Did I Just Cheat on Italy? Part Two

Being that we were flying into Spain for free and because we were going off-season and managed to pick up a Madrid apartment on Air B and B for an insanely low price, we decided to make this trip short, sweet and focused on fact finding; kind of like meeting for coffee on your first date.  We were looking to preserve vacation time for a longer trip later in the year, so we left on the Thursday night flight of a Monday holiday weekend, flew overnight to Madrid and had a Friday through Tuesday trip that cost us only two vacation days.

Flying on an overnight flight deposits you in the country of your choice at some point in the morning (depending on where you fly to and from).  This was a process that we were familiar with from making the overnight flight from JFK to Fiumicino in Rome.  We knew that we had to do our best to sleep on the plane. A lifelong fidget, I have never been very good at this, but I usually land at my destination filled with so much adreneline, that I can hit the ground running and make it to mid-afternoon before I crash hard and need a nap. 

When we de-planed and headed through Barajas airport in Madrid, the first billboard that I saw was this, which tickled me and somehow made me feel instantly at home.  I am a sucker for a sense of humor.

We had short-listed certain foods and attractions for our five day trip and the first thing that was on our mind were churros. Let me start by saying, there are better churros and worse churros, but to me, there is no such thing as bad churros.  Our first stop was to a chain type churro shop on the way to our apartment and with luggage in hand, we rolled our bags in and got our first churro of the trip.  Maybe because we were hungry or maybe because they were actually good, we really enjoyed them.  We knew that there might be better ones in our future as we had plans to hit San Gines for their exceptionally rich and rightfully famous hot chocolate later in the trip, but we needed to break the seal on our Madrid vacation immediately.

The first churro is good, even if it's not the best churro.

We did not hold it against our first churro shop that they sell a "Pikachurro"

Being that it was January, there was not as much outdoor dining and cafe seating as there normally would be, but I give the shop owners credit for their creative approach to offering a warm place to sit outside for their hardier patrons.  Space heaters and furry blankets were a common sight.

After breakfast, we checked into our Air B&B and set out for the first sight on our agenda:  The Mercado de San Miguel.  We arrived at this beautiful glass jewel box of a market at 11:00 am and found it busy and full of people that had no qualms about having wine and vermut prior to lunch hour; we fell in line. I can easily say that this was love at first sight.  This was to be the first of three visits that we would make to the market while in Madrid. We were captivated by this place for the variety of food and drink that was available and for the sights, sounds and smells that filled the air. 

Whipped Burrata. Need I say more?

So many of the tapas that are available in the market are savory, umami-bombs that pair amazingly well with wine and vermut.

Stunning produce.

This looked like art to me.

Vermut at 11:00 am? Don't mind if I do.

On tap, as it should be.

San Miguel Market at night

When we were doing research for our Spain trip, my husband was bingeing on travel videos and I had walked through the room while he was watching one and saw the statue of "El oso y el madroño", which is a bear eating strawberries.  Seeing it quickly out of the corner of my eye, I yelled back to him, "what is that? A cat eating broccoli?".  That is what we referred to this famous statue in Puerta Del Sol as for the entire trip.  Try and get that image out of your head. You're welcome.

The "cat eating broccoli" statue that is actually a bear eating strawberries.

Since we were doing a quick trip, we felt that at least one guided tour would be beneficial, so we booked a Tapas and History Crawl with Devour Tours, which was fantastic.  I would highly recommend this tour company for their expertise and professionalism. We ate and drank across four bars until we thought we were going to burst. The tour was filled with great information and even better food.

We also learned on our trip that Madrid has casinos.  The most unassuming, quiet and elegant casinos that I have ever been in. So quiet and unassuming that they were almost not fun, but that is not what we went for.  What we went for was food, drink, art, architecture and churros.  We got all of that and more, packing in a ton of fun in a five day trip.  

Stunning.

One of several Patatas Bravas.  This one was from "Las Bravas".

Gran Via in all it's splendor.

La Hora de Vermut, which is technically between lunch and dinner but actually all day, every day.

My first lambchop since I was about seven. Amazing.

Someone or perhaps some thousands of people have been rubbing his behind ( I see your hiney, so bright and shiny....).

We came home from this five day trip to Madrid completely satisfied and ready to go back.  Will it supplant Italy as our number one go-to?  No, but hopefully, it will serve as an add-on to a trip to Italy as country hopping is easy and inexpensive within Europe, thanks to carriers like Easy Jet.  Next time, Granada and Seville.  But first, I have to make sure that Rome isn't mad at me. I plan on some make-up pasta and a nice Brunello.

P.S. The churros and hot chocolate at San Gines were everything.  This alone was worth the trip.

Did I Just Cheat on Italy? Part one...

It wasn't really planned. It just sort of happened...or at least that's what I told myself.

After years of traveling for both business and pleasure, my husband and I finally racked up enough frequent flyer miles to book a trip outside the country; at the same time. That had never happened before, one or both of our flights were always on our dime . And it would seem like the obvious choice that we would jump on the horn to Delta Airlines and arrange what we had been faithfully doing for the last ten years; a trip to Italy. As a matter of fact, we traveled to Italy so often that when I responded to my mother's inquiry of "where are you going on vacation this year?" with Italy, she would roll her eyes and say "ugh, again?". But there are no limits to my love of Italy. There were regions still to be discovered and our favorite places, like Rome and Palermo magically offered up surprises and new experiences with every visit. So why did we plunk those miles down on a trip to Spain?

Strangely, it had nothing at all to do with Italy, which is kind of like saying "baby, it's not you, it's me". For years, our neice has been extolling the virtues of Spain, having studied there for two semesters and travelled the entire country. She knew that the wine and tapas culture of Spain was a perfect fit for us, but we had previously been in such a passionate affair with Italy, that we couldn't concieve of a plane ride that delivered us to anywhere but back to her loving arms. Honestly, I blame it on Japan (needle scratch). Yes, Japan.

In September of 2017, my husband took a two week business trip to Japan. Accompanying him on this trip was a hulking a six foot six, bald headed, goateed giant of a computer programmer named Dale, who had never left the country before. Always one to immerse in the local culture and do his travel homework, my husband took it as his duty to introduce Dale to the sights sounds and tastes of Japan. In many ways, this posed new challenges to be solved and broke him of the comfort and complacency that we felt when travelling to Italy. Shortly after that trip, he started to tiptoe into research about Spain.

It all began very innocently. A YouTube video here, a dinner at a local Spanish restaurant there. We even took another trip to Italy in Spring of '18, which provided the mileage boost that we needed to get the free tickets. Before we knew it, we were on the seven hour flight to Madrid.

Sitting here, one month post-trip, all I can think about is how and when we can go back. I am completely torn between two lovers and definitely feeling like a fool. To be continued...

Holiday 2018 Post Redeux

This was originally posted on my Wix blog, under the title "Turkeys, Elves and the Definition of Insanity":

Almost every year, I find myself hosting Christmas for my large, extended family. Either by my own hand or by my husband generously electing me to the post of party queen, every December plays out like the last. Part of my problem is that I hate uncomfortable silences and when the question of who will be hosting Christmas starts to get thrown around in the months leading up to December, the silence of the response is usually deafening. I find myself twisting uncomfortably in the silence and when I no longer take the cricket-song that I hear through the hollow void of replies, I blurt out my bid for it. This has resulted in me winning 27 out of 27times, uncontested. Tell them what I won Johnny: Announcer voice: You've won five days of cleaning, seven trips to the grocery store, nine hours of cooking, three days of decorating, two trips to the liquor store, a beer run, a trip to the party store and two insanely swollen feet!

Luckily, the same does not hold true with Thanksgiving. My sister-in-law loves to do Thanksgiving and I would go as far as to say that she has a lock on the holiday. Thanksgiving is the one holiday of the year that I can guarantee that I can be a guest and that my feet won't swell and throb like two Smithfield hams at the end of the day. It's a holiday where I get a job or a few jobs and I am joyful in the execution of these jobs. You want a sweet potato casserole? I'm your girl. What's that you say? A Chocolate Cream pie? Why of course and I'll throw in a Lemon Pound Cake for good measure.

This year, I was so blissful in my guesting duties that I made a pie, a cake, the Serious Eats Hassleback Potato Gratin (you MUST! Really!) and I had energy leftover to throw together a spur of the moment cranberry sauce. It's easy to be a sport when you haven't been washing floors, scrubbing toilets, vacuuming, dusting and pulling the gizzards out of the ass-end of a giant bird for the last 48 hours.

The burden of hosting is something that is not completely understood by my husband, who seems to think that hosting consists of making a beer run and having the freedom to start cocktail hour earlier than would be socially acceptable on any other day of the year. Every year he looks at me on the morning after a Christmas soiree in almost complete confusion, as I sit with my feet up, on the verge of tears, with a combination of bewilderment and exhaustion on my face over having survived the hosting of another family Christmas celebration. Every year, it pushes me to the brink and every year (like the definition of insanity), I do it again, expecting a different result. The need for change is clearly on me.

So this year, I will wait in discomfort for someone to throw their Santa hat into the ring. I am not going to volunteer, no matter how deafening the silence becomes. I will duct tape my own mouth closed, if need be. I will be resolute in my decision to stand down. But...you might want to check my feet on December 26th. If they are spilling out of my shoes and pulsating like a defective neon sign, then my resolution wasn't worth the Christmas wrapping it was written on.

March 17 2019 P.S. - I did not cave. Man, my feet feel good!

The Restorative Powers of Girl Time

It seems to me that almost everyone has a happy place; the place where the stress of life instantly melts away and is supplanted by a feeling of well being, of calm.  I have many happy places.  Places that are an antidote to the office and to the daily grind.  Some of my happy places are very far away and infrequently visited. The top place on that list for me is Rome.  But, since its hard to visit a place like Rome very often, I also have happy places that are more local and convenient.  I visited one of them this weekend.

Each year, a group of my best girlies and I go on a long weekend away.  We don't go far and we don't go fancy.  Usually it is somewhere within the NY tri-state area and ever since one of my friends inherited a log cabin in the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania, it has been one of our go-tos.  The goal of our girl's weekend is to do as little as possible, eat and drink as much as possible and to laugh.  Our most recent weekend delivered on all of those things.

We have a few traditions that we tend to stick to, like making a midnight run to Walmart (just because we can) and hitting up the American Ribbon Factory.  And while I get how a side trip to a place where ribbon is made and sold has a "Griswald-esque", world's largest ball of twine ring to it, we wouldn't trade it for anything.

One of the greatest surprises of the trip was a meal that we had at a restaurant called "Garlic" in Stroudsburg, PA.  It was literally around the block from the Ribbon Factory and had some of the best food that we have had on our many trips to PA.  The restaurant is primarily a steakhouse, but offers many seafood dishes. I am disinclined to order seafood in a landlocked state, so we all went with the steak side of the menu and it did not disappoint. We had an array of Filet Mignon, NY Strip and Ribeye steaks and while I hate the term "bread program" this restaurant had a strong one.  Thinly sliced, chewey sour-dough type bread was delivered to our table warm and studded with roasted garlic cloves.  Along side the slices were a few ciabatta rolls, that revealed Italian herbs and sundried tomatoes when opened up for buttering.  Any surprise we all filled up on bread?

When we got back to the cabin, it was prosecco and birthday cake in celebration of one of our friend's birthday.  I made one of those cakes that spills out sprinkles when you cut it open, which actually worked out and did not collapse before offering its yield of colorful spillage.

As lovely and relaxing as the weekend was, it is the time spent with friends that makes the trip restorative and satisfying.  Everyone works very hard and has minimal time to get together.  This gathering of women is an opportunity to kvetch, to bounce things off like-minded individuals and to laugh.  Mostly to laugh.  And as I reflect back, I know that I got so much more out of the weekend than six, ten yard spools of Christmas ribbon.  I came back to center and got my head right. And while we did not solve any of the great problems of society, we made each other feel better and we figured out who tracked the deer poop up the stairs.  You know who you are and we all still love you.

The true sign of love for a friend is making them a cake that vomits sprinkles

What, no snacks?

Channeling my Inner Nonna

You ever have one of those days where everything aches for no reason and you walk slow, deliberate and a little like you have a poop in your pants?  Think Fred Sanford, but less elegant.  No? Just me?

OK, whatever.

When I have those kind of days, I think of it as coming down with a case of "The Grandmas".  When you get a case of The Grandmas, everything aches, it takes forever to walk from one side of the house to the other and you forget how to use all your electronic devices.

But sometimes, instead of a case of The Grandmas, you get a case of "The Nonnas".  When you get a case of The Nonnas, you become an elderly superwoman.  You put on your housecoat, cook all day and all night, wash and fold 40 loads of laundry and pick vegetables from your beautiful backyard garden (even if you have neither a back yard or a vegetable garden, when you get The Nonna's they magically appear).

Last weekend, I got a wicked case of The Christmas Nonnas.  I was posessed by the impulse to make Struffoli.  For those of you that don't know what Struffoli are, they are little round balls of fried dough, soaked in a honey syrup and covered with non-pareils.  If you grew up with at least one Italian grandmother, you know what they are and you have warm memories of being shooed away from pots of hot oil, being covered in honey from head to toe and not being able to put anything down after you pick it up because everything sticks to your fingers.

My Nonna did not leave me a recipe for these delightful treats and honestly, I have not ever wanted to make them before because I hate frying.  I hate the smell it leaves in the house, I hate the mess and I hate spatter burns.  But, when the spirit of Christmas mixes with the spirit of Nonna, the compulsion for struffoli can outrun my more neurotic, Felix Unger-type tendencies. Being that I did not have a recipe from my own Nonna, I did what any red blooded Italian Grandmother would do...I used the Internet.

What I found is that there are no shortage of recipes for Struffoli.  Everyone who calls themself an Italian cook has a version - Giada DeLarentiis, Lidia Bastianich, Mario Batali.  They all look pretty good and the recipes are similar...flour, eggs, a splash of alcohol, honey, etc.  But since I was overcome with the spirit of Nonna, I went to the source, Cooking with Nonna.

If you have not seen this adorable series, a young Italian American woman, Rossella Rago, cooks traditional Italian and Italian American recipes with grandmothers.  Yours, hers, any Italian nonna that will sit still long enough to teach her a recipe.  It's quite charming and sweet and it spreads the joy of having an Italian grandmother to everyone.  The recipe that I used, along with a "how to" video can be found here.  Enjoy and Buon Natale!

A Tour of the Monte Testaccio in Rome

When my husband texted me in November and said that he wanted me to earmark time off at work in December for a trip to Italy, I did not question him.  His job has been giving him a sustained level of grief that would have killed me by now.  This was clearly an escape, a way to let the air out of an over-inflated balloon about to pop. I knew he needed the break.

He wanted to start the trip with a quick spin through London.  Long on my bucket list, I was thrilled with the idea of a visit to London.  It turned out to be another Rome to me; a place where I felt immediately at home and where the tug to return began the minute the wheels were up on the plane as we left.  But the bulk of the trip was about Italy.  We would follow our brief London visit with 4 days in Sorrento and 5 days in Rome.  The itinerary?  Find a seat at a cafe near something beautiful and drink wine.  That was it.  Relax, people watch and consume great wine and food. 

What's cuter than a red Mini Cooper?

This was our first time to Italy by ourselves. Each trip before had been with friends or family and we were always playing tour guide and working hard to keep the masses happy.  With the luxury of time and no agenda whatsoever, I spent a little time thinking of things that I had wanted to do in visits past, but did not follow through on, either because of group dynamics or lack of time. And then it dawned on me, I realized that I could take a private tour with Elizabeth Minchilli. 

As a long time follower of Elizabeth Minchilli's blog, it was somewhat astonishing that I hadn't booked a tour with her before this visit. I had been on a couple of tours before - The Vatican, The Colusseum, the Forum.  But what I wanted from this tour was to know the city and to learn what it was like to be a resident of Rome.  Elizabeth was the right person to go to for an inside look at the Roman way of life. 

Elizabeth had several styles of tours available; group, individual, day long, week long, all centered around the food and lifestyle of various areas of Rome. We were looking for a slice of Roman life, which lead us to the Insider's Tour of Testaccio, a real Roman neighborhood, just outside of the central tourist belt.

This private tour started in the Piazza Testaccio and took us through the cafes, storefronts, market and abandoned meat processing plant that are built in, on and around the Monte Testaccio. The hill and it's surrounding neighborhood are unique and interesting and Elizabeth peppered us with fascinating information about how it came to be and it's very long and distinctive history.

Beautiful and fragrant oranges

Romanesco

Artichokes that made me green with envy at their quality.

Amazing fried artichokes

 It would be very accurate to say that we ate our way through the neighborhood, making stops for coffee, wine, snacks, a fabulous lunch and ending with some delicious gelato. 

We ate lunch at Flavio Velavevodetto, a restaurant literally built into the Monte Testaccio. The food was otherworldly delicious. We enjoyed Caccio e Pepe, pillowy, herb and cheese stuffed ravioli and yes, even some "quinto quarto" favorites like lungs, liver and tripe. Elizabeth can claim accomplishment of being the first person to get me to eat tripe. Not just one bite, but two! This is a bigger accomplishment than she will ever know.

Gorgeous handmade pasta

Cacio e Pepe

This ravioli is what angels use for pillows.

Pizza Bianca with Mortadella

Gelato. A sweet ending.

After our tour ended, we walked along the Tiber as the sun came down behind the buildings along its bank. We reflected on our fabulous day, all that we learned and the stunning beauty and distinctive charm of Rome. We felt closer to it than ever before and had a warm and comforting feeling in our hearts and in our bellies. Elizabeth helped to further cement our love for Rome and fuel our desire to return and learn more.  Arrivederci Roma.  Until we meet again...