Advertisement
Published: October 24th 2006
Edit Blog Post
At Sarah's birthday dinner...
I had some delicious gnocchi... So, last week I got home from school and went into the kitchen to say ciao to Lucia, and she was cooking dinner. She was explaining to me what she was cooking, and I thought she said ‘cavallo’, which is horse. She was telling me that because it has an odor after you cook it (una puzza), she had to put the pot outside. I was absolutely terrified that she was cooking smelly horse for cena, but little did I realize that, instead of cavallo, she had said ‘cavolofiore’ (I had only heard the ‘cavolo’ part), so I was quite relieved when she brought in a pot full of steamed cauliflower. Everyone had a pretty good laugh about it at dinner. So, when we sat down to dinner the next night, Lucia put a platter of something that I couldn’t quite identify, because to me it just looked like a plate of something fried (I was thinking maybe some fried veggies, maybe a little fried cavolofiore). Carlo told me that it was “fritto cervello di mukka,” which means ‘fried cow brain.’ I obviously thought that he must be joking, so I just sat there and giggled and said, “No really, what
is it?” (No, davvero, che cose’??). They all just looked at me and said, “No no, it’s really cervello di mukka.” To make sure that it just wasn’t a language problem or comprehension difficulty like the horse incident, I pointed to my head and let out a loud mooooo, and they were all like, “Si si, giusto!” While I sat there, unfortunately totally unable to hide my disgust, they all proceeded to dig into the large chunks of brain. They sat there munching and chatting (at times, they would take a big bite of fried brain, and brain would be spilling out of the fried piece remaining in their hands- it looked terrible). I just sat there for awhile staring at my plate and trying to gather up the courage to try it, but it just looked exactly as though I had taken the sheep brain we dissected last year in psychology class (Kel, I am still trying to figure out why a cheetah can run so darn fast), and dipped it in batter (I was trying to explain this to my host family, but unfortunately, “dissecto” is not really the word for dissect, as I had hoped, and at
the moment I also could not remember the word for sheep, so I again had to bring out the animal noises). Eventually, armed with bread and water to wash it down, I gathered the courage to take a bite and, while all I could really taste was the taste of something fried, the appearance and really soft, mushy consistency really nauseated me. Needless to say, one bite was enough for me to know that I do not like to eat cerebral matter. And I think I've been having a strange reaction to it, because I have been sporadically mooing these past few days...
We took a class trip this past weekend to Umbria, a region south of Tuscany. We left Saturday morning and our first stop was the ancient Etruscan town of Orvieto, which is built on a cliff (to get to the town, we took this funicular car up the mountain, which I found quite thrilling). We had a tour of the caves under the town which they used to make olive oil and breed the pigeons they raised for food and to sell. We had some free time to explore the city, which we did for a
little, but because it was a pretty rainy day (we were lucky to have been underground), we relaxed for awhile in a café and ate some lunch (Mom, they also had some pretty great pastries, and I’m warming my stomach up for when you get here... Last week I may or may not have bought a package of cookies from the supermercato and eaten the entire bag in one sitting while reading in the campo...). Then in the afternoon, we visited Orvieto’s Cathedral.
We left Orvieto to go to the agriturismo where we were spending the night. It was a beautiful place and the view of the foggy countryside was incredible. I stayed in a room with four wonderful girls, and we were so thrilled when we walked in and saw a queen sized canopy bed (although there were three twin sized beds and the queen bed for five girls, three of us really couldn’t resist sleeping in this large, luxurious bed with the curtain drawn around it). After they served us some afternoon tea, a few of us headed back to take a nap, waking up just in time for dinner. Now, dinner is an entirely different story. The
amount of food served to us by this place was really unbelievable-there must have been about nine courses. There was white wine and red wine, bread, then these different kinds of appetizer pastries, then little pizzas, then some different appetizer meats, then risotto with mushroom...pasta....chicken...potatoes....salad.... it just kept coming and coming. For dessert, we had tiramisu and some dessert wine, then we topped it all off with some after dinner fruit. I think we all had a little trouble moving afterwards.
On Sunday, we visited Assisi, but first, on the way we stopped off at the tiny town of Monte Castello di Vibio, where we had the pleasure of witnessing the smallest theater in the world (Il Teatro piu’ piccolo del mondo). I know, quite a tourist attraction....
We then spent the majority of the day in Assisi, which is one of my favorite towns I have visited so far. The Basilica di San Francesco was absolutely incredible, and I definitely could have spent many more hours there. On the way home we stopped off at a little town called Spello (the whole town smelled like flowers..), where we had some gelato before heading back to Siena.
This is
the last week of classes before fall break, and I’m getting very excited to see my parents!
(Side note for L.A.K.E.S.: My host brother always plays the classic ‘Paranoia’ song, and I really just want to break out in a crazy jumping dance each time. Also, you’ll all be happy to know that my unfortunate running habit is sticking with me, and I have on admittedly more than one occasion found myself doing the awkward, head down, Bryn Mawr jog to get the bus on time..)
Advertisement
Tot: 0.231s; Tpl: 0.013s; cc: 10; qc: 80; dbt: 0.0528s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb
Leslie Britt
Leslie
Haha
Unfortuntely I have not heard the paranoia song in paris, but I have done the bryn mawr run-sometimes it's just necessary (and I apologize for having made fun of you @ bmc ) congrats on eating the brain-i don't think i'll have to worry about being confronted with "cervello di mukka" because my host family doesn't even eat red meat. the worst thing I've had is paté. Tu me manques!