Giulia's Continental Adventures

  We went to a cooking class to learn to make pizza and gelato. The teacher was a man named Giorgio and he used to own a restaurant. The first thing we did was make Gelato. The first step was to measure out the ingredients: sugar, cream, egg yolks, milk, a pinch of salt, and a touch of vanilla for flavor. It really did not have a flavor but that was fine.  Then we started working on the cat tongues. Cat tongues are a type of cookie in italy. In italian they are called lingue di gatto. The ingredients are: sugar, butter, flour, and egg whites. We used an icing bag to squeeze them into straight lines which made them look like cat tongues after they baked. This is why they have the name that they have. They tasted like sugar cookies.  They were really good with the plain gelato. The next thing we made was pizza. We made a batch of dough but then Giorgio gave us some of the dough that he had already made because the dough needs to rest overnight to be really good.  We made our dough in the

         Gelato week    Even though we have gelato daily when in Italy, this week we decided to map gelato places in our neighborhood in Florence.  This meant we got to go to different places every day and call it homework!!  Our goal is to go to five places, try flavors, rate them and write about it.   Our first stop was pasticceria Batoni. I had a cup with two flavors: chocolate and stracciatella. In case you didn’t read my blog where I define stracciatella, it’s like chocolate chip, but it has slices of chocolate throughout.  It was really creamy and the chocolate chips were huge! Overall it was pretty good. There were a good number of flavors and the outside seating was good.  Next we went to Slurp. The flavors I got were Chocolate Crisp and Stracciatella. The chocolate crisp had small, crunchy chocolate-coated crispies. The stracciatella had one giant chocolate chunk that was so big I had to bite it. I saved that part until the end and it was yummy. No other gelateria that I have

              A day in Florence  We are in Florence for a month YAY! :) This is what one of our days looked like. We went out to the other side of the Arno River to meet a friend and go into a church (where Galileo and Michelangelo are buried), but it was closed. But we also saw people setting up for a master chef Italy show! It was pretty cool. Then since the church was closed we went back to our side of the river and got gelato. I got chocolate and banana flavors, it was yummy. Then we climbed a mountain to see dad's favorite church in Florence but that was closed too. Even though I didn’t enjoy the climb, the view was pretty, especially when I looked out of a telescope. Later we went back to the first church and it was open now. We went inside and saw all the graves. It was actually kinda cool. It took us a little while to find Galileo's grave but we found it. I could not find Michelangelo’s grave (not the ninja turtle), but my mom pointed it out to me. Then my mother, broth

We stopped in Munich for an afternoon to see dad’s cousin and her husband.  We had lunch together. I ate a brizza. That is a Bretzel Pizza; Bretzel means Pretzel in German. The crust was made of Bretzel; it had cheese and tomatoes as toppings. It was not the best thing ever. The Mac & cheese was by far better. There were also Radishes that my dad's cousin ordered; they were covered in chives and really good. Overall the food in Munich was pretty yummy. I was looking forward to the food in Venice because it’s Italian food. The first night we got pizzas. My mom and I shared a margarita pizza with mozzarella on it. My brother and dad got a pizza that had meat and mushrooms on it. I did not like it. To me the sauce was bad but everyone else thought it was good. We got gelato in the morning and I got coffee and chocolate flavors. For lunch the next day I got spaghetti with cheese; it was delicious.  Then for dinner I got more spaghetti with bolognese sauce and of course CHEESE. Af