After the Planet Funk concert and work on Saturday morning, I went to the mountains with my boss and her family. Although, I consider her family as pretty much my adopted family here in Italy. We arrived at her house and started the fire and wood burning stove to warm up the place since it is usually about 10 degrees cooler in the mountains than in the city. We had lunch then relaxed. Enchanted just happened to be on the Disney Channel so we watched part of that. I was exhausted from lack of sleep that I just sat in content watching Enchanted. :) Afterwards, it was time to start making dinner. We were making pizza! I told Ipolita's mom that I wanted to learn how to make pizza so she showed me and even let me do some of the mixing and kneading!
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| Tomato sauce, cheese and oregano pizza |
Afterwards, here are what the pizzas looked like. They tasted great! I love fresh pizza!
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| Corn and cream pizza |
On Sunday morning, we had coffee and cookies, the traditional Italian breakfast. I told Ipolita that when I was little and we were visiting our Italian relatives in New York, my mom would never let me have cookies for breakfast or if she did only one or two. I took full advantage of the cookie thing this time and dunked my cookies in my coffee, in honor of my childhood self. :)
After breakfast we got ready because it was Ipolita's mom's birthday. We were going to go out to eat instead of cooking for her birthday. As we were almost ready to leave a neighbor gave Ipolita a huge bag of olives. So we had to sort through the olives and make saltwater to store the olives in.
After we finished the olives, we got in the cars and traveled to the restaurant which was located about halfway between their house in the mountains and their house in the city. The restaurant was located off many small roads and in the mountains. It was very cute, quaint, homey and beautiful! The food was great too! These type of restaurants are becoming increasingly popular in Italy, I am told. They are called Agriturismo restaurants.
We first had the antipasti course.
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| Focaccia |
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| Local Wine |
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| Salami and fried mashed potato sticks :) |
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| Mozzarella and Ricotta- They bought some of the ricotta and gave me some to take home! It was delicious! |
Then the first course.
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| Homemade pasta with tomato, pancetta (bacon), and arugula- I ate this |
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| Cream of Mushroom Ravioli- I tasted this |
Then the second course.
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| Chicken- I ate this |
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| Lamb- Ipolita ate this |
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| Rabbit- The guys ate this |
We could have had fruit and dessert but many of us were too full. We did get a few desserts to share amongst the seven of us.
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| Ricotta and Pear Tart |
On our way home, we experienced an interesting experience. Wild Boar were in the road. I mean an expressway. Not one but 4, 5, or 6. We couldn't count them all! I was with Ipolita in her car while everyone else were in the car in front of us. They slammed on their brakes and swerved to the left. Ipolita slammed on her brakes but stayed in the right lane. There was a car behind us but they were in the left lane. Apparently one of the boar hit the car with the rest of our party but they were still running and moving. I don't think any of them got seriously hurt (the boar I mean). They were racing around trying to get out but they didn't know which way to go! Overall, I got a close up view of wild boar! Thank god our guarding angels were taking care of us otherwise we would have had a major accident because those boar were huge!
Afterwards, we went back to their house in the city to celebrate her mother's birthday with a cake. I was very full but yet I still had a piece of cake and a cookie. Mostly, I had to taste the cookies because I just became aware of a cookie store located very near to my house and I needed to taste which cookies I want to bring to America. :) I also had to try a liqueur that I just heard about. It is called Liqueur Strega. Strega means witch in Italian. Apparently a town nearby makes this liqueur because there were "witches" in this town in the past. They were burned at the stake...sound familiar to Salem? Anyways, I wanted to try this liqueur and I did. It is good. I liked it!
Overall, I had a great weekend with my adopted Italian family :) Thanks for everything, Ipolita and family! :)
