Category Archives: Things I learned

my quarter of a cup runneth over

27 July 2017 Seattle, Washington

I'm getting a bit of a head start on my blog post for tomorrow, today. Um… I just confused myself.

Now that we've been back in the US and dealing with grocery stores and counting calories and all of this, I wanted to write about how full of shit the US food labeling system is. Seriously. Look, Europe isn't perfect with labels either, but they did pass a regulation a few years ago that made it mandatory to label food (which is kind of crazy if you think about it… this only became mandatory last year!). And the way they do it is really nice. The requirement includes listing out the nutritional information per 100 grams of the food. So it doesn't matter that a typical "serving" is 5 grams (although they can include that as well, but it's optional), they have to list out all the details for 100 grams of whatever it is. So, for example, you're in France, Italy, Scotland, wherever… and you want to get some cereal. And you're interested in whatever is the lowest calorie cereal, so you start picking up boxes and looking at the nutrition information. And it's all listed there for 100 grams of the cereal. So it's the definition of comparing 'apples to apples' because, even though you aren't going to eat (maybe) 100 grams each morning, at least you are able to see that the bran flakes have 349 calories, vs. the 550 in that granola (I'm making these figures up… I really have no idea if there is a cereal that has 550 calories per 100 grams… it's just for illustration purposes). It's really easy to tell which one has fewer calories. And it's like this for basically everything in the store. Theoretically you can compare apples and oranges and make an informed decision. Brilliant!!

Yesterday we went to Trader Joe's (love that place!) and we walked by the bread section… and I muttered to myself (maybe a bit louder than I realized) "never again, store bought bread… never again" and then a little roll type thing caught my eye, so I wandered over to have a look. It was a pretzel roll. I wish I took a picture with a banana for scale because it was probably shorter than most bananas, but slightly fatter. According to the package, it is 4.5 oz. And I turned it over to have a look at the calories: 160. And for a split second, I thought "not too bad" and then I saw "Serving size: 1/2 roll, Servings per package: 2." You've seen this before. How about those little bags of chips that they sell at sandwich shops and in the deli section of the store? Yeah, those all have 2-2.5 servings per bag. Are they fucking kidding? Who in the hell doesn't eat the whole bag? Alright, so there's that… single serving bags masquerading as multiple serving bags, so that the products seem less awful for you. Did you know that the serving size for a pickle is "1/3 of a pickle"? Nope? It's because they are high in sodium. Have you ever met a person who only eats 1/3 of a pickle? Me either. Personally I rarely even eat a bite of a pickle because I don't like then much.

Then there's cereal and a million other things that are measured in fucking "cups". Again, what the ever living fuck, FDA? I get it, "cups" and all the other "household measuring thingies" are common in the US. I get that, but holy shit, you guys, we should all have food scales. It's so much more accurate. (and if things really go south, we can all become drug dealers and won't have to buy a scale). The FDA does require the food manufacturer to put the grams on the package as well, but those are all over the place (for instance, we currently have two hot cereal packages from Bob's Red Mill. The serving size is 1/4 cup on both, but on one that is 46 grams and the other is 30 grams. Not at all useful, Bob's), so it's impossible to compare one product to the next because the servings sizes are all different. Argh. It drives me insane.

I started reading the actual rules yesterday and my head just about exploded. Not only is it complicated, but there are so many exceptions to everything. For example, ingredient/serving size. So they have minimums that have to be counted, but since it's by serving size, TicTacs are SUGAR FREE, according to the rules. You know what's in a tictac? Sugar, that's what. Total and complete bullshit.

Anyway, I found this article that sums up the differences between the US and EU requirements. Apparently the US is suppose to be updating the requirements to deal with this serving size bullshit, but I have no idea if or when that will become a thing. Especially now. Since we have a moron as president.

Alright, I'm off to bed now. Just wanted to get a head start on my post tomorrow, since apparently I have something to rant about.

Today, with feeling

We got up early today to go running before the death ray… you get the idea. I hate running in the sunshine. Or the heat. Today I woke up to glorious clouds and fog! Ahhh… sublime. I also woke up a bit crabby because I had trouble sleeping last night (hips were achy and I couldn't get comfortable and also couldn't remember where I put the ibuprofen.) I had serious doubts about my ability to run today. But the good news is that WE RAN FOUR MILES AGAIN!!! Yeeaaaaahhhhh. Unfortunately I'm still a wee bit crabby, but better than earlier. And the run was good. We are improving all around.

Food and Activity

Breakfast

I changed things up today to save time. Fruit (melon, kiwi, and banana) with yogurt and bran flakes. Oh and coffee with milk. Calories: 419 (fruit is surprisingly caloric).

Lunch

My buns, toasted with chicken tenders and a spicy slaw topping. Calories: 473

Dinner

Trader Joe's Chicken Potstickers with soy, ginger, garlic, spicy pepper dipping sauce, broccoli, and mushrooms. Calories: 471

nack

We met our friends at the local pub, so I had a few pints. Calories: 720 (beer is the devil!!)

otal calories: 2083
Activity

Ran 4 miles! Again. W00t!!

welcome back to Italy, buona giornata

28 June 2017 Gargazzone/Gargazon, AustrItaly

As we were driving south today, towards the city of Trento, we passed a sign that said (maybe not in these exact words) “thanks for visiting AustrItaly (Sudtirol), have a nice day”. And maybe a kilometer (we’re in kilometer land, you guys) later, “welcome to Trentino.” And from then on, everything was 100% in Italian. I’m not sure if I mentioned this before… it’s kind of important. Everywhere we’ve been in Alto Adige/Sudtirol has been like this “German name of place/Italian Name of place” or whatever… “German first/Italian second”. And suddenly we drove through some invisible barrier into Italian ONLY and it was like we drove straight back into the totally weird, effed up, crazy, wonderful country that I thought we were spending this week in. What, apparently, I failed to realize when reading over a few wikipedia articles yesterday is that… there are TWO capitals of this region: Bolzano and Trento. And, thus, two… um… sub-regions? I don’t really know the right terminology. But it doesn’t matter… we found Italy today, you guys!! We drove through this invisible barrier where stuff was totally in Italian after that… and we stopped at a familiar grocery store chain (PAM) and got stuff for lunch. The girl at the check out (Antonella) was Italian and spoke to us in Italian. “Do you have the loyalty card? Do you need bags?” “No” on both accounts. OMG, such an effing relief! I mean, I can say stuff and people (mostly) understand me. It’s great.


We bought some stuff for lunch and headed to our destination… Levico Terme. Which is a spa town (terme means spa) with a nice lake. We parked (yeah, got a free spot!!), found a lovely park, had a nice lunch, and walked around the town for a while. After that, we walked down to the lake (holy mountains surrounding lake, batman!) and proceeded to start walking around the lake path. So, as you might know, if you’ve read much of this blog… we’re walkers and we have step goals. Our “official” goal is 10,000 steps per day, but if we get only that, someone has probably coughed up a lung or something pretty bad… on travel days, we sometimes have few steps because those days are hard, but normally they are at least 13-14K. Our “unofficial” goal is 20,000 steps, which is what we actually strive for normally. A 15K day is OK, but still basically a fucking failure (or, hopefully, a travel day, so we don’t feel too badly). Anyhoo… so sometimes, steps are hard to come by or just painful to get or something… so we do this thing where we both check steps, do maths and then figure out what 50% of the 20000-x is and go that far and turn around. You with me so far? Good. Ok, so today was about 13,000 still needed after wandering the town. So I said to husband… “ok, so we need to go until you have 14,000, then we can turn around.” And he agreed, like he does. Then we walked down the hill to the lake. And he decided we should go to the right (in hindsight, I think this was a dope choice… “dope” is good right?). So we went right… walked around the lake, which, by the way, looks like this:

Surrounded by amazing mountains! Wow. It was really beautiful. So we walked… and walked. It seemed like a while, but really wasn’t all that long. We paused at some point to “check steps.” At this point, Husband needed about 3000 more, so we figured that maybe we could walk all the way around the lake. We made it to the end of the lake, which, naturally wasn’t just “continue this nice path around the other side of the lake”. We ended up on a road (not a bad/busy road… it was fine), but it seemed to go waaaaay further in the wrong direction, so I thought we’d end up turning around. But it worked out. We found the trail signs again and continued on (after letting some bikes pass us). This side of the lake path was much hillier and more like a hike than a nice easy walk the first side had been. But it was good. I think hiking… or complex trails (even mildly complex… like “complex” in the sense that it’s not a flat asphalt road that you’re following, but a path that you have to pay attention to your footing and stuff like that) are good for your brain. And the physical part of hiking is one thing… of course, but the mental part is also a huge chunk of why it’s fun and satisfying and also completely exhausting. It’s not always the ups and downs of a trail, but the… “where the hell do I put my foot now” type of stuff. So anyways, the second half of the trail was more ups and downs and more shit we could trip over, so all in all, good for our brains.


We finally made it back to “civilization” and had to kind of skirt this silly camping area, which consisted of an RV park and some camping-type-cabin-trailer things that might have had air conditioning (which is more than this apartment can say). That was a little bit annoying because we totally lost sight of the lake. So Husband consulted maps (remember, my GPS is totally broken. It thought I was in the next town over all day long) and got us back to the car in a jiffy (and uphill jiffy), just before the rain started. I’m not even kidding. We literally got in the car and raindrops started falling on the window. Then more and more… and all the way back to the apartment, via the grocery store for important provisions. The temperature dropped pretty suddenly while we were driving too. And now we’ve been back at the apartment for several hours and I’m actually a little bit COLD. It’s a miracle! I haven’t been cold since Puglia (thanks, air conditioning). Anyways, I’m not sure what the point of all this was, except to tell you guys what we did today. A really nice hike around a beautiful mountain lake in ITALY (real Italy!). We have ended the day way over our “unofficial” step goals by the way.


I was pretty happy to find out that Trentino basically means “Italy”, so we are trying to figure out what we are going to do the next two days in this part of this region… not sure that will work out, but it’s nice to know Italy is just down the road a few kilometers (ok, maybe more than a few… about an hour down the road, give or take).

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me first

10 June 2017 Nardò, Italy

this was the day that Christopher basically summed up driving in Italy in two words: “me first.” Before I used to joke that the rules of the road were just suggestions. Which is kind of also true. Except that there are rules and people sometimes follow them, but then there are the unspoken rules that make absolutely no actual sense to anyone, even the Italians, I suspect. But those “rules” can be summed up by the words “me first”. Those two words explain so much: the random left turns, the shitty parking jobs, the disregard for basic roundabout protocol… and more. Basically every Italian driver believes he or she should go first, regardless of who really has priority. It’s crazy. I’m not sure it really works, but you adapt. And hopefully don’t crash into some strange Italian making a left turn directly in front of you.

No pics from today, but we did enjoy cocktails and a nice walk by the sea before returning to Nardò for more cocktails, maybe some beer, meat, cheese, crisps, and bread… and possibly we went to an anarchist bar where we met some of the other ex-pats in town. Odd place, Nardò.

a valuable lesson

15 May 2017 Corneliano d’Alba

I once read on someone’s blog that the best way to order food at a restaurant in a strange city and a strange country is to start talking to the server and ask them about the local specialties. 


So yeah, seems a little bit obvious, huh? Not so much if you’re an introvert/perfectionist who is afraid of speaking a foreign language where mistakes might be made. We don’t eat out as much as you might think while we are on these long trips. For one thing, we’d probably go broke a lot faster. Not to mention the waistline “issues”. So we try and limit the number of times we go out to eat. 


Normally it’s lunch because we can go visit another city in the morning, get there before or near lunch time, and usually squeeze ourselves into a popular place (or sometimes we are the only ones in the place, looking at you, Caltagirone, Sicily), we can have some wine, and walk around the city after lunch. 


And also, we research ahead of time, so we know the local specialties and we know (more or less) what to order. Today, though, I had this idea where we could try this other approach, because, why not? Well, there are a lot of reasons… but that’s boring. So I’ll just move on with the story. 


We rang the bell at a restaurant in Asti today and were the first ones there (that’s pretty normal for us… first of all, sometimes, it’s actually been a good idea to get to a place early because we get the last table… mostly we are almost the only ones in the restaurant for at least an hour). We got seated and our waiter gave us menus. I told him (in Italian… more or less) that obviously we weren’t from ‘around these parts’… and that we’d like to try some of the local specialties. First of all, he asked whether we should speak in Italian or English… which is rare, most people just start speaking in English to us. So we went with Italian (hoping that Husband understood enough… knowing that we had done some advance research, so it should be OK). And the waiter went through the menu and explained in detail each dish… what specifically made it a local specialty (the pasta is only something in this city of Asti, the vitello tonnato sauce is made without mayonnaise, which makes it lighter… thank god, because that dish is kind of disgusting with all that mayo. That the gnocchi was super special because the soil in the area was particularly good for potatoes and they were grown near his home). For every dish. It was really cool. So we opted for a sample of all the antipasti, a shared pasta dish, and two second dishes. 


Anyway, the food was delicious, but it was cool to have this “lesson” of sorts on how we should approach eating out. I’m glad we took the risk, even though we probably would have ordered all the same stuff because we had done research ahead of time.


I forgot to mention that he also picked a nice wine for us, local, of course. And also we’re experiencing some kind of heat wave. It was like 80 million degrees. I am not sure I have enough summery clothes at this point. Anyway, the morale of the story is to take risk and if you see a Fiat 500 (classic, you guys… not the new ones), that means it will be a good day. We saw a cute red one with red wheels, but no pictures because driving. It was a good day. Alright, my battery is nearly dead on this thing, so I gotta save and I’ll upload some pictures in a minute.

Oh yeah and my bread turned out really yummy. Here are those pictures. 

at this point, I’d be the best airbnb host…

13 May 2017 Corneliano d’Alba

Yes, I forgot to post a blog yesterday. We traveled from Aosta to Corneliano d’Alba. It was a pretty short drive, we checked in early in the day, did grocery shopping, took a walk, blah blah blah… are you dying of boredom yet? Yes, probably.

But this new apartment is really beautiful. It’s big… huge, in fact. It’s got a lot of bedrooms and bathrooms. And the kitchen is pretty nice (not big, but good). The TV service basically sucks. Most of the channels don’t come through clearly, but oh well. We aren’t here to watch tv. Anyway… I’ll get back to this in a minute.

This morning, I woke up at 4AM. I know it was 4 because the church bells woke me up. Which is good because I had to pee. And then they woke me up at 5 and at 6 and I finally gave up around 7 or something. I don’t remember. It sounds worse than it was. I did get back to sleep. No huge deal. But anyways, today… we got up, figured out the apartment, went shopping, had lunch, and visited Alba, which is really close. It’s nice out, you guys. No jacket today. It was like 70-something degrees. And supposed to get hotter here. Wow… such a change from when we left Italy in January when it was snowing in the south! Anyways, I digress again. We got back to the apartment, had cocktails, and made dinner. And here we are. Watching some TV. So see? Now I’ve come full circle.

And now that I’ve got the day’s events out of the way, I can write about what I really have in my head.

what I’ve learned from airbnb

First of all, if you actually use airbnb as it was originally intended… kind of as a house swap while you’re out of town, I don’t see how it even works? Because you’re not there to let guests in and welcome them? So who the hell is supposed to do this? Anyway, most of the places we’ve stayed, we meet the host. Sometimes we don’t, sometimes we call them on WhatsApp… and later wonder… “does this person even have the authority to rent this place or do they just know where the keys are?”  Anyways… here are a few things I’ve learned:

  • Meet your visitors. Even for just a few minutes to give a quick tour, answer questions, give keys. No biggie. We may not see each other ever again, which is fine, but it’s nice to meet people at the beginning. We also like to see people before we leave, but that’s not always in the cards. It’s weird when you don’t meet the host and they just give you a code, or worse, instructions to “tailgate someone into the building… go to the 13th floor and the door will be open, keys on the table.” The code part is actually fine. I like the flexibility that gives us… like if we are late, I don’t worry. And we can be early or whatever and that’s nice. But I do like to meet the host. One of the weirdest was when we stayed in a basement apartment in Portland, Oregon. We had a code to get in and never once even saw our host. We heard them sometimes, but never saw them or met them… so odd. Most of the time, if the person is in town (and the place isn’t managed by a company), we meet them, even after our actual check-in.
  • Leave a manual. It’s nice to know how stuff works. And the wifi password. And what to do with the garbage (especially if it’s a self-check in situation). And if there are any weird things. Or any recommendations in the neighborhood. This is just generally a nice thing to have.
  • Empty the fucking fridge. No one is going to eat/drink that opened container of anything. Full fucking stop. Maybe you’re a starving college student… wait, if you’re a starving college student, you aren’t staying in these places. These places are too expensive for you. So clean out the fridge. We’ve been to several places where they have (nicely) left a pint of milk and that is great. It’s new, unopened. Awesome. But that is the only thing in the fridge. There is no half consumed bottle of coke. There is no partially eaten butter. Or juice, or whatever the fuck. Just a new container of milk. For the morning coffee. That is very nice.
  • Leave a “gift” of sorts. Some milk, maybe a bottle of wine, maybe other breakfast items, or something local (in Sicily we had a package full of local pastries, which wasn’t good for the waistline, but was delicious… and we went back to that shop a few times for other stuff… win/win). Nothing fancy. But a little gift is nice. It’s not mandatory or anything. But if you leave the fridge full of crap, I might take away some stars.
  • Make sure the kitchen stuff is clean. Not just the counter tops. But the dishes and pots and pans. And put them away. I know, this is a little extra work. A little. But the previous guest may or may not have cleaned stuff very well. I’d just say, give the place a once over… check the stuff that’s already put away just to make sure it’s clean. And empty the fucking fridge. This doesn’t always happen, but sometimes a previous guest isn’t good with the whole cleaning thing, so stuff isn’t clean. And it’s gross. And it just taints my entire opinion of a place.
  • Bathrooms – clean the fucking shower drain at least sometimes. We’ve had problems with slow drains. There was the place in London where the shower drain would fill up and then suddenly drain just fine a few minutes later. Then there was another drain, I can’t remember where, that was full. We (Husband) had to clean it out. Then this current place. The shower has these odd pieces of stone (slabs) on the floor. They look cool, but the shower drains slow (Husband’s report after first shower). And I went to shower and noticed a lot of hair around the perimeter… and that’s just nasty. And the drain didn’t drain, so also annoying. So we picked up some cleaning supplies and gloves and I cleaned the drain and the slabs… and it was disgusting. Hair hair and more hair. I mean, I get it, shower drains get nasty. That’s just life. So clean this shit out so your guests don’t have to. Also, this colors my opinion of a place and I start looking at EVERYTHING to see if it’s clean. Kind of a bummer.
  • If you have a washer, have a drying rack. Or a dryer… but some of these foreign dryers don’t really do much, so have a drying rack. The last London apartment had a dryer that was broken AND no drying rack, so we had to hang our clothes strategically around the apartment. Rather annoying. Most places have a rack. Some racks are better than others.
  • Important things all kitchens need to have (this list isn’t everything, but it is stuff that has been missing from at least one, if not more, apartments where we’ve stayed): hot mitts, an oven, at least one large cutting board, knives that are sharp or can be sharpened, a big mixing bowl or two, a baking dish, a frying pan, a sauce pan, a colander, a cheese grater, a coffee maker of some kind, scissors (nearly everywhere has had scissors, actually), decent wine glasses
  • Be responsive. We’ve had the occasional issue, which is to be expected. Like in our cottage in the Cotswolds, the first morning I found out the microwave was broken. It turned on and did things, but didn’t do microwavy things like heat stuff up. So I messaged the owner and we had a new one a few days later. Obviously, as a host, you aren’t checking every last thing all the time. That’s silly. So you rely on your guests to tell you when shit is broken. And then you need to fix it, hopefully quickly. Even if they say it’s not a big deal, it probably is… and so it’s in your best interest to just fix the problem as quickly as possible. We haven’t had a lot of things go wrong… just a few things. Nothing huge either. But it’s nice when the host/owner is responsive and fixes stuff quickly.
  • And, since it’s not only on the host to do everything, we always make sure that we leave a place in great condition. We clean the kitchen, run the dishwasher, sweep the floors, and take out the garbage. Other stuff… strip the bed and leave all the laundry in a pile somewhere logical. Clean the toilets. We just like to leave a place almost like we haven’t been there. Which is funny because, when we are there, we are THERE… you know what I mean? We spread out… we leave clutter all over the place. We are messy and the kitchen is probably the worst. The only place we weren’t able to really get it as nice as we’d like was Lecce because the water was broken… the pipes were messed up after the snow storm, so we had a good reason, but it still kinda sucked. We felt bad. But we had to leave a day early, so… not the end of the world.
  • Also we try and be quiet and respectful of the neighbors and the area. We realize we are guests, so we aren’t disruptive or loud (hopefully).

At the end of the day, we really appreciate that people open their homes, or their investment properties or whatever to strangers like us. It’s fun. We meet interesting characters and sometimes we don’t meet but we exchange random emails or calls on weirdo technology I’m probably too old to be using. It’s great and one of my favorite things about long term travel.

catherine’s dream house

22 March 2017 Stow-on-the-Wold

Been traveling for a while now (5 months and counting) and stayed in a lot of different places (17 places and counting), each with its own set of quirks. So I’m keeping a tally of things in want in my “dream house.”

Quick flashback to my childhood. I loved Barbies. I had a small collection, clothes, some accessories, some Kens. I even had the swimming pool (but, truth be told, the bathtub was a far better Olympic sized swimming pool for my Barbies (except that submerging them in water was a nightmare because they never dried and then it was really hard to get them dressed). The “Barbie” pool was more of a “lounge in the sun with a Mai Tai” type of pool. And since I wasn’t old enough to even know what a Mai Tai was, plus I really wasn’t a fan of sitting around a pool in the sun – I burned easily and quickly – the pool was a bit of a let down. But anyways, what I really wanted was the Dream House. I always wanted to live in a two story house and I thought my Barbies should as well. But they always had to live in ramblers I’d build them on the floor of my bedroom. I never did get the Dream House. I just had to take what I could get on my floor. In hindsight, and knowing now what I know about the pool, the ramblers were probably better. Plus I’m sure it helped my spacial awareness and creativity. Although, that’s probably debatable. Anyway, now that I’ve stayed in a lot of different homes in parts of Europe and the US, I have this list of things I want in my real Dream House.

Things I want in my Dream House
  1. Level Floors – Yeah, sorry to all old houses across the world, but I’d really like to have level floors. Also they should be quiet and not squeak. We’ve stayed in at least 2 places where the floors are sloped so dramatically, it feels as if you might fall down when stumbling to the bathroom in the middle of the night. And the squeaky floors… those are just annoying. And if you have a downstairs neighbor, it’s crazy making. And it makes it hard to brush my teeth and pace the floors if they are noisy. So quiet, level floors, please.
  2. Kitchen cupboards and drawers that close properly – The worst thing ever is putting a cupboard door over the fridge door. Especially when the cupboard door starts to get off level and/or pull away from the fridge door. Because you know what happens? Yeah, the fridge door can be hard to close and sometimes it doesn’t get closed, you go to bed, and you figure it out in the morning, and all the food inside is spoiled. This has literally happened to us three times in England. It’s driving me insane. So I want the cupboards to close properly. Scratch that, I don’t want a cupboard door covering the fridge. The stand alone fridge is just fine. I don’t care if it matches the rest of the kitchen. I just want to be able to close the door with certainty. And ease. Oh yeah, this also happened in Italy, but it was a normal fridge. It was probably Husband’s fault.
  3. On the subject of kitchens – counter tops should not be so easily scuffed with a knife or any other kitchen implement as to make me nervous about it the entire stay. Also, they should be heat resistant and not made out of plastic. Mostly, they should not be made out of plastic.
  4. Ceilings and doorways of a proper height – the place where we are currently staying, a tiny cottage in Stow, has really low ceilings and (worse) doorways. It’s ok for me because I’m not particularly tall, but Husband has already whacked his head on all the doorways at least once each (and he’s really not that tall. I mean, he’s a good height for a man. Not too tall, not too short. Just right. But these doorways are really fucking low!) And we’ve only been here 4 days. So it’s going to be a long two weeks of head smacking.
  5. Two bathrooms – this just seems like a good idea. Oh, but a proper bathroom door would be good. We stayed in this place in France that had a closet door as the bathroom door, so it was real thin and lacked privacy. Also a fan. Yeah, a good fan and a window that opens. Because bathrooms are wet and stinky. And when the towels never dry because moisture, yeah, that’s awful (looking at you, Sicily. Everything was moldy. EVERYTHING). So, at the very least a good fan is essential. Also I’d like a towel warmer.
  6. Wood or tile floors – ok, hard floors of whatever type. Just no effing carpet. I hate carpet. Britain loves carpet. So does the US. Italy has the right idea here. Hard flooring that is probably cold, but just so much better than carpet.
  7. Water temperature and pressure – not just in the bathroom, but in the entire house. Did I ever mention the apartment in London where the shower was fan-effing-tastic, so much pressure, it was nearly too much. But over in the next room (the kitchen), the hot water was literally a trickle. Literally. I’m not even joking. When I messaged our host to find out if this was normal, she wrote back, “yeah, unfortunately it’s normal. But the shower is great.” So from that moment on, we washed the dishes in the shower. Additionally, a consistent water temperature is a necessity. We’ve all had the shocker temperature changes happen in the shower. It’s horrible. It’s happened our share of times in all kinds of places (we basically have this rule where we don’t turn on any water or flush a toilet while the other person is in the shower). And on the subject of showers, no electric showers (rubbish) and no “rain” shower heads (also rubbish). I’d like a detachable shower head. Yeah, we get those most of the time. Ooooh, and one more thing as it pertains to water in the bathroom. One faucet for hot and cold water. Not two faucets. No, no, no. Wrong. All wrong. One faucet. Two faucets are in almost every place we’ve stayed outside of London in the UK. Maddening.
  8. A good toaster – most of the time, the toast either doesn’t toast at all, or it burns to a crisp, even at the lowest setting. I just want a good toaster that toasts my bread the way I want on that particular day. The one in this cottage is probably the best so far. The one in the first apartment in London was the worst. You couldn’t turn your back on the toaster or it would light the bread on fire instead of toasting it. As long as you watched it, it was OK though. Toasters are weird.
  9. An oven – this seems like a no brainer, but we have stayed in a few places that don’t have an oven. I want an oven. But I want one that has normal controls that make sense. I don’t much care if it’s got convection or non convection or both or a broiler or whatever. I just want controls that make sense. With maybe words or something? Because the endless supply of little oven icons is insane. And, more often than not, the little icons are rubbed off, so you can’t see them anyway.
  10. Electrical outlets – I want these all over the place. Like every two feet. Ok, maybe not every two feet, but I want them where they are needed. For example, on each side of the bed. We are traveling with an Italian extension cord because it’s pretty normal that we only have one outlet on one side of the bed (almost always my side), so we have to jerry-rig a scheme with this extension cord and a bunch of the outlet adapters we are carrying around (we have 3 sets for Europe, UK, and Italy — yeah, they are all different). Husband once said, “sometimes when I plug stuff in, I really hope nothing explodes.” So really, a lot of electrical outlets wherever they might be needed, now and in the future is a requirement.
  11. Heating/Cooling controlled by an actual thermostat – I don’t think we’ve stayed in a place anywhere in Europe that was actually controlled by a thermostat. Not entirely true. The place in Hawkshead in the Lake District had a thermostat that you could set to any temperature you wanted. But it only worked when the system was on and that was controlled by a timer on the boiler. So if the system was off, but you wanted it warmer, you could set the thermostat to 100, if you wanted, but nothing would happen. So that’s stupid.  And in Sicily, we had these room heater/ac units and we could set a temperature, but I’m pretty sure it was either on or off. Maybe Europeans could save some money on their heating/cooling bills if they would use a thermostat properly?
  12. Good Internet – I don’t really need to explain this, do I?

 

Alright, that’s my Dream House. Subject to change, yadda, yadda, not inclusive of everything, not a contract, blah, blah, blah… There are other things, but mostly about the “stuff” in the house, like sharp knives and dishes that actually fit into the dishwasher, but those are so easy to fix, it’s not even worth listing.

But, what did you guys do today? How’d you get 20k steps?

Oh yeah, sorry. It rained. It poured. The sun shined. We went to Stratford-upon-Avon because it was sorta close to this farm shop I wanted to visit for fresh veggies and maybe other farmy stuff.

right before the rain dumped rain all over us

I know, most people go to Stratford because Shakespeare (well, I know now). But I’m a cultural idiot sometimes and had no idea. Not even when we walked right by the Royal Shakespeare Company. I got a clue after we also walked by his birthplace and the church where he was buried. And also after stopping for a coffee and eavesdropping on the conversation next to us. Two American women, both students of something related to Shakespeare. One telling the other to make sure and take some downtime. That there’s always another book to read and more research to do, but make sure you go to London or up to Scotland and get out of this place for a few days. Shakespeare overdose! Also too many tourists.

this is where we got tsunamied by a lorrie

On the way back to Stow, we stopped at the farm store and got a pile of fresh veg (that’s now in our bellies in the form of Thai Basil Chicken with Stir Fry Veggies), fresh milk (I think), anchovies (for Husband), some jam, and artisan flour (because you can never have too much flour). And that brings you up to speed.

I’m A Runner… wait, what?

I’m a runner. Let me say it one more time: I’m a runner. Words I never, in a million years, would imagine I’d say (write) about myself. Yep, I’m as shocked as you. Maybe even more shocked. I’ve kind of always wanted to be a runner. Or at least have the ability to run more than like 10 feet without feeling like I was going to die. Even as a teenager, I was a horrible runner. I would guess that mainly that was because I never learned how to do it properly or I never really tried very hard to do it properly or slow enough or whatever. I used to joke that “I only run when chased.” But secretly I always wanted to be able to do it without being chased.

We started walking regularly in 2013, before our first long trip to Europe, and eventually decided to get serious about losing weight (in August of 2014, if you’re curious). Since I basically spent my entire life overweight (or worse), the thought of running was like torture and also probably wouldn’t have been very good for my body. Anyway, we started walking and, later, losing weight. And as the weight is lost and the calorie goals go down (because there’s less of you to support, you don’t have to eat as much. Ugh science, sometimes I hate you). In the back of my mind, I kept thinking, I’m going to start running, mostly so I can eat more. Yep. I know you can’t outrun/walk/bike/swim, etc. a bad diet, but you can slightly increase the number of calories burned with running (or walking, biking, etc.). Not a ton, but a little bit and every little bit is delicious. And also it’s a lot faster than walking (uh… yeah, thanks for the big newsflash), but my point is… walking 15-20K steps a day takes forever. If you can run some number of those steps, it’s less of a time commitment.

Alright, hopefully you’re not too bored yet. I wanted to wait to start running until I was relatively close to a healthy weight, just so I would limit my chances of a) giving up immediately, or b) getting injured. I started with the “Couch to 5k” program, which basically eases you into running over a period of 8 weeks. For example, on day one (I’m making this up), you walk for 5 minutes, then run for 1 minute, walk for 5… etc. And eventually you start running more and more until you can run for 30 minutes without stopping. I really thought this wouldn’t work and that I’d probably be the only person in human history who really couldn’t run at all. But I started the program regardless (I like directions and structure) and it actually worked. I still can’t believe it.

The long and the short of it is that the first 4 weeks were pretty doable. Just a gradual increase in running time. Ok, fine. That’s cool. Then week 5. The first two days (it’s a 3 day/week program) were a challenge, but I completed them. But then I peeked at day three and panicked. Run 20 minutes without stopping. TWENTY. I was pretty sure they were mistaken about this amount of time, so I repeated week 5 day 2 a few times before I got up the nerve to even attempt 20 minutes without stopping. And holy shit, I actually did it. I really couldn’t believe it. That’s when I realized that running is probably 80% mental. Maybe more. Definitely a lot though. I finished the program on March 24.

After that, Husband and I started running 3 miles pretty regularly. We did pretty well from April until about mid-August. We clocked just over 300 miles. We participated in our first organized 5k run (that was way more fun and much more exhilarating than I thought it would be). I read a lot about running, increasing distance, speed, all that stuff. Basically I learned that one of the best things is frequent, short, slow runs. So that’s what we did. Frequent, short, slow runs. For me, the hardest part was breathing. I rarely had a run (at first) where I felt like my legs were tired and wouldn’t make it. It was almost always my breathing that was hardest to control. Some days I just couldn’t get my breath. Once I had to stop and walk for a few minutes because I just couldn’t get it right (it’s possible that my sports bra might have been a little too tight). But, over time, it has gotten better, easier, I dare say. Also the endolphins, I love those endolphins!

We took a bit of a break from mid-August until late November, mostly because the summer was hot as balls, we were traveling all over the place, and other reasons that were mostly related to HOT AS BALLS everywhere we went. We started up again at the end of November, in Sicily, where we ran along the sea (not on the beach — that’s wayyyyy to hard and also too sandy) in lovely sunny weather. We are currently in Lecce where we are running around the city (the ring road, so literally around the city). The course is awful though. It’s what I imagine trail running would be like, but only flat. The sidewalks are horrible (uneven, missing, unstable, everything bad you can imagine), there are tons of streets to cross and cars to dodge, oh and the dog poo! It’s everywhere. And I keep thinking one of us is going to have a horrible accident at some point, either with the sidewalk, a car, or some combination of both.

And then it happened. To me. I fell smack on the sidewalk on our January 1 run. It’s like it happened in fast forward and slow motion all at once. I don’t even know what I tripped over. It was on a relatively flat part of the course. Thankfully, nothing was hurt, except my ego, so I got up, dusted myself off, made sure nothing was broken, and finished the run.

I’ve fallen two other times, once on a hike with my friend Cale. He might have knocked me over on purpose because I was so quick and he wanted to slow me down. Of course, this is impossible because I was behind him, going downhill, and just face-planted in the dirt. The second time was running with Husband. We were just starting our morning run on the Kirkland trail, when something went wrong with his phone, then his fitbit flew out of his pocket, chaos ensued, we tangled legs, and I went down. Got some lovely scrapes that day. We had to stop because tears and blood. Mostly blood. I hate stopping!

So then yesterday we decided to run and I fell again! This time it was worse. I somehow cut my eyebrow and broke my glasses. There was blood and anger and a nice man who offered to get me some ice, but, while he went to get it, Husband insisted that we get back to the apartment so we could deal with the blood gushing (ok, not gushing) from my head (I really have left some DNA in Italy). So we walked back to the apartment. I was so upset. Husband said “try not to cry, it will make things worse.” And I tried, I really did, but some tears were shed. And a lot of “fucks” were uttered, (shouted?). I’m not really sure. Anyways, we got back, patched everything up, he fixed my glasses (thankfully I do have a second pair), and now I’m just really sore. My neck and shoulders and arms really hurt, as if I was weightlifting yesterday. And I have a bruise on my knee that’s a little swollen. But I’m ok. If I feel better tomorrow, we will run then. Because I have to get passed my (now very real) fear of falling. Maybe I need to slow down and pay more attention (I thought I was, but I do remember thinking… “ahhh, a nice flat straightawaaaaayyyyyyyy…<splat> right before I hit the ground.

So yes, I am a runner and have suffered the falls to prove it.

Always Snip the Tops. Always.

Italians seem to lose their minds over sweet Christmas breads like Panettone and Pandoro (those might be the only two). Anyways, they are both leavened sweet breads that are made around Christmas (actually they are available here year round, in smaller quantities). As the holidays roll out every year, so do the hoards of Panettone & Pandoro. Every store, from the biggest to the smallest, clears out an entire aisle (which is saying something – some of these stores are really small) and fills it with piles and piles of mass-produced Christmas bread in a box. Looks something like this:

Not enough room inside the store for all the Christmas Bread-in-a-Box

As you can see, there isn’t a shortage. And every time we go shopping (especially in the big “iper” markets), we see many Italians loading up their carts with piles and piles of Christmas bread boxes. Not just one or two, but people buy like 8-10 of them. I keep wondering what they do with them? I mean, they are delicious so it’s not beyond my imagination to eat one a day for the entire holiday. Of course, that would mean I’d have to subsist on Panettone alone and that’s probably an invitation for scurvy or diabetes. So I have to imagine that Italians have eleventy billion holiday parties and they bring a boxed Panettone to each one.

I honestly don’t remember when I first tried Panettone. I vaguely remember not liking it because it was a version with the “nuclear fruit” or “canditi” in Italian. I don’t even think it was in Italy, but I don’t know. Maybe it was. Anyway, I don’t like that fake fruit stuff. It’s nasty. And not even the best leavened bread on earth will make it better. But I do remember the first one that I liked. It was a few years ago in Seattle. I found an artisanal one at Whole Foods made by Essential Baking Company. I think it was marketed as “no nuclear fruit” or something, so I bought it. And it was amazing. And that was the beginning of my obsession. I tried finding the same brand the following year, but wasn’t successful. I remember emailing Whole Foods about it and being assured that they would get them any day now. Never happened. I went to all the stores. And never found it. I didn’t actually go to the bakery, because I wasn’t that obsessed, maybe? Or maybe just too lazy or busy? So I think I went a whole year without Panettone. Maybe. Memory is fuzzy. Then I think the next year, I was at the Metropolitan Market (if you can imagine… it’s a market that is even more expensive than Whole Foods) and they had a Panettone made by Gelatiamo, which is a local Italian gelateria/pasticceria (the woman who makes the Panettone each year, Maria, is from Italy. Her family has a bakery in some town here that’s been around for ages). That was some damn fine Panettone. Better than the Essential Baking Company… not that my memory of that was sharp, since I couldn’t get my hands on it after that one time.

So fast forward to last year. I got this itch to try and make it myself. I read that panettone is considered the “Everest of baking”. It’s really fucking hard to make. And I found that out the hard way… the way that made me question my love for the stuff… and for all things Italy. But eventually, after blood sweat and tears (ok, mostly tears), I got it right. And that was last Christmas. You can read all about it here, if you want to.

And here we are in Italy again for Christmas. And I get this crazy idea in my head to make Panettone in Italy. Read here for the backstory.

Alright, enough blabbity… let’s get on with it.

I made Panettone in Italy!!! All by hand too because we don’t have a mixer. The recipe is the same as last year, but I didn’t use the osomotolerant yeast or the diastatic malt powder. I could have probably asked for them at the cake shop, but I just thought they weren’t 100% necessary. Also my starter was very strong and active, so I figured that would help things along.

I mixed up the first dough on Tuesday morning. The one thing I’d do differently is make sure the butter is softer because I ended up with chunks of butter in the dough (on second thought, that doesn’t sound too bad, does it?). I let it sit on the counter all day while we went for a day trip to Nardo to visit Mackenzie and Christopher. We got back just after 9pm (I think about 12 hours later, give or take) and the dough had filled the bowl to the rim. Very exciting! I popped it in the fridge to slow things down, knowing that the final dough would be mixed the next morning (normally you would mix up the first dough the night before, but I’m a rebel like that… and I let it ferment longer).

first dough ingredients. note to self: make sure butter is softer.

first dough all mixed up… get to work, little yeasties!

The next morning is when the fun really started. I gathered all the ingredients for the final dough. I scrubbed the marble counter top and started mixing things around 8:45 am. Without a mixer, the “mixing” of everything is pretty difficult, especially at first. I started initially mixing the stuff in a bowl, since it’s liquid and dry stuff and you gotta first incorporate it all. I tried like every mixing apparatus we have in this apartment. They all basically sucked and I ended up dumping everything directly onto the counter top.

first dough, the morning after. Looks amazing!!

mis-en-place – ingredients for the final dough. Clockwise from… I don’t know: Water, egg yolks, sugar, first dough, candied orange & lemon peel + raisins, butter, honey, flour, orange zest, vanilla bean, salt.

adding ingredients for the final dough

This dough is sticky, very, very, very sticky. For a very wet, sticky dough like this, there’s a technique called “slap and fold” (or “slap and tickle” if you are my Husband). So I used that method to knead the dough. It is really really hard at first because the dough is so insanely sticky. I had huge dough ball hands for a long time. Thank goodness for the dough scraper we picked up. That thing was a life saver.

slap and fold the stickiest dough ever

Alright, so slapping and tickling folding the dough… its more stretching and folding actually… builds the gluten, which is what you want in this dough. Then you start adding sugar, slowly, which, slowly, fucks up all your forward progress and makes the dough really sticky and almost soupy again. So adding it a little at a time over time is the best way. I think I spent a good 1 hour to 1:15 mixing in the sugar and building the gluten back up until I had a lovely “windowpane” of dough. At this point, the dough actually starts to pull away from everything (they describe in the mixer version the dough “pulling away from the sides”… yeah, so this was pulling away from the counter, my hands, the dough scraper, and anything else I may have actually flung the thing against). So it has a nice consistency at this point, but still very sticky.

Time for the butter. Oh, by the way, if you ever make this by hand, you will need a Husband (or equivalent) to do things for you that require hands. Like scratch your nose, add sugar to the dough, soften the butter more, take pictures, etc. Without a Husband (or equivalent), you’re basically screwed. Just forget about doing it by hand and go buy a mixer. Or get a Husband (or equivalent). Whichever.

Ok, butter. The other foil to gluten. I spread out the dough ball on the counter and smeared it with the properly softened (thank you, Husband (or equivalent)) butter and started the slap and fold again. In a way, it was easier because everything was all greased up. But the texture of the dough totally changed. It became more… marshmallowy, for lack of a better word, which isn’t actually a word. Once all the butter was incorporated, it was definitely pulling away from everything, which was nice.

the adding of the butter

I don’t always understand the order in which things with this dough happen, but I just follow instructions because I’m kind of an expert at following instructions. At this point, you are supposed to add water and honey. So Husband kindly mixed the two together in a glass and we put the dough back in a bowl and added water and honey. The dough gets all weird and slippery and just… uh, slippery and gooshy until you get the water mixed in. It’s kind of a pain. But it’s almost done. Just have to add all that candied orange and lemon peel as well as the raisins. Added those and mixed the fruit around and that was that. Put the dough into a big bowl to ferment for an hour. Half way through that, you fold it… something about gluten development… then you portion it into three pieces and let them rest for a while. After that, form balls and add those to the paper molds that are already prepped with skewers, so the finished bread can be hung upside down after the bake.

that’s a good windowpane!

final dough is finally done

prepped molds. the skewers are so you can hang the finished loaves upside down, so they don’t collapse.

three little loaves, resting

There were three breads, but only room in the oven for 2 at a time, so I put 2 of them near a heat source (heating pad) and the third in a cooler location, so it would take longer to proof. The first two proofed in about 4 hours and were ready for baking.

proofing…

This is the point where I always have a moment of panic. To snip the tops or to just leave them. See, the first time I snipped the tops last year, the entire bread fell (over-proofed), so I always worry that is going to happen. Also, the kitchen shears we have are total shit, so I was even more afraid because they would have probably fucked up the snipping. I had an internal argument about it and “don’t snip the tops” won and the breads went in the oven. Everything in there seemed to go well, they rose more (that’s called Oven Spring) and we got them out and hung upside down without any collapse like last year.

after the bake they hang upside down so they don’t collapse.

Several hours later, the third one was ready. And we had been out on a walk in the meantime and purchased some new kitchen shears, so the top could be snipped. So I snipped the top, no collapsing, and tucked in a pat of butter and shoved it in the oven. This third one was really great. The oven spring was better and the overall look of the bread is nicer. It’s kind of rustic vs. a smooth top like the others (rustic is better in this case). Either way, they will be good (hopefully, this remains to be seen… you gotta wait a few days before you try it… for the cure), but the lesson I learned is always snip the tops.

always. snip. the. tops. always.

Always. Snip. The. Tops.

PS – we cut open one of the non-snipped breads on Christmas morning. Schmeared on a little more butter and sampled. Delicious! We brought the nice looking one to Christmas dinner with my family here in Italy and everyone loved it… or they said they did. Haha. If I had one critique it would be that they might have been a smidge overcooked. They were just a little bit dry. And it’s also possible that the dough might have oxidized a little during the very long kneading process (this really is a thing). So… overall, they turned out very good, but I know I can do better. But we’ll just have to wait until next December to see for sure.

PPS – I took some selfies with the panettone. We look pretty festive!

panettone selfie

look, it’s a panettone!

me and my panettone

Wet Hands, Streaks, and Previously Hated Things

It seems like at the end of every year, especially since social media really became a thing, people are ready for a new year, ready to kick the old one in the nuts, and are generally pretty pissed off about things that happened during the year. So yeah, 2016 was definitely one of those years. I could list eleventy billion shit things that happened, but I started thinking about some of the things that I learned about myself during the course of the year.

Naturally (ok, maybe only naturally to me…), I made a list. These are some of the Little Things.

Hand Dryers Suck

I hate having wet hands. Hate it. So much. And it’s really annoying because I have the bladder the size of a thimble (stick with me… this will make sense). So, when we are out and about, especially on a day trip to another town, I have to pee a billion times, or at least once. And most of the bathrooms here a) have no toilet seat (I’m getting good at squatting), b) have no toilet paper (I carry around tissues for this eventuality – almost always), and c) have those stupid air hand dryers. And not the kind that sort of work (Dyson), but these anemic ones that are basically like blowing on your own hands, so they NEVER DRY. And I know I can wipe them on my pants like a normal person, but I’m traveling with only so many pairs of pants and they will all show hand prints, so it’s kind of a problem to hate wet hands. Anyway, I learned this sometime in 2016. It was quite the revelation to me how much it bothers me. And maybe kind of bizarre.

We’re Streaking!!

I’m obsessed with streaks. I like to track all kinds of things about all kinds of stuff (mostly about myself). It’s funny because when we first started walking, we had the 10,000-steps-a-day goal I started tracking it with an app on my phone. And it was free, which I liked. But horribly inaccurate, which… well, gave me sweaty palms and heart palpitations. Then one day, Husband decided we needed FitBits and I really thought he was bonkers and it was a huge waste of money. But he ordered one for me anyways and like 3 seconds after I got it, I realized that it’s like my favorite gadget ever invented, ever. And thus started the ‘walking streak’. On our first trip to Italy, I had a streak going of 124 days in a row of 10,000+ steps. And the streak unfortunately was broken on the day we traveled back to the US (travel days are hard, you guys). I was really bummed about that. And then I fell off the walking wagon a little bit because reasons. But I got back on the wagon and THAT streak lasted 765 days. SEVEN HUNDRED AND SIXTY FIVE DAYS. That’s more than two years! Sadly, the streak broke on a fateful (ok, I exaggerate) day in September while we were visiting family in the Bay Area. I put on a brave face to Husband, but I was pretty crushed. Still mourning that streak a little bit. So now the current streak is up to 90-something days.

Maybe you just haven’t had the ‘good’ version of that thing you hate

Things I used to hate, but now I can’t get enough of.

Number one is Cilantro. Yeah, weird, I know. I’m so sad here in Italy because they don’t have cilantro anywhere. Anywhere. Full stop. It doesn’t exist. I remember exactly when I started liking cilantro. I made a green chili chicken soup and Husband put some in his as a garnish and I looked at it with such envy, thinking, “I wish cilantro didn’t taste like soap.” But I brushed that thought aside and tried a little bit and it was the best-thing-ever. Then I started putting it on everything. And it’s not as if I hadn’t had it in years (I ate it accidentally on a regular basis) and it’s not as if this was the “good” cilantro and all my life I’ve been accidentally eating the bad stuff. It was just suddenly delicious.

Number two is squash. And we’re talking almost all squash – winter, summer, all of it. I kind of liked zucchini in certain preparations. I still don’t really like yellow summer squash very much (just not a lot of flavor) and paddy pan squash can die in a fire. Is that even food?? To me it’s like a funny shaped waxy ball of death. And winter squash was always too sweet or too watery. Or just gross. And honestly, I never really ate it as a kid. At least I don’t remember… mom? But since I’ve gotten on this counting calorie thing, I started trying new low calorie things. And do you know how low in calories squash is? And do you know that some of them taste like sweet potato? YES!! I started with spaghetti squash because I fell for that “it’s like noodles” nonsense. It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t noodles. Not at all noodles. Not at all. People really are desperate if they think spaghetti squash is like a noodle. Also, it doesn’t go with tomato. And if you think it does, you are wrong. It’s not a noodle and it’s not even a good fake noodle. But anyways… I figured spaghetti squash was OK, so we should try ALL the squash. (there are a lot of varieties!). My favorite is delicata (it’s the small oblong striped one). Then butternut. I like to cut these in half, scoop out the seeds and those stringy bits, put salt and pepper on the flesh, flip them cut side down on a cookie sheet lined with parchment, and cook them in the oven at a high temperature until they are soft and delicious. I don’t like acorn squash much because it’s too watery and vegetabley. I know that’s not a word. I will write a letter to the dictionary people to have it added soon.

Things I still hate – mangoes and kimchee. Husband LOVES kimchee. And what I really can’t stand about it, besides the taste, is the SMELL. It makes me gag. I cannot deal with it. In our ex-house, Husband would sometimes eat it as a snack while I was upstairs showering or something (we tried the 30-block-radius rule, but our house wasn’t that big). I would get out of the shower and I could smell it. And I’d go downstairs and tell him and he would be like, “I opened it and ate it all outside. Then I quickly brought in the plate and washed it with bleach and lye, so there should be no trace. How the fuck can you smell that?!?” Just nasty and I’m glad it doesn’t exist (to my knowledge) in Italy.

Those are the little things. There’s more… stay tuned.