Month: March 2015

What a Weekend

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Gotta love your yogurt with an “h.” And someone telling you that fat is “what you need.” This weekend, I embraced the spring sunshine. I broke out the shorts, went for a 3 hour walk, read outside, sipped cocktails outside… Unfortunately the sunshine didn’t embrace me. Well, maybe it did… too much. I have an itchy sunburn. I admit, I was ambitious. But it was worth it. On Friday afternoon, we wrapped up class around 3, so after a sweaty bike ride back to Bra, it was time for some delicious drinks on my friend Vibe’s balcony. Living on the ground floor, I lack the luxury of a balcony, but she has more than enough space for some raspberry G&Ts, good tunes and friends. The theme of balconies continued throughout the evening, as we headed over to another student’s apartment for an aperitivo and to see the sunset. Note: this place was about 2 minutes walking from Chez Kati, but about 5 stories up. Wow. Saturday was a day for spring cleaning, prepping a new batch of kombucha …

The Supergas Have Spoken

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I purchased these new babies last weekend in Torino because I saw we might creep up into the low 70s (sorry for my Celsius-reading friends) soon. Plus my black ones are looking tired. The one key item I forgot to pack in my suitcase when I came to Bra: an umbrella. Turns out that the 10 euro one I picked up somewhere here in my first week has come in handy. So have my rain boots, which I did remember to bring, and for which I have received numerous comments such as, “Aren’t those heavy?” (yes, sort of) and “It was such a good idea to bring those!” (yes, I know). It rains A LOT here. Ok, I do come from a drought-prone state. But still. Something that has become an integral part of my day is biking to school. Now, I didn’t grow up in a bike-friendly city and I didn’t have a bike at college, so I don’t really have the bike spidey sense that you should really have in this town where pedestrians and …

March 2015

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An illustration from one of my new favorite columns, Food & Consequences by Aaron Thier on Lucky Peach’s website. While this image accompanies a piece on super silly spicy chilies, it also kind of reflects the fire-y frenzy with which I have been attempting to soak in so many forms of written work lately. Read on.  Lists are something that I don’t do quite often on this blog. So today, this semi-spring-y Thursday where I should be paying attention to the temporal dominance of aromas in Wine Sensory Evaluation class but rather am writing this blog post nd researching trendy London locations, is the day! Attention all: I have recently revamped my Chrome bookmarks bar. I also have finally gotten into using Pocket, so now I can keep track of the thingamabobs that I want to read later. But anyways, enough about my organizational tendencies. I want to share some of the things I’ve been reading lately. Mark Bittman put out a column yesterday called “Stop Making Us Guinea Pigs” about how an arm of the WHO identified an active ingredient in …

So Close but Yet So Far: Torino

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The scene of the crime from the power-people-watching seat: the dining room at the gorgeously renovated Del Cambio. A twenty-ninth birthday needed celebrating. What to do, what to do? Go to Turin for the weekend. An hour away on the train is totally reasonable, but the problem is that the last one back to Bra is at 8:30. So to avoid pulling a Cinderella in the pumpkin missing her shoe kind of move, we booked an Airbnb for a couple nights. And went to a Michelin star restaurant. In the days leading up to the meal, we pondered the tasting menus online, one of us gasped at the wine list (I don’t know enough “yet” to be at that stage) and we fretted over our outfit selection. On the big night, we savored an array of beautifully plated and delicate dishes (fish! gnocchi made from breadcrumbs! marscapone and sea urchin! steak tartare!), rosé, the most pleasantly non-oaky Chardonnay I have ever tasted, little trays of beet chips, homemade chocolates and so much more. I will say that this is one …

Go for the Goat

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The scene of the crime: Azienda Agricola Monte Jugo in Viterbo, Lazio, Italy. Pietro, our fearless tutor (not like someone that helps you get good grades, more like the person who made sure we stayed 23 people all week) on the left and Ferdinando, the owner, on the right. Yesterday and the rest of today will be filled with a seminar on “Enogastronomical Communication” (translation: Food Writing) with Corby Kummer, senior editor at The Atlantic and author of several books on making coffee. I passed Amazon links said books along to a coffee-crazed friend, noting that a lot of ground has been covered in the last 10 years and it seems now that things that were once reserved for chemistry class are not being used to brew a cup of joe. If nothing else, this man has presence. He positioned himself on top of a desk, no powerpoint in sight, with his legs crossed, showing off his 50 shades of grey socks, and we began to discuss our first of three assignments. 1. Select a 1-2 …

It’s for School, I Swear

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Out in the school’s didactic garden as part of our Biodynamic Agriculture class learning what to look for in healthy soil. Not pictured: when an earthworm (a positive thing in this context) wriggled around and caused one of my classmates to shriek. Yes, I have been traveling oodles lately. But I have also been in school. Though, by the looks of these pictures, it may seem more like I’m just frolicking around eating stuff and meeting cool people. Well, that’s kind of how I would describe the University of Gastronomic Sciences anyways. It’s only 10 years old (and remember, it’s in Italy) so it doesn’t really have the traditions or structure that an older, wiser institution would have. But if you think of it, as I do, as a physical place where experts come to share little tidbits for a few days at a time with a crazy group of 23 Masters students, then you’re golden. For an Editing Techniques class a few weeks ago, we had to make a short movie promoting “fresh and …

Lyon: The Food Capital of France

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I don’t speak French so I’m not quite sure what I purchased inside Les Halles. I went for the “judge a book by its cover” method and it turned out pretty ok. So, this trip was a while ago now (scusa), but I did indeed cross the border and go to France. By car. We went under a tunnel connecting the two countries. There was no passport check. I did not drive. The weather was a little bit less than desirable, but that didn’t stop the triumphant trio (I’m working on a name with the same zing as dynamic duo but applying to three individuals) from having a wonderful weekend together. First, I will let y’all in on my new go-to weekend travel consultant: the NYT 36 Hours column. If you are arriving somewhere on a Friday evening, want to have a nice dinner and a drink, get cultured the next day, walk around, again eat well and drink well, and then maybe have a market excursion on Sunday morning, this is a wonderful guide. Also, The …

Food, Friends and Firenze

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Whoever led the re-design of the Mercato Centrale Firenze is just a genius. Seriously. I have yet to see visual projects like this one in Italy. Perhaps I am thinking like Food Communication Masters student! Gasp! Last weekend, I headed down to Firenze on the sleek and speedy Freciarossa train to see the female members of the Laub clan, friends from California who happened to converge in my current country of residence for a week and invited me down for the weekend. Robin knows what’s going on, so obviously her pre-trip research (and multi-page printed itinerary) led us to some good spots. On Saturday morning, we took a 40 minute walk to a bakery called Pasticceria Giorgio. Now, I must say, I love walking probably more than the next person and my Supergas were ready for duty, but we were mostly in residential neighborhoods during the jaunt which made me a little but unsure of the final destination. Let me tell you, this place was the real deal. No Trip Advisor stickers, no English spoken (this …

Roaming Rome: Part Two (The Study Trip)

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Bagnoregio: a semi-crumbling city above the clouds about one hour outside Rome. From the other side, I had a really weird deja vu moment where I felt like I was looking out over the Golden Gate Bridge. Oh, California. Our second of five (yes, five) study trips took us to Lazio (the region of Rome) and more specifically to the town of Viterbo, which for a small place, is surprisingly happening on the Slow Food side of things. Brief recap: what is a study trip? Brief answer: an opportunity to meet food producers and members of the Slow Food community, eat lots of cheese and cured meat and feel like you are in middle school once again, among other things. On a semi-related note, let me tell you folks, TRAIN is the way to go for regional travel in Italy. No disgruntled airport workers telling you to throw out you 100mL shampoo bottles because there is no label on it. No stress with lost suitcases.  Anyhoo. I am learning that the essential parts of a study trip …

Roaming the Non-Tourist Version of Rome

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A vegan chocolate store in Rome? You said what? Ok. I know I’ve dropped the ball big time here. It’s been almost a month since I posted anything. Yikes. Scusa. But the thing is, I have just been zooming around. Mostly meeting people from the triennale (undergraduate program) and then traveling with the dynamic duo of Urmila and Vibe. I haven’t really been in a place mentally to sit down in this particular chair in my apartment to put together my experiences, photos and ramblings in one spot. I hesitate to say, “I have been busy” because I know that would push the friends who already are sending me love/hate vibes from their skyscraper office jobs while I am in class learning what theobroma cacao is more towards the hate side. But really. I have been pushing myself almost every single day to just get out there and to go against my more introverted nature a bit. I’ve had a drink with the director of my Masters program, hosted dinner parties, eaten empanadas around an open fire at a street food night, …