herding cats & burning soup: [A to Z] Lust-- Italian

Wednesday, April 13, 2016

[A to Z] Lust-- Italian

Every year I join in on the A to Z Blogging Challenge where your goal is to spend April blogging the alphabet with a couple thousand other bloggers.

My Theme: Lust--in all it's different forms...

Today's post is about the Lust for Italian! I love me some Italian food. And Italy. And a few Italian people. lol I grew up with an Italian family as neighbors. They've been linked with our family since like the 60s and most holidays we'd split time between each other's houses. So Italian food has always been huge with me even though I'm a Mexican/German mix. I so relate more to Italian pretty much everything. Heh

So. Italian food! Sweet Mary. I could eat it every day. I really could. Some of my favorites are below. But really any sort (non meat of course) is good in my book.

Caprese Salad is one of my favorites. When we went to Italy I had it with pretty much every meal. It's just so pretty together and tasty too! I make a baked caprese salad that is to die for.

Peas & Pasta. Our Italian neighbors were a husband/wife who were my grandparents best friends and her mother who was such a trip. She cheated at cards and then would blame getting old and confusion. Yeah. She was a handful. And sharp as a tack until she passed at 99. She was all about the food too. She and Toni would make peas and pasta. It's so simple and even after 20 years one of my favorites. She called it 'poor man's food'. Peas, pasta, a little garlic and onion with parm shredded on top. Perfect!

Margarita pizza. Really any pizza.

Another staple at the Boccardy house Broccoli and Macaroni. Every time I would go home from college they would make it for me. Another seriously simple one but delicious. Just pasta, broccoli, oil and garlic. With homemade croutons on top. I've tried to make this dish SO many times and for some reason just can't. Even though I made it dozens of times with the ladies mine on my own just never works. *sobs*

Sorrento

I love Italy too. I've been a few times and would love to go again one day. The last time we went it was with Toni (Granny's daughter) who was in her 70s at the time and going for the first time and her son who was adopted from Italy as a child. It was his first time going back too. The four of us (them, me and my mom) went for 2 weeks and toured the country then went to a friend's wedding in Bologna. We hit some of the big touristy spots but also visited the town where Toni's mother was born and the city where Michael had been adopted. It was amazing! It was right around Christmas so lots of beautiful lights and decorations everywhere too.

So my post is WAY late but I was trying to find my Italy pictures. I managed to find four of them but the data stick with all the others...no clue. Hopefully I'll find it in my spring cleaning at some point. So just a few. We went to Capri/Sorrento, Rome, Bologna, Venice, Matera, Cassano delle Murge and gah but I can't remember the last place where he'd been adopted from. Total brain freeze.