Excuse my handful-of-weeks-long absence from my blog, I haven’t had time to sit down and write because of my travel schedule. First, my parents came to visit me and we took a road-trip all over Italy. Second, I got back yesterday from a trip to Holland.
A few weeks ago I took the train to Roma Termini and then another to Frascati in the hills of Rome to meet up with the ‘rents. Going from the daily stress of being a foreign student in Padova to the familiarity of being in the Castelli Romani with my parents was like sliding into a bubbling jacuzzi after a day of heavy physical labor. All of the sudden I was completely relaxed.
We started out staying with the Favas, and, as usual, Toni Fava cooked up some fabulous meals including pasta with a creamy mushroom sauce and concord grapes (what!?) and a pasta carbonara that was by far the best carbonara I’ve had in my life. We also went into Roma centro one night to go to a restaurant called Stil Novo (Romanesco for stilo nuovo or “new style”) with two of my dad’s collegues and their wives. We had four courses -none of which I could finish- each more delicious than the last. My favorite, hand’s down, was a shish kebab with nuggets of rare beef, on-top of which thin sheets of lard were melted, and roasted chestnuts. During the day we gave into our nostalgia for the times that we lived there and took drives around the Castelli. We ate fragolini (tiny strawberries) in Nemi, porchetta (delicious slices of a whole-roasted herbed and spiced pig) in Torre Jacova, and granita di café (basically a coffee slushy) in Roca di Papa.
Another especially exciting day we helped out with the olive harvest at casa Fava. They invited physically able friends to help them, enticing their unpaid workers with the vision of a large lunch banquet and the opportunity to take part in a tradition that is as old as time. First thing in the morning my mother and Liz spread nets under the trees, after which we spent hours brushing off the olives with little hand-held rake tools. Toni was in charge of using this contraption that vibrated the branches to get the olives at the tippy-tops of the trees. It was slightly uncomfortable how many vibrator jokes were being tossed around by my parents and Toni and Liz, but hey, I would’ve joined in on the humor if it hadn’t been my parents. Once the olives were collected we took them to a rustic frantoio (olive-press) where they separated the leaves, ground up the olives, squeezed the liquid from the olive-paste produced, then separated the oil from the water. The oil is like nothing you’d ever find in America. You can’t even find that quality of oil in the stores here. I was really excited to bring the oil back to Padova though because many of the Italian students have oil that their father or grandfather make with their own olives so I was very happen to level the culinary playing field.
SO. MANY. OLIVES.
See the olive rake?
Also, I just really like this picture of my mama...
Two beautiful things about this picture: 1. the gorgeous stream of olive oil
2. the classic old Italian man surveying his product.
From the Favas my parents and I embarked on a road-trip to Padova so they could see where I live. We picked up my old friend Carlye in Bologna on the drive up north so that she could join in on the free meals and comfort of once again having parental figures around. We only had one night in Padova and spent the following morning walking around the daily farmers markets in the historic center. The next day we drove more north to Trieste, which I found vaguely similar to San Francisco, due to the look of the narrow apartment buildings built upwards and the trolleys that roll up and down the windy streets. While my dad worked, my mother and I walked throughout the city, mostly window-shopping, but also stopping to see a Roman ampitheater and some beautiful piazzas.
Next we drove onwards to Lago di Garda, staying at a hotel right at the edge of the still as glass lake. The town seemed surreal because no one was out and there was no wind swaying the boats. The absence of the clanging of the boats and the splash of water was so strange that it felt like an episode of the twilight zone. The next day, however, people were out walking in the streets and the shops were open so we took advantage of the high-quality merchandise, buying a couple of beautifully crafted leather bags and a bunch of artigianal chocolates. Then we hit the road back to Rome, stopping only to eat and to buy some balsamic vinegar in the city in which it originated, Modena. Back at the Favas we ate more scrumptious meals and I said goodbye to my parents. It was a fabulous trip: I ate, I travelled, I saw my parents, and I went back to Padova with so many goodies that I needed one of their suitcases. Funny enough though, after they left I felt my first pangs of homesickness since arriving in Italy.
HOLLAND POST IS PENDING don’t fret.
Oh, and there are more pictures of Trieste, Lago di Garda, etc... but I have yet to get them since my parents have them all.
