Saturday, May 9, 2009

I give up. A post all about food.


Tacos in Firenze
Originally uploaded by rhubarbqueen
I've been suppressing the food chat worried that you might think that I'm just a big old glutton. The thing is, I am. The only thing saving me from myself here is that we walk everywhere. I'm not losing weight, but I might if I actually reduced my intake of gelato and pasta.

After three months it is actually possible to be a little tired of really good pasta, not very tired of it, but enough to crave some other type of food occasionally. Today as we walked back from the Horticultural Garden we stumbled across a fast food Mexican place called, imaginatively, Tacos. Briefly considering the absurdness of people who regularly live in Tucson, Arizona going to a taco place in Firenze we went in, ordered 3 tacos and a beer and sat down. They were bloody good. Better than most fast food Mexican places in Tucson, although not as quite as good as a fish taco or one of those sandwiches and grilled cebollas at a taco stand say in Magdalena Sonora. I know, we're heathens. Absolute bloody heathens. Mmmmm Mexican food.

I did go to a great Italian restaurant just down the street from us, il Santo Bevitore, on Thursday night as part of a Mums Night Out event (a bunch of expat mothers from English speaking or English/French speaking lands). Great company, and also a good lesson in eating in Italian restaurants without exploding. Restaurants here have multiple courses:
1. Antipasto (think starter)
2. Primo (soup or pasta)
3. Secondi (the meat or main dish, this is usually just the meat and you order...)
4. Contorno (the veg or potato side dish or even a salad)
and if you're up to it
5. Dolce (Sweets, good God, sweets)

Up until now I've been starting the antipasto, the pasta and a dolce. Sometimes I skip the antipasto and go for primo, secondi, contorno and dolci. I almost explode. No longer. After watching all these waifs eating, I'm going for a shared antipasto, salad (contorno), and the secondi and if the mood is right, which it usually is, a dolce. Il Santo Bevitore was definitely worth a second visit unlike another trattoria on the same street where Doug broke a toilet seat cover. I didn't tell you about that? Hmmmm, a story for when we get home.

3 comments:

  1. What about all these cookery lessons then?

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  2. So good to hear there are more options for Mexican in Firenze now. In 1992 (she said, tugging on her long beard), the sole place was Caffe Caracol, a little too close to the Centro Storico and full of American students on their semester abroad. At happy hour (which lasted precisely one hour) the pitchers of margaritas were $20 instead of $40. I once made a date with a soldier I met there (but the outcome was not nearly as lurid as it might sound).

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  3. Oooo Deborah, that does sound lurid and rather fun. I wasn't quite in my uniform stage then. As for Anonymous with the question about cooking classes todays post is just for you.

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