We have arrived!

11/7/2009

Today we woke up on the earlier side, around 8, so that we could finish off our shopping before we went to the cooking school. The plan for the day was to finish shopping, then meet Tyler for lunch, and then at one we were scheduled to meet a representative from the school at the hotel so that they could drive us to the Villa. How convenient for us! So after getting ready we went back to the San Lorenzo market. We decided to skip breakfast because we knew we would have an early lunch and we both were not very hungry after our delicious meal from the night before. At San Lorenzo, we made sure that we bought everything that we needed to and were fully covered in the gift department of the items that we cold find at the market.

The Mercado Central food market is located right amongst the San Lorenzo market. It was closed yesterday, but open today. I was excited to showed mom what all of these food markets I had been visiting were like. She was amazed. We spent a lot of time at a salami and cheese shop that had tasters and ended up buying some really cool products. Now the question is how are we going to get all of this food back into the States. I am sure that we will also buy stuff like this while we are at the cooking school, so hopefully they have some suggestions on how to go about this.

We headed back to the hotel to meet Tyler for lunch. I had some serious technology issues with using my phone to call him on his European number, so I just gave up and figured it would all work out anyways. Unfortunately, I used up the rest of my hour of Internet this morning, so I couldn’t check my messages to see if he got my last message about moving the lunchtime up. I had a funny feeling that he had left a message for me, but decided to just wait and see if he turned up instead of paying another 5 euro to check my messages. He ended up not showing up, so I figured my gut feeling was right and something came up. (When I checked my messages later on, Tyler had left me one that morning saying that he had gotten really sick and would just see me when we both got back to the States)

We asked the front desk for a recommendation for a close, delicious, affordable lunch place. The trattoria they pointed us two was literally around the corner from the hotel and was very cute. When we walked in it had Rodrigo y Gabriella playing, so I knew it couldn’t be half bad with good musical tastes. The restaurant had a boar theme going on because it was also located right next to the statue of the lucky wild boar. For lunch mom and I split a grilled cheese platter, lasagna, and a mixed greens salad. We liked two of the three cheeses on the platter a lot. The third cheese was some sort of smoked cheese, which neither mom nor I care for. The lasagna was also very good. It was crunchy in some parts around the edges, which I really liked a lot.

We went back to the hotel to wait to meet up with the cooking school representative. He had phoned the hotel and told the front desk to please inform us that he was running late because he had gotten stuck in traffic, which was caused by an accident. I took this as an opportunity to take a little nap because my food coma from lunch was setting in. About 20 minutes after one we finally got to meet Francesco, the tour guide to our trip at the Villa Gaia and the owner (he also is an artist and has his art on display in the restaurant). He informed us that we were officially the only ones at the villa this week, which meant that we could absolutely tweak our stay to do the things that we wanted to do. This was fantastic news for us to hear because it was what we had been hoping for all along! It was a 2-hour drive from Florence to the villa, all through the Tuscan countryside. During the drive, we saw a white Lamborghini, which I thought was pretty cool. It passed us going extremely fast, as was to be expected.

We pulled up to the villa around sunset. It is a beautiful property that has a great view of the hills of Tuscany. We got settled in to our room, which is in a great old house that we have all to ourselves. Francesco and him mom have done a ton of work on the property and made it to be extremely luxurious but at the same time have the old Tuscan house feel. Its extremely cool. We were beginning out first cooking lesson tonight so we headed down to the restaurant for some appetizers before it began.

Villa Gaia is in fact an agritourismo and it triples as a cooking course/tour Tuscany getaway, a restaurant in the summer time, and an olive grove. It is very cool to see how they make everything work. Isabella is Francesco’s mom and is in charge of the cooking course. She is pretty amazing. She is a vegetarian who cooks everything not by taste testing but by smelling. Francesco has another brother, Fabrisio, who works at the villa in the summertime, but he is in Orlando now with his girlfriend. Apparently that is for the better because Fabrisio and Francesco do not get along that well only being one year apart and also the villa is Francesco’s and Fabrisio is very difficult and lazy to work with. I know all of this because Isabella and Francesco have essentially welcomed us into their family. It was a wonderful welcoming. They also have three dogs, two beagles on one very large wolf related dog, which is the icing on the cake to the family atmosphere. The family is originally from Naples but moved to Tuscany about 10 years ago to open Villa Gaia. They also had some family in Tuscany. This was very exciting news for us, because their not only is Naples known for some of the best food in Italy, but their Naples background meant that they use garlic in their cooking, our favorite!

The first cooking lesson was great. We learned a lot of good information and different ways to go about cooking (hopefully healthier and tastier ways). We also drank a lot of wine while cooking, which was so much fun. I made detailed notes about what we made, how to make it, and the little tips we learned that I will also post. Tonight’s menu was homemade pasta with a Tuscan vegetable sauce, eggplant parmesan, veal cutlets marsala, and a classic rustic Tuscan cake with homemade cream. Everything was incredible and it wasn’t just because we made it. Everything was so fresh and the different takes on the dishes were very cool to try, not to mention the through the rook delicious factor.