Venice is one of the most unique cities in the world, famous for its architecture and artwork and most importantly (for me) its food! I am currently studying here for a term as part of my final year of a history degree and this blog is most definitely another method of procrastination to avoid the masses of reading for my first seminars next week...
I moved into my flat in Venice, the home of Spaghetti Vongole and Risotto on Tuesday with my three new flatmates with eight massive suitcases and my Mother in tow, who claims to be staying for five days but could quite possibly have taken a three month sabbatical and will be crashing on our sofa for the whole duration of our stay.
We could not have asked for a better apartment, on a wide street about 10 minutes from Saint Mark's square we have numerous bakeries, fruit market stalls and a fish market right on our doorstep and a keen accordion player that serenades his choice of three songs from eight in the morning through to late evening. I'm sharing the flat with three friends, who I bonded with over a mutual struggle with our Italian lessons two years ago. Having never lived with any of them before we are still in the phase of making sure everything is clean so we don't annoy each other in the first week. Lucy and I are both naturally very messy and we are sharing a room, so I can't imagine it will be that long before we have trashed the place.
The best thing about living abroad, especially in Venice are the market stalls that make it so easy (even with our limited Italian) to buy fresh produce which makes dinners seem a lot healthier and tastier, even though the Parmesan tastes so good you have to add a little extra to your dinner. Emily and Holly were in charge of buying fruit and veg this week and Emily reckons she embarrassed herself by asking for pesce (fish) instead of pesca (peach) at one of the fruit stalls...so I'm not sure if we will be returning to that one until our Italian has improved. The girls persuaded me to start a food blog after sampling my cooking on the first night - I've promised to cook most of the meals throughout our time here, mainly because my parents invested a lot of time in teaching me how to make a good béchamel sauce and I actually enjoy cooking. I love kitchen equipment as well and this year, receiving a new knife for Christmas got a similar reaction to my teenage brother receiving the new version of Xbox.
I don't fancy myself as a master chef, and have repeatedly been told by my cheffy friends that I would never be allowed in a professional kitchen because I'm just too messy, but I cook simple, mostly crowd pleasing meals which are easy to make after a totally hard day enjoying Bellinis and Aperol Spritz in the many bars that Venice has to offer.
No comments:
Post a Comment