canavese and provincial italian foods

so i went to milan after rome.
met my friend alex there who was kind enough to let me stay in his house!
i got my own little room and it was so nice because i had been at a hostel for a week which doesn't always produce the best sleeping conditions. have to say i slept a solid 10 hours that night which is pretty rare for me.

he also was kind enough to pick me up in milan!

the drive to piedmont region and canavese was nice. the air was fresh finally and there was rain and low lying clouds on lush green mountains. it was really beautiful.

this was the only part of my trip where i took not one photograph. oh i took one of this building that was built sort of in the shape of a typewriter....

just kind of small towns and lovely nature. it was a great end from the trip being in two lively people filled smoggy dirty cities to be in nature.

went to this little restaurant in a house much like the place i went to in germany when i first moved here. to me it was pretty neat....i mean we have this in the US in some ways....out of the way bed and breakfasts.....or small town diners....i think maybe alex would liken this to a small diner instead of a classier place.

first up was veal with this sauce made from cheese, anchovies, capers and tuna all blended together. i still remember that taste being my favorite one. i am a stinker with food usually. i will try things but i make faces. most of you know this.

so that was delish. next up...raw veal. being that i was a vegetarian at one point this was an internal struggle for me. on the one hand, it's baby cow killed for our pleasure. on the other hand it was raised there on this farm so i also know from lessons with seamus that local is always better.

so i went with my guts, literally, and tried it. i have been a meat cutter but have never tried any kind of raw meats.

first time for everything.

it was okay. nothing really spectacular about it.....it had a walnut oil, if my memory serves me, but it was kind of bland and i didn't eat it all....

i think the next three dishes were grass. literal grass from you know, outside!

the first one was a quiche type dish, pretty tasty. the second one i didn't like really....it was polenta with cheese and grass but it tasted kind of like manure.

the third one was a more hearty type of green or so it would seem with crusty baked bread....

then i got the beef that had been stewing in wine for a day and some roasted potatoes. that was really tasty and then at the end i had this limoncetta. i wanted a giant bowl of this stuff. so cool and crisp and lemony!

to go along with this meal i had wine from probably the vineyard next door.

really nice.

got a coffee walked around the small town, had some white wine from alsace region of france which boarders basel and germany...

next day was up and off to get a coffee and catch a train to basel.

so thanks alex for showing me provincial italian life!
it was a great way to end the journey.

best part of waiting at the milan centrale station:

i was having lunch and this dude came up to talk to me and you know how it goes, small talk...where you from and so on. then he point blank says that american girls are hot in the sack. then asks if i like it in the posterior.

i laughed so hard food came out of my mouth.

i wish him luck with his approach to finding good butt sex!

then i went to zurich and stayed there the night and came home..

now i want to go back to london to see the banksy show and i also want to plan a bike trip to strasbourg as well as going to munich, berlin, frankfurt at end of july to see kelly, paris at one point because it's only 3 hours by train from here and costs 80 francs but want to plan far enough in advance to use couch surfing if i can....

wheeeeee