our autumn in italy. food.

and then there was the food.
when you think of italy you cannot help but think of food.
i'm gonna be honest. we ate A LOT.
something else we did was walk. A LOT.
busting out lots of pics and words and some silliness and a recipe link and a recipe on this post just to warn you it might be a little long...

st. peter's basilica sunday morning

we walked a lot every single day. all day hard.
it's how i justified starting my day (yes, every single day) with
cafe americano(s) and chocolate croissant(s)

yum

and ending with pizza, pasta, wine annnnd gelato. yeah that's right... all of it!

romantic little place for dinner

i'm going to break this to you all as gently a possible...
not every single thing we ate in italy sent us over the moon.
i know hard to believe. but it is true.
i will not dwell too long on the foods that underwhelmed me, after all it was only a few meals in the grand scheme of life.
there were however some dishes that we loved that i knew would inspire me to attempt at home.
the food that we loved the most were not fancy and probably the most affordable simple meals of the trip.
hang in there with me i'm going to get to my first inspiration recipe in a moment....

on a food related note, kind of...
something funny happened in rome.
if you knew me and my beverage choices you would know how shocking what i'm about to tell you is.
prior to italy...
offer me wine and i would say... no thank you.
offer me red wine and i would politely say... no thank you and make a face as you turned away.
not that i have ever been sick from red wine, i just have never liked it, at all.

BUT..... take me to italy and something came out of my mouth like someone else was speaking.

i suggested we get a bottle of wine... red wine ladies.
RED WINE.  RED. the words came from my mouth.
i don't EVER say... let's get RED WINE. NEVER.

what in the world was happening i just don't even know.
it's like i was drunk and talking crazy talk. i SWEAR i hadn't had a drop to drink... yet.
mr. c fell from his chair then quickly ordered a bottle of red house wine before i could say i was kidding.
mr. c... likes him some red wine. yep. he does. (laughing hard here)
i know some times he pops in and reads my blog and when he sees this he will say... oh honey don't tell them that... haha mr. c tooooooo late!
don't you be pouting mr. c

water from the aqueducts. i tested out the 'drinking fountain' feature. it was great water!
see i drank more than red wine.

okay serious face..
back to food.
so back home again i went hunting for recipes.
let me correct this... hunting for a recipe for eggplant parm NOT baked to oblivion, swimming in a sea of sauce and heavy greasy cheese and guilt.

my favorite place to find recipes is from real people who don't get all crazy with fancy ingredients and spices i will NEVER use again. hate that.
straight forward real people food puts me over the top any day of the week.
i've been popping over at
'meatless meals for meat eaters'
a nice blog. love her story about health, family, healing food. she is real. authentic. she writes and cooks from the heart. someone i could be real life friends with and she has a *new cookbook.
i love that she loves to eat annnd miriam happens to be an american (texan) that lived in italy for a time. love that and i want to have dinner at her house.

source

here's the original recipe eggplant parm

my little tweaks.
i halved the recipe. it was only us 2 for dinner of which we had 2 good sized dinners! win-win x2!
i used a smallish eggplant producing eight 1/4'' 'meaty' slices
i made her sauce with boxed (canned) chunky tomatoes (fresh is not so fresh here right now)
i used a little olive oil for my frying
i used less than 1/4c of fresh fine grated parmigiano-reggiano (my fanciness food splurge)

this really is one of my favorite knives. everyone should have an aubergine colored knife!

the italian breadcrumbs i make from my own bread.

here is my recipe for coating 8 slices of eggplant
3 pc of day-old bread in food processor (or enough to make 1c md-fine breadcrumbs)
1 t dried rosemary
1 t dried thyme
1 t dried basil
1/2 t garlic powder
1 T fresh fine grated parmigiano-reggiano (love)
2 pinches fresh ground sea salt
play with the spices to your own tastes.

sorry no photos of the beautiful creation, my photography skills couldn't do it justice  anyways :(

the results;
loved.
let me tell you my mr c is a big (not fat) guy and he loves good food (and red wine. haha) and can still put away the food like a strapping michigan farm boy.
he was full, he was happpppppppy and several times said it was better than the original dish from our trip!
he thanked me over and over for making this.
this recipe tasted fancy... but it wasn't fancy... and it was budget friendly.
it tasted like i slaved away all day on this... but i didn't. it's okay if someone thinks i did though.
we popped open a cheap CHEAP cheap bottle of red wine we brought back from our trip. if it was bad we were out a whole 1.09 euros... btw, converted that's $1.48.
can we still be friends if i tell you how much i enjoyed that cheap red wine or are we broke up now?


have a happy day!
xox
tracie
*mr. c if you are not still pouting about the red wine mention, this cookbook is on my wish list :) thank you.