Italy resumé

It took me 4 days to set up this post. I know I promised some people photos of Venice as soon as I am back, but my "very fast" internet connection has set limits to it. Plus my mother came on Wednesday midnight, so I have been busy hosting her.
Now, our 5 day trip to Italy and Venice was everything that I expected and even more. We could experience a true summer weather with beach, lot of relaxed atmosphere, beautiful scenery, good food and very good company of many friendly Italians and 2 Portuguese.

Joana, our host and Joao somewhere in Padova

Day 1 Joana picked us up from Padova autostazione and guided us to her place where we could drop our bags and dress into summer clothes, because in Italy they have a summer. Then we met our driver Lorenzo, who took as all to the sunny beach of Lignano (I think this was the name :S). It got cloudy as soon as we arrived to the beach, but this didn't stop us to take a first summer dip and enjoy the beach. Eventually it got sunny and we kicked some ball.

Kicking the ball

Day 2 continued in the rhythm of beach life, by the end of the day we were back in Padova to meet Alessandro, Joana's second half. As Italian and a true master of pasta, Alessandro made us a lovely dinner of chilli spaghetti with fresh tomatoes.
Day 3 was a trip to Venice. It is as beautiful as you see in the pictures. Where ever you go, there is a possible Kodak moment. We spent around 5 hours walking around with our very very patient tour guide Joana. I won't make a long speech here, pictures will talk for themselves with a little help from the caption.

Breakfast at Ale's house

First buy in Venice, water



One of many canal photos



Colourful building

"3 pieces of ravioli please" - Pasta

It was still first half of the Venice trip, so the spirits were high

Our lunch: bread bought from Jewish ghetto, ham from butchers and cheese from cute Italian supermarket

Tourists stopped in front of pretty clock tower

They were feeding me to the pigeons of Basilica di San Marco

Palazzo Ducale

They didn't bang their heads. They must have been trying it out before then

Beautiful pasta, pasta, pasta, pasta, pasta

View on Grand Canal from a bridge

Sprits

Pizza

Venice - Grand Canal

So all this was Venice. There was a day 4 with walks in Padova market on Prato della Valle square. Joao made a great bought of new sunglasses after he got his previous sunglasses wrecked in the beach by a kid. But one photo below all this was long forgotten and everyone was happiiiiiiiiii.

Sunglasses models

A very warm day 4 finished on a graduation party of Alessandros friend, somewhere in nearby mountains. It was a lovely warm summer night, with many happy people. Million thanks to the party guy who invited us.

The Pasta Gang
tomatoes - Joana
pasta - Alessandro

observer - Aire
special effects - Whisky

Night before Venice - Baking bread

Another attempt to bake bread. The recipe is from beautiful cookbook Piri-Piri Starfish: Portugal Found. The recipe was calling rye flour next to simple wheat bread flour, but I didn't have it, so my bread came out pure wheat bread. As it cooled down little bit, we had it with fresh mozzarella and tomato. Mmmmm ....

Tomorrow we will fly to Venice for 4 days. Wiiiiii ... I know it is going to be crowded and in general I don't like crowded at all, but it's Venice, it's a must. I am convincing myself that I am prepared for this, so in the end I can say it was wonderful. Cappuccinos, ice-cream, warm summer nights with food to nibble and wine. Bring it on!

Good old Cabbage Rolls

This dish is definitely from my mothers cooking repertoire. I missed the taste of it, so I decided to give it a try. It gives a little work though, but I suppose the more you do it the easier it becomes. We always had it with boiled potatoes and splash of sour cream.

Cabbage Rolls

1 medium size cabbage
300g ground beef
1 small onion finely chopped
1/2 cup long grain rice
pepper
salt

Boil the rice.
Mix the beef, chopped onion, rice, salt and pepper.
Place the whole cabbage in the pot with water and little bit of salt, making sure that water covers cabbage entirely. Bring it to boil 5 - 10 min, so the cabbage leaves become slightly soft and you can bend them without braking. Do not over boil the cabbage otherwise the greener and softer parts of the leaves get mushy. Lift the cabbage out of the pot and remove whole leaves one by one. Cut the white tough skeleton end of the leaf thinner.

Flatten the leaf on the board, depending of the leaf size, place 1-3 Tlsp of meat mix onto the leaf. Fold the sides of the leaf to the centre over the filling and then roll the filling into the leaf starting from the white skeleton end.Place the rolls on the pan with little bit of olive oil and fry them 3-4 min from both sides until they gain brown spots. Remove from the pan and place them to a pot layer by layer tightly side by side. Pour over with the remaining water from boiling the whole cabbage. Cover with a lid. bring to boil over low light and let it simmer 1 hour.

Transformation

My blog went through complete transformation to the brighter side. When I opened an account in Blogger I didn't have a clear vision how should it look like. So I have been changing it and trying out layouts. Now I can say I like it, its my new baby. To celebrate the transformation I baked so much loved in our house Chocolate Crinkles. The recipe is form Joy of Baking once again. I have been exploring this website and continue to do so.

These Crinkles are brownie like cookies with nice soft texture and rich chocolate taste, which makes them more than just cookies. Dough is very easy to make, keeping it in the refrigerator for few hours makes the process a little longer and demands some planning. I tend to make the dough on the night before and leave it in the fridge overnight.
What I like about the Crinkles is that they are nice bite size, when ready baked about 3cm in diameter. I would call them figure friendly. You know how brownies are always a very generous square and its impossible to eat half now and leave the other half for later. Who does that? With Crinkles there is no need to make those crucial decisions, because they are tinier but still have all the flavour.

Guinness Brewery

Another tourist attraction in Dublin seen. It was actually a week ago already, last Sunday, that we went there. Its me being very, very delayed. I am having this blog around half a year now and most of the times I still cannot remember that I should write here on more permanent basis. I try to improve.

So Guinness. "Good child has many names", as we say in Estonia. They say its a Storehouse, Brewery and the most odd a Museum. It does explain the history of Guinness and everything surrounding it. Ingredients, making process, transport, but the educational part in this "museum" is very small. All they want to do is sell their beer and increase the profits. Oh and in the booklet they promised that visitor can pull his own draft and get a certificate and all, but we didn't find such thing. As a good consumer I must say that the most enjoyable part is the top floor with magnificent panoramic view on Dublin City and pint a fresh and creamy Guinness. The most amazing thing was when we acclaimed our free pint. Girl in the bar made a shamrock (ristikhein) on the foam. It was very pretty.

Concentrate the eyes on pint on the left, that's mine, thirsty Joao already wrecked his.

Summer in Ireland

Let me make it clear once and for all. Why do they say Ireland has a summer? It doesn't. It is raining every day. I wear a coat every day in the "summer". It does become in-expensive in a long run, because there is absolutely no need to buy summer clothes. The stuff that you use for spring times is excellent. Long trousers, top and have a sweater ready to cover your bare skin. Forget little cute dresses that you wear in summer times, not here, you would end up with cystitis. Bottom line, no summer here, at least I haven't seen it.
But I have two great holidays coming. First one at the end of July, we a going to Venice for 5 days to visit JT (Joana). It will be warm and very crowded but I don't care as long as its warm.
Second one is in September, we are going to Portugal for 2 weeks. 2 weeks!!! And there it's going to be warm as well.
Meanwhile there is a picture from the summer in Ireland.

Look what it does to you.