Let's talk about food

                                                       Learning how to hand-make pasta 
                                                                  at a local restaurant

For many of you, this photo probably seems strange.
"Is that Bernadette with an apron on" you might ask. "Is she cooking something?"
To give you some better context for these questions, I would like to confess that I absolutely have no idea how to cook. The years of eating mom's excellent dinners and the wonderfully greasy meals at Mrs. E's have left me in Italy without any knowledge of how to actually feed myself.
You may think, "Well, cooking is easy! You just turn on the stove and boil some water!"
Well the first problem here is that I have a gas stove that is probably older than the apartment I'm living in. So it took me about a month to learn how to light that thing.
Then there are of course the questions like, "How long does it take water to boil?" "How do you know if the pasta is finished?" "How exactly do you cut an onion?" "Wait, you aren't supposed to use the seeds in a pepper?"
Apparently, everyone went to some secret cooking basics school when they were little and I wasn't invited. Before coming to Italy, I honestly didn't know what garlic looked like, let alone that you were supposed to smash it with the flat side of your knife in order to cut it.
Well, lucky for me! I found the right place to learn about all things food! And not only am I learning about Italian food, but the best kind of Italian food. Anything and everything bolognese.
The city of Bologna has many nicknames, but the most important one for this conversation is "la grassa", meaning "the fat". Bologna is famous for it's food. Ever heard of tortellini? How how spaghetti alla bolognese? Or maybe you've heard of mortadella (more commonly known as baloney)? All of these things were invented by the bolognese.
I am living in the food capital of Italy! And I can't figure out how to light my stove...
Last Saturday evening, I tried to make carbonara. This is a very simple pasta recipe that my roommate showed me how to make a few days before. Fry up some pancetta (bacon). Scramble some egg yolks. Boil some pasta. And then mix the egg and pancetta in. It takes about 10 minutes.
But of course, when I tried to do it, it took me ten tries to light the stove. I forgot to put the water on (add 20 minutes) and when I mixed in the eggs at the end, the pasta wasn't hot enough so instead of cooking a little to make a type of paste, I was left with liquid egg yolk and a little pasta on top. Naturally, I threw the whole batch away and went out to dinner.
The restaurant I chose? Spaccanapoli. Only the best pizzeria in the entire world. They serve pizzas so big, you have enough meals for the rest of the week. As well as for everyone else in your apartment.

                                                                 Me at Spaccanapoli

It was only 10pm when I got there, a very normal dinner time for Italians, and something that I am still having trouble getting used to. When I tell people that I normally eat dinner at 6 pm, they look at me like I'm crazy.
"But that's almost like lunch!" I've had someone say to me before.
I don't understand the Italian metabolism. They only drink espresso for breakfast. Eat lunch at 2pm. And then dinner no earlier than 8pm. Ever.
Then there's really not a lot of snacking. The potato chips here taste funny. And there's no such thing as grape jelly, so PB&Js are nonexistent (an essential block of my diet where I am physically experiencing withdrawal).
Food here (when I'm not cooking it) is actually pretty simple. Caffe, pizza, and pasta. I eat pasta for almost two meals a day. I read an article for class that said on average, every Italian consumes around 60 pounds of pasta a year. That's a lot of pasta. I just wish I knew how to cook it.
My usual dinner consists of pasta and tomato sauce. Usually with some onions (yes, I now know how to peel an onion). And while it may seem a little repetitive, there is actually something beautiful about the smell of onions in olive oil. I now put onions in everything. Its also the only vegetable I really know how to cut properly.
To conclude this post, I would like to discuss my Thanksgiving feast. Thankfully, our program put together a dinner for all of our homesick selves. They rented out an entire restaurant, which then prepared all of our traditional Thanksgiving foods. For me, the best part was a squash/pumpkin soup. Maybe just because I've really never had anything like it before.

The turkey was actually fantastic too. Buuuut, there wasn't any stuffing. In fact, I was taken back to the kitchen to explain to them what stuffing is and why it is absolutely essential to every Thanksgiving meal. They didn't make the mashed potatoes chunky like my mom makes them. And cranberries don't exist in Italy. They think cranberries are blueberries. So I did enjoy a rather interesting blueberry sauce.
It was a wonderful Thanksgiving. But not the one I have at home. It's amazing how homesick you can be for food.
Sometimes I feel guilty. I am in the country that invented gelato and nutella! And all I can think about is how I would kill for a crab rangoon from Peking Taste.  But then again, every time I smell those onions cooking in olive oil, I remember just how lucky I am.
To make up for the lack of PB&J, I just get gelato everyday instead. Wow, what a rough life.