It’s me! I’m still here, but mostly I’m over here, at www.nataliesanluis.com. I’m preparing to graduate (finishing my thesis, looking for jobs, drowning my existential angst in baked goods and wine), so I normally only cook on weekends.
But I’ve still been eating, of course, and I have pictures to prove it. I know you only look at the pictures anyway.
I am back from Paris and have moved into the Little Green House (LGH [#LGH]). My life is busy, but mostly with great things. Here are some pictures.
Brunch at Contigo for Jenny’s 21st birthday
This also happened. Not shown: fireball whiskey
Lately I have been in a constant state of gin-and-tonic making/drinking
I have a problem
I ate it
Also, I have a well-stocked wet bar now. Prepare for mixology.
One Friday, I took a train from Milan to Rome to spend 36 hours in the Eternal City.
To be completely honest, I spent a bit of time finding somewhere that felt right in Rome. As a tourist I understand both the hypocrisy and pointlessness of criticizing tourists for being touristy; I, too, took pictures of the Coloseum and threw a Euro into the Trevi fountain and walked to the Pantheon. But it didn’t take long for me to become irritated with crowds of families decked out in American flag garb. I reached the apex of my frustration when I sat down for a glass of wine at a restaurant in front of the Monumento a Vittorio Emmanuelle and was handed a menu boasting of frozen pasta selections.
Luckily, sightseeing in crowded places isn’t really my traveling style anyway. So I started my first and only full day in Rome by taking the metro to Testaccio (Piramide stop), a neighborhood a little off the beaten path known for its outdoor market and incredible food. Testaccio cooks were preparing offal-based dishes before they were cool: the population once was composed primarily of poor stockyard workers.
My first stop in Testaccio was Gastronomia Volpetti, a shop with meats, cheeses, pastries, olives, wines, fresh pasta, and coffee. It smelled like a million paradises crammed into one tiny shop. I looked around for a bit and bought a calzone with spinach and cheese, which I ate on the way to Testaccio’s famous outdoor market.
There are very few things that I enjoy more than an open-air market, and they either consist of butter and sugar or are inappropriate to put on the blog. Any time I travel, I do my best to seek one out. It’s a great way to find local produce and get a taste of the culture. Testaccio’s market was split between produce stands, butchers, and a flea market. I bought a peach and walked around.
My next stop was Trattoria Checchino dal 1887. I forget what type of cheeses were used for these dishes, but I hadn’t had them before. Obviously the riagtoni and pesto were absolutely perfect.
A brief aside: do you eat alone often (hey all you people who don’t click hyperlinks — click this one)? I always intend to take myself on dates, but I never end up doing it. While I ate, I sipped a glass of wine, wrote in my travel journal, and took my time. This was the first of many hour-long, solo meals in Europe, and when I get back, I’m going to keep making time for them every couple of weeks.
I spent the evening walking through Villa Borghese, a giant heart-shaped park. It was one of the most romantic places I’ve ever been, and dozens of couples around me thought so too. I had a special moment with some tomatoes, bread, cheese, and The Sun Also Rises on a bench near a fountain. The night ended with gelato, eaten while sitting on some stone steps and watching a lengthy, dramatic gypsy fight. And those were my 36 hours in Rome.
Click for photo source
Roma travel tips:
Imagine this: one morning, a sweet blonde girl wakes you up by nudging you gently and placing a buttery pastry filled with Nutella in front of your face. How do you respond to a gesture like that, other than gazing up into her beautiful eyes and asking if she might move in with you in August?
All of the above really happened, more or less. After London, I flew to Milan, Italy to meet my dear friend (and future housemate) Kelsey. We spent the next couple of days traipsing around the city, scaling the Duomo, and eating incredible food while tan, well-dressed men called us beautiful and professed their love. Kelsey said something at one point that really hit home: “I don’t worry about seeing everything in Italia when I come here, because I know I’ll be back.”
Italy is beautiful. The people are warm. The food is fresh and flavorful. The wine is goooood wine. The coffee is inexpensive and delicious. The blondes are pastry-bearing.
We watched the Eurocup Italia vs. Deutschland game in the Duomo Piazza. I don’t even know how to describe what it was like. When Italy scored the first goal, the entire piazza immediately turned into a moshpit of joy. I was embraced by a few sweaty dudes, people lit fireworks, and beer rained down from the heavens. Italians are passionate, beautiful people, especially when a shirtless Ballotelli is involved.
Here are a few things I ate and loved in Milan:
In the moments before I boarded my flight to London, I wrote the following in my travel journal: “I’m spending a week in London and Italy, then a month in Paris, and if I’m being completely honest, I’m terrified. Excited, but also terrified.” My nervousness didn’t subside when the plane left the tarmac, and it was definitely still plaguing me above the Atlantic Ocean. As I schlepped sixty pounds of luggage onto and off the Tube, then down a sketchy street in East London, my excitement was building, but my fears weren’t diminishing proportionally.
So after I settled in, I rode the subway back to the middle of the city, and I got off at Westminster. I walked to the stairs and climbed toward the exit, and when I got to street level, I stopped. At that moment, I completely forgot that I was thousands of miles away from literally everyone I knew. This is the first picture I took in Europe:
There’s something truly incredible about emerging from a dirty underground station to finding something monumental or ancient or pristine or beautiful staring back at you. Since I first saw Big Ben about a week ago, I’ve experienced that stand-there-mouth-open-blinking-like-an-American amazement several times. I can’t quite describe it accurately, but then again, I’m glad no one told me about it.
The London Eye
I spent most of my time in London walking around aimlessly, which is a travel technique that I highly recommend. At one point, I almost thought I was lost, but then I followed a sidewalk to an open gate, beyond* which was a beautiful park, which I walked through to find Buckingham Palace. I set a loose structure and to-do list for my day, but spent the majority of time going where I felt like going. At one point, I ended up at the Tate Modern; when it closed, I read a book on the museum’s lawn on the bank of the River Thames for an hour.
*Originally I typed “beyonce.” My mind’s auto-correct clearly prioritizes the words I use more frequently.
These are the things I ate:
Strawberries from a stand at Portobello Market. Portobello Market is a market (doy) in Notting Hill. Lots of fresh produce stands, vintage stuff, and kitschy tourist things.
A Posh Sausage Sandwich (sausage, smoked applewood cheese, portobello mushroom, and red onion chutney) from The Breakfast Club. Meat, y’all. I ate it. It was alright, but nothing to write home about. Still don’t dig it, but I’m trying to eat whatever I want here. Lesson learned: I don’t want any more sausage.
Fish and chips from Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese. This pub (built in the 13th century!) was really awesome–it’s set up like a winding cellar with dining areas on the way down. The fish and chips were overpriced and bland, but I ordered it over more intriguing menu items because I figured I had to have the fish-and-chips experience. I didn’t. Alas.
I hunted down some street art by Banksy. This was in a sketch alley about a block away from Savile Row.
The First Kitchen’s London Travel Tips:
From a secondhand bookstore in Notting Hill. I dropped 20€ on books before I realized that I had to tote them around all day.
Wow! I suck at blogging! I kvetched all semester about how I couldn’t maintain TFK because I had no free time, but I haven’t sat in a classroom in over a month and you’re still looking at pictures of muffins.
I went to Mt. Bonnell for the first time. It was incredible. I took a very small picture.
I am still doing this blog thing, I think. It’s obviously been on the back burner for a while, and will continue to be during the summer: I’m about to leave for Europe for six weeks. But I’m still going to try to post when I can, so stay tuned if you like looking at pictures of the food I eat both here and abroad.
I started watching Mad Men. It was boring. Mad Men parties, on the other hand, are wonderful.
Despite my absence from the blog, I’ve actually been relatively busy this summer. I haven’t had a summer to do whatever I want to do since middle school. In high school, I spent my summers at (nerd alert) debate camps; since college started, I’ve been working and going to school full time, all the time. These weeks of free time have been a very welcome change. Since classes ended, I’ve spent almost every day reading, playing pool, drinking, hanging out with friends, watching Community, going to movies in the park, hanging out in coffee shops, catching up with my parents, and neglecting to plan (hashtag) Europe Adventure 2012.
Mexican martinis occasionally bring tears to my eyes
Vegan early grey soft serve from Sweet Ritual
I drink iced coffee at least once a day now.
Once I also made a beet and citrus salad. Grapefruit is out of season now, but this would be incredible with blackberries and a blackberry vinaigrette.
Beet and Citrus Salad (serves one)
I don’t have a recipe for this. Basically, I roasted a beet (wash it, wrap it in foil, roast at 450 for 30-40 minutes, peel, slice). Then, I made a salad out of green things, walnuts, red peppers, the beet, an avocado, and grapefruit. Then, I made a vinaigrette using grapefruit juice, balsamic vinegar, and olive oil. The end.
*Check out my guest post at Cheekyness today about co-ops!*
In case you haven’t picked up on it in the past few posts, this semester has been an exercise in stress management. I’ve always lived a stressful existence, and I kind of like it most of the time. I thrive under pressure. I’m just not used to crushing, overwhelming pressure (which is dimensionally equivalent to mass over time squared times length), or debilitating tension (which is dimensionally equivalent to mass times acceleration).
one of my friends once told me I eat grapefruit like a sea urchin
For the past few months, I’ve been exploring different ways to deal with my stress. There’s always beer, and I do enjoy a pint or two on a Thursday night (or, in some cases, a Thursday afternoon, in the 45 minutes between class and work). I also tried out burning off stress at the gym, but sometimes it’s hard to exercise after that first beer.
So I’ve started Sanity Baking. My friend Jenny introduced me to the concept of Sanity Baking, her favorite method of dealing with phy666 stress. And when my co-op acquired a Kitchenaid mixer, I felt like the Sanity Baking gods were… reaching their (lady)fingers down to… soften my butter to room temperature… so to speak (I can’t even defend the words that come out of my head anymore) (note: Sanity Baking doesn’t always make you sane).
Anyway, muffins.
Grapefruit Olive Oil Muffins. Yields 18 muffins. These are only faintly sweet, so feel free to up the sugar by a little bit.
2 grapefruits
2/3 cup sugar
1/2 cup buttermilk
3 large eggs
2/3 cup extra-virgin olive oil
1 cup whole-wheat flour
3/4 cup all-purpose flour
3/4 cup oatmeal
1 1/2 tsp. baking powder
1/4 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. salt
Preheat the oven to 350F. Zest both grapefruits. In a mixing bowl, combine the zest and sugar by rubbing the zest into the sugar. Add the juice of one half of a grapefruit, buttermilk, eggs, and olive oil, and stir to combine.
Sing along if you know the words:
Sift the dry ingredients (if you are Jenny. Or dump them in the Kitchenaid, if you are me). Combine wet and dry, mix well, pour into a muffin tin lined with those muffin things. Sprinkle with brown sugar and oatmeal (optional). Bake for 16-18 minutes (long enough to do about one-eighth of a physics problem).
