Italy on 5 Pounds a Day: Day 2

No, this isn't about how I managed to survive four days in Italy with only £20 in my wallet.  But by the end of the trip, I was fully expecting to find that I had gained a significant amount of weight from all the food we ate!

Since we were instructed to be on the bus by 8:30 am, my roommate Erin and I woke up bright and early on Tuesday morning and were the first people to hit the breakfast buffet at 7 am.  What a spread!  Fruit, cakes, pastries, meats, cheeses, cereal, bread, yogurt, bacon and eggs, and cappuccinos made to order.  Our day of gluttony was off to a good start!

Breakfast

We'd come to the right place for our culinary tour.  Bologna is in the Emilia Romagna region of northeastern Italy, which is considered the food capital of Italy, and is particularly known for its Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese, Parma ham (prosciutto), and balsamic vinegar as well as a certain variety of cherries.  After breakfast we piled into our little bus and headed out to the country to find out for ourselves.

Our cute little air-conditioned bus

Our first stop of the day was an agricultural cooperative where they make Parmesan and ricotta cheese.  (I believe it's pronounced "lah-MAY")

The cheese factory

 It was a relatively small operation, and I suspect they don't normally do a lot of public tours...

The copper vats where they mix and cook the milk

Ricotta cheese

Freshly-made Parmesan cheese wheels

... based on the number of, um, pin-up calendars adorning the walls.  This was one of the more tasteful examples.

Most of the employees are male...

Our guide seemed oblivious to this until one of the women in our group asked Mara to ask him if we would look like the ladies in the calendars if we ate their cheese.  The poor guy turned bright red and was at a complete loss for words, but was clearly relieved that we seemed more amused than offended.

After squeezing our way through the factory floor, we were surprised to emerge into a huge room filled floor to ceiling with shelves of giant wheels of cheese.  Each one weighs 45 kilos, or about 100 pounds!  They use a special spiked plastic mat that fits around the wheel to mark it with the date.  The cheese is aged a minimum of 12 months.

Each wheel of cheese is stamped with the date and batch number

Say "cheese"!

After our tour, we visited the small shop in the front where we were offered samples of Parmesan cheese of varying ages and some of the other cheeses they make.  Mara surprised us by giving us each a one-pound wedge of Parmesan as a gift from the tour company.  That's a big chunk of cheese!  While we were there, the owner of the restaurant we were going to later stopped by to pick up some ingredients for our dinner.   A promising development...

Someone asked where they got the milk from, so our cheese guide offered to take us to meet the cows.  This seemed like a great idea until our bus pulled up in front of a concrete bunker.  These were not the "Happy Cows" you see in those ads for California cheese.  These poor cows were kept penned up inside.  I'm sure they were treated well, but it wasn't quite what we were expecting.  Still, we listened politely as the owner's teenage granddaughters explained the milking process (in Italian) and showed us the machinery.

Pam makes friends

We piled back into the bus and drove on to our next destination, the restaurant Rifugio DiVino.  It is owned by a friend of Mara's aunt, who lives nearby.

The sign hangs from a cherry tree!

The restaurant

Italy is beautiful!

While we sat outside and enjoyed the beautiful weather and surroundings, Mara's aunt showed up with a huge basket of gorgeous duroni cherries from her uncle's farm.

Mara and her aunt Franca.  Life is just a basket of cherries

We were served a light lunch of cold cuts, Parmesan and ricotta cheese, two kinds of bread, marinated peppers, a green salad, and cherries for dessert.  The round bread is a regional specialty and is made in a special grill that creates the floral design.

Lunch!

Our waiters were the owners grandsons, who spoke English fluently.  It turned out that their father is American.  Small world!  After lunch, we donned aprons and went into the kitchen for an informal cooking class/demonstration with the restaurant's owner, Giovanna, and her daughter, Sabrina, who translated everything for us.  They showed us how to make tortelloni with cheese filling and veal cutlet rolls with parma ham and fontina cheese.  (Tortelloni is bigger than tortellini and usually has a cheese or veggie filling rather than meat.)

Giovanna mixes fresh eggs with flour to make pasta

Marianna and Charene give it a try

Ricotta & Parmesan cheese filling goes in a pastry bag

Rolling out the pasta requires a loooong rolling pin

Piping the filling into squares of pasta

Sabrina shows us how to fold the tortelloni

Veal rolls

Then we were shooed out of the kitchen while the staff finished up prepping the food for our dinner.  We joked that they were probably feeding our amateurish pasta to the chickens and dogs and making a new batch with their industrial-size mixer and pasta machine.  In the meantime, Mara's aunt invited us over to her house to try a special cake she had made for us. 

Aunt Franca's house

The cake was delicious!  It was sweet and buttery with a crunchy texture from almonds and thin pasta noodles. 

Tagliatelle Cake

After polishing off most of the cake and heartily thanking Mara's aunt and uncle for their hospitality, we took a quick field trip to a nearby town to do a little sightseeing.  We just had time to walk up the hill to a castle ruin and then back down to our bus in order to get back to the restaurant in time for dinner.

church

Castle tower

Here's a picture of me with my roommate for the trip, Erin.  Apparently some AWC ladies get us mixed up because we have similar coloring and are the "same age."  Considering Erin is taller and seven years younger than me, I'd say she got the raw end of that deal.

Erin and I enjoy the view from the castle

Back at the restaurant, we helped put the finishing touches on a cherry cake using the cherries Mara's aunt had brought us.

Pretty cake with cherries on top!

Taking a breather in my apron

And finally, the moment of truth -- we sat down and ate all the food we made, or at least helped make.  Along with several bottles of the local sparkling wine, of course.

Buon Appetito!

Tortelloni with sage & butter sauce and Gorgonzola cheese sauce

Salad and meat rolls

Cherry cake

Oh. My. God.  Everything was delicious!  The tortelloni was probably the best pasta I've ever tasted.  We thanked Giovanna for a fun afternoon and an incredible meal and waddled back to bus.

B-O-L-O-G-N-A: Day 1

Will I ever get the Oscar Meyer jingle out of my head?!

I met up with a dozen other ladies at Heathrow airport on June 18th to fly to Bologna, Italy for a culinary tour of the region.  This was my first trip with the AWC, which organizes several group tours each year for its members.  Since Josh was in DC on a business trip, this seemed like a lot more fun than staying home by myself.

It was quite a shock going from cold, rainy London to Bologna, where it was sunny and in the 90's, but we were all thrilled to experience seasonally-appropriate weather for a change.  We met our guide, Mara, who is Italian and lives in London but has family in the area, and piled into our air-conditioned bus, eagerly changing into our summer clothes as soon as we arrived at the lovely Hotel Corona d'Oro.

Our hotel

After a quick lunch of cold cuts (prosciutto, mortadella, salami, etc), cheese, and bread, we took a walking tour of the city with a local guide.  Bologna is the seventh largest city (population-wise) in Italy and dates back over 2,000 years.  There are no stone quarries nearby, so most of the buildings are brick, earning it the nickname "The Red City."

Neptune fountain in the Piazza Maggiore

Pope Gregory XIII overlooks the Piazza

The University of Bologna, founded in 1088, is the oldest university in the Western world.  We took a peek in the library, which is painted with heraldic shields representing the families and home countries of all the students who have studied there.

Library of the University of Bologna

Some of the coats of arms painted on the ceiling

Restoration work underway on the interior painting

The Anatomical Theater, built in 1637

Anatomical Theater

Along the way, we were surprised to see some familiar products on display in a shop window...

Mmm Mmm Good!

Another plaza lead to a cluster of seven interconnected churches known collectively as the Basilica di Santo Stefano.

Basilica of Santo Stefano

Nice brickwork in the cloisters

A distinctive landmark in Bologna is the two medieval towers near the town center.  Like many other structures in the city, they were under restoration and covered with scaffolding, so it was hard to get a good photo.  The towers are believed to be nearly a thousand years old, and both lean slightly.  The taller one is about 320 feet tall -- comparable to a 30-story skyscraper!

The taller of the Two Towers

Bologna is also known for its porticos, which provide architectural interest as well as shelter from the elements.

Ancient porticos

Not far from our hotel was a nice marketplace with shops and stalls tempting us with all sorts of goodies.

Flowers

Pasta

Meat and cheese

Fresh produce

When we got back to the hotel, they had laid out a lovely spread for us with prosecco, ham, cheese, olives, nuts, and other tasty nibbles.  Very fancy!

Noshing in the hotel lobby

We tried not to fill up too much on snacks as Mara had made a dinner reservation at a nearby restaurant for us.   We feasted on fried zucchini flowers, mortadella, veal cutlets and lasagne.  And, of course, more sparkling wine.  I think we all slept very well that night.

Keep Off the Grass

Saturday I organized a private guided tour of the All England Lawn Tennis Club -- host of the Wimbledon tennis championships -- for a group of fellow AWC members and their spouses.  I had taken the tour last summer when my friend Robin -- an avid tennis player and fan -- was in town and I really enjoyed it, even though I've never been much of a tennis fan myself.  Every time I mentioned to a fellow AWC member that I lived in Wimbledon, I was inevitably asked if I'd been to see the tennis or knew how to get tickets, so I figured there would be enough interest to meet the 15-person minimum for a group tour.  Indeed!  We ended up with 25 people.

We were fortunate that the weather cooperated, since it had been cold, rainy, and windy the day before.  It wasn't exactly a beautiful summery day, but it didn't rain, and the sun even peeked through the clouds a few times, which is what we consider "nice weather" here in London.  We met up with our Blue Badge guide, Marian, who asked us to observe two important rules of the club: do not take photographs of the members, and do not touch the lawn.

Reviewing last year's brackets

As we toured the grounds, the grounds staff was hard at work getting everything ready for this year's tournament, which begins on June 25.

Lovely view of central London (and the Pimms tent) from the top of the hill

Wimbledon is the largest catered sporting event in Europe.  During the "fortnight" the 1,800 members of the catering staff serve 200,000 glasses of Pimm's, 112,000 bowls of strawberries and cream, and 300,000 cups of tea and coffee.  The strawberries are picked locally in Kent and delivered to Wimbledon each morning at 5:30 am.  When I was there last summer, one of the cafes temporarily ran out of strawberries and it was treated like a national emergency -- and it kind of felt like one.  Imagine a baseball game with no hot dogs...

The perfect lawn on #18 Court

The #18 Court is the site of the longest match in Wimbledon history: 11 hours 5 minutes.  We actually sat next to John Isner at a restaurant in Wimbledon Village during the tennis championships last summer.  He is really tall!

Plaque outside #18 Court

In the early days of the club, the grass courts were maintained by a roller pulled by a pony.  When it broke in 1877, the members decided to hold a tennis tournament to raise funds for repairs. From those humble beginnings arose the Wimbledon tennis championships.  The first winner, Spencer Gore, thought the game of tennis was just a passing fad and wouldn't catch on.  Kinda like the Beatles, eh?

The Pony Roller

Part of the tour took us behind the scenes to areas where normally only members and players are allowed.  The Players' Garden was the only place where we were allowed to touch the lawn, because it wasn't real. 

It looks like real grass!

This was no AstroTurf, it looked just like real grass -- or at least like the perfectly manicured grass courts at Wimbledon.  We had to bend down and feel it with our hands to believe it.

The view from the members' terrace was quite nice.  You could watch several tennis matches at once from that vantage point.

Number 2 Court (in the background) and Number 3 court (foreground)

The grand finale of our tour was Centre Court, where we all were tempted to camp out in the comfy seats until the championships began.

Marian tells us about Centre Court

Our guide graciously offered to take a group photo for us on what was once known as "Henman Hill" after former British tennis player Tim Henman.  Nowadays it has a new nickname: "Mount Murray" (after Andy Murray).  The actual name is Aorangi Terrace, but no one calls it that -- probably because they aren't sure how to pronounce it...

Posing for a group photo on Mount Murray

After the tour, we spent some time in the museum, which has a fantastic collection of tennis memorabilia -- from 16th-century royal tennis equipment to signed tennis clothing worn by last years' champions.  The highlight was a replica of the men's changing room inhabited by a chatty hologram of John McEnroe.  Definitely worth a visit!

The Fox Goes Too Far!

Urban foxes in Wimbledon

Before I moved to London, I thought of foxes as cute, fluffy, utterly benign creatures.  Not anymore.  Urban foxes have become enough of a problem in London that hardware and home improvement shops sell various kids of fox repellent alongside the mouse traps and rat poison.  Foxes dig up people's yards, get into their trash, and in some cases even injure their pets or small children.  Our local fox population in Wimbledon is no exception.  We occasionally spot foxes strolling down the street in the evenings, or slinking through our garden at night, and nearly every week on trash collection day the contents of at least one trash bag is strewn all over the street.  One fox seems to have taken a liking to us (or perhaps quite the opposite), which he shows by leaving "gifts" for us in the back garden. 

It started with fox poop, and then progressed on to trash -- plastic bags, banana peels, and the like.  Next it was fashion accessories...

Boot

Fox glove

But this morning, the fox took things a step too far.  The horror show that greeted me in the garden when I came downstairs nearly made me vomit.  Just outside the back window was the decapitated, disemboweled corpse of some kind of animal.  Too big for a squirrel or a rat, too small for a cat.  Maybe a possum, or a rabbit?  I wasn't about to take a closer look to find out for sure.  Occasionally a magpie would fly in and peck at it.  Disgusting!

Headless Disemboweled Rabbit!  SO GROSS!

 To make matters worse, Josh was away on a business trip, so I had to figure out how to deal with this nightmare on my own.  Pest control companies couldn't help me, and my local council office said they only dealt with dead animals on public property.  I threw myself at the mercy of my neighbors, who took pity on me -- probably because I looked like I was either about to cry or puke.  My neighbor came over with a shovel and garden gloves and stoically shoveled the various parts onto a garbage bag, which he put in his own trash can.  He confirmed that it had been a rabbit at one time, and did a quick scan of the yard for any stray bits.  No sign of the head.  Maybe the fox thought another neighbor was more deserving of that trophy.

I shudder to think what the fox will come up with next.  But I'll definitely be baking some cookies for my neighbor...