Day 26, 27, 28, 29, and 30

Wow, I suddenly got really bad at this. Its been busy though so give me a break. Besides there wasn't too much to write about each day and I didn't want to bore anyone. This weekend I just worked at the restaurant. I did 10 hours on Saturday which was actually a lot of fun. We weren't busy but weekends most of the other study abroad group goes away so there are more opportunities to do some cooking. I made 2 sauces, one pomodoro sauce that they use in the hot line and I made an amatriciana sauce with guanchale which is cured pork cheek. The pasta sauce was actually for a party of 60 that was coming in for lunch on Sunday. I made it on my own with some instructions on how to get it going and the sous chef Carlo tried it when it was nearly done and all it needed was just a bit more salt, so I was happy with my performance. It was weird the next day to see the sauce that I made go out to 60 people. Not a lot of it was left afterwards either. That was an interesting experience in itself. I had never plated for that many people at once before. The starter of the meal was a salume (meat) and cheese plate with a small salad, foccacia, and bruschetta. The second course was umbrichelli, a think spaghetti style pasta with the sauce I made. The third course was a ricotta mouse with a chocolate sauce. When we began we setting out 60 plates, then we just went at it assembly line style, placing one component at a time. We had 4 of us working on it, so it only took about 10 minutes at the most. As soon as those plates went out we repeated the process for dessert. It was very cool. The only thing that sucks about that is the dishes afterwards. So I only worked the lunch shift on Sunday, I took the afternoon off to get some homework done. I also went out to eat with friends, the only restaurant I had eaten at was Zeppelin, at least in Orvieto. We went to what has become one of our favorite places, Pizzaria Charlie's. Its interesting because they have a German atmosphere almost, with German beer on tap, but the food is Italian. The beer was good. The pizza was amazing, I am definitely taking my mom and sister there when they are in town. Monday through Wednesday, you can guess I am sure. Class, work, class, work, class, work. Of course their are highlights....excellent food as usual, strange gelato like cigar gelato. Yes I said cigar. Chef had heard of people doing tabacco gelato before so he got 2 cigars, we boiled the tabacco in simple syrup, the usual eggs, cream and sugar went in there and viola, cigar gelato. It is one of the most interesting things you may ever taste, but I liked it. Of course we had discussions only afterwards if it is even healthy to eat it at all. We also had a few more Italian language classes this week. I am actually not that bad at reading Italian and my pronounciation is good when I am speaking although I am a slow reader. I think that's going to take some time though. I still manage to muddle my way through when we go somewhere they don't speak English though. We also had our fourth wine class today. It was sparkling wines or spumanti in Italiano. They were pretty good. Although the reds tasted just like grape juice not like wine at all, so that was interesting. Our next and final wine tasting is with sweet wines. That's on Thursday which unfortunately I will have to miss, because I am leaving tomorrow, right after class to catch a plane to England. We will be in London for Thursday night, Friday, and Saturday morning and then it is off to Dublin for Saturday night, all day Sunday and Monday morning. Its going to be a blast and I will be sure to keep better track of the trip and take plenty of pictures.