Meatloaf in Italy!

January 31, 2011

This morning Danielle and Marissa went to the school a tad earlier than usual so they could print out their boarding passes and information for their trip to London which is coming up in a couple of weeks. As Lauren and I were about to leave the house Lauren gets a call and it’s Marissa saying that our Italian teacher Gloria is sick and we don’t have class! Score! However, not having class til 10:45 makes for a late start to the day, so now that we didn’t have to go to the school til 1:30 in my case, and 4:00 in the other girls’ case, we had no clue what to do with ourselves! But last night before we went to bed Marissa and I were talking about dinners that we could make this week, so we all decided to go to the market and get some fruit (because stocking up on Vitamin C is still necessary in the sick household!) and look for the different ingredients we needed for our dishes. Marissa has decided to make meatloaf, mashed potatoes, and corn for tonight, while I have decided to make chicken croissants with green bean casserole for my dinner tomorrow night. 

We looked around the market for the meat, but we thought that buying meat at a supermarket is probably going to be cheaper, so we headed to Conad and looked at their meat selection there and Marissa was able to buy about 1ish pounds of ground beef for 2.50 euro and I found packs of 6 chicken legs for 3.20 euro…we thought that seemed like a lot more reasonable prices. I couldn’t find croissants because here in Italy we don’t have Pillsbury rolls of croissants or biscuits like at home, so I ended up buying these little rolls that looked like croissants and thought I could just stuff the pre-baked roll because I don’t think I really have any other options. Everyone was able to get everything they needed, but I still couldn’t find any cheddar cheese for my croissants! So after we came back home and dropped off all of our groceries I headed back to the market and looked again at the cheese stand when this woman started speaking to me in English – I must have had a look of concern on my face, and she could definitely tell I wasn’t Italian – so I asked her if she had any cheddar. She said she only had one block of cheddar that was approximately .436 kilograms, which is about one pound of cheese. I figured that one pound was about 2 cups, which is how much I needed, if not a little more than that, so I she started wrapping it up for me and she gave me the cheese and she told me it was 9 euro! Holy crap! Cheese here is so stinking expensive, and I guess for a cheese that is pretty rare around here that was a good price, but still, I don’t think I’m going to be making anything else with cheddar cheese! 

I brought the cheese home and then headed back to school by myself for Comparative Media. Once we all got into the classroom Fabio told us that we were going to watch a movie, so I got all excited, but then he told us we were watching Fahrenheit 451 and I got a little bummed – we read Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 in high school and I didn’t mind the book a whole lot, but then we also watched the movie after we read the book and the movie is so old and crazy that the movie kinda ruins the book for me. But we watched the movie (well most people we were in and out of sleep), and luckily I sat by Ryan who kept me entertained throughout the movie because we would make fun of different things all throughout the movie. Watching a movie in a small little class really made me feel like I was back in high school again! In European Issues nothing really new happened, but I signed up for my presentation on March 9^th, and my presentation will be about Turkey’s ruler. Each kid in the class has to make a presentation on one of the people on this list of leaders in Europe or the European Union, and the presentations are all throughout the semester. The first presentation is on Italy’s prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, which is Wednesday. 

On our way home from school walking down one of the main roads before the Duomo we heard this crazy noise in the street and the closer we got we saw about 15 men dressed in these baggy pants and crazy outfits dancing and chanting and playing music. Danielle, Lauren, Courtney (Lauren’s best friend), and I were all laughing when all of a sudden one of the guys grabbed Danielle’s arm and started swinging her around and around and she’s screaming my name for me to help her, so I start going towards her when all of a sudden I get sucked in and this guy is spinning me around and around and around. We finally like break free when all of a sudden they change the direction and grab our other arms and swing us around and around until the song ends. We walk away and are extremely dizzy and can’t walk straight and I didn’t stop laughing for at least 5 minutes. Like nowhere in Kent would I be able to walk down the street and get sucked into dancing with this group who is chanting and playing music on the side of the street – I love Italy! 

Danielle and I stopped at a Tabacchi shop because I was told in some of them you can find folders and Danielle was thinking about buying stamps – we realized that the Tabacchi stores are like gas station stores with the most random things in them! Neither of us found what we were looking for, but on our way out we saw this checker board that had shot glasses instead of the round checker pieces..how funny is that! We were almost home when Marissa calls me screaming, “WHERE ARE YOU GUYS!? DINNER IS READY!” We walked in the door and it smelt HEAVENLY in our apartment. Danielle and I both rushed to put our stuff away and get to the table because Marissa had the table set with the food all ready – it looked and smelled and tasted so delicious! We laughed though because we thought it was funny to eat such a comforting American dish in Italy, but of course we don’t care! Earlier in the week I found spicy ketchup at Conad and put that on my meatloaf..it was so so so good! We praised Marissa’s cooking skills and her and Danielle claimed they ate so much they couldn’t move, so I did dishes and cleaned everything up. As soon as I finished wiping off the table Marissa and Danielle told me to put my shoes on…it was time for gelato! Of course I couldn’t resist and the guy at the gelato shop down our street of course knows us by now because we are there all the time, but we discovered this cone in there that is 15 euro and is HUMUNGOUS and I said that the last day I’m here I’m going to buy it and devour the whole thing…everyone is holding me to it!