Mangia! (Eat!)

Every time we go to Italy, we dream of all the food we will eat.  Pizza, panzerotti, pastries, pasta...all those "p" words that make our mouths water. 

Christmas dinner was really unorthodox for an American girl.  Seafood is the traditional Christmas Eve dinner, and Fabio's brother went to town buying all kinds of shellfish.  Yum.  Uh...yeah right.  Yuck.  Basically, we ate raw seafood for Christmas Eve dinner.  I was a good sport, and had one bite of everything, but I really had to choke down the oysters and clams.  It was definitely interesting, but let's just say, I didn't walk away stuffed like I would have at my parents' house.  Side note: Fabio got really sick from the seafood the next day.  He had to go to the ER in the middle of the night, and had serious stomach cramps for the next few days.  We won't be having that kind of dinner ever again, I can assure you of that.

I took pictures for posterity sake:

Breaking open the hairy mussels.  Notice how there are none on my plate.

 Boiled octopus salad.

 Unidentified shellfish salad.

 Giant shrimp.  At least they were cooked.  I only had to dismember them to eat them.

 This fish was pretty good.  I have no idea what it was, but it was cooked and tender.

 The obligatory holiday panettone:

 Enjoying Christmas Eve:

 Hot chocolate in the bar.  It's pretty much like hot chocolate pudding.  Amazing:

 Pasta at Boxing Day lunch.  Puglia is famous for orecchiette pasta:

 An amazing spread for lunch one day.  Just basic cheese and lunch meat from the store, but seriously, SO MUCH better than basic cheese and lunch meat...oh and don't forget the bread.  Wow.

 One of the many plates of pastries.  One day I had a craving for cannolis, and this is what they brought home. 

 Every time we go to Taranto, we must go to Ernesto's Pizzeria for a 2 Euro panzerotto.  The only ingredients are mozzarella, tomatoes and the dough, baked in fire wood oven.

 La Nonna wanted her picture taken in from of the mozzarella and prosciutto at the grocery store:

 Lasagna on New Years Eve:

 This is an interesting side step.  We needed to pick up some baby food for Teo.  We considered getting some horse and rabbit, but thought that might freak him out:

 Even though it was FREEZING, we HAD to have gelato:

 Pizza, of course:

The world's largest salami.  Just kidding.  I don't know about that, but it was certainly the largest salami I had ever seen.  As you can see, Matteo is loving it.

One thing I told Fabio's family was that American's invented airplanes, TV, cars, the assembly line, electricity, etc.  However, they cannot manage to make decent bread, cheese, pizza or pastries.  So sad.  That said, we always end our trips feeling fat and seriously gross.  We are happy to be back, eating a lot less sweet and rich foods.