Oktoberfest!

In 3 weeks, I will be in Munich for Oktoberfest!  We have had this trip planned for about a week now, but I can't stop thinking about it, I can't wait.  This year is the 200th anniversary of Oktoberfest, I guess they are planning a special opening ceremony but we will not be there until the third weekend (Oct. 1-3).  We will be taking a bus from Florence to Munich, leaving at 11:30 PM Thursday night, so we arrive Friday morning.  Of course, we will be attending Oktoberfest, but there are other things that we'd all like to do, like visit a concentration camp, take a bike tour of Munich, go to some museums, etc.  So we will be doing quite a bit besides just Oktoberfest.  Soooo excited for this, here is a link of my itinerary...  http://bus2alps.com/uploads/mandators/11/tours/156/info-en.pdf

Cooking Class

So I had my first Italian cooking class last night, and it did not disappoint.  The class is taught by an older woman who moved here from Iowa 35 years ago.  She married an Italian man and has 3 kids.  And they also have a few American kids staying with them for the semester.  She does the class in her home kitchen, so it was pretty cool to see a real Italian home.  She's an incredible cook, and I've already learned a lot about cooking.  For the first class, we made a roasted turkey breast stuffed with pancetta, which is like bacon.  We also had green beans, pizza, focaccia, and a black raspberry desert pie.  Oh, and the best part was the soup called Pasta e Ceci.  It was a thick soup made with chickpeas and pasta, and it was probably the best soup I've ever had.  She makes everything from fresh ingredients, and you can definitely tell by the taste of the food.  She handed out cook books to everyone with all the recipes we will be using in class, along with some other information like cooking tips, history, Italian translations, etc.  Awesome class, I will definitely be making these recipes when I come home, and I'm sure Gramps will think they're tasty.  Buona serata!

Cooking class

I completely forgot to mention this earlier, but I signed up for an Italian cooking class last week.  It will be every Tuesday for 6 weeks (I think 6? maybe 8).  It starts tomorrow night.  It's somewhat expensive, but I rationalized it by figuring in the fact that we will get free meals once a week in class.  But most importantly, this experience will be PRICELESS. Learning to cook Italian food, in Italy?  How many people get that chance?  Can't wait for class tomorrow!

Central Market

Shopping today at the Central Market...
1.5 kg of beef (3.3 pounds)
10 peaches
5 kiwis
2 oranges
2 limes
.5 kg green beans
6 tomatoes
a bunch of asparagus
enough lettuce for all of us to have a giant salad tonight

Total: 21 euro, or approximately 4 euro's each.

4 euros each????? you can't beat that!
Gramps would love this place!

Chianti!

Just got back from Chianti trip with Palazzo Rucellai (that's the school I'm attending here).  For those of you who don't know, Chianti is a region of Tuscany, and the wine is named after the region where it is produced.  Absolutely amazing place we went to, it was in the hills of Tuscany, one of the most beautiful places I've been to.  I'll be uploading pictures on Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/brendan.coburn) of the trip.  First we took a tour of a small castle that used to be owned by the Pazzi family, made famous by the Pazzi Conspiracy.  It is now owned by someone else, and they grow grapes and olives on the land and produce red wine, balsamic vinegar, and olive oil.  They had tons of wine barrels in the basement, once again, pictures of them will be on Facebook.

The tour guide taught us a bit of interesting information about olive oil, some of which was new to me.  Extra virgin olive oil is essentially the first press of oil that is extracted from the olives, nothing is added, nothing is filtered, you could eat it straight from the machine.  Look for "first cold press".  The other stuff you find in the stores, labeled just "Olive Oil" or even "Virgin Olive Oil" is not nearly the same thing.  Long story short, the extra virgin variety is healthy, the others are not, and there are even variations within the extra virgin category that make some better than others.  What was interesting, though, was that the tour guide mentioned that the United States government recently declared that consuming up to 2 tabelspoons of olive oil is heart healthy.  What the US government didn't include in that recommendation is the key words "extra virgin".  The reason they did this was so that they didn't discourage people from buying all the varieties of olive oil that are sold in stores.  Just another example that the government food recommendations, that includes the food pyramid, are NOT created to make you healthy.  Their main purpose is to encourage sales of the products that the US agriculture system produces.  It's extremely refreshing to learn from people who aren't from the US and aren't basing their knowledge on what the American government says is right.  In Italy, everyone knows what extra virgin means.  Sorry, that was a bit of a rant, I tend to get a bit fired up about these things lol.

Ciao!

Great tour today

For my history class, our professor took the class on a tour of the immediate area near the school and also the Central Market, which is by far the best place to buy food.  We went into various small shops that sell bread, paninos, etc.  When we first arrived at the Central Market, Dr. Fischer told us to wait while he ordered us food from a street vendor; he didn't want us to know what he was making us eat.  We tried it, and most of it thought it was great.  It turns out it was actually cow stomach.  More precisely, it's the cow's 4th stomach (they have 4 total), and it is called lampredotto.  It was very delicious, I'll probably be getting some every time I go to the market.  We also learned all sorts of things about the meat they sell in the market, and the various meats they eat in Italy that they do not eat in America.  They use every part of the animal in Italy... they sell everything from pig's feet, cow's tongue, cow's nerves, chicken hearts... everything else you could imagine.  They also had a huge area full of all fresh vegetables and fruit, they had a guy who sold all sorts of nuts and dried fruit, a balsamic vinegar and wine shop, and more.  It is pretty much the only place you need to shop for food, the only problem is that it closes at 2pm every day and we don't get out of class until 2:30. 

Finally able to work out!

So the gyms here in Florence are wayyyy too expensive.  the cheapest we could find was $60 a month.  And I don't have money for that.  On top of that, this wrist injury is still lingering, just won't go away... so I can't do pushups with my hands flat on the ground, and definitely can't do handstand pushups.  Finally we bought a yoga mat today so I can do some pushups with my fists with the cushioning of the mat.  And we got resistance bands so we can work with those.  Just finished a short workout using these new tools... I definitely miss the weights in the gym but I suppose this will have to do for now.  And now for dinner!  We are making ravioli dinner tonight (fresh ravioli) with the nightly bread and olive oil appetizer, salad with real aged balsamic, and of course a 1.5 liter bottle of red wine that I could have paid for with the change in our couch.  Ciao ragazzi!

And by the way, feel free to leave comments on my blog posts, I don't know you guys realized you could do that.