Wednesday, February 26, 2014

Once Upon a Time... I studied in Italy


Torta Pinolata

I am exceptionally blessed. Really. I thank God everyday for the life I've lived to date, young as it may be, and the people He's put in it. All of my friends and family are truly spectacular people. And all of my adventures to date make me ecstatic to recall. I've traveled quite a lot, learned a lot of random lessons, made a lot of beautiful things, cooked, baked, and burnt a lot of exceptionally great food, and been stupid enough to have jumped off of my fair share of mountains, cliffs, and "perfectly good" airplanes. I've lived in Chicago, Washington DC, Dublin, Ireland, and the very exotic Oxford, Ohio. Oh, and Florence. Which is the point, really.  One particularly amazing time of my life was the 7 months I spent living as a student in Florence, Italy.

During my time in Firenze, I studied cooking, photography, film editing, writing, and of course, brushed up on my Italian. While the Italian never really took, (I am awful at picking up languages), the others were all a natural fit, and suddenly I couldn't get enough.

I took several cooking classes and seminars whilst in Firenze, and I had another blog, (a travel blog), that listed all of my favorite recipes. Due to requests, I've now posted them here too. I hope you enjoy making them as much as I did! Posted at the bottom of the recipes, I've also put some of the stories from my first classes. If you thought I was clumsy here, you should have seen me when I was lost in translation ;)