Archive | eat this

Ravello, caught between earth and sky

August 13, 2012 at 7:58 pm

Our second morning on the Amalfi Coast dawned so crisp, clear, and beautiful that we almost didn’t mind our daughter rousing us at 7am. Just look at the view from our apartment! (If you’d ever like to stay there yourself, here’s the listing.)

Elliott took this video of the scene as well as his two lovely ladies:

We couldn’t wait to see the town so we set off on a short walk to shop for some fruit. Lena enjoyed a fresh apricot (she’ll eat five a day) on the steps of the church in the middle of town.

Later that morning we all walked back down to the beach below our apartment for surf and sunshine:

The individual lidos are demarcated by the different colored umbrellas. If you choose to go to a lido, you will pay between 3-5 euro for a day’s use of an umbrella and a couple of lounge chairs. As always, we chose to pay nothing and laid our towels down wherever we could find space.

photos by Jess Garber

Check it out, Lena is actually looking at the camera and smiling!

Twice! Sorta.

Finally, after Lena’s afternoon nap, we hopped into our car and drove about 20 minutes up into the hills to visit the magnificent town of Ravello. To my surprise, Ravello was my favorite of all the Amalfi Coast towns we visited, although it’s far from the coast. The beauty of the mellowed-by-time buildings, the peace in the many blooming gardens, the spectacular views down green hills to the coastline, the clinks of cutlery on crystal in the piazza-side cafes, the bursts of color from pottery shops, and the overall understated charm of the whole town completely drew me in.

Lena is wearing an outfit I wore when I was a baby. Jess is, as usual, wearing an outfit I wish I could wear today. (We’re definitely enjoying each other’s clothes as long as she’s visiting!)

The magnificent Villa Rufolo, which I imagine Mark Ruffalo lives in between filming movies.

Old vineyard just outside the center of town.

Quiet garden where a father and son were painting together.

A cinquecento (or “500,” named for its 500 cc engine), the quintessential Italian car.

I took the video below of Lena climbing steps in Ravello. I love how she grunts after each step. Such an effort for little legs!

We returned to the town of Amalfi and almost had a heart attack when fireworks started exploding right outside our window. Later we learned they were to celebrate the festival of Our Lady of the Snows. Italians, who love all festivals and any excuse to shoot off fireworks, were commemorating a legend from 4th century Rome in which snow fell in August. A parade of boats streamed from town to town along the coast and each town obliging shot off fireworks late into the night.

photo by Jess Garber

Elliott and I put Lena to bed and left Jess in charge, and then dressed up a little and headed into town on a date! We’d both been craving a meal of fine seafood, and Elliott had researched for an hour earlier that day to determine an appropriate restaurant. He settled upon Ristorante Marina Grande, an establishment that prides itself upon upholding sustainable fishing practices and serving locally caught seafood and locally grown food. It was a perfect choice.

I love their bread bags instead of baskets… and the beautiful drawing of the town of Amalfi on the front of their menus. We could find our apartment in the drawing!

Elliott perused a wine menu that was almost as big as he was. To begin, we chose the tasting of seven appetizers, which included seven vastly different types of seafood. For a main course I chose the homemade rosemary gnocchi with prawns and oranges (there were a lot of flavors goin’ on in that one… almost too much for a pregnant woman to handle) and Elliott chose a dish bursting with seafood: linguine twisted around shrimp, calamari, and several kinds of shellfish.

That was our last day on the Amalfi Coast, at least on this trip. We must come back! We drove down the coast the next day and enjoyed our first stay at an agriturismo that night. Tomorrow I’ll have some photos of Lena with pigs and horses and kittens (oh my!).

4 :: in Amalfi Coast, eat this, travel, video

Napoli

August 8, 2012 at 12:18 pm

I hardly know where to start with this trip. It was so last minute and sooo unplanned. Elliott had work in Naples last week and thought that Jess, Lena, and I could come along. Of course I said yes… I always say “yes!” to traveling. We could see Naples and then spend a long weekend on the Amalfi Coast.

However, we got into our car last Tuesday morning with no maps or planned routes (just my iPhone) and the vague idea that we would drive an hour north, take the ferry from the island of Sicily to the mainland, drive approximately 6 hours north to Naples, and hopefully find lodging waiting for us. We had tried to be a little more organized, but it just didn’t happen. Two friends were staying with us almost since the moment I got back from the States and there was just no time to plan.

Unbelievably, over the course of the day everything eventually worked out. The roads were straightforward highways, the ferry was a total breeze, and our baby Lena stayed happy all 8 hours of the trip. It might have been because her mama sat next to her the entire trip (and pregnancy + back seat = carsickness for me :-/), but I give the credit to God’s grace.

Around 1pm on the road our potential reservation for that night fell through. We were hoping to stay in a gorgeous apartment in downtown Naples that we found on AirBnB.com, but the owner never responded. Thankfully, I’d made an additional reservation at the hotel on the U.S. Navy base outside of Naples where Elliott would be working that week. Although Jess and I would have preferred to be steps from Neapolitan pizzerias and gelato shops, it ended up being our only option, and I’m so glad we had that as a backup. Elliott walked 5 minutes to and from work that week while Jess, Lena, and I enjoyed the luxuries of base (grocery store, pool, and a place to buy a travel crib because we forgot ours…).

On Thursday morning Jess, Lena, and I packed up early and hit the road for Naples. We took a short bus ride and a loooong train ride (maybe we should see which city the train is going to next time?) and finally got out in crazy Naples. We spent the day on our feet in the city and I fell in love. I must go back… next time hopefully to a studio within steps of a pizzeria!

Applying her sunscreen on the train.

Stop #1: Shopping for sunglasses. Ray Ban knockoffs for 5 euro? We bought ’em.

The city of Naples invented pizza and I had been dreaming of pizza in Naples for days now. On a little side street in the Quartieri Spagnoli (Spanish Quarter) we found a teeny tiny little pizzeria. For 3 euro each, we got the pizza of our dreams.

Putting together our pizzas.

Sliding the pizzas into the wood-burning oven.

Sliding them onto plates a couple of minutes later.

And viola! The original pizza, one with fresh tomatoes and one with sauce, and both made with buffalo mozzarella cheese, fresh basil, and olive oil. Truly heavenly.

Someone fell asleep!

Our gelato melted faster than we could keep up with it! Mine was dark chocolate with oranges.

5 :: in eat this, family, Italy, Naples, travel

the Father’s Day breakfast in bed flop

June 20, 2012 at 1:36 pm

Buzzzzz. Buzz buzz.

My alarm clock went off early on Father’s Day morning. Elliot was wearing ear plugs (the dogs in the farm nearby bark loudly through our open windows at night) and didn’t hear it. Good for me, because that meant I could proceed with my plan: breakfast in bed for him! Soft Eggs with Buttery Herb-Gruyere Toasts. Doesn’t it sound heavenly?!

About 5 minutes into said plan, as I was still studying the list of ingredients for breakfast, I heard our baby crying. Uh oh. This breakfast in bed might not go as well as I’d hoped.

About 20 minutes into said plan, as I was slipping eggs into boiling water, I could hear that Elliott had woken up. Uh oh again. Lena and I went to meet him. “Happy Father’s Day!” I said.

“Oh wow… good morning… I forgot!” he said.

“Well, get ready, because you’re about to have breakfast in bed.”

“Whoa.”

(I should say right now that thus far in our marriage we have never had breakfast in bed. I was making history!)

I quickly finished cooking the romantic breakfast, but I was disappointed that it didn’t look anything like the pictures on Smitten Kitchen. For one thing, I was missing egg cups. For another, the toasts were kind of burned. And lastly, I only had cheddar, not Gruyere, for the toasts. Sigh.

mine Smitten Kitchen’s

Oh well, Elliott hasn’t ever seen Smitten Kitchen in his life, so he didn’t know the difference. He raised his eyes appropriately in delight when I brought the meal to him on a Polish pottery platter, accompanied by a fresh cup of coffee. Unfortunately, however, breakfast in bed also meant baby in bed, and there was no way we could juggle her and cracking eggs and dipping toasts. We relocated to the balcony.

The summer sun shines right on our balcony in the morning, which means it’s about 80 degrees by 8am. Sweating, squinting, and attempting to enjoy a hot breakfast, I glanced at a clock.

“We’re going to have to eat kind of fast,” I said to the man I was attempting to honor with peace and rest today. “We should leave for church in 10 minutes.”

We managed to leave in 15, still swallowing our coffee as we raced out the door. (In fact some of mine landed on my white dress.) We left so fast, unfortunately, that Elliott forgot his entire wallet. We arrived on base and the security guards shook their heads. “You’re going to have to go home and get your I.D. card. Sorry.”

I forlornly unpacked the diaper bag and my daughter from the car as Elliott sat even more forlornly in the driver’s seat, ready to turn around and go home and be even more late to church than we already were. Just then some friends pulled up behind us and said hello, then kept watching me unload and said, “Did you forgot something? Your I.D., Elliott? I can get you in. Oh, you don’t have any identification on you? Wow. Well… I can still get you in. Don’t worry. I’ll park outside the chapel and come right back for you!”

Bless him. Saved our day just a little bit, he did.

So Father’s Day wasn’t quite the restful, peaceful bliss I’d hoped it would be for Elliott’s sake, but real life rarely is, right? Later that evening we took a hike in the valley below our house. Although the grass is dry and prickly this time of year, we managed to find a quiet spot with a pretty vista and enjoyed one of Elliott’s favorite things: a picnic meal out in nature. He and Lena shared a peach and found a baby frog in a nearby creek. Not a bad end to his Father’s Day!

Dearest Elliott, thank you for being such a patient, attentive, and involved daddy to little Lena. She has no idea how blessed she is. But I have some idea, and I am thankful and grateful every day. We love you!

5 :: in eat this, family, husband

my sweet tooth hurts

May 8, 2012 at 4:50 pm

For some crazed reason I decided that for the month of May I would not eat any sweets. It seemed like a good idea… eight days ago. Now it’s all I can think about. Seriously. Not an hour goes by of each day (for at least the past three days) where I am not thinking of some delicious sugary thing I would love to consume. Like…

the above hot fudge brownie sundae
a red velvet cupcake
a Hershey’s kiss
a salted caramel cupcake
chocolate chip cookie dough
a banana cream cupcake
a McDonald’s McFlurry with M&Ms
basically any kind of cupcake

The idea was to curb my craving for sweets. Years ago my brother just randomly decided not to eat dessert and very immediately reported he had lost his taste for it. In fact to this day he rarely eats dessert. Unfortunately he is also almost a vegetarian and drinks green tea by the gallon. Maybe I should have known: I can only aspire, I cannot attain.

Oh well. Seven-and-a-half days down. Twenty-three to go. Wish me luck!

image via here

4 :: in eat this

makin’ marmalade

March 21, 2012 at 9:00 pm

There are many things on my bucket list of life: read War and Peace, learn how to manipulate the manual settings on my camera, write a book of some sort, make Julia Child’s boeuf bourguignon, and learn how to can food.

But when my friend invited me to make and can my own blood orange and strawberry marmalade last week, I was hesitant. We had returned from France the day before and the day of the jam-making was my husband’s birthday. Yet it was Elliott who said, “Go! I want you to learn, and so do you!”

So my sweet husband watched our baby alone for several hours on his birthday, all hoping for the reward of some really good jam at the end of the day. I was determined not to disappoint him.

And I set off to learn. One of my friends directed as we other three women cut, chopped, boiled, and supremed at her direction. First we peeled the oranges:

Then we all sat down to “supreme” the oranges, which means we removed all the skin from each individual orange section. This was slow, tedious work, but it does make a delicious marmalade with no orange skins to get caught in your teeth.

Meanwhile, we put all the orange skins to boil on the stove. I cut up a big bowl of strawberries to mix in with the oranges.

We boiled all our jars on the stove to sterilize them. The jars had been the most enigmatic part of canning to me, but they turned out to be straightforward. We sterilized the jars and lids by boiling them for 10 minutes. We would boil them again when they were full of marmalade.

After the oranges were surpremed and the skins had boiled, we mixed the orange pulp, strawberries, and finely sliced orange skins all together.

And into the pot they went, along with quite a bit of sugar and the orange-flavored water that had been boiling with the orange skins.

And then we let the mixture bubble, boil, and steam for a loooong time. The candy thermometer had to get up to 225 F and it took about an hour to do so. Meanwhile all the windows in my friend Becca’s apartment steamed up and we basked in our own marmalade-scented sauna.

Finally the temperature reached 225 F and we had our marmalade! We carefully poured it into the sterilized jars, screwed on the lids, and then submerged the jars into a pot of boiling water. With a tea towel on the bottom of the pot in the water, the jars had enough cushion not to break. We let them boil for 10 minutes until the little button in the center of the lids was depressed. Technically, our jars were now sealed, our marmalade was now “canned,” and we could leave the jars out for a few months on our kitchen counters. I don’t think my marmalade is going to last that long, though, considering the serious dent Elliott, Lena, and I have made in it in the past week!

Now here you are. Feast your eyes on the first batch of marmalade made by yours truly!

(And yes, the birthday boy was very pleased.)