“Life is too short, and I’m Italian. I’d much rather eat pasta and drink wine than be a size 0.” ~Sophia Bush
I haven’t done Foodie Friday for a bit, so I’m throwing it in on Wednesday to give you a taste of some of the food we’ve had since I arrived in Italia. Most of these have a story attached, so I’ll treat you to that, too.
Since we were in Sorrento over the Easter holidays, our hotel had many Easter treats on the breakfast buffet. Included was this wonderful Neapolitan Easter bread which I never saw anyone cut.
The hotel also put out a number of tarts each morning, and this apple tart was one of my favorites as it had a custard filling with glazed apples on top. It wasn’t too sweet, and that made it delicious. It went quickly.
We arrived in Messina a little after lunch, and we found a small bar close to our hotel to visit for a quick snack. On the menu was pan pizza, and the waiter assured us that it was small and perfect for one person. The above is what he brought. Basically, it was a rectangle of dough that they cooked in the pizza oven. We later found out that the pan pizza slab of dough really is a thing in Messina bakeries.
At the same bar, I ordered bruschetta, one of my favorite snacks. Everyone else ordered something that needed stove or oven time, and they all got their food first. It took about 15 minutes for them to bring my sliced bread/toast and tomatoes/basil to me. In the end, I shared the tomatoes with Gary since his pan pizza was, well, you know…. By the way, the correct pronunciation of what I had is brew-skeh-ta, not brew-sheh-ta.
Everyone was a little tired of pasta one night, so we went ordered other things. Gary ordered a grilled chicken salad, and this is what came. We had a good laugh over the “croutons” as they were thin slices of plain white bread cut into squares. Gary said the dressing was more like that mayonnaise-type salad dressing—more bland than anything.
We did try to stay healthy. Honest. These veggies were great.
In Messina, Rob and I ordered pasta pomodoro one evening. They brought mine (above), but since Rob had also ordered those grilled veggies, they held his back….or so we thought. We were all almost done eating, and Rob still had not received his pasta, so he went downstairs to see what was going on. A waitress brought him a plate similar to mine except that he had about half as much pasta as I had. He ate it, and we asked for the check. Right after that, the waitress, the owner, and the cook brought another plate of spaghetti for Rob. We told them that he already got his pasta, and they looked at us as though we were nuts. He showed them the empty plate, and the waitress slammed the plate holding the fresh pasta on the table behind her. The cook stalked out of the room. “The pasta’s so nice, they serve it thrice,” I joked.
coldpastaandredwine.com 