately brought up dinner. His idea, like always, was Chinese food from the place down the street. Works for me.

Later that night, after power naps and some iTuning, we went to our favorite “cultural assocation” to meet up with Juan and Henk to play some pool and be there for Marissa’s debut as Iceland’s Next Top Bartender. Naturally, Helen and Prima were there too. Joe and Liz showed up for a bit. As did Jack. Prima seems keen on adding another “roommates team” to our league, but her apartment doesn’t have enough players. Our apartment’s foosball record against Jack and Juan is now 4:3.


Cesare was playing acoustic guitar that night. What a great artist. His repertoire of covers is eclectic, but everything sounded great. He had most of us singing and/or dancing along.

Wednesday I slept in until grabbing lunch with Henk at Nerbone, a trattoria in the Mercato Centrale. Salsicce e fagiolo. (Sausage and beans, a classic pairing.) Delicious.

Food writing was devoted to the process of laying out pages in a cookbook. We had a guest lecturer, a photography and graphic design professor. The president/founder of the school stopped by for another impromptu visit for an update on our semester project.

Italian was distracting. The soundtrack for the day was ‘70s and ‘80s disco hip-hop. Oh, and the lesson plan was occupations and three and four digit numbers.

Lisa and I invited her friend Caroline and my roommates to join us in our dinner at Pizzaiuolo where she and I finally got something we’d been discussing for the past month: DEEP-FRIED CALZONES.

My roommates and I went from there to the “cultural association” to meet up with the same crowd from the night before, sans Liz and Joe. The cologne Henk bought in Paris last weekend pretty much elicited the reaction Axe commercials pretend Axe has. The girls flocked to him like moths to a flame. Prima was on him all night. For serious.

Thursday our cooking class got the best recipe so far. It’s famous worldwide but originates from the region known as Emiglia Romana. LASAGNE. I cannot describe how good it was. We made everything from scratch using fresh, authentic ingredients. And it was just a basic lasagne too. Freshly made pasta, Padana Grana cheese, Bechamel sauce, and a beef, pork, and porcini mushroom ragu.

The teacher from next door stopped in. (I thought to yell at us for being loud in our excitement, but that wasn’t the reason.) She proposed a joint session next week. So our “Food & Society” class and her “Wine Exploration” class are pretty much going to merge into the best class EVER next week. Eating, drinking, socializing, and exploring. What’s not to love?

Food photography. Our on-location assignments around the city were cancelled due to inclement weather, so we spent the afternoon cropping and selecting pictures for our portfolios. It was nice to not have to walk around in the cold, but it wasn’t nice to not have the option to eat/drink all afternoon. I snapped this on the way home:

That night, Jack and my friends’ dreams were realized. We, the two culinary students, made dinner together. Dinner for twelve. And it gets better. Our friend Eddie volunteered his expertise, pantry, and knife set to help us out. So the group got three culinary students working for the price of two. Or rather for the price of free since Jack and I bought all the food that Eddie didn’t bring in his goodie bag. When I got to Jack’s apartment (after a month of supposed-to-go-ness), we planned the menu and then went to his neighborhood supermarket to get everything. Oh, and their apartment is amazing. If it had a single bedroom option, I would totally try to live there next semester.

Cooking dinner was quite fun and entertaining. While Jack and I went food shopping, Eddie started whipping egg whites and preparing antipasti and contorni.

By night’s end, Jack came to the conclusion that, had we a professional kitchen and professional equipment, we could open a restaurant. Eddie seriously had to MacGyver a lot of kitchen stuff. He burned a broken tray (like a car radiator) so we could bake in it. Turned a garlic bag into a makeshift cheesecloth. Et cetera. We almost had to find a wire hanger and turn that into a whisk. Luckily by the time the girls got there, we had cleaned the place up.


Although we lacked tools, there was no lack of friendly help. Juan, Giuseppe, and Anton were all ready and willing to beat, chop, and slice-and-dice (respectively) anything we asked them. And we had Daft Punk blasting on the iPod, which I think is excellent cooking music.

We started cooking around 8:00, served dinner around 10, and finished around 1. It was a true Italian style meal: Late, relaxed, and with lots of wine.

Our final menu was:

• Tortilla chips and guacamole
• Minestrone
• Pan-fried garlic crostini
• Artichoke and rosemary risotto
• Pepper/lemon/basil-marinated beef rolled with prosciutto
• Tiramisu

Juan had brought some Yerba Mate from Argentina, which is an excellent tea about as strong as coffee. So that was a nice way to wash everything down.

I thought I was just impressed that we made everything and nothing went wrong. (Especially since we made minestrone and tiramisu in less than half the time you’re supposed to.) But according to all our eaters, everything went really, really well. And now we’re painted into a corner we’ll probably have to do several repeat performances.

And yeah, it was a really fun night. Easily the best night I’ve had in Florence even though we didn’t go out. Good food. Good drinks. Good music. Good company. Good times.

Henk and I stopped into our neighborhood Latin bar for a little dancing and caipirinhas before bedtime. Those were nice night caps.

Friday Yesterday morning at noon Henk and I got up and went to the “eat-all-you-can” Japanese restaurant for lunch. Mmm. After an afternoon of digesting and my mandatory weekly Lost episode, we went to aperitivo at another bar. Which will probably become my favorite aperitivo bar. The place is nice, the food spicy (probably to encourage drinking, but it doesn’t phase me), the liquor quality, the drinks strong and well-mixed, and the bartenders amazing. By amazing, I mean they have the kind of flair you see on The Food Network or Travel Channel.

We went to the cultural association to play foosball and pool. Marissa was working again. Liz and Anna met up with us, and we introduced them to the friends we’d made at pool, Paule and Adam. A few rounds later, the l’auberge Italienne crowd (Liz, Anna, Henk, and I) went off to a Russian bar for gyros and beer both good and cheap.

Saturday This morning I went to the hospital for my appointment with the orthopedic doctor re: my knee. It’s been a month since the injury. There is no damage to the ACL, but there may be minor damage to one edge of the meniscus. We decided the best course of action would be to get an MRI (and any resulting arthroscopic surgery) back in the states. The surgery isn’t urgent and wouldn’t require a recovery period of longer than two weeks. But two weeks of not walking and then a week on crutches would do some serious damage to my semester, academic and extracurricular.

But hey, all that aside, I have a clean bill of health! Party on.

Liz, Liane, Anna, Henk, and I went to a late lunch at I Ghibellini before they went off to the Uffizi. I decided to go to the bar and post all this. And then I’m going to rest up because tonight most of the gang is returning from Rome and we’re all supposed to go out on the town.

And now we’re caught up back to the present. But surely not for long.

week's off to a good start

Saturday was relaxed. As was Sunday. I’m really glad I wrote about that inane Brad Pitt conversation the other day because on our way to the market, Liz found this:

I know. It’s like God sent her a giant postcard. I would never have allowed her to pick up something off the street and put it in our building, let alone on her bed. But knowing how much it meant to her, I did.

That night, Giuseppe and I went to the cultural association and got a couple of drinks. After that I stopped by The Pucker Party at Twentyone, where I didn’t see any familiar faces this time. But I made a new friend or two. It’s called “Pucker Party” because you were supposed to “get pucked up” and make out with someone in front of the bartender for free shots.

Sunday was chill. Liz and I spent the afternoon wandering around. We crossed the Ponte Vecchio and walked in hilly neighborhoods across the river. That night I went out to dinner and spent as much time walking to dinner as I did dining. I guess it’s about time to introduce Lisa? She’s in most of my classes and my partner in the writing and photography projects. She’s cool, and she’s a little older than me, which is nice because sometimes I feel like the voice of reason among I’m coming from a different perspective than all the junior-year-abroaders here. Our assignment for the week was a restaurant review (of a specific place, Sabatino). Of course, because it was Sunday, it was closed. And we kept wanting certain other restaurants, so we went to like four more. And they were all closed. We wound up at a place by my house, . After dinner, Liz, Liane, Jess, Anna, Aneet, and I went out to Moyo for drinks. The blondes and I stopped into the cultural association for some quick shots. It was a fun night.

Monday’s classes flew by and were pretty good. It was molecular gastronomy day in Food Styling. We “fried eggs” without pans, oil, or actual eggs.

The "yolk" was made of orange, lemon, and carrot juices and the white of banana yogurt. We also made “caviars” out of those juices and green apple juice. Through the magic of molecular gastronomy, the yolk and the caviar both had a thin membrane that when broken released the thickened liquid inside. Very cool.

Our other work for the day was an amuse-bouche: Bruschetta in a teaspoon. We changed the textures of all the typical ingredients (tomato, olive oil, garlic-rubbed bread) except basil. The taste when you finish eating is exactly the same although the chewing experience is quite different.

Graphic design was another “series” project. In this case, ten slides of the numbers 0-9. I finished them all, but some could use refining. I’d post a few, but they’re saved on the lab computer at school.

That night, it was “Lisa and Andrew go to dinner, take two.” We met at the Ponte Vecchio again and then recruited Jack, who lives in the neighborhood of our restaurant. Sabatino was good. It was nice to go out to eat with two foodies/classmates because we discussed the entire meal (regarding tastes, textures, techniques, etc) way more in-depth than average people ever would. Alongside all that critique was approval though. Good dishes. Good times.