Month: November 2014

Some Snaps from School

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My “required reading.” Sorry, Poli Sci PDFs of my past, this is looking astronomically more appealing. On this lazy, rainy Sunday, I thought I would provide some visuals regarding my life inside the castle/educational institution that is UNISG. On my desk back home in Saratoga, there is an ENORMOUS stack of cookbooks (such as Sprouted Kitchen) that I bought for the photos rather than the recipes as well as nearly every issue of Lucky Peach ever published. During lunch break the other day, I went into the library, which it turns out holds about 90% of my Amazon Kindle and real world book purchases in the last few years. Here’s an aerial shot of part of the periodical section. “What’s for lunch?” I heard you say via the black hole that is the internet. This non-informative yet charming “Menu” board makes you think twice about what you actually got yourself into by signing up to go to a one-of-a-kind school in a tiny part of a semi-tiny town in northwest Italy. So, here’s the cafeteria, which of course …

Thanksgiving Abroad

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I realize Thanksgiving has come and gone. Everyone is sick of eating (now probably very dry) turkey. The stuffing was gone like 36 hours ago. Nobody is even going to think about eating pumpkin pie for another 363 days. Here in Bra, my class assembled in one apartment (holla Matteo and Henna for hosting us) for a potluck-style meal. There was indeed a turkey, potatoes a plenty, Swedish meatballs, brussels sprouts, agnolotti, orecchiette, stuffing, tiramisu, orange/hazelnut cake… I brought 4 bottles of wine… But really, how fitting that near the end of our first full week of classes together, our crazy big/little family had the chance to celebrate an American holiday that yes, is all about eating until you want to take off your tights, but also about sitting around and just talking while someone goes back for another round of potatoes. This Thanksgiving I am thankful for being among so many thoughtful people who are just as fascinated by food as I am and who I know will become close friends as time goes by. While I still cannot believe what is …

“Why Vermont?”

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Yesterday, I met Santa Claus. Well, not exactly. I met Carlo Petrini, who kind of reminded me of Santa for his mythical qualities. I feel like I could have gone up to the podium and sat on his lap and told him that all I wanted for Christmas was to save rare acorns in the world. With the assistance of a handy dandy simultaneous translation kit that looked like a stethoscope, Carlo engaged in some small talk with us new Masters students, provided a glimmer of hope in the midst of the doom and gloom of our food system today and offered some insight on being with the same 23 people all the time. He basically said it’s ok if you hate someone but you have to tell them to their face and then just get over it because we’re all here to talk about food. When my last name was appropriately pronounced in Italian (“air-eeeees”) I raised my hand, lied as usual and said that indeed I was from San Francisco (sorry not sorry) and then he asked the question …

The Universe in a Glass of Wine

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Above: the remnants of fraternizing with FC17 (secret code for the Master’s program that began in September). Say the word “Physics” and it brings back some very scary moments of my first year of high school thinking I would legitimately fail a test on waves or motion or similarly vague concepts that I never quite understood. But of course, here I am in graduate school in Italy, and in a lecture today on the “Interdisciplinarity of Gastronomy,” the professor brings up theoretical physics. WTF. Somewhere in the midst of a three hour ramble (with a 15 minute espresso break) that touched on various yet somehow related topics such as food waste, divestment and European laws regarding chocolate labeling, I perked up when I heard something about a guy named Richard Feynman, a Caltech professor who casually won a Nobel Prize in Physics in 1965 but also looks like he could have been a movie star. Am I right? The text below, excerpted from one of his Introductory Physics lectures, might be the most beautiful and accessible description of the sciences I have ever read. A poet …

The Week’s End

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What does one do in Bra on the weekends? Well, for starters, on Thursday night, go to a wine tasting with 3 local producers from Roero at the most wonderful/creative/bumpin’ place in town started by 2 graduates of UNISG: L’Alfieri. The synopsis: funky décor, innovative food, a coffee table full of intriguing magazines in languages I do not speak, guys with cool eyewear, solid jams (we’re talking a record player), cocktails. Check out their super cool video over on Vimeo. Speaking of wine, I have a lot to learn on that front. Like, for example, eat dinner and not just 2124 breadsticks before going to an “aperitivo” (7 PM snack and wine time) and then a wine tasting or else (serious) pain will follow the next day. My (extremely basic) knowledge of California wines and my go-to catchphrase, “Mmm, that’s nice” isn’t quite cutting it here. So, I am now a member of a wine bar. Yes, with my 2 euro contribution, I bought myself the right to order a glass of wine at La Carbonaia and have lovely, lengthy conversations with …

The Mind of a Chef

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Today I’m going to give a blow-by-blow of one of the most beautiful twenty-something minute bits of television I’ve seen recently: the “Spring” episode of The Mind of a Chef. This PBS show is a stream of gorgeous shots including musings from chefs about their creative process, their hangouts with other chef-friends and their local landscape. Season 3 is currently focused on Swede Magnus Nilsson, an exceedingly eloquent, creative long haired guy and head chef at Faviken who definitely likes to cook with butter. And hang out in fields of flowers while talking about eating icicles as a child. In the first part of the episode, Magnus invites his friend from Copenhagen with large glasses and a funny hat to come hang out at a dairy farm. Teeheehee, it’s milk! This is straight out of Kinfolk, people. After some time with the cows, it’s time for a cocktail. Not just any cocktail. One with huge crystal ball ice cubes, honey from his own bees and some fresh dandelion. Then it’s time for manly activity. Grilling fish with his bro and camping …

My last first day of school

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My snazzy new school ID, courtesy of one of the four sets of passport photos I had taken in Argentina for various bureaucratic processes and then accumulated. Today was the big day! And the sun was out. How glorious and polite of you, Mr. Sun. A good sign. We all cruised into school (which, remember, is a castle) for a 10 AM meetup/ introductions galore. But before any of the fun stuff began, we had to sign a lot of papers so that we could get health insurance! How very Italy! Shortly thereafter, several mentions of how to check your scores from exams were made. I was like, “Exams? Really? We haven’t even met any professors yet? Ok…” The next hour or so was spent on self-introductions. The who, what, where, when and why, if you will. Mysterious people who had not manifested themselves on our Master’s Facebook group were today revealed in real life. Guess who went first because she was sitting closest to the front? That would be me. It was so interesting to hear what …

#nonparloitaliano

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My frenemy, the Duolingo owl. One of the first things I learned to say in Italian was “I do not speak Italian.” That was closely followed by “I do not understand” and “I’m sorry!” In my first week here in Bra, I have devised an interesting formula for constructing sentences: English verbs + Spanish prepositions (mostly “para” because everything is “para”) + (very limited) Italian nouns, mostly relating to food (obviously). Otherwise, caveman communication is key. This involves lots of pointing and 3-4 word sentences such as “Per me, un cappuccino.” Luckily, my knowledge of Spanish allows me to pick out a few words in sentences. I get excited when I hear “quanto” or “verde” or “cena” or “sabato.” But then it’s my turn to speak…and nothing comes out… Will I come out of this year being fluent in Italian? Probably not. I definitely missed the boat on studying Italian at Midd or doing Language School. But for now, I’ve got the Duolingo app going. The owl with the stopwatch is cute until he starts crying. I also turned on my …

My blog, reinvented

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I hear you asking, “Where is Bra?” Also, “Are there a lot of lingerie stores there?” There are indeed several old lady lingerie stores here. The way the locals pronounce “Bra” though, they roll the “r” so intensely you would never think of underthings. After a very long hiatus in which this blog was not updated and therefore did not serve a purpose, I’ve thought a lot about what I want it to look like and how I want to organize it (if nothing else, as some of you know, I am a serial over-organizer). Here is a road map for what I intend this blog to look like for the next year while I live and study in Italy. LIFE IN BRA This will include anecdotes gleaned from daily life in a town of 30,00 inhabitants in northwest Italy. Examples include accidentally locking the trash room for my apartment building on the night before trash day and causing panic among the neighbors. GRAD SCHOOL What I learn in school. For some people, this stuff will be …

“So, why are you here?”

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This post is a (much) longer version of my response to this quite common icebreaker question. 6 months ago, almost to the day, I graduated from Middlebury College. For four years, I studied dictators and transitions to democracy in a teeny tiny New England town. I ran away to the Southern Hemisphere for a year and then came back for one more. Given that the full name of my major is probably the longest one ever invented, I just say I majored in Latin American Politics (the full details: International and Global Studies with a disciplinary focus in Political Science, regional focus in Latin America and language specialization in Spanish.) Phew, ok. So that happened. Two weeks after graduation, I was in Florence with my family on vacation, learning lots about Renaissance art and eating pasta and such as tourists tend to do. Given that I seem to get dressed the quickest out of all the members of my family, I was waiting outside by the pool at our hotel just kind of doing some mindless iPad wandering. And then, I thought (I …