The Old Trams

Some of the trams in Milan are quite new and slick, some of the trams are pretty awesome and old.



While the 2 is old and grotty, the 1, the 23, and the 33 at least have a real vintage feel. They have great, original-looking wooden interiors. Wooden benches, varnished to a high shine, sliding windows, and glass lamps.



I really love the lamps. They look like they belong at an old lunch counter or something.



While the surface trams here are pretty slow, I still like taking them. Especially these ones with the vintage interiors. But I even like taking the 2, screeches and all, because I like seeing the city. You feel like you're getting to know the town. It's good people-watching, too.

New Food

I adventured on my recent visit to Penny and got a lot of stuff I've never tried before. Some of it is predictable stuff. Like carrots, couscous, Merlot, and corn. Can I just say I have been upset by the lack of fresh corn here? You see the corn fields on the commuter rail, not more than a few miles outside of the city, but nary an ear at the farmers' market. What's the deal with that?



The other stuff was a little more unpredictable: some fresh spaghetti alla chitarra, new cheese, these Mulino Biano Flauti, and some more of the "Ciao" series of yogurt.



I tried the Ciao Grecia already. Honey and walnuts. Good, but perhaps a little sweeter than I would have liked (as with most of the yogurt here). The fresh spaghetti was delicious but pretty much standard pasta, so no complaints!

More Taste Tests

I am not sure what I think about Italian packaged pastries in general. The preservatives they use are always detectable in the flavor palette. These Flauti from Mulino Bianco are an OK idea otherwise. The cake is soft enough, and the filling is an alright plain cream. I am not wild about them, but it won't be awful to eat the rest of the box.



This cheese was pretty good! Camoscio d'Oro is sort of like a mild brie. I was eating it on hot rolls. I would definitely go for this again.



I should really have more cheese adventures. There are lots of exciting cheeses out there and they are pretty cheap in Italy, but... it's bad for me and I have no one to share the hunks of cheese with!

Weekend Drinks

When I got home on Saturday, the sunset was pretty great. I couldn't quite capture the redness of the sunset, but it was great.



On Sunday I lolled about the house a bit, but escaped in the afternoon for shopping with Ali Mo from down the street.



We ended up having aperitivo at Bhangrabar on Corso Sempione. I went for a coconut drink, and Ali went with one with cardamom liqueur. I do like the drinks there a lot, and the vegetarian selections at the aperitivo, while limited, are very good.

Faro Voltiano

You can perhaps tell that Alessandro Volta was the favored son of Como because there's an awful lot of stuff named after him. Like this lighthouse, the Faro Voltiano.



Yes, it's a lighthouse. On top of a mountain? I mean, yes, it's near a lake, but it is not a useful device, just a monument. That said the view from up there is quite nice. Almost worth hiking up a giant hill then climbing a few hundred stairs for. I kid, I liked it!



It's a cool spot to see the west fork of the lake. The guys liked it too.



It happened to work out that we caught the end of a large speed boat race on the lake while were up at the lighthouse. There were seven or so of these large racing boats, catamarans perhaps fifty feet in length. Lots of helicopters were out there covering the race, too.



And this was pretty much our last activity in Como for the day. We headed down the lighthouse, down the hill, and down the Funicular to the train station to head back to our respective homes. And I am pretty sure we were all tired!

Going up the Funicular

The other main attraction of our day in Como was taking the Funicular up to Brunate. You can see the path of the Funicular up the side of the mountain in this picture. If you squint, you can see the two cars going up and down. The two cars are on one cable, they share one track up to a point where it splits. It's like an elevator with a counterweight.



This time our car stopped at the intermediate stop, Como Alta. It's cute!



Riding in the Funicular, you can't help but get excited. Anteneh and Wahyudin both were able to get free tickets with their Lombardia tickets...



Here's a video of the drive wheel of the Funicular.



The end of the funicular is Brunate!

Voltian Temple

My pick for our trip to Como on Saturday was to visit the inside of the Tempio Voltiano, the museum dedicated to Alessandro Volta. Yesterday's picture is of the outside of the temple. It's a pretty small museum, but pretty nice! I always love the details from these old places. These chains around the outside of the museum had a great look.



Now, the inside of the temple has two parts, the downstairs has a lot of experimental equipment used by Volta, and the upper floor gives Volta's history. My favorite was the downstairs! I'm sharing this photo of eudiometers because I didn't know what they were... but I figured it out. It's for measuring volume change in gases. So, you get the gases in there, then, submerge the base into a liquid. And then, you do whatever to the gas. These ones looked like Volta would use a spark to ignite whatever was in there. The fluid rises (or falls) based on the chemical change leading to volume change. So, that's what they are.



There were lots of different, hard to understand experimental devices, including static generators, Leyden Jars, electrometers, and various things. One of the weirdest was the animal experiments with muscle contractions. There were lots of frog legs in weird poses attached to weird things for stimulating them with electrical currents...



Of course, the main draw is the batteries, since that's what Volta is most famous for. There were dry stacks, and lots of really great electrolyte batteries. The biggest one was 54 cells.



The temple itself did have a lovely interior, too.



So, just to answer the unspoken question, this is all here because Volta was from Como, and actually did a lot of his work there. I think he was actually born in Brunate, up on the hill...

Another Crazy Busy Weekend!

I've been having another crazy busy weekend. Yesterday I went to Como with Anteneh and Wahyudin. Anteneh lives there, and Wahyudin has never visited. I have so many photos... but let me just start you off with this one of the guys in front of the Tempio Voltiano, our first stop for the day.



More to follow, I promise!

Hey Hey Hey, Aperitivo Every Day

On Thursday, Christoper stopped by my office for surprise aperitivo with him, Praskovia, Alessandro, and Elena. Supposedly it was to celebrate one of his labmate's thesis submission, but that guy didn't even come. As usual, I think it was just a standard Christopher excuse to go to aperitivo at Ciu's.



A good time as usual. I branched out and tried a new drink, the Papa Hemingway: ginger ale, golden rum, Angostura bitters, maybe something else? I will have to check next time I go. Served with pineapple. Very easy to drink, with some decent taste from the ginger ale and bitters.

Oh, and on Friday, I saw the Google street view bike cart! Sorry the picture's not great, it took me a second to notice it passing my building and realize what it was. It's a tricycle cart, technically. Besides the guy peddling, there was also a campus security guard walking along side. So not going very fast, really...

Centrale FS

Centrale is a big old building with a heavy concrete feel. There are giant, stylized horses, lion heads, and the like. It's sort of Art Nouveau, sort of Art Deco, and all sort of fascist. (Really, Mussolini had a lot of influence on the design.) This fountain has always made an impression on me. I can't tell if this face has an evil grin or is grimacing in pain. The teeth especially are strange.

Gorgonzola

It's a place, not just a cheese. Actually, the cheese comes from that place. And that place is on the subway system of Milan! On Sunday, I went to Gorgonzola for the Sagra Nazionale del Gorgonzola. Essentially, the Gorgonzola cheese fest.



I joined up with Tommi, Ali, Linda, and Monica, and met their fun friends Gemma and Carlo. We all ate lots of great cheesy food! Here, we're eating gnocchi in gorgonzola cream with walnuts and grapes, and pizza gorgonzola!



We headed back to town after filling ourselves with cheese, and headed over to do some browsing at La Rinascente. Linda wanted to see these Marc Jacobs mouse shoes!



The Duomo was light up that evening, which I always like to see. They don't light up the stained glass every night, and I don't know the schedule, but I suspect that it's just on the weekends?



For dinner we went to L'Altra Taverna, a Neapolitan pizza restaurant. I figured it would be good since it was Tommi's choice. (I always trust Tommi's restaurant and wine picks, he's a pro after all.) But it was amazing! Tommi recommended the stuffed crust pizza. It looks small on my plate, right, but I could not finish it. It's like a pizza with a calzone crust. To stuff the crust, they use ricotta with porcini mushrooms blended in. It's so creamy and delicious, and so filling! I will definitely be going again...

Saturday Night is Party Night

This was a busy weekend for me! Besides the Watermelon Times, I also had some socializing to do. Saturday night it was Ali's birthday party. That's him and his lovely fiancee, Linda. (They just got engaged this weekend, congratulations you two!)



We were at ATM Bobino for aperitivo. What a great spot! The bar is alone on a median on a pretty big street, but you escape the traffic by getting up on the second floor terrace. The food was pretty decent, same with the drinks, but the atmosphere was the main attraction. All the folks were super chic, and the music was fun but not too loud. We had a large party, so we had to fight to get good seating! After the aperitivo, we had champagne service for the birthday boy!



We wandered over to the Sempione area to socialize a little more. Ali steered us to Cream Lounge to get giant drinks. Susan and Keivan got the large size, I don't know what happened to Tommi!



Look, these things are huge, right? No wonder the place was packed!



Luckily they're not so strong, so getting home was no problem...

Watermelon Times

This weekend I had at my watermelon. This is a baby watermelon:



However, it was still about four or five pounds of watermelon... a lot more than I care to just eat as melon. So I tried a few recipes inspired by Herbivoracious. I took a trip to Penny to get parsley and these lemons.



One idea I got from the food blogs was to try watermelon where you'd normally have tomato. I saw recipes for watermelon gazpacho and watermelon and avocado salad/ceviche. Due to my limited fresh herb selection at Penny and lack of a blender, I wasn't quite going to get either of these options to work out properly. Hence the plans for watermelon tabbouleh, with that parsley and lemon.



Very simple! Diced watermelon, finely diced red onion, hand-torn parsley, and lemon juice.



I gave it a little time to meld flavors, and served it over quinoa cooked with veggie broth. For something with six total ingredients, it had a pretty exciting flavor. (And you know how I usually cook... I usually throw in a little bit of everything, especially the spices!)

While I was letting the tabbouleh sit, I tried frying the watermelon as suggested by Herbivoracious. I don't think I achieved the searing that he did. Still, I was surprised by how much I enjoyed the fried watermelon. It had a little bit of caramelization and a little bit of the general cooked fruit taste. The olive oil and sat gave it a savory flavor. I was almost surprised by how much salt I added when adding to taste, especially when I didn't add any salt to the salad part of the tabbouleh, which tasted fine even without the salt from the broth used with the quinoa.



I actually would make both of these things again. The hard part is cutting up and seeding the watermelon, not the dicing or frying, and eating a whole watermelon will always be a challenge... I know I said this wasn't going to turn into a recipe blog, but just bear with me!

Mmm... Produce

Mmm... Vegetables. Sometimes I feel like I overdo it when I go to the street market, but I always manage to eat everything I get within a week. I bought leeks, potatoes, red onions, a watermelon, mushrooms, and what my mother says is bok choi.



I was not sure, but I guess this is bok choi? There are a lot of varieties of these green leafy things, and figuring out which is sometimes tough. These have narrower, taller stems than I am used to for bok choi. I decided just to cut it up and saute it with some of those onions, with olive oil and paprika.



Oh, and this watermelon has a crest carved into it. I don't know. All the ones at this booth had the crest. I am going to eat some of this in the regular fashion, but I've also been looking at watermelon recipes online for salads, gazpacho, and fried watermelon...

My Newest Food Discovery

So, my latest obsession are these bake-able rolls. Esther mentioned that this sort of thing is very common in Germany, and these ones are meant to have a "German" appearance. Baguette-brötchen, this particular type is called, and the brand has a German-sounding name, 3-Ähren Brot. It could actually be German, the supermarket chain I shop at is German-run. You just pop one or two in the oven, and bake them until they get golden on the outside. And then you put cheese on them. Butter and cheese, if you are German.



When I get back to the US, I am totally going to add this sort of easy delicious thing to my regular meal rotation. Hot rolls and a salad, that would be a nice easy dinner.

(Also, I totally got suckered into buying tiny cans of Coke. I like to have a Coca Cola now and then, but at my store they sell those giant half-liter cans, and then bottle sizes. I really don't want that much at a go... So tiny wasteful overpriced cans that satisfy my soda desires...)

Postal Public Service

This week I had to go to the post office to mail some letters. You can often buy stamps at a tabacchi, but they never seem to know how much stamps are to foreign destinations, and they never seem to have the right denominations... So I decided to actually go to the Poste Italiane near Centrale to get things mailed properly. (Though, let me say that one time I was improperly informed and didn't put enough postage on a letter and it still made it.)

I managed to conduct my business entirely in Italian, and successfully asked how much it cost to send letters to different places! As of now (September 15, 2012):

• Within Italy: 0.60 Eu
• Within the EU: 0.75 Eu
• To the US: 1.60 Eu

So, send letters!

Cooookies

Groceries... I really do go to the store a lot, even if I don't post about it so much. This batch of groceries is quite lacking in vegetables. When I went to Penny there wasn't much along those lines that looked good. And the salad stuff was just gone!



I branched out and tried a new type of cookie, Biscotti di Novara. This bag is huge, but it's so light!



These cookies are delicious! They are lightly crispy, sweet but not too sweet, and have a tiny touch of vanilla flavor. I almost think these would be good in a tiramisu. I'm dipping them into my yogurt...

Fruit from the Trees

While my neighborhood has a pretty urban feel, I keep finding opportunities to pick fruit off of trees. Last week I found a small fig tree on my walk back to my office. Clearly, other people have noticed it, because at a casual glance I only found one fig that was ripe enough to pick. I sliced it and put it into my salad... Pretty good, actually.



Every day, I walk past two pomegranate trees in the courtyard of my apartment. They've had fruit on them for... months, I think. My landlord told me that I would have to wait for November for them to be ripe... The fruits on one of the trees have turned pink, and I am tempted to pick one just to see, but I am going to be patient for another month.



Of course, there was the loquat tree earlier this summer. There was always plenty of ripe fruit on there!