This is a tale of three toasts and a chicken.
We have been here long enough that I am beginning to miss some of the food we have in America. One of which is french toast. Now some of you reading this know that it was a custom for David and I to go to Restless Oaks on a regular basis for breakfast and to have french toast. (Makes me salivate just thinking about it!) Well, I thought, french toast is certainly something I can make here. After all, the bread is perfect for it, nice sturdy slices of Italian bread; dipped in a milk and egg batter, fried in the pan with a bit of butter. The maple syrup I knew would be a no-go, but we found some whipped honey that made a pretty good substitute. Now I usually add a bit of vanilla to my egg/milk batter, and it was this that proved to be the challenge. There are three grocery stores we have been visiting, one is a smaller one a short walk away, another is comparable to Wegmans, and the third is like a super Walmart. For this particular shopping trip we were at the "Super Walmart." I cruised up and down the baking aisles looking for vanilla. Didn't find it. The spice aisle perhaps? Not there either. There were two ladies discussing something they had pulled off the shelf, so I asked them if they knew where the vanilla was. (Foolishly I had left my little Italian dictionary back in the apartment, so was flying by the seat of my pants here.) They both look at me with very earnest eyes and repeat "vanilla." It appeared they were thinking as to where it might be in this store by the way they just kept repeating "vanilla", like they were thinking along those lines. Finally they shook their heads, were VERY apologetic about not being able to answer the question, and I thanked them for their efforts. After another futile attempt to find this, what I felt now to be an essential ingredient, I asked another young couple who had a baby in their cart. Surprisingly it was the young man who responded. "Vanilla, " he repeats, and I say it's a flavoring used in baking. Yes, he understood because he had worked as a waiter in the States. When I told him it was to make french toast though, he hadn't a clue what that was. Evidently he didn't work for Perkins or IHOP. Anyhow, he asks his wife in Italian where vanilla would be, and she looks on the shelf, not too far from where we were standing and hands me a small piece of cardboard to which are attached two small vials of clear liquid. These vials look are about the size of perfume samples. No wonder I couldn't find them! I'm looking for a brown bottle or a McCormick type box! Well, these things have me stymied. I asked the lady, "how do you measure? how much do you use?", as it appears there is only about 1/2 tsp at best in each of these vials. She says that she uses a whole one in cake batter. Oooookay. To bring this part of the tale to a close, we bought these precious vials (I didn't even look to see what they cost!) and we had delicious french toast the next morning for breakfast. Oh, and I only used a couple drops of the stuff. And I also learned that vanilla is vaniglia in Italian --- not a long stretch there.
The second tale of toast is of the regular, everyday variety. The apartment doesn't have a toaster, and when we looked at the Super Walmart, there were none to be bought. Now I love my toast for breakfast. I will even have it for lunch sometimes, and also for tea. So, needless to say, I have been missing my toast. Necessity being the mother of invention, I took a sharp knife, as a fork does not pierce through the tough crusts of Italian bread very well, speared a piece of bread and waved it over the flame of a gas burner. This makes for a somewhat toasted surface, not exactly the "crunch factor" you get from a conventional toaster, but better than nothing. (By the way, o you know how incendiary bread can be?) But spread with sweet cream butter, occasionally with whipped honey, accompanied by a cafe latte or tea ----- yummy!
Since I am writing these in the order of occurrence, the chicken story comes next. The food here in Italy is good, very good. But as I had written above, there are some things I am missing. Another of which is roast chicken. We do not have an oven either here in the apartment (4 burners, that's it), so the possibility of me roasting a chicken here was non-existent. However, at the supermarkets they have roasted chickens all ready to go, just like at Weis. Perfect! We'd get some veggies, salad fixins', dessert, and there would be our dinner that evening. Now this store is huge, enough hat you have to take a number to get cheese at the cheese counter, a number for the bakery department, and a number for the "deli." We had shopped for our other items (this was the great vanilla hunt trip) and came to the deli counter. It was ten I noticed you needed a number. I walked over to this machine that I thought was where you got a number. David said no, it was a produce weigher. Okay, so after looking all over and not seeing a number ejector, I asked some guys in line ahead of me, "dove numberos" which I think is part Italian, part Spanish, but he nevertheless knew what I meant and pointed to the "produce weighing" machine I had originally been at. Now timing is everything, and had I gotten a number when I was at this machine in the first place, we could have secured a chicken for our dinner that evening. There were three chickens left in the deli case, two small and one larger one. I watched in horror as three people ahead of me each took a chicken! The next lady also wanted a chicken, but I could tell by the clerk's reply that they were out of chicken. What was this, the power of suggestion? There were other things in that deli case! Some lovely sausages, various pasta dishes, different meats.... But no more chicken! It has been over a month since I have had chicken and my salivary glands were all ready for it! But it was not meant to be, not for that night's dinner. (Since then we have managed to get our chicken another night, and oh, did it taste good!!!!)
Now for the final toast. I made a big deal about the challenges of cooking here, which really are not that bad as we eat out most of the time. After all, this is a country with some of the most delicious food in the world. Last night I was in the mood for pasta, so we went to a restaurant that David knew about near the plant where he works. He had only been there once before, at lunchtime, when the Texas contingent was still here. It is a packed house at lunch, but dinner is more relaxed. I order my pasta and a salad; David the adventurer chooses two things off the menu having no idea what they were. (They were good, but I like to know what I'm eating!) The price was quite reasonable and our total was quite minimal as we hadn't had dessert or any extras. When we go to the register to check out, our waiter indicates us to wait a moment, turns to a cooler behind him and gets out two frosted shot glasses. He then fills these with what looks like homemade wine, judging by it's color. I am quite pleasantly surprised, thank him and begin to sip my "wine." Now in an earlier post I had talked about grappa, an after dinner drink that the Italians all seem to think is the best stuff in the world. My take on it is that it has a taste more like paint thinner. I guess it's one of those "acquired taste" things. Anyhow, I take a sip of this stuff and realize what it is, and I say "grappa." "Si si, yes yes," says our waiter with a smile. It is like he has bestowed upon us a taste of the gods. We are like special customers who are chosen to share in this ambrosial nectar. Now the thing about this grappa, as I said, was it's color --- it looked like wine. And the taste, while still quite potent, had almost a fruity flavor to it. I asked him if they made this themselves, because it was not poured from a commercial bottle. He misunderstood and told me it was made form "frutta d bosco" or "fruit of the woods", like strawberries, etc. We found a few fermented blueberries in the bottom of our glasses, so they must be part of the recipe too. Anyhow, it actually wasn't bad, or else I'm getting used to the stuff. It didn't quite suck my breath away like the first time I had it. And I can tell you this, David slept like a baby that night!
