Cooking class

Ciao! I had my first and only cooking class last night (you can take up to 4, but they cost 36 euro each, so i didnt want to spend a lot of money on it). Probably one of my favorite things Ive done so far. I mean Ive seen a lot of beautiful scenery and works of art, but last night was really fun. The cooking class is for 6 students a night. Its really just watch her cook and take notes, which i was wishing we would get to cook, but this was just as fun...and not as much work :) The woman i had class with is named Daniela, the class is in her apartment. She's probably 60 or so years...im really bad at guessing age...maybe more than 60. But she was a lot of fun, she didnt really speak english, which was interesting at first. Later her friend Roberto i think his name is came over. He comes to all of them apparently because other people told me about him before i had my class. Everyone thinks that Roberto and Daniela should get married, except Daniela apparently :) He was talking (he know english pretty well) about how he loves her but she wont marry him. It was funny. They are so cute together. He is hysterical, definatly added to the experience. We ate sooooo much food. It was amazing, definatly the best meal ive had since being here. We started off with these round bread things and somethign that reminded me of hard tortilla things... i dont know what they were called. but they were good, we had water and orange soda. then She started to show us how to cook the veal., which would be the second course. i took notes so Im gonna try to cook it once i get back into the states. That could be interesting... You flatten the veal and then take scraps of veal and roll the scraps in the veal and put a leaf of basil on top and toothpick that together. then she made the pasta sauce, chopped carrots, onions, celery and garlic, i was pretty skeptical that i would like that because out of all that i only like carrots, btu i was gonna try it... so she heated that up, then added tomato paste and bacon and heated it. She poured that on the pasta, it was amazing!!! with the pasta we had white and red wine... we had potatoes and veal for the next course...that potatoes were ok..nothing fancy, but i liked the veal. but it did take some getting used to...she added a blush wine for this course. Then desert!!! mmmmmm it was a yogurt (chocolate chip) mixed with something that looks like the word riccotta..but i think its a curd or something, thats what we understood when she was talking (but it was smooth...kinda like cream cheese), she put that in a bowl and put 5 scroops of marmelade (orange) then spinkled with hazelnuts? and chocolate chips.. and refrigerated. with that we had sweet wine. It was so good! So all in all, i had 3 pieces of bread, 2 helpings of pasta, some potatoes, two pieces of veal, but they were fairly small... i mean not the size you think of for a piece of meat, then 2 helpings of desert, probably 4 glasses of wine (the glasses here arent big so it wasnt a whole lot, especially over the whole dinner) and half a nectorine...ooo and the predinner snacks. I was STUFFED by the time i left. I dont know where i put it...i dont think my stomach couldve fit all that in there... I took a picture with Daniela and Roberto, so i can show people when i get home.

I finally bought an umbrella, it is the brightest pink you've ever seen in your life! it was starting to rain so i went to Piazza erbe and looked at umbrellas, and one of the vendors came up and helped me, it was 6 euro, the only other colors they had for that price were yellow and an ugly green. They had a cool Italy one, but it was 10 euro and then i wouldve screamed tourist, which Im sure i do anyway...but i think i wouldve stuck out with that one...so maybe I'll buy it before i leave. we'll see...so im pretty sure now that i finally bought an umbrella, its never going to rain here again... well i better get going, the wine tasting class might be getting back soon...maybe-noone know when that is over. I thoought about taking it, but it was at least 150 Euro, and at the time of signing up i didnt like wine, and i didnt feel like spending that much money. even though it woudl be fun to be able to come home and talk about wine...i guess i'll jsut stick with my pick out a bottle of wine by which is moderatly priced and has the prettiest bottle... its worked so far :)
ciao!