Cooking 3

Before I left for Italy I became interested in soup, mainly the creamy potato and clam chowder kind. When I got to Italy I figured I'd try my hand at it and it's not too hard, just supply consuming haha.

I've taken the parsley out of my recipe since I feel that it adds no value to the dish. In Italy they don't have bacon or bacon bits so I've been putting pancetta and garlic in a pan to mimic the taste and smell, and it's not too far off. Most recently, to make it creamier, I added a cup and a half of cream to the dish and I got a consistency a little more familiar.

The first step is to brown the onions, but once I burned them and the whole soup was slightly grey instead of a white-yellow haha!

The Beginning of the End

I would say that today officially marked the beginning of the end here in Perugia. Leading up to today I've had to prepare for many presentations, write some papers, and study for many tests and finals.

Today I had to give my first two presentations, and the big end of year items for me are starting to be due.

In Italian this morning I had to give a 5 minute Oral Presentation of my Italian skills by picking a random topic (La Mia Citta Preferita Negli Stati Uniti - My Favorite City in the United States). I talked about Boston for 5 minutes and it was the longest/shortest 5 minutes of my life. Because I love history, I mainly focused on the Freedom Trail and all the sights you see along the way, plus I added in some pictures of an old Crew Trip since it showed my friends and I posing like the statues.

Then in my Leonardo da Vinci class I was the first to present for the entire class, over the three day span. We are presenting a piece of our papers, and adding our own background and opinions into it. I made a prezi for my presentation and I talked about the two pictures I used in my paper on Leonardo's Anatomical Studies. It was a sketch of a skull, with the dental formula in the corner, and a sketch of the spine and different vertebrae from different angles.

I was able to talk about how he drew a European man, who was probably an adult, which corresponds with the fact that he would draw the anatomy of dead male prisoners. I was able to say that because Leonardo used all the shading and showed depth I was able to determine his ethnicity and gender. With the spine I mentioned how the sketch only possessed two mistakes, and even then it could still be used in classrooms today because it was so anatomically ahead of it's time and that near perfect.

Next week I have more papers, presentations, and tests to take so fingers crossed! I'll get one last break though this weekend when I visit my Nonno's cousin Maria in Milazzo, Sicily! I'm so excited!

Happy Thanksgiving Everyone!

Internship Update

Much of my time at my two museum internships has been spent cataloging. At the Ranieri house we've been cataloging books that belonged to a women called Romeyne Ranieri Bourbon di Sorbello. She was the grandmother of the founder for the museum and is from America, but while traveling in Italy with her family met an Italian aristocrat and got married.

We have to update the museums website by Thursday or at least have drafts done we are going to meet up sometime this week and do so. I have to put together a Biography for Romeyne with another girl, and the two others in the internship are doing her son.

For the Fondazione Marini Clarelli Santi House we've been inventorying clothes, bed linens, and towels. We found a bunch of costumes last week for a 1700's style party, and a karate uniform from the time when Bruce Lee and karate films were huge!

I get to make up a program proposal for the Santi House, it's going to be a Victorian Era Tea Party for young girls, so that they can have fun while learning table manners of the day.

Milan

On Friday and Saturday my Leonardo da Vinci class went to Milan to visit some Leonardo sights.

On Friday we got to see some of his old notes and a this breath taking Gothic Style Duomo, that made you pay 2 Euro for the right to take pictures. I didn't feel like paying for two reasons: 1) I just don't want to pay to take pictures, and 2) the place was a sight that no photo could do justice.

Saturday we saw more of his old notes, a couple originals and copies and probably one of the most amazing things he has ever done. Saturday morning we got to see The Last Supper. You get about 15 minutes in the room with it for an 8 Euro ticket that you pre-buy and it's amazing. I starred at this piece of work for 15 minutes and felt like it was simply not enough time. Although it has been restored countless times since it was first created and is probably no longer an original Leonardo the piece of work holds up to its name and reputation.

Gelato!

Of course being in Italy I have sampled my fair share of gelato flavors and found the places which do and do not live up to the "Real Italian Gelato" hype.

Fragola (Strawberry): This can be a common flavor but can sometimes be done in a way that reminds one of just american ice cream. The best Fragola I've had, has the taste of a fresh smoothie that's just a little more solid. You can taste the ground up berries and it feels refreshing to eat.

Menta/After Eight (Mint): I've had a lot of trouble finding this flavor in Perugia, but I have seen it in Assisi, Rome, and Siena. This can also sometimes taste just like american ice cream but again it just has that extra kick of refreshing to it. Like a liquid breathe savers just went down your throat and engulfed your mouth.

Tiramisu: Very delicious, and I find it's always best to get the kind with bits of real Tiramisu because it's almost like a nice fluffiness to the gelato.

Anything with the word chocolate in it: I mean, it's chocolate, very hard to go wrong there.

Canella (Cinnamon): SO FREAKING AMAZING!!! Whoever invented this was a genius, it's the perfect amount of cinnamon you could want, it's like eating a cinnamon bun with without the bun and icing. It can be found at the Dolce Bio Gelato shop in Perugia right next to Piazza Italia and it's just to die for.

These have been more of my favorite and memorable flavors, of course there are more out there, and some of the displays are very pretty.

Siena

Leaf Peeping!

I felt like a leaf peeper in Siena! There are more trees there than in Perugia and boy do I miss trees! Their weather was a little more Fall-like than Perugia had been so it almost felt a little homey.

I went Sunday with a girl from my Saint's and Sinner's class, we missed the trip Friday since we went to Rome instead so we made it up, and had a lot of fun! We spent the first hour and half or so getting lost trying to find the city center and the Duomo church, the first stop on our itinerary. There was a crypt under the Duomo with glass floors so you could see the old architecture, but there were also glass floors in the Duomo looking into the crypt so it was a little freaky.

Then we went to a museum in a public building and explored more than we needed to which was fine because there was some cool stuff there. The bones of St. Clement were there and positioned very decoratively with golden ribbons tied to them. I started pointing out his femurs, scapula, patella's and other various bones slightly for practice to see what I could remember from my classes, and because it was so interesting.

In all of the buildings we went to there either were a lot of Madonna and Child paintings or statues and paintings of the She-wolf with babies Romulus and Remus. We wanted to start counting to see just how many we saw because it was simply an insane amount! How many different ways and times can you do over the exact same thing???? A lot apparently haha.

Freaky Fruit

Duomo

Rome

Colosseum 

I went to Rome this Friday and Saturday with my Archaeology class and it was wonderful.

They have built this city up around the old ruins and it's just so incredible how old Italy is an that they can do this. To get to see these buildings and aqueducts spread about also steps you back in time because it's just integrated into the new city. Maybe in 1,000 years or so America will be like this and then people will come to see our old ruins of major cities.

The class itself visited Villa Guilla and the Vatican (so I country hopped as well) focusing on looking at Etruscan artifacts from all over Italy and not just Perugia.

Statue from the Altar to the Fatherland Monument building/
Probably the best photo I'll ever take 

We were allowed some free time so a few classmates and I Friday night scouted out the Colosseum, which we could only see from the outside but was just amazing to behold. We walked all around it and I got a little geeky point out small indents in the old stone saying that "It might have been a road look at these wheel tracks maybe!" We also walked along the Roman Forum and went to the Pantheon.

Saturday after we finished touring two of the Vatican Museums we had some free time again, so we walked around a few more museums and elbowed our way over to the Sistine Chapel. I'll talk more on the Vatican in a later post because it's looking like I'll go again with the family when they come over for Christmas.

Cooking 2

I love Mac&Cheese, and I knew that the only way I'd be able to make it here was if it was baked and from scratch. So it hit the Google webpages and found myself a nifty little recipe.

Final Product

I had to change one of the ingredients, Cheddar for Asiago, simply because Cheddar is very American and I thought Asiago would be close enough, off a guess. Turns out my guess wasn't that bad and I was able to make a delicious baked Mac&Cheese a few times and I took picture of the process this time.

It starts off with cubing a wedge of Asiago, and grating bread and Parmesan cheese. Then you cook your elbow macaroni while creating your cheese sauce. The cheese sauce is made with butter, flour, milk, and your two cheeses, that you mix and melt together in stages. Then you mix the pasta and cheese sauce in the pan you'll bake it in while you brown bread crumbs with butter in a skillet (This recipe calls for A LOT of dishes). After they have browned you spread the crumbs on top and bake it for 30 minutes at 175 degrees Celsius (about 350 degrees Fahrenheit), and once that's done you enjoy!

Prep Stage

Cooking

Pre-Baking

Uncle Tom's Cabin

So at the Library Museum this week we started to look through some old french books.

I was lucky enough to pick La Case Del'Oncle Tom or as it's more known here Uncle Tom's Cabin! This was a 9th Edition 1899 book of Uncle Tom's cabin in french! It had the most amazing design on the cover, and the pages just seeped history out of them. Probably going to be my most memorable moment at that museum.