My wife and I visited Italy last year, and we discovered that we are so Italian! No, not even a touch of Italian genetics. But we learned how almost every Italian home has some kind of edible garden and noted that Italians tend to eat what is in season and what is grown/raised locally.
Carol and I get the majority of our produce from our all season garden, eating mostly what is available at the time. Italians have an emphasis on fresh. How much fresher can it get than from the outside garden to the kitchen? We tend to eat Mediterranean style most of the time. Lots of olive oil, fresh vegetables, pastas and whole grains.
We only buy ingredients and make most everything fresh from scratch. In the winter our tomatoes and tomato sauces come from our frozen summer production. We eat lots of vegetable soup during the cold weather, yum!
So while we are not Italian, we certainly share a great deal of their food culture that emphasizes fresh, in season, home prepared meals.
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hendi_alex
- Super Green Thumb
- Posts: 3604
- Joined: Sun Jul 06, 2008 7:58 am
- Location: Central Sand Hills South Carolina
-
hendi_alex
- Super Green Thumb
- Posts: 3604
- Joined: Sun Jul 06, 2008 7:58 am
- Location: Central Sand Hills South Carolina
We started in Florence, after a few days went to Montalcino, then on to Rome. Trip lasted 13 days split about equally. I enjoyed Montalcino the most, then Florence, and Rome the least. Food was mostly pretty average but probably because we stayed late September and early October. Fresh mushrooms were about all that was in season. It seemed to me that a tourist has a pretty tough time finding authentic, high quality Italian food like is prepared by the locals. The wine was great everywhere however and the gelato was almost always very high quality. We had some really good pizza and some really good beef, but most everything else was just o.k. My impression was that there are so many tourists that food quality just doesn't have to be very high. No matter what, there is a steady stream of new customers. Still I love the philosophy and ideals embodied in Italian cooking.
