American Dinner

Ciao a tutti! :)

As I had said earlier, at my school we have 6 exchange students (including me!). Anika and I are from America, Tim is from New Zealand, Matias is from Argentina, Nam is from Thailand, and Nicolas is from Ecuador. After being with exchange students all weekend long, I wanted more! I invited everybody to go to lunch after school on Wednesday to the city center. Of course, us being exchange students and none of us have any homework or responsibilities, we could all go! It was actually a lot of fun- they are all fun people and interesting to talk to. We first walked to the city center from our school which is only a 15 minute walk or so. Then we went to a pizzeria (there has to be about 40 in Vicenza, I always go to a new one!) and then to get gelato (the same goes for gelaterias too!). I love how fresh the pizza and the gelato is- I could eat it every day! :D

Here are my exchange student friends! :)

So that was fun to try to get to know them more. Then for Thursday's night's dinner, my host mom really wanted me to make dinner for her and Leonardo again. The first time I made dinner, I made breakfast for dinner: pancakes and scrambled eggs and fresh-squeezed orange juice. They definitely thought it was a strange dinner mixing sweet and salty together. I told them that is the kind of dinner a lot of Americans like because it is quick and easy to make. So last night I made them something similar (why not try to get them to like American food as well as Italian food?).

This is the dinner that I prepared for them: cornbread that was slightly sweet, fried potatoes with parmesan cheese (my family calls them "Uncle Bob's potatoes") and fruit salad with apricot yogurt.

 

 I thought the dinner was quite delicious- this is something my family cooks often and it reminded me of home. However, my family still wasn't quite used to the idea of sweet mixed with salty. They tried some cornbread with honey like I insisted, but they preferred to have salami with the cornbread and the fruit in the morning for breakfast. They adored the fried potatoes though. The next time I make my family, I will only stick to "dinner food", and nothing sweet. I will try to prepare meat or a salad or something else American...I will be looking at recipes for the next few days! :)

 

Usually an Italian dinner consists of meat such as chicken breast, pork burgers, or liver (Leonardo loves liver! I tried it once, and it wasn't bad!). We also have cheeses, bread, and maybe some veggies. No fruit and nothing sweet until after dinner. For lunch, we always have pasta in different forms and maybe some fruit with it. Everything here is so fresh and delicious! I love everything they have here! :)

 

That is all for now...hopefully my weekend will be full of interesting activities!

 

Ciao! :)