Panettone

I'm in Connecticut with Ross's family today... I can't believe what we saw at the grocery store! Panettone!

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...

Carrefour Groceries

This week I hit up Carrefour... there are two Carrefours near my office at ITIA. They have nicer groceries than Penny, but of course it's more expensive. The selection is great at the larger Carrefour... You know me, I love artichokes!



I got Brussels sprouts and this funghi fantasia mix to make a yummy sauteed side.



And these store brand chocolate biscuits were cute and tasted great too.



It takes a little too much planning to get my groceries there regularly, but I do enjoy my treats from there!

Food Round-Up

I've been so busy that I haven't had the chance to post my usual boring food pictures! Even with all the excitement of late, I still have to buy food. And now there's additional excitement at the grocery store since the holiday food is starting appear! In the middle of that pile of groceries is a box of gingerbread cookies!



I am not sure how late in the year the farmers' street market will keep going, so until it closes for the winter, I'll keep using it to supplement my Penny purchases. The artichokes are out in force, and the green fractal cauliflowers are back as a regular thing in the stalls. Clementines are becoming a favorite for me.



I should not have bought that caramel corn, it was too good.



Oh, and I decided to give those pomegranates I picked in the courtyard a shot. The little one was a bit spoiled, so I tossed it, but the larger one was pretty good. A little tart. I plucked out the arils, and used them in a salad.



I think there might be a few more of those on the pomegranate trees in the courtyard, but most of them have already split and are too far up out of my reach, anyway. Gotta investigate...

Museo Poldi Pezzoli

On Sunday morning, we headed to Museo Poldi Pezzoli, a really cool house museum.



The gentleman that the museum is named for collected all sorts of stuff, including porcelain, clocks, navigational instruments, and jewelry, but the collections have been added to by donations from other wealthy Milanese. The clock and watch collection was a lot of fun. This watch has a rock crystal shell.



The armory was pretty fun too. A set designer from La Scala designed the most recent renovation, replacing another set designer's original vision.



The best room was probably the study of Gian Giacomo. It's one of the few rooms that totally survived the WWII bombings. It's got an oriental fantasy flare. Lots of personal possessions, including a bust of his mother, and modern stained glass windows. Very cool.



I would highly recommend the museum, and the free audio guide, even with its issues, was pretty informative. Go for it!

Fresh Foods

I bought all this fresh food in anticipation of Ross's arrival for his vacation.



Mozzarella di Buffala, artichokes, chestnuts, fractal cauliflower, zucca squash, and a bag of minestrone fixings. All of this turned out to be delicious. For a lot of these veggies, the season is just beginning, so they were pricey! But I wanted Ross to get the good stuff...

The minestrone fixings were fascinating. The bag has chopped parsley and kale and other greens, bits of zucchini, asparagus, squash, carrots, and whole cherry tomatoes and fava beans. I cooked it up with a little broth, and then stuck in some couscous. So yummy...

Another Installment of New Foods

Another batch of new-to-me foods from Penny.



I finally upgraded to the large size of olive oil, a liter and a half. I go through that stuff like crazy. The almond biscotti are delicious, definitely in the buy again category. The pineapple juice is good. I bought it for the vitamin C, and while it's tasty and 100% juice, I probably shouldn't buy it again since it's a lot of sugar. The corn snacks were tasty. I actually used them as crackers with a little cheese. They are a little expensive for small packages, though...

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!

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...)

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...

Groceries from Today and Monday

Vacation photograph interruption today...

Today I went to the street market. It was a good day, everything I bought was a Euro or less a piece, including the hair-clips! The only thing I lost in Germany was my largest hair-clip. I bought two different large sizes to try. None of them are ever big enough anyway... I should look online for giant hair-clips! I got zucchinis, fagiolini (green beans), red onions, two of those "cone" cabbages and two melons, both in the tiny size. Usually those melons are 1 kg a piece, this pair was 1 kg total... This way I can eat a whole one for breakfast!



Monday was my regular grocery run. That pineapple is also a tiny one. Also, I caved and bought ketchup. It's spicy ketchup, at least. I have just wanted it for sandwiches. In the back are some bread rolls that you have to oven bake a bit and oranges for juicing. There's also a single can of Coke in there. The off brand just wasn't cutting it for my weekend afternoon indulgence.



Food!

Bakery Goodies in Ingelheim

One of the first things Esther and I did when we arrived in her town, Ingelheim, was go to get pastries! The local grocery store had these cool bakery machines, where you push the button and the loaves come out. I am not sure I get the point, as I am pretty sure it's just like a storage hopper for the bread... but they are cool machines.



We went to a bakery to buy real pastries instead. Plums are big in the Rhine part of Germany. This pastry with the plums and streusel was really good, and quite heavy on the plums. They are a little bit sour.

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!

Neighborhood

In Italy they have these signs all over that tell you the direction to the closest freeway entrances. This one is in a pretty small square in my neighborhood, I didn't realize it got enough traffic to justify such a complete sign. Yes, it is near-ish to a freeway... but not all these freeways!



These are slices from that strange Italian zucchini from the other day. The seed area was not present along a good chunk of its length and almost lacy in other parts.



Groceries! The little jellies are rose gummies, the ice cream is plain cream flavor with coffee ribbons, and those onions are like overgrown green onions. The tops work as chives, and the bulbs have some serious onion volume. The crackers are sort of like Ritz, but a little thinner and crispier. I had some with cheese today for lunch :D

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.

Market Day!

Yesterday I headed to the street market in the morning. Wow, there were actually more stalls than ever before, I guess because it's peak summer time, right before everyone goes on vacation... Here's some of the stuff I bought! (This is all the stuff for me, I got some gifts too, so they will not be appearing!)

Squash, melon, zucchini, and shoes. It's the time of year that all these things are pretty darn cheap. Including the shoes. They are super cheap-o, 6 euros! OK, they are made out of terrible materials, the soles are foam I think, but I am wearing them today and they were very comfortable on the walk to school. They certainly won't last forever, but for a fun summer shoe... Part of the reason I went for them is the color, you know me I like that sort of turquoise blue for everything. The other part is that the sole is pretty think. You can't really see in the pick but even in the toe the soles are just over an inch thick.



I actually am not a fan of the sandals with really flat leather soles, and around here, your feet would get filthy fast. But, that's the style that the Italian ladies are wearing...

This is a zucca squash, as far as I know. I think the term means pretty much any winter squash, including pumpkins, but this one is like a turban or buttercup squash. This is what the picture of the zucca on my last box of ravioli di zucca looked like...

Visiting the Doctor!

Yesterday I decided to head to the doctor. My calf was incredibly sore, and getting more painful every day. I asked my labmates a lot of questions about how this whole doctor thing was supposed to go. Luckily, in my packet of papers from the administrator at ITIA, one was the proof of payment of insurance, stapled to my primary care physician registration along with his open office hours. So I headed over there.

The office was just in an apartment building. This seems to be pretty common in Milan. Once I got to the office, I took a number and sat in the un-air-conditioned waiting room. The whole thing felt rather retro. The office was just the one doctor, one aide filling out prescriptions for the regulars, and his daughter as the admin. But, the operation ran rather smoothly. Considering that I took number 7 arriving 10 minutes after the beginning of office hours, he saw me in just a little over an hour. So 10 minutes per appointment, not bad. The doctor didn't speak much English, so I explained my problem in a combination of Italian and charades. He gave me prescriptions and we chatted about his upcoming family trip to the US for the summer holidays. (Let me just say that I am glad that I needed to see him now, rather than during his vacation, when I would have had to schlep over to his substitute's office...)

Overall, I would say that it was an pretty good experience. The doctor was super friendly and assured all my concerns about possible causes of the soreness. (I had been a little worried about DVT, since I first noticed it when getting off the plane on Sunday, but he assured me that I was missing the sure signs. Just a pulled muscle from swing around my luggage on said trip.) The uncertainty of just sitting in a waiting room hoping I hadn't screwed anything up (my leg, my paperwork, getting the right number) for an hour was the only thing that was unpleasant.

There was a pharmacy on my way to the subway from the office. You can always spot them from the big green cross signs:



I was actually amazed by how fast the pharmacy filled my prescriptions. You don't hand in your prescription then sit down, you hand them your prescription at the register and they get your stuff right then and there. Super fast!

Since the pharmacy was right next to a small Carrefour, I decided to bring home some groceries and grab a cold drink.



Fennel, potatoes, green beans, jam cookies, breakfast rolls, and porcini ravioli... I also had a Fanta Aranciata that I drank on the way home! The guy at the checkout was really nice, I was short 5 cents on exact change and about to pull out a 5 Euro note to cover that but he just gave me the "no biggie" wave with a smile. Had fennel in my salad last night!