Baking with Chef Fil

I have never been one for cooking; the activity requires a bit too much forethought, patience and cleanup for my noggin.

However, in the past two weeks my ambivalence for cooking has been replaced with a passion for delicious, easy, and fast recipes. My constant companion in this has been allrecipes.com. My guinea pigs? Filippo and Dany. And it is only right that it should be so. Why, it's Fil's fault that my new hobby is so culinarily invasive! In love with the Disney flick Ratatouille, he wanted to make the french dish from which the film gets its name, which led me into the arms of allrecipes.com.

First attempt? Not a huge success...ends up I'm salt-hesitant. But the salted-up leftovers were fantastic! Ratatouille is a 100% veggie dish, normally composed of peppers, zucchini, eggplant, onions and tomatoes. Fil was sufficiently disappointed. But the Remy costume was satisfying.

Unhampered by my distaste of cleaning up, I have continued in my quest of discovering low-maintenance deliciousness. I have been hugely successful! I've already experimented with a second veggie dish, two chicken meals, and a pork roast. They were easy, fast and tasty.

Yesterday, I used my new interest in cooking to introduce my Italian family to pancakes! They tasted like pancakes! And they were wonderful with real maple syrup, imported directly from Krogers, USA.

Today, Fil and I wandered together into the land of baking. Once again media-inspired, Fil has been clamoring for American pie. He's a fan of Word World, an educational cartoon where everything and everyone is composed of letters, and they have multiple episodes with P-I-E, PIE! Unfortunately, he didn't quite grasp the concept that we didn't have to just find the letters "P," "I" and "E" and push them together for blueberry deliciousness. Even more unfortunately, I didn't realize that it wasn't the ingredient-equivalent of the letter-pushing until I was cutting butter into the crust mixture.

We have yet to try the pie, but the smell is divine. Next on the list: Cake Balls.

A Puzzler of a Summer

Where is my summer?! It has been a disgustingly pleasant 78 degrees for the past two weeks and I miss my sultry Italian summer! Filippo and I still have 10 more visits to the pool on our prepaid pool card! Dany and I haven't gone scuba diving since our first immersion. I want my summer back! Enough with this freak gorgeous weather.What have I been doing during this abnormal weather? Well, funny you should ask. Dany and I have been working on Part 1 of his 18,000 piece puzzle . We're almost done with the first leg, which is more than 4,500 pieces. I don't remember how big the puzzle will be when put together, but it easy covers a wall. These puzzles run for hundreds of Euros, but Dany has dreams of putting it together, fixing the whole thing up all fancy (with lights and plexiglass) and selling it for a king's ransom.

A Very Merry Birthday to Me!

I'm 25 years old! Doesn't that sound so adult? I balanced out my new adult-like age with some child-like antics yesterday, sneaking down the kid's waterslide at the pool and playing on the rope course at the park. I fight the inevitable march of time with regression tactics.

So, this blog is a bit behind the times (with the Times having marched a couple of weeks beyond my birthday), but still think my birthday should be commemorated with a post. It's kind of lame celebrating it in Italy -- where's my strawberry cake, damnit? I did have a very nice celebration, though. I went to a Sardinia cuisine restaurant with Dany (who gifted me with thousands of distractions via a shiny new smartphone) and our friends Marco and Vanessa. Wearing a beautiful new shirt-dress that Pam had bought me, we feasted on SO MUCH CHEESE. Sardinia is known for its Pecorino (goat cheese) and boy do they love that stuff. (I'm also a fan). Vane and Marco then gave me a beautiful set of earrings which went smashingly well with my new outfit. Birthday magic! (OR, everything-that-is-anything-in-Italy-is-a-variation-on-the-color-purple).

The whole week was awfully fun because Pam was off work. On Monday we had gone to the beach (where I picked up the rarest of rarities, a tan!). Tuesday we went shopping and ate at a Japanese buffet (delicious! They have a bar where the dishes circle around endlessly and you just pick up what you want, when you want it). Wednesday, we made Hawaiian pizza and then went to a super cool pool park (thus the waterslides alluded to in the first paragraph). What a great week!

That weekend (July 9/10), Dany's group, sfigher, had a song competition at the sea. What a wonderful weekend it was! The girlfriends went to the beach on Saturday while the boyfriends sound-checked. The actual concert was a spectacle! The stage was huge and alive with lights, and the show was very entertaining: comics, dancers, a beauty contest (gag), as well as the actual music competition. Sfigher knocked the socks off of everyone (except the judges, who must have brought extras) and they thoroughly enjoyed their crowd of 1,500. The next day, the sfighers and sfigherettes hit the beaches.

This past week I found myself on vacation! I spent the week cleaning and relaxing. It was a good week. I love summer in Italy.