Thanksgiving in Rome

Ciao!  I hope everyone had a good Thanksgiving.  We did!  People in Italy don’t really celebrate Thanksgiving but we worked with some people who work at the Rome Center (that’s what our building is called) to host a big Thanksgiving dinner for us, some spare students, and other odds and ends.  A woman helps run the Rome center put together a great table with candles and a pretty tablecloth.  My Grandparents came up from California so they got to join in.  They even brought festive napkins!  Everyone brought some food to share, and we did too!  We made turkey, mashed potatos, cranberry sauce, stuffing, and gravy.  We couldn’t get a whole turkey from our butcher so we just got turkey breasts.  And we couldn’t find cranberries so my grandparents brought a bag of them up from California along with the turkey napkins.  Some other people brought salmon, pizza, fruit, carrots, and quinoa.  At the beginning we all said something we were grateful for.  I said I was grateful for the food!  Someone who lives in Italy, after she said what she was grateful for, she said that even though Americans usually eat pumpkin in sweet things, Italians usually eat pumpkin in savory things.  Which is true for my family, because we usually just eat pumpkin in pumpkin pie.  She also said that she brought the bowl of roasted pumpkin cubes.  For dessert, since my other grandma wasn’t here to make her special pumpkin and apple pies, we brought tiramisu, an Italian dessert made with layers of mascarpone, lady finger cookies, coffee, and cocoa powder.  It wasn’t much of an American Thanksgiving, but it was yummy!

Fun Italian Word:  Tacchino (Turkey).

-Violet 😃

           

3 Different Pizzas

Ciao, friends!  This blog post is going to be about three kinds of pizza: Neapolitan Pizza, Roman Pizza, and Pizza al Taglio.  Take a peek at the Venn diagram here:

Basically, there are three different kinds of pizza here.  Even though every pizza is yummy I think I like Neapolitan pizza the best.  I like its soft chewy crust, and cheesy traditional toppings.  My mom and my sister also like Neapolitan pizza, but my dad likes Roman with its thin, crispy, crunchy crust.  In fact he loves the burnt parts!  My mom also likes Pizza al Taglio, or as she calls it “pizza by the slice”.  She likes it because you get a few slices and you get to try different toppings instead of getting one whole pizza with the same toppings.  They do have fun toppings (sausage, tomatoes, potatoes, ricotta, etc.).
Another kind of pizza that is different is Pizza Bianca.  It’s not really in a category, but it’s probably the closest to Pizza al Taglio.  It is basically rectangular pizza dough, like Pizza al Taglio, but its toppings are olive oil and salt.  It tastes so good!  All of the pizza here taste so good!🍕 😊

Fun Italian Phrase: Mi scusi (Excuse me)
-Violet

Cheese, Cheese, Cheese.

Ciao!  Violet here.  Let’s talk about cheese for a minute.
A few popular kinds of cheese here are mozzarella, parmigiano reggiano, pecorino, ricotta, and asiago.  Pecorino is made with sheep milk, asiago and ricotta are made from cow milk, mozzarella is made from cow or buffalo milk, and parmigiano reggiano is made from cow milk and is mostly the same as what we call parmasean.
Every cheese is good here, but I miss the cheeses of home.  I miss string cheese, cheddar cheese, and cream cheese.  But when we go back home I will miss getting a big ball of fresh mozzarella, a big block of parmigiano reggiano, and a hunk of pecorino that always tastes like what you smell when you’re around a sheep.  (The pecorino is very fresh.  I once found a piece of grass on my slice.). You can always get those cheeses in the stores here.
It seems like each cheese has its own specific use here.  For example, mozzarella is usually used on pizza, ricotta is usually used in ravioli, pecorino and parmigiano reggiano are usually used in carbonara, and my mom likes to use asiago in grilled cheese sandwiches.  It would be strange to see mozzarella in ravioli, ricotta in carbonara, and parmigiano reggiano in sandwiches.  That’s just how it is!  I wonder what the Italians would think of cheddar cheese, cream cheese, and the unfresh mozzarella we see in string cheese.
I love all cheese.

Fun Italian word:  Formaggio (cheese).

-Violet

Starlings and Southern Italy

Hello!  How is everyone?  I am doing fine.  My aunt and uncle came to visit us.  Yesterday we went to get gelato at our favorite gelato place.  We started to walk home when a flutter of black dots in the sky caught our eye.  They were the starlings!  So we hurried out onto a bridge over the river where we could see lots of starlings in the sky.  The little black birds live all over Rome.  At dusk, just before they settle down for the night in the trees, they fly in flocks and create amazing swooping patterns in the air.  They just look like a cloud of black dots and they are amazing to watch.  Their flight patterns are called “murmurations”, maybe because they murmur to each other in the air.  They were noisy!  My uncle’s hand got pooped on.

We just came back from Pompeii, Naples, and Sorrento.  They are all in the south of Italy.  Pompeii used to be a town but now it is made up of ruins.  About 2000 years ago a volcano nearby errupted and covered the whole town and all the people in hot ash.  Then some diggers started digging and found the ruins of Pompeii, but nobody lives there now.  We had a fun time.
Then we went to Naples.  There are lots of busy rushing cars and busy walking people.  They say Naples is where pizza was born.  We had fun there too!
Then we went to Sorrento.  It is a little town by the water.  There are lots of stores along the sides of the streets with lots of good smelling lemon stuff.  Limoncello, lemon candy, lemon soap!  The reason there is a lot of lemon stuff is because there are lots of lemon groves around.  I bought lemon soap.  I love Sorrento!  And even though we had some bad weather, we all had fun on our trip.

We are having lots of fun in Italy, but we are going to head home in about 4 weeks.  When we get home I am going to miss Italy a lot, but I will also be happy to be home.

Fun Italian word: Limone (lemon).
-Violet