Ciao Lavie: The Braidy Bunch

Today was the most perfect day ever. First, happy birthday Britt J Couldn’t ask for a better friend… and I hope you had an amazing day. 7:45 AM comes around and we are all refreshed and ready to go. It was the best night sleep I’ve had in awhile. Being the younger sibling for quite some time, I spent my fair share of time on hotel cots… I’ve come to absolutely love them. I told my roommates I definitely wanted to sleep on the cot (our rooms have 3 single beds and 1 cot.) We go to get breakfast and we’re the first ones of the group to be there. We ask to take our food back to our room and the woman, who does absolutely everything, says “as you wish!” So cute. We catch the bus at 9 AM and our bus driver is malto bello (probably not correct Italain…. But you catch my drift.) Seriously, need to marry an Italian boy. The drive is beautiful… imagine Charlottesville but bigger, better, and more beautiful (if that’s possible) followed by everything beautiful. We drove through Tuscany and I wish my mama and pops could have been there. I’m going to win the lottery and send you here. Max (Maxamillion) arranged for our tour of a castle, which is offered only twice a year. This family lives here… parents of five siblings died and only one sibling wanted to keep the castle… she started the business at 24 and moved to the castle (I have a lot to do in 2 years…) The castle was originally inhabited by the Pazzi family which just so happens to mean crazy in Italian. Right outside the castle is a windy road with extremely pazzi drivers. This castle is considered a small castle with only 40 rooms.

We toured the cellars (learned SO much about wine) and then the olive tasting/making room. A few interesting facts:

1. Chianti is from the region not the grape… any “Chianti” in the states is not real Chianti (just wait family… I brought us back a treat J) Chianti is also made of 100% sangiovese grape.

2. 69% of olive oil that we buy at the grocery store is bad for our bodies (health wise)

3. Extra virgin olive oil should be between .1 and .2% acidity. Since it doesn’t have to be labeled we really don’t know what we’re eating. (If anyone knows my obsession with food lately, you can imagine I was allllllll about this tour)

4. Extra (in extra virgin olive oil) means under .8% acidity

5. Virgin means made from pure olive trees (no additives)

6. Regular olive oil has 10 times more acid than extra virgin olive oil

7. Unlike wine, olive oil is the younger the better… always look at the harvest date on the bottle and you should buy olive oil in a thick, dark glass. (the more money, the better.)

8. If you need to get oil stains out of clothes use salt or baking powder.

9. If a wine has at least 80-85% of one grape, they are allowed to call the wine that grape. Our tour guide recommended not drinking blends until you know the type of grape you like.

Mom, Pops, and Sarah: some barrels are called barrique barrels (french/American oak) which cost 1,000 a barrel. They only last three years and after that they sell these barrels to whiskey makers… dun dun dun STEVEN!!!!

We tasted three olive oils… well actually two extra virgin olive oils and one bad olive oil. Cannot wait to cook with it. NEVER deep fry olive oil and you should never get it too hot. After olive oil tastings, we went to a cooking class. I want to adopt this woman as some family member, she was absolutely precious and could cook/cut pasta like champ. I got the recipe for making homemade pasta and am going to attempt it when I return home.

After the cooking class, we went to wine tastings. Roberto (our tour guide… CUTE) showed us how to hold the wine glass. He said if we put our palms around the glass he would “cut our hands.” Always grab the stem of the glass. Three steps to tasting wine: look, aromas, and taste. We were tasting the first wine and he asked what we smelled… I answered raspberries and he says something Italian and then says “ I love young people with such good noses.” So thank you mama and pops. Our antipasta (appetizers) included salami, cheese, bread with extra virgin olive oil, bread with tomatoes, and bread with olives (my favorite.) After we got another wine and ate the pasta we helped prepare…. Pasta from SCRATCH… best meal ever. One pasta had meat sauce and the other was vegetable sauce. The dessert wine (almost as strong as Steven) was really tasty… but too much for me. After we toured the vineyard and I felt like I was in a movie.. so surreal. Prettiest place I’ve ever been to in my life.

After the bus ride home, a group of us went to the markets. I’ve discovered I’m so much like my mom. I’m a horrible shopper. I cannot buy things for myself… I have absolutely no problem spending money on others, but when it comes to spending my money on me… ain’t happenin. I did buy my little nephew the cutest Italian hat. Miss that little man so much. Shopping and price haggling for two hours wore me out. All we wanted was a cannoli (which Lori and I have been trying to get for so many days now.) We found the cutest bakery… and got so many bite size desserts for 8 euros. Christmas in May. The owner loved us so much he gave us 8 additional donuts/croissaints/etc. Heaven. This was around 5:30 so no one was really hungry for dinner… we’ve been eating pizza, pasta, and gelato so much lately that all we wanted was something American. Subway for dinner. Classic.

All 20 of us went out in Florence tonight. It was a blast. JMU seriously took over the city… another group is studying abroad here and so many people knew each other.. it was crazy.