Allie All Alone: Part 2

My second week away from Charles is coming to an end tomorrow.

Yes, I realize tomorrow is only Wednesday, but since Thursday is a holiday here they've decided to also cancel class for Friday so everyone can go home and visit their families for a long weekend. So, naturally, this week has just flown by and I am very happy to get home and relax. We have decided that since we both have Thursday off we will make our first official trip to the sea! Unfortunately the forecast isn't perfect (partly cloudy), but I am excited anyway!

This course is going quite well, and I'm enjoying my students immensely. Unfortunately I am only a substitute in this particular course and next week will be my last with these boys. They are also disappointed about the change-up, but I think it has something more to do with the fact that they saw their teacher's photo today in the hallway and they've decided a young teacher is more their taste. Italian men...they're all the same!

On Sunday Charles and I made a ragu together for lunch, and I brought the leftovers with me back to Loreto. It was enough to get me through this whole "week", so my taste buds didn't suffer as much as last week! Charles told me that since I've been gone he's also lost the drive to cook any kind of real food. He said that it's just not fun when you don't have anyone to do it for! Of course, this is great news to me because as I was re-reading my last post I was beginning to think I should get off my lazy butt and do some of the cooking sometimes, and now I have a wonderful excuse not to! :P

Bye Bye to the Abbey Theatre

After a year of complaining about how I need to quit the pub, I've finally taken my own advice. My last day will be sometime during the first week of May. I'm really excited about quitting just in time to enjoy the summer with Allie. The list of good reasons surely outweighed the list of reasons not to quit. The good reasons are plentiful (obviously most of important spending more time with Allie) while the bad reasons are pretty much that we will lose out on about 150 euros each week (hmm, that could be a good reason to quit too!) and a lot of free Jameson whiskey (maybe another good reason to quit!).

Allie All Alone: Part 1

This is just the beginning of my first week away from Charles, and I'm already starting to feel the pangs of longing! Luckily for me there's a holiday this Friday and I'll be able to go back to Rome on Thursday night!

I think that after being married for nearly four years (and having dated and lived together even longer than that) I have become thoroughly spoiled. You all know how much Charles loves cooking, and at first we did a lot of it together, and I can sincerely say that most of what I know I have learned from him. In recent months I have really taken a back-seat in the cooking department and have enjoyed delicious meals magically appearing in front of me with no concept of the time and effort that went into them (see last post). Even on the nights he works at Abbey we generally eat a meal together before he leaves for the night. If not, I'll have something like a bowl of cereal to hold me over. It's pathetic, but true.

Now that I am here on my own in Loreto I am really beginning to appreciate and miss what my husband does for me. Part of the problem here is that I don't have much to work with, and I am a bit unwilling to either pack it all up and bring it here, or to buy it again. For example, I have no spices, not even pepper. I actually meant to bring the pepper from home, but I forgot it and I figured this week I would suffer and then I'll bring it back with me for next week. So, the last two nights for dinner I've had chicken breast flavored with salt...which tastes like plain chicken breast.

I've had to pack my own lunches (yes, Charles did this for me the last time we were in Loreto), and so rather than having to wake up an extra 15 minutes earlier, I make a salad the night before to take with me in the morning. My salads aren't bad (it doesn't take much skill to cut up veggies) but again they are lacking some essentials: oil and vinegar would really improve the dry blandness that I masticate every afternoon.

I'm not starving to death on my own (this was actually a concern for me), but let's just say that I don't look forward to my next meal like I do when Charles cooks for me. It's totally normal for us to have just finished eating lunch when I ask what he's planning for dinner! In fact, as I write this and think about all the delicious goodies I'll be stuffed with this weekend I'm starting to salivate a bit!

Just two more days to get through and I'll be back in the cuisine capital of the world...not Rome; the kitchen of my apartment!!

Farewell Lunch

Here's my rendition of something we had in a little town near Loreto a few months back called Castelfidardo. You've probably heard of it because it is the birthplace of the accordion! Yeah...we'd never heard of it either but no matter, the pasta was great. This is a pasta that is best with some hard to find (but not impossible) ingredients in the greater Seattle area. The first is freshly made pasta called tagliolini but any fresh pasta would be great. The second is Guanciale (pig cheek bacon). If you really want, you can find guanciale at Armandino's Salumi (www.salumicuredmeats.com) in downtown Seattle near Qwest Field. It's most similar to bacon but it isn't smokey but you could probably substitute it with some nice bacon.


Ingredients for two:

Two whole cloves of garlic
4oz of guanciale
Fresh peas (any type of sweet pea would be fine)
Extra Virgin Olive Oil
Fresh pasta (or a dried long strand pasta, like fettucini)
Grated Parmigiano
Salt and Pepper

In a large pot, bring your water to a boil, add the fresh peas and cook until they are soft, then pull them out of the water and set aside, leave the water boiling. Add some salt to the water and your pasta. In a saute pan over medium-heat, cook the guanciale for a minute then add the two whole garlic cloves continue to saute but don't let the garlic get any darker than a light brown. Once you've got your bacon (drain off the fat if you like) cooked how you like, toss in the peas and saute for another minute or so. Once the pasta is cooked to nearly al dente, drain it but save a little of the cooking water. Add the pasta to the saute pan and give it a toss maybe adding a little of the cooking water (this isn't a 'saucy' pasta). Saute everything together for a minute in the pan and then drizzle a little oil over the pasta and finish with grated parmigiano. Salt and pepper to taste depending on the saltiness of the bacon.

Breaking News!

I mentioned in the last post that I would be heading to Loreto in May to do another month-long intensive course. Well, it was confirmed yesterday that I will actually be packing up and leaving THIS Sunday!

Another teacher who lives and works permanently in Loreto has a minor illness that requires surgery. She will be out for about three weeks having this done. She teaches the three-month intensive course, and so I am being sent as her substitute while she is gone, and it works out just perfectly that she will return in time for me to just continue on in Loreto and start the one-month course as orginally planned.

This is great news on the one hand, because the extra money is always welcome, but it's also bad news for the fact that Charles and I have to spend so much time apart! I still plan to come back to Rome on the weekends, but unfortunately Charles' Abbey Theatre schedule has had him working both Friday and Saturday nights for the last few weeks. So hopefully they'll have pity on us and he'll be able to trade at least one of those nights so we can be together!

Charles is "super sad" about me leaving, and has demanded that I call him every night at least for a second to say good night (as if I wouldn't!). I wish it could be that we were both going together like the last time, but for now he is working a lot teaching courses at American Express and being a slave to his other wife Abbey. Hopefully that will keep him distracted enough to get him through the five days a week without his Alsie!

Mid-April Update

Just a general update for you all:

The weather is resembling spring more and more each day. We are working, renting the room, and waiting patiently for the arrival of Diego and Jillian on May 14th. We love having friends visit! This year it should be a bit better for us than the last time Diego was here. Right now we have a bit more money than last year, so we'll actually be able to do some cool things with our friends this time around!

At this point it seems that I (Allie) will be heading back to Loreto for another month course starting May 12th. Charles won't be going this time so that he will be able to keep his job at the pub. It will be difficult to be apart all week long, but I'll come back to Rome every weekend to spend time with Charles, and it's only a month, so hopefully it will fly by. Of course, this is the period that Diego and Jillian will be here, so unfortunately I won't get a chance to spend much time with them, except for a weekend trip or two. But, you know what they say, "money's money."

Talk to Us!

Last night I downloaded the program Skype onto our computer. It might be the coolest thing ever. If you haven't heard of it, it's a program that lets you call people through your computer. If the other person has Skype, the call is totally free. If you want to call someone's house line or cell phone it's really cheap! I called my mom in Pasco last night and it was only 1cent per minute!

The only thing you might need to buy is a headset with a microphone so you can talk. I bought one with a webcam so I can do video chats as well! If you already have Skype, or you decide to take advantage of it and download the free program, let us know your contact info so we can say hi!

Looking forward to hearing from some of you!!

Summer Slim

In Italy, and especially in Rome, how you look is important! In fact, I would say it's importantissimo! It's almost impossible to determine how old an Italian woman is just by seeing her from the back. She could be 14 or 40, but by her body and her clothes you won't be able to tell (once you see her face, though, the years of sun abuse will clue you in really quickly to her real age, but that's another blog for another day.) The point is, they really put a lot of time and effort into their appearance (especially the women), and we have become so keenly adept at spotting American tourists that it's disturbing. They don't even have to speak and we instantly know that they are not only foreign, but clearly from the Good Ol' US of A.

Anyway, as you all know, we have been here nearly two years at this point (yes, it's really hard for us to believe it, too), and naturally we have begun to live a very Italian lifestyle. And it's more than just our regular intake of espresso! We do strange things now, like eat fruit after dinner and drink Coke Light instead of regular. Of course, with such a change in lifestyle we have naturally begun to see a change in our waistlines as well.

With the onset of summer arriving we decided that maybe we could step it up just a bit and see what would actually happen if we gave it a bit of effort. So we took some advice from an Italian friend who recently lost a lot of weight himself. Basically all we've done is stopped eating carbs at dinner. We still enjoy Chuckie's delicious pasta dishes at lunch time, but for dinner we stick to lean meats (lots of fish) and veggies. Naturally we try to be careful about over-indulging in all of the Italian sweets that call to us around every corner, but of course sometimes you just can't win that battle. In order to make up for those times when we give in to temptation, we've also started a little exercise routine. Just short jogs/walks in the neighborhood. We try to go everyday, but we aren't too hard on ourselves if we don't make it.

Like I said before, most of the work has already been done without us realizing it, and to show you what I'm talking about I present two photos of us as a couple. The first you probably have proudly displayed on your mantel piece at home (just kidding, unless you are our parents) from our wedding announcement, and the second was taken about a week ago. Just look at the difference!! You can really tell with Charles, it's incredible. I look at him everyday and say, "man, when did you get so skinny??" A lot of the time we wonder what we would look like today if we had stayed in America....scary!


The other day I decided that since we are feeling really proud of ourselves and like we're hot stuff it would be a good time to go shopping for a new bikini. I've avoided this task since we arrived in Italy because the only bathing suits you can find have the European cut bottoms. If you're not familiar with this, it is basically a backside half the size of your actual backside. Not exactly a thong (although you can find them quite easily as well), but for a somewhat conservative American girl, it feels like you've got a constant wedgie.

Anyway, I tried a few on, and was pleasantly surprised with how flattering it actually looked! This week we have been blessed with beautiful spring-like weather, and if it stays like this we will probably head to the sea on Thursday. It's still too cold to swim, but maybe we can get a head-start on our summer tans!