First Day of Class

This is the Gnocchi before we cooked it.
And this is after...

Today was the first day of classes at Apicius. My first class was at noon time, where I attended The Mediterranean Diet: A Guide to Healthy Living which is part lecture based on nutrition and part based on cooking. My teach is a head Italian chef with his first language as Italian and his second language as English so at times throughout the class, I became very confused but was able to piece most of what he was saying together. After the lecture, we cooked Gnocchi con salsa di peperoni which is like pasta with tomato sauce. The Gnocchi is made from mashed up potatoes, flour, parmesan cheese, and egg yolk. We kneaded it all together and then rolled it like into the shape of snake and then cut it into one inch diamond shapes. We then made the sauce by frying shallots, chives, capers, and red peppers. It was very tasty. I feel like I say that about everything here but everything here really is good and food is a big part of the Italian culture. All of the classes are 2 1/2 hours long so my next class was at 3 which was Tuscany and Its Wines. the course is designed to show you the outstanding richness of Tuscan wine typologies focusing particularly on the most important winegrowing areas in Tuscany. Again, the teacher was Italian with a second langauge of English so I was confused quite a bit throughout the duration of the class time. After 2 hours of lecture about how wines are made, how to read wine labels, and how to taste wine, we proceeded to taste 1 white wine, 1 rose wine, and 1 red wine. I would have to say that the white wine was my favorite because the other two were kind of dry. I am excited for this class because I have never had wine before but wine is everywhere in Italy and I feel that I will be able to embrace the culture that much more by understanding and learning about Tuscan wines. After class, I went to this MailBox store where I had to order my textbooks. A lot cheaper here than in the U.S. but it's not an actual textbook, it's like a photocopy of a textbook and spiralbounded. I arrived home around 6 and waited for Emily to get out of class, we then made pasta (heart-shaped pasta) with a tomato and sausage meat sauce and for dessert, Emily picked up another piece of Tiramisu at the store down the street :) Tomorrow, I don't have any classes so who knows where I'll end up!