Braving It Solo...It Won't Happen Again

The kids had a last minute few days out of school for the Italian elections.  We found out the Monday before and Joey had to work so I decided to try my hand at traveling Slovenia with the kids alone.  I'm not quite sure what possessed me to forget what its like traveling with children except the egotistical desire to be the kind of woman that can do that sort of thing.  So, on a whim and with Joey's consent I made a reservation!:)  I stressed up until the moment we left (should I be doing this?  Is it worth it?  What was I thinking?) but as soon as we were on the freeway I loosened up a bit;)  We had  good time  all and all but I'll be giving you a little bit of the reality of what its like traveling Europe with young children.  While fun, it can make you want to pull your hair out lots of times!!

We made our first stop at an indoor water park in Ljubljana.  The kids were quite entertained here so...no problems;)  Then we headed for Lake Bled which we've heard good things about, a fairy tale mountain/lake town that we will definitely be seeing in the summer but we thought we should check out in the winter too since it's not too far away.  We arrived safely in the evening, prepared "pasta pomodoro", read stories, dealt with a grumpy Isaac, sent him to bed early and then finally Georgie and I went to bed ourselves;)  We finished reading her Junie B. Jones book together, reading for over an hour which was fun...something I never get to do at home.

In the morning we were lazy, watched a show, played a game and then finally got out of our jammies,  and headed out to explore the town.  

Georgie and Isaac had the grand idea of pulling Juliet in the sled and since this was going to be the vacation where I was going to say "Yes" whenever it was remotely possible (and didn't cost too much money)...I said, "yes".

 It looks like we're having such a dreamy time, pulling a sled through the snow covered streets in a tiny little mountain tourist town in Eastern Europe.  But it was at this time that I gave Isaac and Georgie the warning that if they didn't stop fighting over who got to do what with the sled then I would leave it right there on the side of the road and no one would get to use it.  And it was at this time that I had to stifle every bone in my body not to tell Juliet to s*** up her whining about only wanting Mommy to pull her.  5 minutes after this we left the sled on the side of the road.  One child pouted, talked back and complained until I had to get in the childs face and tell the child to pull it together and change their attitude or there would be no **** toys for a week.  So we walked in silence for several minutes, lost, not sure how to find the trail around the edge of the lake until we were saved by a bakery.  

With food to lighten our mood we were given another chance to make a go of a happy vacation again.  And then we were doubly saved by this beautiful swan that Juliet is still talking about. 

We didn't have to fear the bird nipping at us because we were all 

covered from head to toe in snow clothes.

The view of the lake was completely hidden with a very dense fog.  

You can ever so slightly see the castle floating above Georgie's head in this shot.  

 But then it began to clear!

 We trekked around the lake trail moving about 1/4 of a mile an hour, the kids getting snow in their boots, losing gloves, intermittently fighting with each other and having attitude problems (the attitude problems aren't always present....in a particular child they are seasonal....the come for 4-5 days about 4-5 times a year and this just so happened to be the season for them.)  There were jokes and fun too but I'm focusing on the negative here because you get plenty of the positive;)

 It really was like a fairy tale here.  The lake was half frozen, there's an island you can see here in the distance with a beautiful church sitting on it and the castle literally floats out over the lake on an extended cliff.

It's hard to tell from the shot but Isaac got stuck in the snow;)  

We went out for pizza that night and I'll take my chance to brag and say that the kids were really well behaved at dinner.  They were polite, sat in their seats like we've been working on and generally had a great time.  We did a lot of walking on this trip which they're getting better at but in certain moods they (one in particular) really like to complain.  And I tend to lose my patience, something I am working on.  Back at the house we played war and UNO while Juliet climbed all over us, destroyed our cards and almost pulled a burning log out of the fire.  Traveling Europe is such dream;)  Is it wrong of me to say that I envy my friends who are living here without/before having any children?   Well, it's honest and selfish all at the same time, I guess.  At the end of the day you'd never trade them but I think it's normal to feel like they're cramping your style from time to time even though you love their guts!

xoxo

Ash

Un Ricetta

The stars aligned for Paula, Corey and i when it just so happened that I had organized a cooking class with the chef at one of our favorite restaurants on the Wednesday night that they were here!  It worked out so perfectly!  Manlio, taught us to make three different kinds of Gnocchi, the recipes of which I will post here;)  We had such a good time.  Being with an Italian chef in his personal kitchen, watching him treat potato gnocchi dough like it was his newborn baby and tell us the trail of his life cooking in Italy was just a little bit magical; If you want to make it and have questions, feel free to ask.  The ricotta one has been the easiest and least intimidating for me to create so I'll start with that one;)

Le Ricetta per Il Rifugio Ricotta Gnocchi

250 gr Fresh Ricotta Cheese
2 eggs
200 gr (a little more than 1 1/2 cups) Cake Flour
1/4 c grated Parmesan Cheese
60 g butter
2 t chives or herbs
Salt and Pepper to taste

Start a large pot of water boiling.  When it comes to a boil add a generous amount of salt.

 The ricotta used in this recipe has to be fresh and not the kind you can buy in a plastic container from the super market.  Not because I'm trying to sound hoity toity but because the two cheeses are totally different and American Ricotta won't work in this recipe. You'll want to try a gourmet-ish grocery store and ask at their cheese counter if they have this.  It should be relatively easy to find depending on where you live.

Salt ricotta in a bowl generously.  Add pepper to taste.
Add one egg whisk and then the other until completely combined:

Fold in parmesan cheese.  Add flour slowly while whisking.
*More flour makes the gnocchi more firm so I prefer to err on the less flour side
so the dumplings are more tender.

Using a spatula fold in the herbs of your choice.  Then add 2 T melted butter.  The dough should be relatively sticky.  Almost like a pasty (sp?) cheese.


 This is the part that is hard to describe.  It's better to see it.  But I'll try.  Scoop up a small mount in a regular sized soup spoon and smooth the top with a second spoon.  

  Using the second spoon, pass the dough from one spoon to the other rubbing the edges of the spoon together as close as possible.  Switch to the other side of the dumpling and the other sides of the spoon until you've formed a football shaped dumpling.

Here's Paula trying her hand at it.

 Drop it in the salted water and watch.  When they rise to the top let them boil for 2 more minutes then remove to a buttered dish with a slotted spoon.

Manlio served this gnocchi with an oily lamb sausage and melted butter (yummmm;).  When I made it at home I made a salted browned butter, cooked on high heat until slightly carmel in color and flavor, then poured it over the top and added shredded parmesan cheese all over it before serving.  Next time I want to carmelize some leeks along with the butter.  I think that would be a killer combination.  

Il Rifugios Potato Gnocchi

This Potato Gnocchi dough is on the menu at Il Rifugio all year round.  The dough is a somewhat traditional recipe but Manlio adds a filling that makes it special..special and delicious;)

Potato Gnocchi

Yellow Gold potato, 1 kg

200 grams cake flour

1 egg

Salt and Pepper to taste

Boil unpeeled potatoes in salted water.  When cooked through, peel  and put them through a ricer or mash them.  Salt them generously.      

filling:

50-60 gr Latteria cheese

30-40 gr Arugula blanched for less than 1 minute

Chop the cheese into chunks and then process all in a food processor.  

Butter the cooked gnocchi and serve with shredded, smoked Ricotta.

Add one egg in the middle, fold it in.  Add flour a little at a time, dusting the table and gently kneading it in.  Stabilize the ball of dough with one hand and knead with the other until it is the texture of play dough with a little more bounce. 

CUt off a portion and roll it out into a fat log shape.  

Make a well with your finger along the length of the log.  

Fill with filling,

pinch to seal,

roll it out thinner and slice.

Dust with rice flour and, if you need to, leave over night or prepare to boil.  BOil in salted water until it floats then promptly remove them with a mesh spoon and put them in a pan prepared with a generous amount of melted butter.  Toss to coat, top with shredded smoked ricotta and serve.

Look who's here!!!!

Look what the New York flight drug in today! Paula and Corey! And they were fresh as daisies so we traipsed right over to the lagoon and toured San Marco square. But now we're home and they are
Sleeping off the jet lag. They'll head out for dinner with Joey tonight and we'll spend the next 4 days with them talking about and eating food;). We are ago glad to have them!

I want one of these...

A man named Davide Crosetta And his father came to prepare the ground for our garden today. They drove 10 miles in this little car, across freeways and busy roads! We've seen ones similar to this driving on our country roads every once in a while and always point them out and giggle. My next stop is to find out how much one of these cost;). If we're going to have land one day this thing is perfect;). A EuroTruck...;). Davide says 13 year olds are legal to drive these things. Isaac perked up at the sound of that! After they spent the afternoon with us Davide gave us a sort of backhanded compliment (though he meant it as an honest compliment...super nice guy). He asked me " Are you sure you are American? Because we go to Americans homes their kids don't obey them, they don't take care of their yard and they certainly don't try to learn the language!" He said that Georgie, who loves all things
outdoors and stayed out watching their every move in preparing the garden, spoke to him in all kinds of Italian. When he asked her his first question in English she responded in Italian and just kept talking...COOL;).

Carnival

Small Town Carnival

Carnival is a pretty big deal in Italy...bigger and different then we expected.  It's kind of like Halloween but only because people wear costumes and not just the masks and capes that you see in pictures of Venice.   Here's a picture of Isaac (a shark) and Juliet (a bird) with our friend Emma and our neighbors Phillipo and his little sister who's name I can never remember.  

 Every commune (it seems) has it's own celebration of Carnival.  In our town, Caneva, the center square is blasted with confetti, lined with tents for the towns organizations to serve food and accept donations to all the towns people that come out for it.  Pop-music was blasted to cheer everyone up and put them in the party  mood.  

 Emma is a peacock:

This is a group of people running one of the tents dressed up like Gondoliers.  I liked their costumes so I asked if I could snap a photo:

They had a few jumping castles for the kids to play in, which was nice.  We left our big kids to play with their neighbors and school friends while JOey and I let our friend Daniela show us around all the tents.  

Daniella took us to the Alpini tent to try a local delicacy whos name I can't remember.  It was a round of white polenta, perfectly soft, topped with a slice of traditional (and very fatty) Italian sausage.  They top it off with a horseradish sauce that they warned us about, telling us how spicy it was, making sure we  thought we could handle such spice and then waited, watching with suspense when Joey popped it in his mouth.  It was nothin';)  HOrseradish or wasabi or something like that.  Italians don't know spice:)   

All and all it was a cozy, local, friendly party.  I, again, felt enamored by the Italian idea of communes...a local town center that organizes events for every holiday and random weekends where everyone from the community can get together and volunteer and feel like real neighbors. I know we do that in the US...city festivals etc. but these feel smaller, more consistent and neighborly then anything you'd ever go to in Houston or Orange County or something.  It's been a cool experience.

Afterward we went to Daniela and Giovani's house to hang out and eat chips;)  They're the kind of hosts who gather everyone in a group hug,  kissing each others cheeks through toothy smiles every time we say good bye.  We love them....!

Funny Things Only Parents Will Appreciate

Funny things the kids have said recently that I want to journal:

Last night I was looking for Juliet's toothbrush at bedtime in the bathroom.  Isaac and Georgie were both also in the bathroom showering and peeing, respectively (that's how we roll here;)  So I asked them if they had seen Juliets toothbrush.  Georgie said, "It's in my sandwich."  yummm..

I was talking to Juliet about her body, how she has curly hair, light brown hair and brown eyes.  I told her, "You don't have freckles."  To which she replied, "But I have nickles!"  (which means nipples;)

This morning I was playing around with Juliet tickling her and spanking her bum.  We were playfully arguing back and forth with her doing that cute "I think I'm so big,' brow furrow, yelling at me with a half grin on her face.  I said "I'm going to spank you so hard you're going to forget your middle name!" She looked at me so hard, trying to be so mad and so serious and yelled, "My middle name IS GAGA!!!"  I thought you would like that Mom!:)

Buda and Pest

Drum roll please...

Our favorite city of the Christmas trip was:

 Budapest used to be two different smaller cities on opposite sides of the river Danube, one called Buda and one called Pest.  Your useless factoid for the day;)  The old town of Buda might be one of the most magical places in Europe.  

 My favorite spot was the Fishermans Bastion:

 I won't try to describe it.  You just have to go and experience it.  Especially at night and look across the Danube 

This lovely place is called Heroes Square.  It is a monument to the heroes and founders of Hungary.  On both sides of the square are beautiful art museums.  The statues are really cool to look at in detail below.   You can see a little bit of the arched wall of columns and statues behind the Obelisk too.  There are probably 35 statues here.  

Here's a closer shot of a few of them.  The coolest thing about the square itself, really, was watching a few local families roller blading and riding their bikes here.  It is a HUGE paved area so perfect for that kind of activity.  It was just cool to think that local hungarians play here.  

Behind Heroes square is a large park and pond (skating rink in the winter), a small courtyard, this castle and the following church.  I hate to throw around the word "favorite" too much but my Mom and I loved this castle, called Valdahunyad Castle.  Sadly it's not a real castle in the sense that royalty lived here.  It was built in late 1890-1905 as a millenial celebration of the country of Hungary.  It was designed to feature several copies of different landmark buildings from all over the kindgdom of Hungary, especially the Hunyad Castle in Transylvania (now Romania).  Whatever, it was cool;)

This church was right across the square from it.

In the square we got ripped of by a man selling Marzipan candies.  But they were worth it;)

The House of Terror Museum:

The House of Terror Museum was like a fire hydrant of Eastern Europe history being blown at you except cool.  It's more about their communist history with Hitler and then Russia (more Russia)...not much about the Holocaust as we expected.  However, the things non jews went through under communist Russia was pretty dang appalling.  If I could do anything again I would read more Easter Europe History before I came to Budapest.  To understand a lot of what you're seeing and not feel overwhelmed with "what's" and "why's" the whole time it would be nice to have the general idea of what happened here.  And this museum helped.

Aren't we creative..."behind the iron curtain":)

As I emphatically recommend visiting Budapest with people I give them a caveat that we might have liked it 50% more than we otherwise would have because the Christmas Market was so fun.  We kept making jokes about ourselves because as we traveled these cities we'd have a plan of things to do that day and then we'd see a Christmas Market (this time of year there are big ones and little ones dotted everywhere in Europe).  We'd get delayed there for 2 hours, eating!!  In this particular photo we're eating this typical Hungarian fried bread scone like thing that Joey hasn't stopped talking about.  

It was pretty incredible in a very indulgent kind of way.

Here's one of the cute food booths in the Christmas Market in front of St Stephens Cathedral.

Two different kinds of stuffed cabbage and cooked cabbage in the middle...lots of cabbage!  If you're not drooling it's because you've never had European cabbage before!!

Sausage, Cheese, anti pasta and more cheese.

Here's St. Stephans, the ice skating rink and the Christmas market where we spent most of our time.  At night they had a big light show on the front of the church and Joey spent two nights watching it with Juliet in between bites;)

Ju-B's face;)

After stuffing our faces on the first day we finally made it over to Buda. 

 We wondered around the old town, saw the castle ruins and then made it over to the Hungarian History Museum which was cool but not necessarily a must see.  Outside of the museum is this statue of hunters, a slain elk and hunting dogs.  We all thought of Pop Pop, so Kerry, this shot was taken for you;)  Joey wanted one in front of it to show to his Dad:)  It was really beautiful.

Uncle Bryant and Georgie liked it too;)

All the statues in Buda were really cool.  In Europe you pass by statues EVERYWHERE but several of these in old town Buda stop you.  You want to preserve them in a picture so you can show them off and remember them.  They're just cool. 

Here's another one we really liked of children playing and catching a fish.

We almost left the area when Bryant and I remembered that we'd wanted to see the Fisherman's Bastion.  If we hadn't gone back for it we would have missed the coolest sight in Budapest.  I highly recommend going in the evening because the lights are amazing...both at the Bastion and the view all along the river.  

The church across from the Bastion.  I wish I'd gotten a better picture of this church.  It was really beautiful.  During the Russian/Communist rule of Hungary it was the only church that was allowed to remain active and Catholic.  One of the Hapsburg Queens, I think Marie Antoninettes mother, this was her favorite church to visit in her kingdom.  Did you know Hungary was part of the Hapsburg empire before it became its own independent country?  I didn't know that before. 

The Bastion from the street side.

And again from the river side:

The Bastion takes its name from the guild of fisherman that was responsible for defending this stretch of the city walls in the Middle Ages. But the wall didn't look like this back then.  It was initially designed and built for the millennial celebration at the turn of the century (the same time as Heroes Square and Valdahunyad Castle).  It was destroyed in World War II and rebuilt again in the late 1940's.  That was one amazing thing about this city.  It was destroyed at least 4 different times and just as soon as the people would get it all rebuilt and their feet back under them it would all be destroyed again.  I can only imagine there's evidence in their culture of this resiliency. 

On our way home we stuck our toes over the border of Croatia just to say we did.  Then we traveled to Ljubljana for dinner and to show them around briefly.  Here's a photo of the Christmas Fairy Square where children walk under the magical wand to be touched with her blessing at Christmas time.  You can barely see the line of people waiting their turn below.

It was sad to leave this place knowing we will probably never go back again.  It wouldn't take too much persuasion but with so many other great places to see and Budapest not being extremely close it just isn't likely.  Thanks for the great Christmas Budapest!  And thanks to Mom, Dad and Bryant for being with us.  It made it at least 10X more fun.  We really missed Adam and his family though.  It would have been great to have cousins!  Love you guys!

xoxo