Buona Pasquetta

April 13th 2020: Happy Easter Monday!! The celebrations continue in Italy! My celebrations came in the form of a day off from school and a lot of Mamma Mia! Our Easter weekend was a ton of fun! It started out with a big birthday bash, thank you to everyone who reached out! As my sister explained to me, turning 18 doesn’t strip me of my dancing queen title, it just extends my reign! An absolutely delicious torta was delivered to us, it was amazing! And I got to watch mamma mia! with my friend from class. We had lots of fun explaining the tenses and why they were used to each other. By the way, I am pretending the reason I can understand mamma mia! so well is because my Italian skills have developed so much….not that I can quote the movie! Saturday was spent hard at work in the kitchen. 6 hours and many FaceTime calls and even more frantic google searches resulted in a ‘masterpiece’. Sunday brought a fantastic Easter feast made possible by Casa Ceccatelli and a viewing of mamma mia! here we go again. Danielle and I watched it in Italian and had loads of fun trying to guess the lines before they came…it’s harder than it sounds!

Sunday was also the first annual Tatarczuch-Koff-Lowry Carrot Cake Competition, also know as the TLK CCC. You’ve probably seen it all over Food Network and ESPN, yes it belongs on both channels. Food, competition, and trash talk are staples of all our family gatherings so this event brought us all together. Don’t ask about the winner, the competition was too fierce for one to be decided! I will say that the Lowry’s produced the best decorated and the T-Koff’s the best presentation. Out of New Hampshire we got quantity! Nana has some very lucky neighbors!!! Montreal proved to us that college students need to work on time management! Everyone please let Madelyn know that 1 pm EST means 1 pm EST. I would argue that Florence definitely worked the hardest with the materials given and definitely deserves the participation award I gave myself. I made a carrot cake with lemon syrup and lemon icing. Seems pretty simple right? Well it was gluten free and nut free (let’s keep Nonna and Abbie alive and well!) there was no brown sugar or baking powder, there was not the right amount of carrot, and I made my own confectioners sugar. I’m proud of me too! Can’t wait to drop off this cake for you, Gered!

Important note: the cake at the top is NOT mine!

I found out today that I am moving up again this week! Here comes level 4! Now when I sit outside, I can understand what the neighbors are saying to each other! Of course, I pretend that I don’t so they keep talking!

In other news: I did a HIIT workout today via Skype and as I lifted my leg to prove I didn’t have shoes on, I absolutely wiped out. I fell over before the video even started! Many many laughs were had!