Italy Week!

It was only a matter of time before we made our way to Italy. It's one of our favorite countries to visit in real life, and of course the food is incredible. We could have spent all summer in Italy, but I'm afraid I would gain 20 pounds or more!

Crafts

Dan made these adorable Venetian masks with the kids using supplies we had around the house. We just cut paper plates in half and made eye holes. The kids painted the plates while Dan made little feathers out of construction paper. Once dried, add a craft stick and you're ready for the masquerade party.

A couple of other crafts this week involved making food. I love these hands-on activities. Asher in particular really enjoys cooking, so it's fun to get him involved. This week we made our own pasta, pizza, and ricotta cheese!

We got a pasta maker attachment for our KitchenAid mixer as a wedding present nearly twelve years ago, and though we rarely use it, when we do, it is so fun! You can make pasta by hand, but rolling and cutting would be really challenging. For this week, we cut our pasta into spaghetti and linguine shapes. Of course we had to make our favorite sauce of all time--Scarpetta's tomato sauce. 

For the ricotta, Dan used this recipe and then made a really delicious poached pear dessert. I didn't think I was a fan of ricotta desserts (like cannoli), but this changed my mind!

Culture

Dan and I have been to Italy a few times, both together and separately. Zahara went when she was a baby, too! The kids got to re-live a couple of our trips with a slideshow of our top memories. I'll never forget our trip as a family of three to Cinque Terre and Tuscany. And of course our honeymoon is unforgettable.

The kids also watched a couple of NatGeo videos. One on gondalas, and one on the leaning tower of Pisa.

Food

We've already talked about some of the food we ate this week. Pasta, ricotta, pizza. We had a few different options for the pizzas. Dan experimented with an anchovy and cultured olive pizza (verdict: too salty). We also went for black olive (the kids' favorite), and a white pizza with ricotta, buffalo mozzarella, thyme, and ricotta. I liked the white pizza a lot.

Dan and the kids made focaccia too, using our sourdough starter. We had that as a snack throughout the week. We also had a caprese salad, osso bucco (veal shank) with risotto, chicken marsala, and a charcuterie board. Gotta say, the charcuterie board was kind of hard to do kosher. We had some deli meat, olives, artichoke hearts, and anchovies, but we were really missing the variety of meats.

  

Italy, you were wonderful as always. We'll miss you, but I'm sure we'll be back again soon. Next stop is our first in Africa: Ethiopia!

See our other country weeks here.