A touch of history and racism

Today I intended on sleeping in a little later than usual since class didn't start until 4 but I was rudely awaken by the cacophony of the church bells from just down the block at 6, 6:30, 7, 7:30, 8, 8:30 and 9, at which point I angrily rolled out of bed to start my day.  One of my friends and I headed to the campo (basically the town square) to climb the tower that overlooks Siena.  Little did we know that climbing this tower required that you essentially crawl up two flights of stairs because the roof is too low and the walls are too close together for you to stand tall or face fully forward.  I'm not claustrophobic, but I could see the need for the panic buttons that were installed in this part of the stairwell.  Moreover, these stairs were used by people going up and down...poor planning medieval sienese, poor planning. Fortunately, that lasted only two flights and the rest was relatively manageable facing forward and standing up straight.  When we got to the top, I was awestruck.  I really can't describe how beautiful it was, so I'll let pictures do the talking. 

The Duomo and part of Siena

The Campo

My attempt to be artsy with the bell at the top of the tower

We also enjoyed the museum which had some pretty awesome frescos from relatively recent times (late 1880's) and older periods (1400's) and some pretty sweet modern art from the past ten years.  It was a trippy combination of art but it was manageable.

Later, in cooking class, we found out that our teacher dislikes chinese, black, and polish people.  But hey she's momeryl whatever.  I think she also bashed the french a bit.  She was on quite the roll.

Moving on to some fun history about Siena.  Every year in may and august (16th) Siena hosts this crazy no-rules horse race in the campo.  People have been known to drug the horses, kidnap the jockeys, etc.  It's called the palio.  Well there are 17 sienese neighborhoods that are represented at the palio, and have been since 1729 (before that, dating back to the medieval times there were as many as 59 contrada represented).  Each contrada has it's own flag, mascot, and history and the rivalry between contrada runs deep.  It's like ManU and whatever other soccer team ManU has a rivalry with combined with Britney Spears and Christina Agulara, with a little USA UK rivalry thrown in there.  It's intense.  Some contrada even have their lamp posts sculpted to look like their mascots (they're pretty cool).  I'm staying in Selva.  Here is a wikipedia description of my contrada:

Selva (Forest)

Selva runs west from the Piazza del Campo in the centre of the city. Traditionally, its residents were weavers, but when the contrade were mainly military they had a reputation for being excellent archers.
Selva's symbol is a rhinoceros at the base of an oak tree hung with hunting tools. Its colours are green and orange, bordered with white.
Winner of the Palio, on August 16, 2006, with Salasso on Caro Amico. Won the Palio last on July 2, 2010, to much upset from Nicchio (favored to win).

So that's some fun facts about my contrada.  Here are some fun cooking facts:

1. In the middle ages, bakers specialized in white or brown bread.  They had separate guilds.
2.  Adding butter, margarine, or oil shortens gluten strands in the dough, hence the name of shortening.
3. Bleaching flour is done by allowing the flour to age, turning from yellow to white as it oxidizes.  This can also be achieved by using vitamin c (ascorbic acid), azotic carbamide, or peroxide.
4. You need steam when baking bread to prevent the surface from drying out, to aid in heating dough faster, and to increase the rate of expansion of gas pockets.  You can through in ice cubs once the oven is pre-heated (professional bakers, pump in steam).
5. Bread will go stale even if there is no moisture loss.
6. San Fransisco is associated with sour dough since the bacteria needed to start the process is common in the air there.
7. Biscotti means twice cooked in Italian.
8. Most cakes were pound cakes until the 20th century.
9. Pasta means paste or dough in Italian.
10. Noodle is a German word that refers to any pasta like preparations made outside the Italian tradition.
11.  It is a myth that Marco Polo brough noodles from China to Italy.  Pastas were in Italy by the 6th century.  Marco Polo did his thing in the 14th century.  But, there is evidence that China has had noodles since 200 BC.
12. Naples, Italy had the ideal climate for pasta preparation, leading to pasta becoming a common street food in the 19th century, which, in turn, led to shorter cooking times and the popularization of cooking pasta al dente (to the tooth) by the late 19th century.
13. You can improve cooking water and reduce stickiness of pasta by adding a splash of lemon juice
14. Sauce comes from the roman word "jus" (an ancesetor of juice and "jus" as in "a jus") and latin "salsus" meaning "salted"/
15. Gravey came from the french word grane meaning "made with grains"
16. Sauce should taste too strong on its own since the food dilutes it.

See that wasn't too bad.  OK off to bed.  Cheers to the daily adventure.

Post office and Pizza

I have failed you as a blogger.  I forgot to bring my camera on our most recent excursion to a bakery.  There were SO MANY magic machines that spat forth pasta, and dough, and similar things.  I'm sorry.  Now that that's over with, on to the fun stories.  For those of you that don't know, I spent about 2.5 years working for one of the largest pizza chains in the world.  I was a cook, a server, a phone guy, a driver...pretty much every job except manager.  When Momeryl went to make pizza in our cooking class yesterday, all I could think was "I'd do this better."  Which was absolutely justified.  Certainly her dough and sauce were better, the pizza tasted better hands down, but when it comes down to technique, given the same starting materials of pre-made dough and sauce, I'd win.  I simply have experience on her.  She's made maybe 1000 pizzas in her life.  No more than 1 a week, every week of every year for the past 20 years.  I've made that many pizzas in a week.  There were nights at this pizza place when we'd top 200 orders, with an average of 2 pizzas per order.  But, upon tasting the product, I realized that my place of employment was doing it wrong because this pizza was amazing.

This morning we went into what appeared to be a tiny bakery.  We were greeted by a man who is almost certainly in the mafia and spoke no English.  He took us into the back room which turned out to be at least twice as large as the store front. There was a wall of ovens, literally 10 feet high and ten feet wide of ovens.  The next room which was also very large where they were making, of all things, pizza.  I felt an immediate kinship with the guy working there.  Granted, there was a little PTSD being in a kitchen where they were making pizza.  I swore once I left, I'd never return.  Then I swore it again and meant it the second time I left.  And here I was, half-way around the world and faced with pizza-making again. 

So we get to leave the pizza-making room and get taken through this series of hallways to yet another room where we met Uncle Johnny Stickano.  This guy was making pastries, chewing a toothpick, but was clearly called to be a comedian.  He had a captive audience.  He did some "magic" for us.  He used one of those magic machines, to get some dough, used cookie cutters to put them on a platter, then used TV network magic and pulled out a rack of already done cookies.  It was cheap humor but well-appreciated because it ended in cookies.  Even when we left his room to go to another room (seriously?  So many rooms in this tiny bakery!  More magic!) where they were making croissants, Uncle Johnny Stickano followed us and cracked jokes.  At one point he imitated shooting up heroin with his toothpick and said that most people aren't like him.  He's happy and loves his life unlike his boss (mafia guy) who is sad.  He also joked with the girl who doesn't like fat in her milk that he knew that she must have recently been to the beach because he was psychic/she had a tan.  All in all, the magic bakery was awesome.

Also, the ancient house we stayed in this weekend had a key.  I had it for the entire weekend and didn't want to leave it in my room in the tower so I put it in my pocket to put it downstairs with the other key.  Whoops...brought it home to Siena.  So we had to mail it back to the house.  Which meant that we had to figure out the Italian post office system.  SO STRESSFUL.  We had the key.  So that was good.  We didn't have an envelope so that was bad.  We found one and were about to take it when we decided we should probably clarify if we needed to pay for it, we did.  But when I went to give the woman money, she shook her head and said something in Italian.  So we tried again but with smaller denominations, she picked the 50 cent coin out of what I was holding in my hand and gave us change.  OK!  Key in envelope. Check.  Now how to mail it.  We were warned by our guide that you have to take a number.  What she didn't tell us was that you have three options of numbers.  P, E, and A.  We took one of each and decided to roll with the one that was called first.  Our E was called first but we weren't sure how to claim our spot, or which spot was ours anyways.  So we stood there, looking at all of the lines, watching as our number got replaced.  We were down to P and A.  So we looked around for the woman who took our change for the envelope.  We had to follow her around the room a little bit, but eventually we got her to stop and we held out our two tickets and our package, she took one, crumpled it up and pointed at the other.  So, we needed the P ticket, presumably for package, or priority, or something.  We had some time to kill because we were P30 and they were on P24.  We looked around for everyone else with a P ticket to make sure we weren't missing anything.  EVERYONE ELSE HAD A FORM!  We go to one of the racks of forms and grab one of each that we had seen people carrying with them.  Some had instructions in Italian, some in Italian and French, none in English.  Back to the lady.  In probably what was the best bastardization of any language, I held up the package and all the different forms and said "Per ca necessary?"  So Italian, French, and English in one sentence, but it got the point across.  Thankfully, we didn't need a form.  What we also noticed, from observing people while waiting for P30 to be called was that you RAN when they called your number.  Even this old lady, who was hunched over and probably had been for the past 30 years booked it across the room when her number was called.  So dutifully when P30 was called we ran up, pridefully showed the guy our ticket and handed him the package.  He said something in Italian, which I'm pretty sure was "normal" and I said yes, because I didn't care if he was asking me if I wanted the most expensive option because I just wanted to be done.  I was prepared to pay 40 euro just to leave, but fortunately only had to pay 1.  DONE!  We made it!  What an adventure!  After which, we promptly laughed at a group of German tourists who were breaking all sorts of rules trying to figure out how to work the Italian post office.   Anyways, sorry for the long post.  Here are some pictures to make up for it.  Cheers to the daily adventure.

Careful what you wish for

While I was working on that last post, I stopped to get some food with friends which requires a 20 minute walk into town.  Food was good.  It starts pouring though.  We are umbrellaless mostly in flip-flops, I was in Tacky Shirt (TS).  We started jogging back to the house with rain just soaking us.  Finally we get home (which was uphill the whole time) I look down and the backs of my legs are COVERED in mud.  There were spots of mud up to the bottom of TS!  It literally looked like I had just given up and sat down in a pile of mud.  HOW?!  Anyways I figured that I had to post about that little adventure since I was just mentioning how few adventures have been going on in the past few days.  Cheers to the daily adventure!  And cudos to anyone who actually made it through the entire last post!

The one with all the facts

Let's start this off with the understanding that this post will not be about adventure.  It's been all of 12 hours since my last post what more do you want from me?!  I'm in this awesome house that's about a 20 minute walk from the nearest town which is about a half hour drive from Florence.  We tried!  We tried to go to Pisa/the Mediterranean yesterday but we missed the bus and we were going to try again today, but the time tables on Sundays are pretty crappy so the timing wouldn't work out.  So the most adventuring I've had since the last post (now that I'm finally caught up on all of the other adventures) was a little tennis.  Sorry, I'm slacking, I know.  So the plan now is to give you a story about our time at the gelato factory, all the fun facts about food from the past few lectures, a few pictures, and a video from the gelato and chocolate factories.  Hopefully that's sufficient.

Gelato factory: this place was pretty tiny so our group of 16 had to break up into two groups, one waiting outside under the tuscan sun (boom! movie reference) and the other one inside enjoying this Italian ice cream.  Once inside, you're greeted by a man who speaks pretty solid English, which is nice, it makes everything go faster.  So instead of hearing someone rambling on in what sounds like that language that sims speak and then getting the translation, you just skip straight to the real language.  So gelato guy (not cool enough to be an Uncle) explained that all of his ingredients are natural, that he makes his gelato for that day and the next and that's it.  In fact, he has to come in at 4 AM to start making all the gelato.  Also, I'm pretty sure he said that all of his gelato comes from the same cream base which tastes kind of like a milk shake (we got samples and I had to finish everyone's since the girls weren't down with the idea of chugging liquid fat and sugar...go figure.)  Also, pistachios, we learned, should make your ice cream this baby-poop-green color instead of that bright mint green color.

Alright!  On to the facts!

1. peanuts are technically not a nut...they're a legume!
2. Rye first arose as a weed in wheat and barley crops.
3. Ergot (also known as Holy fire or St. Anthony's fire) is a fungus (that grows on rye) that generates alkyloids that stimulate uterine muscles and hallucinations (because those go together?) and is similar to LSD (Lysurgic acid diethylamide) which was discovered in 1943 by Albert Hofmann.
4. In 1755 some English reference source described oats as "a grain which in England is generally given to horses, but in Scotland supports the people."
5. Rice is the principle food for about 50% of the world's population, which is good since there are over 100,000 distinct varieties.
6. Sticky rice is sometimes called waxy, sweet, or glutinous rice.  It is not sweet and doesn't contain gluten...
7. Wild rice is not actually rice.
8. Raw rice carries bacteria which can produce gastrointestinal toxins and can survive cooking temperatures.  They can germinate in leftover rice that is not refrigerated.   
9. Dent corn is used to make grits...and horse feed.
10. Popcorn pops best at 380 degrees Fahrenheit.
11. Rice krispies are esentially glassy networks of rice that when placed in cold milk, experience stress fractures and breaks due to uneven contraction across the krispie.  This gives them their distinct sound.  Oh snap!...krackle and pop...
12. Everyone produces 1 quart of gas per day. Some of this is due to bean intake, there's a specific bacteria that breaks beans down into carbon dioxide and hydrogen gases.
13. Peanut butter was originally developed in 1890.
14. Brazil nuts contain high levels of selenium.  They are anti-cancer agents, but when consumed in large quantities (more than 5 ounces a day) it is toxic.
15. Harvesters of brazil nuts have to carry shields so they don't get concussions from nuts dropping out of the trees.  Seriously.
16. Cashews are never sold in their shells since the shell has properties similar to poison ivy.
17. Macadamia nuts are named in honor of John macadamia, a Scottish scientist, and close friend of the man who discovered the nuts.
18. To make beer or rice alcohols, you have to let the starchy grains sprout a bit or mold a bit before cooked, so the starch can be broken into sugars.
19. Flaming dishes are usually fueled by brandy or rum.  The food isn't actually burnt, the energy from the combustion of the alcohol is absorbed by the water in the brandy/rum.
20. Yeast producing alcohols can tolerate 20% alcohol concentration in their environment.  
21. Alcohol provides 5% of calories in the average American diet.
22. Your stomach absorbs alcohol before it can reach your intestines to be absorbed into your blood stream.  In men, about 30% of the alcohol is lost to the stomach while in women only 10% is lost to the stomach.  Yet another reason men can drink more than women.
23. Hypersensitivity to sound and light (during a hangover) may be leftover compensation for the depression of the nervous system.
24. Dry mouth and headache (during a hangover) are caused by dehydration.  Drinking coffee counteracts the constriction of cranial blood vessels, thereby helping with the headache. 
25. Long simmered stews retain 5% of the cooking alcohol, briefly cooked dishes retain 10-50%, flambes can retain up to 75%.
26. Grapes are the worlds largest fruit crop, 70% of them are used for wine making.
27. Cork, coming from the bark of a tree, can spoil, and in turn spoil the wine.  5% of all wine bottles are spoiled due to tainted cork.
28. Champagne bottles have a gas pressure of about 3-4 atmospheres.  That's about the same pressure as car tires.  It contains six times its volume in carbon dioxide.
29. Less than 10% of the world's sparking wine is true champagne.
30. Lipstick, oils from food, traces of dish soap all reduce the bubbliness.
31. Champagne is best served at 40 degrees F in tall, narrow glasses so the bubbles are smaller and last longer.
32. The aroma of a wine changes from the first sip to the last due to the contact with the air.
33. If wine is cloudy and contains particles that don't settle, it's spoiled don't drink it.  If the particles to settle, its indicative of more acid in the wine which makes it taste better.
34. Darker wine tends to be older.
35. Lager comes from the German word lagrin which means to store.
36. Fresh beer is called "green beer."  It has little carbon dioxide, is cloudy with dead yeast cells, and has a harsh sulfrous flavor.
37. Some british and Belgian beers should be aged to improve over 1-2 years.
38. Bear foam should cling to the glass as the level of liquid drops, this is called lacing.
39. Stouts can have nitrogen gas instead of carbon dioxide. 
40. in 1876, Henri Nestle was the first to produce milk powder.
41. The Swiss eat about twice as much chocolate as Americans.
42. Swiss and German chocolate is ground smoother than English or American Chocolate.
43. White chocolate, invented in 1930, is technically not a chocolate.  It is a mixture of purified cocoa butter, milk solids, and sugar
44. Chocolate cools your mouth as it melts, which feels cool.
45. Chocolate contains a specific type of saturated fat that can be converted into oleic acid (a healthy fat).
46. One ounce of chocolate contains as much caffeine as a third of a cup of coffee.
47. Theobromine, a relative of caffeine in chocolate, increases feeling of well being, is a mild anti-depressant, stimulates muscular system, stimulate the kidneys.  It's also what's bad for dogs.
48. Chocolate does contain cannabinoid chemicals.

That's condensed down from 33 pages of notes.

Here are the pictures promised:

The clock tower in Siena at night...Sorry my camera doesn't do night pictures well

San Domingio (or something like that) from the vineyard

A close of of San Domingio...SO MANY TOWERS!

A view...

Another view...from the tower in Sandomingingio

ME!

And the videos as promised:

This is gelato coming out of the magic gelato machine...

And this is chocolate coming out of the magic chocolate machine!  I appreciate how all the food in Italy comes out of magic machines in a pretty awesome fashion.

Don't judge me...

Sorry about the lack of posts over the past few days, we actually had homework for my class, so I actually had to do something other than explore and blog.  So much has happened so this will be a pretty scattered post.  Also, there are a lot of fun facts about food and such that I think might just get their own post.

OK, so jumping back to last weekend in Florence, I had an adventure with haggling.  I actually failed pretty hard at haggling.  I really wanted a brown leather belt, since when I go to the Vatican next weekend, I have to wear dress shoes (which are brown) and I don't have a brown belt.  We went to this market in some random part of Florence which, if you are claustrophobic, would be a terrible experience.  There were so many people in these tiny isles between racks of colorful purses and scarves and statues and flags and all these other random assortments of items that people associate with Italy.  Deep in the heart of this market, we found this stand that was selling belts and I picked this one that was 18 euro, with the intention of toughing it out and bargaining my way down to 15 at least.  I hate bargaining, so much so that when I bought my car, I called my dad and gave the phone to the dealer so they could haggle over the price.  I decided it was about time for me to face this fear and haggle.  I had these images in my head of being picky and bidding low and slowly accepting the real price I want.  What really happened?  I got to the counter where a woman spoke very little english and muttered "uhh...so...will you take less for this?"  "No."  "Oh.  OK.  That's fine."   So after that great success, as I'm shamefully pulling out 18 euros to pay, the woman grabs the belt, drops down into a squat in front of me, and reaches behind my back.  I was pretty surprised, but she was just testing to see if it would fit.  It was too big.  So she pops back up unscrews the hook thing at one end and just cuts some off.  I guess I looked pretty terrified that my new 18 Euro belt was being cut, especially since I couldn't event get her to cut the price.  She said "You Americans are always so afraid.  To us, this is normal.  If belt doesn't fit, you cut!"  Then she starts shouting "Marco!  Marco!"  I was thinking, oh God, what did I do and why does she think my name is Marco.  Then Marco, who easily could have just walked off the set of the Jersey Shore, appears and punches a whole in the belt and walks away.  Then she screwed the buckle back on, dropped down to a squat again, tested the belt.  Satisfied, she bagged it and sent me on my way.  That was fun...

Me in my tacky shirt.

Back in Siena, I had another market experience.  Every Wednesday a market appears out of nowhere.  It's like an outdoor walmart.  Even the people who go are like walmart people!  I was at home.  The group that went shopping was comprised of me, another guy, and three girls.  In a surprising twist, me and the other guy were more into shopping for clothes than any of the girls and they all just wanted food.  The market does strange things to people...  I found a 90's blue shirt with black material sewed into it to look like a vest and iron on necklaces for only 5 euro.  I bought it, it was made for me after all.  I was now a proud owner of "the tacky shirt"  which now has a song and dance. 

I was mistaken for an Italian!  Boom!  Mission accomplished!  Some tourist (I'm so over tourists at this point, standing and taking pictures, blocking the streets when I just want to get to where I'm going) comes up to me and says "Pardon...Uhh..Plaza Basilico?" in an American accent but in an attempt to speak Italian that landed closer to French.  I chuckled a bit and said "I'm American too.  Now what are you looking for?"  It turns out he was looking for a bus station that I could have walked him to but had trouble explaining where it was, so our poor confused friend had to bumble through asking a real Italian, in poor French, where the bus station was.

 Yesterday, we toured a Vineyard/saffron farm and a chocolate factory.  This meant that we started drinking wine and grappa (which is a type of alcohol similar to vodka made from the skins and stems of wine grapes) at roughly 10:30 in the morning.  Aggressive.  There is also a new rule, no wounded soldiers in Italy, meaning that any food or drink given to the group must be consumed.  Typically, the responsibility falls to me and another guy.  So, brunch was quite an experience.  As was the chocolate factory afterwards.  It was a little hard to focus with close to a bottle and a half of wine metabolizing.  But!  The chocolate was good!  I found, and purchased this chocolate bar.  Sorry for the graphic nature, Italians are weird.

A view from the Vineyard.

The town we meandered after the wine tasting and before the chocolate factory.

Last night, we headed out to our haunt for the weekend.  It is a 7500 sq foot villa built in the 1500's with a sitting room in it's tower, a pool, a tennis court, and a reading garden.  UHH-MAY-ZING.  We continued the days activities well into the night, playing taboo and singing and dancing in the tower, that was likely a bell tower that has been converted. 

Views from the tower.

At some point, I began serenading this girl (the one who is very concerned about the amount of fat in her milk).  The issue is, I thought I was being really smooth.  Upon reflection, the scene looked a little more like this.  She was cowering in the corner of a couch (in the tower) in the fetal position, as I circled her like a vulture, occasionally dropping to one knee, the entire time "singing" (shouting the wrong lyrics to the song that was playing, which was likely some Fall Out Boy song).  This went on for roughly 20 minutes while my "friends" looked on in sympathy and amusement, much like watching cars crash, over and over and over again.  Eventually, the girl found an opening in my circling and scurried off to bed.  I was heartbroken.  But, such is life. 

The Location of The Event.

Today we were going to go to Pisa, but missed our bus by 2 minutes.  Adventure failed.  The plan is to do it tomorrow so hopefully there will be some fun stories about that.  Cheers to the daily adventure. 

MeetLife Cafe and El Gringo

There's still quite a bit to say about Florence and I still have some fun facts about Siena to share, but it's Monday and it's late so I'll keep this one short.  Today was a birthday for one of the girls in our trip so we went out to a coffee house called MeetLife Cafe.  The bartender spoke really good English and most of the signs were in English which is bad news because that tends to mean you've found a tourist trap which means high prices and crappy food.  Shockingly, the food was crappy but not because it was a tourist trap but simply because this place sells coffee and liquor and that's it, except for their happy hour snack bar which consists of bread, cheese with french flag toothpicks, ham with swiss flag toothpicks, and an assortment of sauces that looked rancid.  We pounded the bread and cheese, and a few of the daring tried the ham, and the rest of us had some coffee drinks or liquor.  I stuck to a nutellino, which was essentially chocolate mousse in a glass, with whip cream, coffee flavoring, and mini chocolate balls.  It was great.  We closed the place down (at 10:30 pm).  So we went across the street to El Gringo!  The Mexican food restaurant known for their cheap tequila shots. 

Some girls from our group, neither one of which is the birthday girl, at El Gringo!

On the bright side, they had cheap margaritas, sangria, and pina coladas as well as cheap tequila.  Sadly, they were out of the margaritas, sangria, and pina coladas.  We all opted out of the tequila shot except for another guy in the group and the birthday girl.  Perhaps unsurprisingly, it wasn't good tequila for only 1.5 Euros.  We also ordered nachos with queso, which was as close to chips and queso as we could get.  Yet, somehow corn chips with mozzerella and melted velveeta on them don't quite count as nachos with queso.  The kid from the Denver-New Mexico area disapproves.  Even Donny T's in Lexington Virginia has better mexican food.  Though we are in Europe and the restaurant did have a giant mexican head in the front of the store.  Anyways, an hour or so later and we're still there debating politics, religion, and everything else one does not discuss in civil conversation.  Suddenly, the background music starts blasting authentic mexican folk songs.  Are they trying to kick us out?  But they close at 12:30?  It's only 11:50!  We will not stand for this.  We continued discussing, and eventually ended up having to shout mostly because of how high they had turned up the music but also because it was a pretty heated conversation.  So we finally threw in the towel, and said "ciao, hombre" to El Gringo, a solid 20 minutes before they were supposed to close.

And now that I've actually started writing this entry I feel like a little more prepared to talk about our cooking lesson and class today, so still short, but not as short as it could have been. Sorry...

Today I took 14 pages of notes on dairy products.  I can't even pick out any fun facts for you because after 14 pages of notes, nothing is fun anymore.  I'm pretty sure I became lactose-intolerant because of our lecture.  I guess here's what I learned:

• Sheep and goats were domesticated and milked between 8000 and 9000 BC
• Cheese was originally made by accident in the stomach of an animal while traveling from one city to another carrying milk inside it.
• Lactose-intolerance, not due to incredibly long lectures, actually decreases with prevelance the farther north your ancestors originated.  Rates in Scandinavian countries are around 2% while in Africa they're around 70%, with a gradient in between.

Today, in cooking class, we made some amazing food.  Bowtie pasta, with a bacon cream sauce, beef stew (with a wine and (shockingly) olive oil-based broth),  potato suffle, and apple pie (which really wasn't apple pie and was closer to apple cobbler).  Momeryl was getting a little sassy today, cracking jokes here and there, generally about how hungry we were and how she could count on myself and another guy to eat the left-overs.  We also had this bread with olive oil as an appetizer which was fine, except the bread was awful.  Only ingredients in the bread?  Flour, water, yeast.  Essentially this is what you would get if you had an open bag of flour that spoiled and you baked...  But with enough oil, garlic, salt and pepper it was good.  Apparently the name in Italian refers back to the ages when to test to see if the olive oil was good, men would dip the crappy bread into the olive oil and eat it, letting the oil run down the face...  We were told "you just have to forget the unpleasant effect on your breath, if you are going to enjoy this properly: semel in anno licet insanire, as "everyone can go mad at least once a year."" Though, as I've started my new diet and savings plan, I was starving.  As food and museums in Europe are insanely expensive, and as I don't want to be 300 pounds when I come back to the US, on days when we have cooking lessons, or paid dinners, I'm not buying other meals (starting tomorrow).  We'll see how that goes.  Anyways, cheers to the daily adventure.  Here are some pics to make up for me betraying your trust and giving you a long post despite my introduction.

This is a close up of the Medici house at the Boblie gardens.  The Medicis once owned pretty much everything in Florence, so nearly every museum is in one of their old buildings and based largely on their personal collection.

The view at the top of the Boblie Gardens.

another view from the Gardens.

A view from this sweet church with monks that was just down the street from our house.

One step back and two steps forward

I'm so physically exhausted from seeing ALL of Florence, that getting the motivation to do this blog post was very difficult and included a glass of local red wine and a cup of 1/2 fruit tea and 1/2 green tea.  Moreover, before we delve into this breath-taking experience of Florence, I'll have to step back to Siena to go over a few milestones and experiences.

This past week has flown by, but I feel like I've been here forever (but seriously, not just in the 7th grade girl way of signing year books "OMG this year has flown by, but I feel like I've known you for-eh-ver. LOLZ").  This week was the first time that I've used a clothes-line.  I did a "load" of laundry and was shocked by the size of the laundry machine.  Imagine a top hat that's been stretched into a larger circle,  or a washing machine that is about as deep as a top hat...and it was a front load. What a challenge.  Two hours later...my laundry was clean and I had to figure out a way to dry it.  We don't have a dryer and I'm assuming it's because it would consume too much energy (we were warned that if we had too many things plugged in the power would just shut off...no big deal.)  Anyways, I hunted around town for clothes pins as our well-stocked apartment didn't have any...I finally found some in the Euro store.  After only dropping one pair of underwear to the ground below, I got all of my laundry up.  A day later, it dried, oddly stiff though.  I think I'll stick to modern technology.

Another first from this week: using a bidet.  For those of you not familiar with this nifty device, it's essentially what you would get if you combined a toilet and a sink.  It's meant to give your butt and junk a mini shower.  Supposedly, it's more hygienic.  So, my interaction with this device began roughly 21 years ago when I was conceived.  By random luck, I was given and X and Y chromosome and was born a man.  As a man, I have less of a need for toilet paper than women.  Also, as a man, when I go abroad my roommate are also men and also have a decreased need for toilet paper.  So, if we are assigned an apartment without toilet paper, we may or may not have avoided buying any to this day.  One day, it turns out that I WAS in need of toilet paper and my genetic code had screwed me over.  There was not toilet paper.  There was a roll of paper towels, but I wasn't about to be the guy who clogged the toilet with paper towels.  I decided to suck it up and use the bidet.  Supposedly, you are supposed to squat above it, well that didn't work.  I slipped and ended up sitting on the rim, wondering what I did to deserve this, as the cold water assaulted me.  Once I finished cleaning, I waddled across the room to dry off.  Then, I had to wash my hands.  This just seems so inconvenient.  But, hey it's an adventure.

Class-wise, we went to tour a coffee factory.  They roast coffee beans, and barley (you can make coffee out of roasted barley...it has less caffeine (what's the point then?) and tastes kind of weird without sugar.)  This factory, was more of a warehouse in the middle of the Tuscan fields, but in a kind of sketchy way, not in the "Under the Tuscan Sun" way. We walk around back and are greeted by a man who looked like the love child (I need a new term, suggestions?) of George Clooney and Mitt Romney.  He didn't speak any English but kept making jokes and looking very proud/sly while flirting with our translator.  We called him Uncle Mario.  We were hoping to pick the most stereotypical Italian male name and I decided I wanted to be related to him, but not his brother or son.  Turns out it was Leonardo, close enough.  Anyways, Uncle Mario explained that his coffee was half robusta and half arabica and gave us all a cup from freshly roasted beans and another cup from freshly roasted barley. 

In the back is a gradient of barely roasted coffee beans to dark roasted coffee and in the front you have barely roasted barley to roasted coffee.

On the way back, we took the public bus, which was crowded.  I ended up standing in the back kind of surfing, a challenge far beyond my skill set.  The bus magically turned around a tight corner at a fast pace and I went tumbling into one of the poles that people hold onto.  Turns out, these poles aren't meant to support the entire weight of an American guy.  It broke.  I broke Italy.  Well, didn't really break so much as temporarily ruined.  It was fixable. 

Back in Siena, we decided to head out to Florence.  We had to try and figure out how to actually buy bus tickets in a foreign language.  Between our collective knowledge of French, Latin, and Spanish we did it BOOM!  An hour later we arrive near the center of Florence.  We spent the next two hours walking through Florence, through the country side of Florence, and up an ungodly amount of hills.  It was a beautiful walk with some amazing views but it was still a two hour walk with like a 40 pound backpack on. 

The river in Florence and a random bust.

That evening, we went to a palace that was plastered in beautiful art.  We went up to the top of the palace and looked out at Florence and saw everything lit up at night.  It was wild to think that centuries ago, people did the exact same thing and saw pretty much the same scene, just minus electric lights and cars and stuff.  It was also really upsetting to find out/realize that SO MUCH art/architecture was lost during WWII.  Apparently, walls were built around the highly valued pieces in Florence and around Europe (In Germany, they hid pieces in underground beer cellars.)  A special force was also created to ensure that certain pieces, like The David, weren't destroyed.  When I finally passed out in my bed, I was in heaven.  Compared to the super hard bed and shower without pressure in our apartment back in Siena, the bed I'm staying in, and the shower I'm using, were Godly.

The Duomo from the clock-tower in Florence.

Today, our feet and legs took even more of a beating and we went to see The Duomo, The Academia (the home of The David), and another art museum.  They're big on art here in Florence.  The Duomo was breath-taking from the outside and amazing on the inside. Unfortunately, we didn't go into the dome, and we only saw a portion of it, but the sheer size of the church and the dome was incredible.  The David literally caused me to just stand still for nearly 20 minutes.  His hands were awkwardly large, he was incredibly ribbed, and unlike the rest of the statues, his eyes were actually filled in.  Also, just the size of The David is crazy.  It's like two stories.  The rest of the art in The Academia and in the other art museum was pretty interesting but after roughly 5 hours of looking paintings, I began to stop appreciating things.  Points I took away:

• The Medici family was insanely wealthy.  The second art museum was in one of their houses and had multiple halls filled with statues and portraits of royals and also had frescos.  
• I dislike medieval art.
• I need to do more research about "the massacre of the innocents" so a lot of art becomes more than just dead baby jokes.
• Saint Michael is pretty cool judging by his depictions

Famous things I saw over the past few days:

• The Duomo
• The Birth of Venus
• The David

• 

  Not the real David, but smaller replica outside the clock-tower.

   
• Probably loads of other things that I didn't realize.

The view from our house.

Sorry for the long post.  There's still a lot left to talk about, but this has dragged on way too long.  Here are some pictures for making it through.  Cheers to the daily adventure.

The view from the street near our house.

Florence, from the way up to our house.

 

The Duomo.

A crappy picture of the visible part of the inside of the dome of the Duomo.

A sunset in Florence.