Chocolate festival 2012

Chocolate Festival

This past weekend we had the opportunity to enjoy the annual Cioccolando, the local chocolate festival in Vicenza. Every year in October, there are chocolate festivals throughout Italy. The ones I heard of this year included the one in Vicenza, the one in Soave and the larger one in Perugia. Various chocolate makers set up in the main piazzas of each town and offer samplings of their handmade chocolates. However, the most famous draw to the festival is the Italian version of hot chocolate. It was a rainy cold day in Vicenza but since it was the last day of the festival, I was bound and determined to get there. After all, this was MY Halloween. So we embarked upon our little adventure to downtown Vicenza.  We dodged a few rain puddles and followed the group of people headed towards the festival. My Italian instructor told us that there were supposed to be about 59 vendors but when we arrived, it seemed like fewer than that. I supposed the rain kept some back. But, nonetheless, the vendors there were all under their tents marked with Cioccolando, so I am guessing they are used to hosting this festival in the rain.

Immediately we spotted the hot chocolate. In fact, nearly every vendor had hot chocolate. My family was a little cold so we decided to grab some of it. Now I have been told stories about the Italians and their hot chocolate and how they prefer it thick. Our Italian teacher even told us about the hot chocolate and how anything less than what the Italians normally drink is considered “plastic” or fake. In other words, they don’t drink hot chocolate made by swiss miss. Nope. What I was handed was a cup of dark, thick chocolate soup. The inside of my cup was coated in a thick layer of chocolate. The drink itself was like drinking hot chocolate syrup from the Hershey’s bottle. I couldn’t finish it, the drink was too sweet, but my kids thoroughly enjoyed the experience.

We wandered around a bit and began to see the same chocolate at every stand. We did purchase some dipped fruit, although I think it was sugar candy dipped in chocolate. They had lemon, orange, ginger, and pineapple. There were truffles of all shapes and sizes. Round ones rolled in pistachios, walnuts, almonds and chili powder. There were square truffles that tasted of orange and chocolate, strawberry and chocolate, and again, pepper covered chocolates. I also had a chance to taste the Italian version of fudge, which is a little thinner than our version. There were also little critters made out of chocolate, chocolate lollipops and chocolate covered candies. But I must say, the piece of art handcrafted by these chocolatiers was amazing. I saw chocolate in the shape of wrenches, hammers, padlocks, keys and other tools. In addition to the tools and such, the chocolatiers also had handcrafted Prada shoes for 15 euros, all chocolate.

Despite the rain and an aching sprained ankle, we had a great time and I cannot wait until next year’s festivities. I think we’ll try one of the other festivals though so we can do a little compare and contrast. As I sit and sip my hot chocolate with cream, I think to myself, I really enjoy my hot cup of “plastic”. 

Crafting in Italy - Adventures at Abilmente

Crafters beware because what I am about to tell you will blow your mind. If you think you have seen it all at Micheals, Joann's, AC Moore, Hobby Lobby, or Home Store, think AGAIN!  You have not found true love in a craft store until you have met your match and true love at Italy's Abilmente, http://www.abilmente.org/nqcontent.cfm?a_id=1764

My Italian teacher told our class about this wonderful event that occurs only twice a year in Italy, right in our own backyard in Vicenza. It is the time of the year the Italian women get their craftiness on, drive in droves to the arena, wheel in empty suitcases only to walk away with overflowing ones, and prepare themselves for 4 days of crafting adventures. This International Craft & Trade Fair is just that, but by far the LARGEST International Craft Fair I have ever attended, and I LOVE craft shows! This was like Michaels, Joann's and Hobby Lobby on steroids!  Around this time of the year you can attend any craft show to purchase little knickknacks and ornaments for your tree, gifts for the whole family, and sample many foods.But here in Italy, that is NOT a craft show. This is where you go to BUY your craft supplies!  We have a couple stores here that have a few aisles of craft items but it's not like there is a Michael's or Joann's to curb your appetite for creativity, so we shop on line. Apparently though, the Italians have this little hidden gem!!! My friends and I walked in, expecting to purchase said knick knacks and such but were amazed and well, overwhelmed with stall upon stall of crafty goodness. There were vendors selling crafting books and magazines for all ages. There were several vendors for scrapbooking and stamping crafts. Needlepoint, wool, felt, and fabric demonstrations and vendors as far as the eye could see. Literally, there were about 900-1000 vendor stalls and demonstraters. There may have many more but I love count and my sprained ankle wasn't happy, but that never stopped me. I fell in love with all the country like fabrics, reds, greens, yellows, blues and pastels. It was all I could do not to purchase every last scrap. When I asked the price of an item, imagine my surprise when she told me I couldn't buy it but that it was sold in a kit. This was the theme for most of the day, kit, after kit, after kit. Dang it, and my sewing machine is back in the states in storage.

We saw some interesting demonstrations on working with wool. I am not really sure what they were doing but it looked like they were aspirating the wool with a needle. The crafters working with wool had it wrapped in  a ball and were poking it with a needle. It was interesting whatever they were doing so we just sat mesmerized for a bit. We saw demonstrations on the art of painting ornaments, there was even a woman painting glitter on a shoe!  The shoe looked fabulous afterwards. There were beads of all shapes and sizes and buttons to boot as well. We entered the embroidery section of the show and were amazed at the quietness of this section. My friend called it the civilized section of the show and I think she was right. i wasn't pushed once in that area. Also at the show were vendors from England and France and even some American names like Martha Stewart crafts and Singer. Most of the items looked like things I could purchase easily online but I suppose for the Italian women, this is how they bought their crafting needs for the holidays. And let me say this, these crafters are pretty talented at using recycled items and making them into art. The kits are fantastic and I look forward to completing my Christmas witch, Bella Befana.

My poor friends' eyes glazed over as we traveled from booth to booth and at times I thought I had lost the girls but they hung in there like troopers. We each bought some wonderful already made items, thank goodness I don't have to recreate all those wonderful items, and I am sure enjoyed ourselves silly. I now understand why they sell discounted 2 and 3 passes to this show. Perhaps next time I will embrace my inner Italy and bring my very own suitcase to fill to the brim with crating treasures! Italy, today you impressed me. Brava!! Brava!!

Cooking & baking

It's fall and what I love more than anything is baking a pie or cake and cooking up some soup. I have some tried and true recipes that  my family and I love, the problem I am encountering though is converting to the metric system, well that and trying to locate my items on the shelf of an Italian grocery store.

For instance, mayo here is not in a jar, it's in a TUBE. With a McDonald's label to make it even funnier. But today, as it is fall and all, my family requested another pumpkin pie. So let's start with the pumpkin. First and foremost, no, i do not use Libby's pumpkin pie from a can. That is blasphemy in this house. My mother's recipe, handed down to me, includes boiling a pie pumpkin down, peeling and then mashing it. Ordinarily, I have no problem doing that, I get the pumpkins and off we go. However, those wonderful little orange pie pumpkins DO NOT EXIST here. So I had to go in search of a substitute, and that would be where I found winter squash, or zucca, as it is called here. This winter squash resembles an acorn squash in color and is a little bigger than it, but the taste of it is sweet. Trial one of the pie making experience included the new pumpkin and the old spices and other ingredients. And since my picky 9 yr old enjoyed it and gave me a thumbs up, it was deemed edible and delicious. Of course, the family ate the whole pie and requested a second one. My car is in the shop and I was out of sweet and condensed milk. Hoping that the Italian store up the road actually carried this item, I peddled my bike in search of the product, with a google translation in hand. Google, you failed  me. There was nothing in the store that looked remotely like the Eagle brand sweet and condensed milk and nothing that read "latte dolce e condensato." So finally, after standing in the aisle for a long time and becoming quite perturbed that I could not find what i wanted, I asked a fellow female shopper, because after all, we bake, right? I showed her my translation and she stared at it for a moment as if to process my request and then I saw a light bulb go on. She knew what I wanted! I nearly did a happy dance right there in the store but quickly contained my excitement when the lady directed me to a TUBE! Yes, no wonder I couldn't find the Eagle brand can, it didn't exist! And to top it off, the name if the product was "latte interno concentrato zuccherato", roughly translated, milk inside concentrated sugar. In a tube, who would have thought? So I a quick calculation of 15 1/2 oz to mL and dang it, it was in grams! I grabbed 3 tubes hoping it would be a enough and went in search of the heavy cream i needed for the soup. Luckily, it translated into panna and I grabbed the panna di cucine in hopes it was the right stuff too! I peddled back home, goodies in hand, and imaging my yummy dinner and dessert.

My mother would be proud because guess what? I have rewritten her pumpkin pie recipe and deemed it 'pumpkin pie italian style'. I have on that recipe the new name of the sweet and condensed milk and the number of tubes, which should be about 3 1/2, as well as the number of grams I needed. I then converted the cup of water to mL, just because I could, even though I do have a few measuring cups. The only other conversions I made were teaspons and the oven temperature, which is roughly 191 degrees celsius rather than 375 degrees fahrenheit. Let's hope the second pie turns out equally as good!

The potato leek soup was fabulous too, even though the heavy cream was different than what I am used to, but hey, that's the adventure in cooking right? Thank goodness I have little cheat sheets all around the kitchen to help me in my cooking. My stove is in celsius and therefore I am constantly converting back and forth between celsius and fahrenheit, and due to this, i have a cheat sheet in the cupboard. Thankfully we got a new stove so the gas marks are gone as well. (Gas marks are a European heating system that just has numbers 1-9. Roughly speaking, #4 equated to 350 degrees) . When reading a European recipe I find myself converting measurements too from milliliters to ounces. I will have to thank Pampered Chef for the magnet converter I have hanging in my kitchen because otherwise, i might just give up on cooking altogether!

So two points to remember, 1) brush up on your metric system before traveling over here and 2) cheat sheets are a must!! For your own curiosity, 250mL equates to one cup. It's the small victories that makes cooking all worth it!

Goat cheese anyone?

Our Italian as a second language class went on a field trip to a local goat cheese farm to see how the cheese was made (because of course that's important in the land of cheese), to sample the cheese and to purchase said cheese. So we traveled to the other side of Vicenza to a little dairy farm called Azienda Agricola DESY.
And a farm it was. Our wonderful host had the obligatory horse (cavallo) and donkey (asino) for "show" as he said. The horse was too busy eating hay to be bothered with people but the donkey was the friendliest and hairiest donkey I have ever met. He was so lonely and just wanted attention, until he thought your hand was food and tried to bite you. Otherwise, he was such a loving gentle-donkey.

The owner showed his small barn that house about 30 goats, all ranging from babies to adults. All female except for one very busy male. These were also special Alpini goats bred in the Italian Alps. It was asked what do they do with all the goats since they give birth in February and then he would have lots more goats. he told us that some young goats are kept to replace the older ones, some are sold and lastly, some are the main course at Easter as it is tradition to eat goat's head at that time. I was fortunate enought to know this little fact when my stepdad's mom came down from NJ one year and cooked a goat's head right there in our oven. Apparently it is a delicacy, one I know I will not ever partake of. In addition to the goats, the owner had a few cows, and about 15 very stinky and very stout pigs. Unfortunately, the pigs served a purpose of salami and panchetta, but that is the circle of life around here. Lastly, we met the young cows intended for veal. i felt badly for the baby cows but again, the reason the Italians don't name their livestock like we Americans to is because Peter, Paul or Mary may be dinner that night and it would sound weird saying "We just ate Peter for dinner."

After showing us the animals, the farmer then showed us the milking room and the discussed the process of how the cheese is made. This particular farm makes both cow (mucca or vacca) and goat (coppa) cheese. We saw the two aging rooms, one was for cow and the other for goats. Some cheese aged as long as a few months, especially the green cheese which is similar to our version of blue cheese and takes very much like it, except that it is green. So now it really does look like you are eating moldy cheese, but it is so delicious.

We did have an opportunity to try the goat cheese and then the milk cheese. I have come to the conclusion that goat cheese is not really a favorite cheese of mine, no matter how long it has been aged or how soft it is. The cheese itself must be an acquired taste. However, I gladly purchased some Morlacco di Vacca (fresh cow cheese) and some Stagionato di Vacca (an aged cow cheese) to take home to the family. It's a good thing my oldest LOVES cheese. And if you would like to do as the natives, take your cheese and dip it in fresh honey. It is a tasty treat!

So if you are ever in the neighborhood or want a little fun activity for the kids, check them out or stop in at your local dairy farm. http://www.aziendaagricoladesy.it/ You never know what yummy cheese or milk awaits you.

Agriturismo HIke

If you have the opportunity, this is a must. What is an agriturismo? According to Wikipeida, an agriturismo is a combination of the words for "agriculture" and "tourism" in Italian - is a style of vacationing in farm house resorts codified into Italian law in 1985. An Italian agriturismo will usually serve foods to guests prepared from raw materials produced on the farm or at least locally. Some will allow the guest to actually participate in the activities surrounding the farm.Our guide told us that in order to qualify to be an agriturismo, they must use about 80% of the crops on their land to support this type of tourism. The place we visited not only used their items but others from the region as well.

We started our hike in a little town called Isola. It sits at the foothills of the mountain range. We walked the streets, admiring the old homes mixed in with the new construction homes. the houses sat side by side and somehow the architecture all seemed to work together. Our path changed from pavement to gravel and then from gravel to mud, rocks and leaves. The path led up through the homes, giving us a view of the more rustic italian homes and enjoying the smells of fresh bread being made. We entered teh brush and continued along a dirt path. It was lined with hig grass, rocks, ivy, and trees. As we got further into the woods, our gentle incline up the mountain increased too. I remember rounding the corner of one incline only to be met with another continuing incline. Complain though I did, it was a peaceful walk, despite my huffing and puffing. (I walk 3-4 miles 5 days a week but this was a whole new ball game)

The path led to a muddy hill and i began to get flashbacks of a certain muddy hill I ran up a year ago during a zombie race. As the path opened into a clearing, I caught myself darting my eyes from side to side on the lookout for said zombies. Luckily, none were to be found that day, however as a car drove by on the main road that opened before us, i began to curse under my breath at our tour guide Todd for having us take the rugged path. We rested there for a few minutes and an older couple with their walking sticks and hiking boots passed us by and smiled. It was at that moment I thought, "well hell, if they can get up this mountain and they are in their 70s, I better damn well start walking. I had no excuse now."

We left the main road and headed back on the rocky path, rounded a corner and all of a sudden, I saw my very first deer since we moved here. I thought, "they do exist" and promptly my yelling out "a deer" scared it away. Of course the whole time we were walking we kept hearing gun shots go off because after all, it is hunting season here in Italy. Thankfully, none of the bullets headed our way and no one in our group had PTSD, otherwise it might have been a tiny problem. We came around one more bend and hit a very jagged and bumpy concrete walk way. we made it to the top and rested again. Much to our surprise, the hour and a half hike we were supposed to have, only took us less than an hour. I suppose when you tell a group of women that there is food at the end of their journey, they move with much more determination. Or perhaps it was our stellar athleticism that led us to the top so quickly. Either way, we made it to our destination.

We walked down a little dirt road and found the agristurismo, complete with chickens, turkeys, geese, rabbits, and horses. The land was breathtaking and covered with fruit trees, herbs, olives, and grapes. Our hostess greeted us and began the feast for lunch. Let me say, it was DELCIOUS, or as the italians say, Buono! The meal prepared included pasta with truffles, pasta with duck sauce which is very popular this time of year, thinly sliced meat seared on one side, chicken in a creamy sauce, a cheesy appetizer that tasted like fresh cheesecake, fennel with parmesan, roasted potatoes and an assortment of delectable cookies for dessert. Of course no meal is complete without wine, both red. It was a wonderful sampling of the region's food. After conversing and enjoying our time around the table, it was time to descend the path.

So if you are ever find yourself near an agriturismo, stop and sit for a spell. You won't be disappointed.