Brain Food

Whoever said "absence makes the heart grow fonder" must have known what it's like to be without internet for 3 days. I never realized how much I love writing this blog until it was taken away! Which I suppose would be the cloud's silver lining. [I swear, I'm not trying to jam as many adages into one post as I can.]

Sunday was spent sleeping and studying. Yup, finals week in Italy ain't so different from finals week at home! Except for at Converse I don't walk by the Duomo on my way to take it or go to Sergio's for lunch afterwards...alright, so it's a little different.

All that studying required some serious brain food:

 Chocolate-orange yogoats

Arugula + cannellini beans + pecorino + balsamic.

My brain felt better.

My roommate Alaina's parents got here (on Mother's Day - che carina!) and generously invited all of us out to dinner with them! We went to Ristorante Aqua al 2, recommended by API and my roommate Sam who went here early on in the semester. They are known for their "samplers" - of salads, pastas, meats, and dessert. If you order a sampler, they bring you 3 different dishes, chosen at random. I split a salad sampler and a pasta sampler with my roommate. I snapped a picture of the salads, but even my beloved LuLu couldn't quite get a clear shot (stupid restaurant lighting...):

From left to right: corn with cherry tomatoes, mixed greens with tuna and capers, and fennel with chicken and radicchio. I think the fennel one was my favorite - I liked how it was hard to tell the chicken apart from the fennel, it made for an interesting presentation.

The pasta samplers were not in any way photogenic or pretty, and they were passed so quickly it wasn't worth the picture. The first pasta was fusilli (the spiral pasta) in a creamy green sauce (probably pesto) with what we think was tuna. It was good, probably my favorite of the 3. The second was farfalline (little bow ties) in a tomato sauce with mushrooms - good, but kind of blah and unimaginative. The third was a little hard to tell - it was rigatoni in a sauce that I thought was sun-dried tomatoes and eggplant but we couldn't tell if there was meat in it. I checked the menu again online and I'm pretty sure it was just veggies, but it's Italy - chi sa? (who knows?) Either way, it was very tasty - definitely had red wine in the sauce. You know that rich, deep flavor that you get when you cook with wine? Mmmm. Not just for drinking! There was a cannelloni (big tube pasta) stuffed with ricotta and spinach which was good, but again, nothing special. Not bad - but nothing I couldn't find at home pretty easily.

The meal itself was not fantabulous perse, but this was one of those instances where the atmosphere and company was so nice, it was a truly pleasant dining experience. Thank you Alaina's parents!!!

Afterwards, we went to Grom. No explanation necessary.

Melone + fiordilatte di menta (basically, creamy mint)

New May flavors!!!

I LOVED this combo!!! I've had melon with mint leaves sprinkled on top, and this was the perfect recreation of that in gelato form. I have no idea why they work so well - they are both really sweet, but I think it's something about the cool mint and the fruity melon that just...works.

Study, study, study...

~Namaste~