Chef Abbie

March 24th 2020: You may now exclusively refer to me as Chef Abbie or ABBA. I have taken this time to perfect my craft! All of the gluten free goodness! Nonna is seriously lucky to get to experience lockdown with me, the rest of you should be jealous. Cookies, salmon risotto, fresh guac, and turkey burgers have all been on the menu recently. 

This weekend, I made arepas! I first had them in Ecuador (plot twist, they are traditionally Venezuelan) and loved them! I made them with the Language Club at Hartford and had them again at a street market in London. As you may have noticed, the picture at the top of this page is NOT arepas! That is because they were not pretty, but they were delicious! I didn’t have most of the traditional fillings so I used chicken, bresaola, and cheddar cheese. It was lots of fun to make and I’m super excited to make them again once I can get all of the necessary ingredients. Just before I came to Italy, my dad and I did make llapingachos which are the Ecuadorian version and they are made from potato!

I’ve been doing a lot of yoga and while it doesn’t substitute for ‘putting the biscuit in the basket’, it is definitely fun to do something active. I have even figured out the best way to do yoga: follow instructor on phone with headphones, play Mamma Mia! in the background on computer, and be on the terrace or in front room near the window in hopes of getting some sun!

I am so so happy that I have class every day. This whole ordeal would be much harder so I am very glad that we are healthy and have some structure! I thought I would share what I learned today! We are working through the various uses of the condizionale…while it is similar to Spanish it has many more uses-tenses. One of the things we went over today was Futuro nel Passato (yes that means future in the past and no it doesn’t make any sense!!) I was very, very confused about this but then the teacher asked me for an example and I said “mio babbo ha detto che mi avrebbe telefonato oggi.” And somehow that was correct. The class is entirely in Italian, since we have gone online, I can count on one hand the number of words we have spoken in English. All of them have been tech words because our teacher and Skype are not friends 🙂 Being surrounded by it has taught me so much more than I could even imagine. I had no clue why that sentence made sense, or how it followed that particular rule but I was able to formulate it! Also, my homework over the weekend was to write a story and I wrote about what soccer means to me and what role it has played in my life. I have tried to send it to many many people, many many times and it won’t go through. So please know I am trying to share my progress as many people have asked but I am not good at technology!!!

Also this weekend was amazing because I convinced my dear mother to FaceTime me and then ‘forced’ her to watch a Hallmark with me. I love love! In this very confusing and changing world, sometimes all you need is a little mediocre acting and predictability to make it through the day! I, (the daughter of someone who worked in a medical school therefore making me a doctor) prescribe to you a strong dose of hallmark viewing. Depending on the person, it will either create extreme joy and happiness and cause you to forget the situation for two hours (or less if you fast-forward through commercials) or it will make you angry and you might even lose some respect for me as a person for loving them but at least you forgot about the virus for a bit! Sounds like a gagner gagner to me (Uncle Mikey!!!)

Thank you mom for making my weekend!

Lastly, I clearly have lots of time! If anyone is stuck for something to do between hand washing routines, give me a call! I promise I won’t spend the whole time discussing the endless pros and nonexistent cons of Mamma Mia!

In other news: I watched another of my favorite movies recently… “Oh we’ll just throw him in the wash. It’ll be grand.” Anyone know what movie? And who ‘him’ is? Hint: I watched it so there was at least a tiny bit of love.