So here are a few highlights from my past week. There's a shot from one of the other apartment's roof, looking down on the "main strip" on Ortigia. Next there is a pic of my humble attempt to make Minestrone. The base came from a can, but I added fresh veggies and sausage, so it tasted pretty good. The pic next to that one is a shot of one part of the outer rim of the island. I just really liked the uniform lights and how they looked in the water. Next there is a pic from the night me and my fellow student made pasta (Lolli) and the day-to-day manager of the school made a wonderful ragu!! You can see the extra piece of sausage I asked for....
The rest of the photos were from our trip this past friday, which was to a vineyard where we had a grappa tasting. The tree in that picture is an olive tree, supposedly (and this was apparently found by scientists I believe) that the tree dates back to 1100 AD. Yeah, let that sink in for a sec. Beneath that are some peppers, which the owner causually pointed out to be the 3rd hottest in the world. They were called something like scorpion peppers. He said when he first got the plant, he put one in a sauce and cried for TEN minutes. Shnikes those are some hot peppers! And then below that is what the grappa tasting looked like. We found out that our host was the president of the local Grappa tasters quality control board group ensemble (GTQCBGE for short). He has made award winning grappa, and taught us everything we needed to know about making and judging grappa. He said the most important thing was that the taste of the grappa confirms what you smelled before you drank it. Who knew? I took a picture of the one I preferred, I think it came from the north of Italy, and it was aged extra long in a barrel, which gave it that golden hue. The other picture was of a grappa that had been infused with a local herb, so it was green, and had a bit more of a strong taste.
Oh yeah, and I took a selfie with the big vats of grappa. Or was it Moscato? I forget... Clearly I had already blacked out from the grappa at that point
Just kidding mom! I blacked out after the selfie...