Gelato Recap

No trip to Italy is complete without gelato. Over the course of my three-week trip I managed to have gelato17 times, possibly more. It's hard to remember to take a picture when someone hands you a gigantic mound of delicousness. We visited Fior di Luna, a gelato shop in Rome. The general take-home message of the tour was gelato is better than ice cream, can't say I disagree.

Favorite Gelato Flavor: Pistachio

Favorite Gelato Combination: Limon and Cookie. It sounds gross, but I loved it.

Gelato Flavor I Really Wanted to Like: Ricotta with Fig. It just wasn't figgy enough for me.

Grom NYC vs. Grom Florence: Both are mediocre, I don't get what the big deal is.

Toppings vs. No Toppings: Melted Nutella was a nice touch, but unnecessary. I guess I'm a purist.

Maximum Number of Gelato Consumed in One Day:  2, some folks managed 3.

Best Gelato I Had in Italy: Some random place in Bologna. It was amazing.

Boboli Gardens

Stumbled upon this garden during the last few days of the trip. Located behind the Pitti Palace, it felt like the Central Park of Florence except you had to pay fee to get in, and only Italians get to use the student discount. It was worth the Euros, the garden was massive and a great place to procrastinate despite looming research deadlines.

Chinky Chinese

Eating delicious Italian food got really old after awhile. Luckily someone found a Chinese restaurant  that served decent food. Studying the Mediterranean Diet and food culture gets tiring, even for the most dedicated student. The owner spoke Mando which came in handy when I asked if they snow pea sprouts (they did not). Two visits, the place was legit!

The buffalo life

In my next life I may want to come back as a buffalo and live my life in an Italian mozzarella factory. These buffalo have only one job and that's to lactate. The facility is designed to encourage milk production. This includes an all-you-can-eat hay buffet:

The owners try to keep the environment as stress-free as possible. So the buffalo are free to roam around.

Each aisle of the floor has a massage center. The buffalo line up and wait their turn at the machine. When they get the urge to lactate, which is usually twice a day, they head to the milking machine.

These machines are around 250,000 Euro. The tour guide was not too happy when I asked. She need not worry, I have no desire to start my own buffalo farm.

The producers swear by this method and claim their mozzarella is the best (of course). I couldn't taste anything spectacular, but my conscience felt good.

Something fishy

While in the South we were supposed to visit fishermen near the dock to taste test some of their catch. This included fresh anchovies. Unfortunately the weather was bad and nobody actually made it out to sea. Instead we went to a packing facility. Where we observed clams getting jarred:

These jars were for COOP, an Italian grocery store. Soon after they were putting the same stuff in a jar for another company. 

Anchovy paste starts out in a vat like this...

...and gets put into tubes:

Exciting stuff. The best part was that was all got tubes of anchovy paste to take home!

(The warehouse)

Buzzed

Coffee culture is very specific in Italy. One never has a cappuccino in the afternoon, anything with milk added is for mornings only. Most of the rest stops we visited (aka autogrill) had a counter with an espresso machine and a orange juicer. Way cooler than anything you'd see in the U.S. 

In the south we went to a coffee factory, where they import beans from all over the world.

Some raw beans:

The two main kind of beans are arabica and robusta. Arabica is more flavorful and is usually what we find in the states, i.e. Starbucks. Robusta has more caffeine and is used more commonly in espresso drinks. The best way to see if a coffee bean is good is to roast it. This factory has a small roaster for taste testing:

The aroma of fresh roasted coffee beans is amazing!

It's nuts!

Hazelnuts, or nocciolo are every where in Italy. It's found  in chocolates, Nutella and even as a gelato flavor.

This hazelnut orchard is part of the private property of an Italian family.

Depending on the shell to fruit ratio, a hazelnut can be listed as "D.O.P." per the Italian government. Any product with the label "D.O.P" or "D.O.C" means it's legit. Olive oils often have this demarcation as do San Marzano tomatoes.

In case you were wondering, here is what a hazelnut looks like on the tree:

The tour of the hazelnut orchard was followed, of course, by a tasting. We tried raw hazelnuts:

Toasted hazelnuts:

And a hazelnut brittle:

Needless to say, I ate A LOT of nuts that afternoon. Those toasted hazelnuts are addicting! There was also cold beer and walnut liquor (not a fan) so there came a point where I actually started to feel a bit sick. I avoided all hazelnut products for the duration of the trip.