So before I embarked on my three month long trip to Italy my mother was worried about one major aspect to my living, cooking. Now you are probably thinking "WTF you are in Italy! There is food everywhere" and you are most certaintly not wrong. Not only is there food everywhere, but there is some of the best food you will ever eat. You almost don't know food until you have eaten in Italy. Also surprisingly food here is not as expensive as I thought.
Although even with all that in mind everything will add up at some point. The decision that I needed to limit my eating out came when I logged into my online banking. I'll spare you the details and just tell you it didn't look as good as I hoped.
Now remember that I said that my mother was worried about me cooking? That is because I literally could not cook for sh#$. We are talking complete lack of stove and oven experience. I was completed limited and restricted to microwave and toaster. I could make a mean toast and jam.
Those limited skills in food preparation got me through in America (also my boyfriend making me food helped, thanks babe), but Italy is not exactly known for its prime microwavable meals.
So with all that in mind, I decided I would enter a course of my own creation called cooking 100 (pronounced cooking 1-oh-zero). The course includes basic things like stove operations and such, so pre-cooking 101 material.
For the first meal of the course, I decided to tackle pasta. With much supervision, I was successful. To be honest I was a little embarrassed to ask for help. Even when I was googling (yes I googled it) it was hard to find simple instructions. I had an idea how to make pasta just from observation, but it was the little things I was worried about. How much water? How hot do you have the stove? How do you know when its finished? Despite my embarrassment, my roommates in Italy were very helpful and giggled along with me as I looked so lost.
Now a few weeks later, I can proudly announce to my friends and family that I have successfully made pasta and sauce, hamburger, chicken parm, chicken, and rice. It is a start but girl has to start somewhere! It is still a little hard to get over spending all this time making food for it only to be eaten and gone in 10 minutes. Two euro Italian wine has been helping with that.
As silly to some people it might seem. I am actually proud that I have achieved the creation of edible food.
