Recently, I took a two week vacation to Italy (with a few days in Boston). To say that the trip was absolutely amazing would be an understatement. Both in Italy and in Boston, I spent time with great people, ate incredible foods and saw so many postcard worthy things. I have an amazing family and amazing friends and I am so so thankful. As I'm writing this, I'm realizing that there aren't any positive adjectives that can convey how awesome everything was.
Italy:
Rome to Sulmona, Abruzzo to Florence.
I saw the house that my mother was born in.
I saw the one room "house" where my grandfather grew up.
I met lots of relatives/people in the town where my grandparents were from.
I met Benny Francoise, who used to be a chef with my Dad in Boston. Now, Benny lives in Italy and sells garlic and olive oil for a living. He has 400 olive oil trees...if you want to buy his olive oil, you need to let him know how much you want months in advance. When it's time, you show up with cash and your own containers. He doesn't package it and he doesn't ship it. My Dad asked him if he misses Boston/working as a chef. Benny said, (paraphrasing) "No, I don't. But I would like to have one more busy Saturday night back in the kitchen with everyone. That would be fun." When he said this I pictured a slammed small kitchen with everyone working at a frantically fast pace, but with movements so precise that they resembled a smoothly moving machine. With Italian opera playing.
I had huge incredible dinners without any menus being opened.
The food. Oh, the food. (I wish more restaurants here offered pineapple & watermelon after meals.)
Great conversation and quotes with my family.
Club Space.
Lots of walking and steps.
Connecting flights. Missed flights.
I didn't want to leave. I want to go back. It's one thing to go on a vacation and have the memories and pictures. It's another thing when that vacation affects how you look at life. The 3rd annual DiGirolamo summer vacation gave me memories, pictures and a new perspective.
Over the past week, I got two care packages in the mail. Both contained food.
My parents sent me apple cider donuts,
Boston newspapers sports sections, chestnuts, a birthday card, New
England fall foliage (seriously; they sent me leaves), a sonic toothbrush and a slinky. It's like the tastes, smells ans sights of autumn in a box. Love it.
Jessie on the other hand sent me dulce de leche from Argentina. And lots of it. If you don't know, dulce de leche translates into ohmygawdthisstuff is ludicrouslyamazing.
Lets start with this cone shaped candy, Havanna Havannets. (Read more about it in this NY Times article on dulce de leche.) Basically it's a milk chocolate cone filled with dulce de leche. I started at the point and didn't know there was a cookie at the bottom. Let me put it like this: if I gave these out as Halloween candy, kids and parents would be googling "havanna havannets candy" before the got to the cookie. Once you eat this, you want more.
Ohhhhh Yes. Now, I'm not a huge fan of regular Oreo cookies: too much chocolate. If I eat them, I'll split them and only eat the half of the cookie that has most of the "cream" filling with a glass of milk. Well, these dulce de leche Oreos are a different story. I eat them whole and I eat them with great pleasure. I'm starting to think that dulce de leche makes everything better.
Alfajores Jorgito. Guess what this is! Dulce de leche chocolate cookie! Guess what else it is! Amazing! On another note, the kid on the package looks like he's up to something.
And a jar of dulce de leche made by Veronica. I want to eat this with bananas, pecans, crepes, and ice cream. Lucky for me I found AmigoFoods.com, which is "Your Latin food store on the internet!" and they carry lots of authentic Argentine food including 17 dulce de leche products including this Veronica jar. As if I needed another reason why I should be running more.
Dulce de leche is Nutella's sister. I have yet to have them together...be right back. Ok. Dulce de leche and Nutella is a food orgry that I recommend to everyone with a mouth.
And oh, something that's not dulce de leche but still shocking and great. Lays "lomo con cebolla caramelizada" potato chips. That's tenderloin with caramelized onion potato chips. I was excited to see what these taste like...and then I was excited to eat more. I really like them. Other flavors: parmesano ahumado con hierbas (smoked paramsean & herbs) and pechuga de pollo al limon con hierbas (lemon chicken breast with herbs). These are potato chip flavors people. I want these sold in the US.
Here are some Lays Resto commercials, done by BBDO.
I was home last week and did something that I've never done before: I took a tour of Fenway Park. Of course I've been to countless games there, but I've never taken a tour. It was great. I got to go in the press box on some Theo Epstein/Peter Gammons steez. I sat in the Green Monster seats. I walked through the "employees only" hallways which had Red Sox poster sized pictures and plaques all over the walls. I got the baseball chills more than a few times.
Even if you're not a Sox fan, Fenway Park is a place that you should go to...see a game there; take a tour. Trust me. I went with Dodger fan and he loved it.
As a wise man once said, "During baseball season, Fenway Park is the best bar in the world."
Here are a few pictures that I took...click here for the rest.
We were stopped at a stop sign on Price Street, about to take a left on Hanover, when some old guy walked by. He said, "Hello" to my brother (driving) and Vince said, "How you doing?" The guy never broke his walking stride. Nice guy. I've never seen anything like this happen in LA. I'm just sayin'...
I just bought an Eye-Fi memory card for one of my cameras and I think it's pretty amazing. Basically, I take a picture and then it wirelessly uploads to my flickr page (or my iphoto or my desktop if I want it to) in a matter of minutes. It also geotags my pictures with the location they were taken...which could be very useful when I'm in Sicily. So check my flickr page to see what I've been seeing...
And guess when I heard that, when I was back, home"
Three and a half days in Boston and I made the most of them.
A while ago, Jessie told me about Kanye's Glow in the Dark tour and that's what got this trip home started. She deserves a huge thank you because we all know I don't come home enough.
Wednesday
- I landed at Logan and took the T to Government Center. I miss taking the train, so taking the T was both welcomed and relaxing. The T is so much better than LA traffic and $4/gallon gas prices. I walked from Govt Center to my brother's work and seeing everyone out with their Celtics (and Red Sox) gear on was awesome. There was a sports buzz in the Boston air that can't be matching by anything in LA; not even Laker playoff "buzz."
I went to game 5 of the Celtics/Cavs series. Jay-z was there cheering on his boy Lebron but it didn't matter: my brother and I were there. Vince had his "Paul Pierce throw your 3's up foam fingers" that he made and I had my Celtics gear on. Those 3 foam fingers are the greatest thing I've seen in a while and V is a genius for making them. C's won by seven.
Kanye West. Possibly/probably the best live performance I have ever seen in my life.
Seriously, I can't say enough about how amazing his performance was. If you still have a chance to see him live, go see him live. You can thank me later. Even if you think he's an arrogant douche, go see him. He was that great. 90 straight minutes of Kanye West. 90 straight minutes of Kanye giving it his all...he was on his game like a perfect game. The only person there who didn't love it was the dude sitting next to Jessie. He slept for Kanye's entire performance. No Joke. He was slouched in his chair and asleep for Ye's whole set. I have no idea what his deal was.
Red Sox Day game. I love the Red Sox and I love Fenway park. Enough said. (But not really; I could write pages and pages on this.) Sox beat the Brewers 5-3 with Ortiz homering, Dice-K improving to 7-0 and me eating three Fenway Franks. So good. So good. After the game I saw a few more buddies that I hadn't seen in a while...good times.
Every time I go home, it's never for enough time. Three days makes me want to spend three weeks there and I know that three weeks would make me want to spend three months at home...
Last year Ichiro Suzuki said this about having to fly to Cleveland to play a make-up game that was originally snowed out:
"To tell the truth, I'm not excited to go to Cleveland, but we have to. If I ever saw myself saying I'm excited going to Cleveland, I'd punch myself in the face, because I'm lying."
Recently he was asked what he thinks about Cleveland and he said:
"Looking back on it, in the four days I spent here, I found a really cool pair of sneakers. So for that, I like Cleveland."
And lets not forget what he said about facing Dice-K:
"I hope he arouses the fire that's dormant in the innermost recesses of my soul."
Either Ichiro has some great quotes or a clever interpreter.
