Coming to a Close...

The year (and this blog) is coming to a close... Here are some of my favorite memories of the year and this blog... Focus today on visitors! I had so many visitors to Milan, and we did so much in the city! Some of my visitors even dragged me off to other awesome cities. (I am not saying I fought them!)

Who came to visit:

• Ross came to visit in February. Besides hanging out in the city, we went to Paris and Venice for Carnevale. In Milan we mostly relaxed!


• Esther and Tom stopped in near the end of April. We ate a lot of different foods, visited the Duomo and downtown in general, and headed to Navigli to have really good pizza.


• Miranda came for a long weekend in May, and we really made the most of it! Besides eating lots of good things, we also trekked out to Lake Como and Verona! I had my first visit to the Brera with Miranda.


• Blake came in the middle of May for an artists' symposium. Eating and drinking were again major highlights of the visit, but I also took my first trip up to Lago Maggiore both to see the Borromeo Islands and to enjoy the art show! Blake and I visited Museo del Novocento.




• In June, Gerri, Chris, and Linda came for the FINA World Master's. I entertained them for a couple days in Milan, and helped them head on to Riccione, and then met them there for a few wonderful days at the beach and cheering them on at their highly successful competition.


• Linda came to visit in Italy in September and October. She didn't come to Milano, but I met her for two wonderful weekends, in Venice and in Rome. In Venice, we dined and lived the chic life, while in Rome we did even more sight-seeing! We really romped all over the city.




• Ross, Mark, and Mary came to visit in October. Ross spent nearly a week with me in Milan, while Mark and Mary stayed in Milan then headed to Firenze for a few days. Then we all met in Venice!


• Heather and Konrad stayed a weekend with me in early November. We had a lot of gelato and went to the Science and Technology Museum, the highlight of which was the submarine tour!




• Stan stopped by Milan the weekend after Thanksgiving, and I joined up with him to visit some of his old haunts.


• Finally, my sister came for the first week of December. We headed down to Florence to stay with Heather and Konrad, bought masks in Venice, and celebrated the day of the patron saint of Milan, Sant'Ambroggio!

Well, that's quite a long list of visitors. I didn't realize how lucky I was to have so many guests 'til one of my Germany-living friends told me that I was her first visitor after living for Germany for just over a year. I'm lucky to have so many intrepid friends!

Last Groceries

This is my last round of Italian groceries... I didn't manage to eat all this stuff before I left since I ended up having a few meals out and about. I kinda knew I was overbuying. However, I had to at least have some panettone before I left! It's a traditional Italian Christmas cake, particularly for Milano. In the Veneto, they have pandoro instead. Very similar, no fruit bits but with powdered sugar on the outside...

Saturday Evening

We finished up our Saturday morning by heading to the Duomo to have a little indoor tour. (Led by me, of course!)



Since it was Immaculate Conception day, there were lots of masses happening. We caught a good part of one.



We popped over to La Rinascente to finish up our tour from the night before.



We walked up to the castle to do a quick bit of catch up shopping at the street fair, and then headed back toward my apartment. We shopped at Penny, me for groceries, my sister for souvenir food to take home. It wasn't too crowded, luckily. We huddled up in the apartment, packing Vio's bag and having a few snacks, before heading to my landlord's for aperitivo and pasta dinner. It was a lot of fun, and a great, relaxing way to spend an evening.

Wine Review: Barbera del Monferrato

OK, a quick break from vacation photos for some wine I drank last night! I am trying to remember where I bought this wine. I think I paid more than two Euros for it... It's an interesting wine, and this variety of Barbera is meant to be drunk young. The first things you notice about it are that it's lightly sparkling, and that the color is powerfully bloody ruby red. The flavor is pretty strong, but not rough. A little fruit, definite acid and bitterness. I would actually buy it again, but it's not a wine I could drink all the time... too bold for that!



Second, unrelated taste test: Chocorooms! Vio impulse-bought these at the airport on her way to Italy. Based strictly on the packaging I think...



They taste just like you would expect from the package. Plain, but not too soft or milky, chocolate, crispy slightly sweet cracker. They are cute and hilarious, and actually taste pretty good. Thanks, sister!

Christmas Appearing

I came home this week to find the Christmas decorations set up in the lobby of my apartment building. Yay!



Same ones as last year, but I am still excited.

Lampadine

When the light-bulb in my bathroom burnt out, I stopped in to the small hardware store in Piazza Bausan for the first time. Everything here seems to be halogen bulbs. They didn't even have incandescent bulbs in this normal size at the hardware store!



The lamp was also quite difficult to get open, since it's high above the sink, but in the end I had success. I can read in the bathtub again!

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!

Too Darn Hot

OK, it's not as hot as my thermometer is pretending it is. It's just complaining about being in direct sunlight! But it has been pretty terribly hot this week. For the first time this summer, I have been having a little trouble sleeping at night because of the heat!



I get why everyone leaves in August, it's pretty unbearable! My landlord tells me that when he was young, truly everyone left in August, and that for the middle two weeks of the month, Milan was like a ghost town. Now, it's just noticeably less crowded, with reduced store hours and the like.

So Many Groceries

On Wednesday I hit the street market, and yesterday, the grocery store. At the market, I resisted buying clothes, shoes, and purses, and stuck to more necessary things. There's one regular stall at the market that sells cleaning products. My apartment came well stocked with most supplies, including doubles of a few, but I was almost out of floor cleaner. I did actually use this cleaner already! I mopped my whole apartment this week...



I couldn't resist the onion rope. The pineapples were only a Euro, so I figured why not. The guy selling the pineapples asks when you want to eat it, and gives you one of appropriate ripeness. He was a pretty good judge, I asked to have mine for the weekend and it's looking just about right for tomorrow... The melons are getting there too. It will be a fruity weekend.

I bought toothpaste! "Whitedent" brand. I am not sure if it is an Italian brand or what, but it was a lot cheaper than the Colgate, so I thought I'd give it a shot. I put those gnocchi in the freezer, as I think it improves the texture of the filled ones. I think they're too soft usually, though the flavor is lovely!

A few from around the house...

I've started freezing my water jug at night, and the coolest ice patters form on the outside of the jug from just the condensate from the air. (It also sometimes ices itself to the place-mats.)



And these are groceries, of course. I am sort of hooked on the ricotta salata, I've been eating it for breakfast with a touch of honey. The arribiata sauce was on sale so I bought a bunch.



So my friends are telling me that some of the grocery stores here will be closed for parts of August... I might get lucky with my Penny since it's a German-run chain. I am not sure if I should stock up on foods or just hunt for the deals that the few open stores will be running. One of my friends spent a whole August in Milan, and got great deals at Esselunga, so it might also be a chance for me to enjoy some really high quality food on the cheap.

Ladybugs!

My apartment doesn't have air conditioning. It's a little hot at night sometimes, so I just open the windows and that usually does the trick. The issue is that even on the fifth floor, I sometimes get bugs. Not many, but I try not to leave the lights on in my bedroom when the windows are open, to avoid attracting them. In the kitchen, though, I usually don't bother with these measures. I thought it had backfired a couple of nights ago, as there was some huge looking kind of loud insect buzzing around. I went and grabbed my zapper racket (rechargeable!) and looked around for the thing, but it had settled down... and I couldn't see it... Turns out it was a ladybug! I didn't really comprehed how much their wings unfurl when they fly.



What a cute little guy! I love the ladybug faces. Once I saw it was a ladybug, I was quite relieved. I got him on a piece of paper and shooed him out the window, hopefully to find greener pastures.



Later in the evening I had another vistor, a this time a red one...

Hail!

Yowza! I was going to post about other random stuff (graffiti, food, etc.) and then we had a hail storm. Basically it went from typical sunny 80+ Italian summer day to ice falling from the sky and back in about an hour. Seriously, it was just hot and clear before this:



I thought it was just heavy rain until the wind blew some hail against my window. This was all collected in the corner of my balcony.



Some of these pieces were large-pea-sized!



Yikes! I am glad I don't have a car or motorcycle to worry about out there. The thunder and howling wind were pretty serious. I am glad I was home because sometimes I forget and leave my windows open when I leave the house. Most of the time it's a good idea, to keep things ventilated... It's all melted now! There are just a few clouds in the sky.

In Boston

Well, I am in Boston. But not for long! I am off to Los Angeles soon for the Sarah and Fergus wedding. So this will be my last photo for a while...

I stuck my water pitcher in the freezer and forgot about it, and it had a weird ice thing going on. Solid all the way around the bottom and the sides, with a small cup indentation on top. I thought I had blown my prospects of getting cold water at breakfast, but the single serving ice cube worked out for me!



It was pretty much 85 in my apartment all the time last week, so cold water was a must. I shudder to think how hot it will be in August...

Rediscovery

Well, I had an odd moment last night. I realized I had a completely empty cabinet in my kitchen, and I just "rediscovered" it.



See, right there, just to the left of the sink. That's a tin full of tea, also. To be fair, that cabinet to the right of it is pretty much empty too, but it's a drying rack cabinet and you all know how I loathe washing dishes by hand, I am dishwasher all the way. Anyway, I feel like I opened the cabinet when I first got here, and never needed it since. But, it's really a better place for my dried goods than above the fridge, so I have moved all that stuff over there. It goes to show how this place really is bigger than I need it to be!

Banking

So I finally got an Italian bank account. They take the online banking very seriously here. I have a customer number that is my online ID, a pin code, and also this one time use key generator. If I want to do anything other than just look, I have to input the code that pops up when I press the little grey button.



I have decided not to ever take this out of the house!

More groceries!

Today I had to go shopping to get a few more groceries, as my friends Esther and Tom are coming to visit tomorrow! You never know what you are going to get at Penny Market. There were no cauliflowers, and the eggplants and artichokes looked not so hot, so I didn't end up getting any impressive veggies. I will have to stop by the pricey fruit and veg place in Piazza Bausan to get Italian melons and maybe a cauliflower, asparagus, or artichokes. The little shop has high prices but everything there is really good quality.

What I did end up getting was lots of yogurt (an easy breakfast), mushrooms to saute to put in pasta, green pesto, oranges for OJ, salad greens, and treats that I have been trying not to buy because I just eat them if I bring them around the house...



It's kind of amazing how little food I keep in the house. I would run out of food in less than a week, I think, typically. I certainly demolish any fruits and veggies I bring into the house in a few days, I usually only by two or three yogurts at a time, and even the fresh pasta goes awful fast. I guess I do have that bag of polenta, if I was willing to eat it pretty plain it would last me a few days. Awfully filling, that stuff!

Sunday

I haven't left the house today, and to be honest, I don't think I will. I've got a busy few weekends ahead of me so cleaning up the house and relaxing at home seems to be the right plan. I vacuumed today, it's amazing how dirty this place gets so quickly. Seriously, Milan is a sooty city. Fine black dust can appear anywhere. The weirdest is that my door frame on my front door gets dust around the edges. The other thing that I was cleaning up seems to be mostly lint. Because there are no clothes driers, lint just falls off the clothes when they dry. The lint color tends toward blue, since I have blue blankets, one set of blue towels, and perhaps even from my jeans. I've made the joke in my head that Milan is "The City of Lint".

Yesterday I did leave the house, to go to school and work. I got one major task done, so I am pleased enough about it. And I went grocery shopping on my way home from school. I have started to buy fresh milk, I needed it for an ingredient, and really the fresh stuff tastes fine, with no trace of that tetra-pak milk that I was afraid of. The spinach tortellini in the big package are actually the best ones I have had from the closest grocery store, which worked out well. My "adventure" purchase this week is those pre-cooked beets. I haven't seen any fresh ones yet, including in the farmer's market, so I don't know if this is just the way to expect them or what. I will update you all on how they are. I picked a pack with three small ones instead of two medium or even one big one, so I hope they are tender and sweet...

Shopping Bag

While I was in Boston, I made myself a ridiculous bag to take as my shopping bag. I usually stuff plastic bags in my backpack to have in the case that I go shopping, so I figured I would stuff this in instead.



It's a little ridiculous, I admit, but I blame my sister for encouraging me to make such a big tassel. Everyone knows how much I like tassels, so she was just fanning the flames.

To be fair, this bag looks a little silly but I was able to fit all the food groceries here in there on my first expedition. I mean, they are all in there in that first picture. The straps felt a little stretchy, but the bag looked pretty good!



Anyway, this is my first round of groceries on my return, gotten last weekend. I will have to go again soon!

Return Gifts!!!

When I got back to Italy, I got awesome gifts! Rydia sent me this insane card, and got a lot of people to sign it, too! When I say insane, I mean it came in its own box with a slide-out drawer, that had a drawer pull knob. Sweet!



And my friend Ali brought me back candy and fruit from Tehran! I haven't opened the candies yet... I want to enjoy them, not just eat them in shame at my desk! The fruit is dried barberries. These are used in fruit-seasoned rice in Iranian cooking, which they serve at Darcin and I love it. They taste a lot like cranberries but are a little smaller, so I think I could eat these plain as crasins. I will be trying that, but I am going to come up with other ways to cook them.



Yum!

Lies

This thermometer lies! When I first saw it on the window in my kitchen, I thought that perhaps it read the outside temperature. Then I noticed that it was on the inside of the window, and thought it was the temperature in the kitchen. However, since it gets some direct sun, the temperature it gives is just the temperature inside the thermometer... It was definitely not 40 C this weekend. 40 C is sweating-while-wearing-shorts-and-a-tanktop hot... I think it peaked outside at 15 C or so, a pleasant temperature.



As a side note, I am on my way to the states tomorrow... I will probably not be posting for the next few days as I find my footing in the time zone...