Adventures in Eating

Being pregnant and travelling through Italy has advantages and disadvantages. The main disadvantage is missing out on a lot of great wine drinking and some raw cured meats, like prosciutto and salami. The advantage is I can eat as much as I want and not really be concerned about the calories. I also got out of eating some terrible strong licorice yesterday after finding out, per our guide, that it's not good for pregnancy (who knew?).

Tuesday we cooked our last but best meal yet. Our starter was a stuffed eggplant. The stuffing was made of ham, egg, breadcrumbs and cheese. We then finished it with a tomato sauce. We made homemade fusilli as our first course. The fusilli was a little more challenging. The pasta was rolled and cut into about two-inch slices, which you then smushed a thin rod into and rolled until it was thin. Our sauce was a tomato-based sauce with sausages and ribs and pig fat in it. The second course was a thinly pounded steak, which we rolled the leftover eggplant stuffing into (with the addition of ground beef) and cooked in a broth of onion, celery and white wine. The meal was fantastic from start to finish. Mom has commented how much the cooking reminds her of how her father used to cook.

We then took a little road trip to a town called Aieta on the top of a mountain on a very winding road. There was an old palace on top overlooking the hills. There were sheep and pig farms everywhere. We had a nice little tour guide from South Africa who had married an Italian. We then travelled to Praia, a little beach town, for the sunset.


Yesterday we were up at the crack of dawn to cross through the middle of the country to the east coast town of Ciro. We stopped along the way to visit a licorice factory and museum. The town smelled fantastic, but the fresh licorice was bitter and horrible. We stopped for lunch at an old convent and had a feast so big that we never made it to the second course. Every appetizer you can imagine was brought out to us - from meatballs to breaded mashed potatoes to spicy olives stuffed with tuna. Our first course was tortelloni filled with fresh truffles and another with mushrooms. We were too stuffed to get to the steak second course, so we decided to get back in the van. We moved on to the town of Ciro and hit a winery which covered over 250 acres. Mom even tasted a few different whites (without mixing them with Coke.) We then made our way to a castle on the beach about a half-hour from Catanzaro, where my great-grandmother was from, and I left a little bit of my gramma's ashes in the ocean. On the way back we passed through the actual town and I marvelled at the fact that it had tunnels through mountains and visually resembled parts of Pittsburgh, where, coincidentally, Gramma chose to settle. Today is our last free day in Calabria, so we will have dinner with our new friends Cristiano and Carmine before heading to Rome tomorrow. I fear for the buttons on my work pants when I get back.