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@Kim ShookSo sorry about fall, I hope she feels better! And happy belated birthday!

You will love it and Italy needs tourists! If you need any recommendations, let me know!

My son made cottage pie on one of the cooler days here. Another day we made shrimp with angel hair.

Back to Tuscany. 😀

Fab! I want to go here when I'm next in Germany!

We are moving from Milan in a few weeks time so have been doing some day trips to places we wanted to see before leaving. We went up into the Lombard mountains above Lecco one day and ate in a typical Italian bar that happened to have homemade ravioli. Hamburgers are a thing now in Italy, so I figured I was safe eating them since the ravioli menu featured ingredients I don't like. The ones pictured are made with deer. Imagine my horror when I got a microwaved burger that had been put on the panini press. It was inedible. My fault, I know. Served with pretty good wine though. I'm a huge fan of Inferno. Not so much Sfursat (I don't love wines made from dried grapes). All followed by homemade strudel (delicious) with unidentified caramel sauce (?) and a homemade, quite unpleasant, genziana liqueur. Better luck for me on next day trip to Lago di Garda. When we are not in a pandemic, I go to Vinitaly every year for work. We went to one of my favorite places to to go to down the lake during the fair, and had fabulous food and views. I had pan-fried faraona (guinea fowl, but the Italian names sounds better! 😃) With chanterelle mushrooms and sauteed bitter greens. There was also a filet and a mixed grill at my table, as well as paccheri with shrimp and zucchini. Followed by tableside crepes suzette and homemade baba. Places are Sirmione and Desenzano del Garda.

What a lovely trip! Thanks for sharing!

We went out for pizza the other night and our table ordered the "giro pizza" menu. Not sure what it's called in the US! Where they bring you meter-long pizzas of all different types until you are full. We were in the 'burbs of Milan where they like thick-crust pizza. This was thicker than I normally like, but not as the thick as they usually do here. So here we've got mortadella and pistachio, very popular here now. Then anchovy (it was terrible), vegetarian, pear and gorgonzola (This was the best of the night followed by the mortadella one) and finally sausage and rabe.

I LOVE, love, love my Zalto glasses, but they are so delicate, I'm always afraid to use them because we are so clumsy. I can break something just looking at it. 😃 I first learned about them years ago when visiting Benanti on Mount Etna. We did a side-by-side tasting with "normal" glasses and Zalto and everyone at my tasting rushed home and bought them. 😅

I've been doing a lot of kabobs lately, inspired mostly by this thread! These are lamb, served with tzatziki and a big salad with lettuce, tomato, kirby cucumbers, carrots, celery, olives, mushroom, onion, red pepper, assorted seeds and sprouts (I have a weird obsession with sprouts lately!) This is a sort of salmon Nicoise, again with the sprouts. And this last is "Melanzane Mimosa". Basically grilled eggplant with eggs and a vinaigrette made with some anchovy.

Coming in here late. Of course there is no hard and fast rule, but I personally feel it’s really difficult to generalize. I know someone said this, but often picky eaters as kids can grow up to be picky eaters as adults, can’t they? I have known kids who grew up saying, “Nothing green on my plate!” to saying the same thing at age 30. I am a mother, and tried the “Eat it or starve” route but I am sure other parents can agree that it doesn’t actually work! My kid will definitely not eat and skip dinner if he doesn’t like something. I remember as a child, thinking spaghetti and broccoli was the best thing ever. I tried to get my son to eat it and he threw it up all over the table and pretty much won’t eat anything cruciferous, even if it means going to bed hungry. So yea we can try to “train” their palates, but tastes are tastes. At the same time, I think we are also sometimes guilty of thinking “Oh the kids won’t eat that, let’s make them chicken fingers!” And it kind of becomes habit and palates get “trained” to easy foods. I remember my husband taking our toddler son (at the time) out to lunch at a fish restaurant and ordering him tortellini (a kid favorite in Italy) because he “knew” he’d eat and didn’t want to go sightseeing with a hungry kid. But when my husband’s spaghetti and clam sauce arrived, my son ate the whole dish and my husband ended up with the tortellini. That said, this same kid will eat through an entire container of liver or spleen pate as well as wild boar and other game, all fish, including anchovies or smoked, lardo, all kinds of smelly cheeses, many different cuisines, and is thoroughly offended at the thought of a kid’s menu. He eats a vast array of foods yet, I still consider him a picky eater. And I, like many other parents, try to constantly get him to taste new things and dare I say, change his tastes (a few more vegetables in his diet sure wouldn’t hurt.) Is this thread only about China (just delete this part if so)? If anyone is interested in what goes on in Italy, it changes up and down the entire boot and across people’s homes. So no chance to generalize. I’ve been to people’s homes in Sicily where the kids eat first – fried cutlets and fries – and are sent off to play while the parents eat the “real” food. Whereas I’ve never been to a home in Tuscany where the children ate something different and weren’t expected to sit “composed” at the table until they were “excused.” P.S. This is of course my personal experience with my kid. I was never a mother in the US, only Italy. But I was a kid in the US and we ate the adult food and that’s what I try to do with my son as much as possible.

Some gorgeous pizza lately on this thread! We tried making LA-style Korean barbecue. It did not suck at all. 😃 Then there was some yaki soba. And finally some pasta al forno with meat sauce and béchamel (leftover from making Lasagne food gifts for my MIL).

I guess you can't really tell from the picture, but this is Gnocchi alla Sorrentina (basically gnocchi in tomato sauce with melty mozzarella on top). There is too much mozzarella because I had 200 grams so I guess you can't see the gnocchi through the cheese! 😜 We made some wonton soup, fried wontons and spring rolls as a rainy day project. This might not be a dish for everyone, but my family loves it. It's a pantry dinner for when you have not done the shopping called Acciugata. It is garlic, oil, hot pepper and melted anchovies basically made the same way you'd make pasta with garlic and oil. You need to take the pasta out early and finish cooking in the flavored oil adding pasta water as needed. And some Vignarola without the pork products.

This looks so inviting! I'm going to try to make it this weekend!

We made a Mediterranean feast during the first crack of sunlight. I marinated the chicken in yogurt and spices and served with very pilaf-y rice and the usual suspects on the side. The veg is on different skewers lest some of the younger diners felt they were being poisoned! 😂 One of my favorite pizzas,- with tomato and arugula. We tried out whole wheat flour for once and made a crisp and thin pizza. Wasn't bad at all! Some Escarole and Beans. Photographs terribly, but tasty!

This looks amazing!! I need that in my life!

Why not just lemonade? For the lemon juice I mean.

@Duvel I finally made the Catalan chicken dish with meatballs and mixed mushrooms! Everyone here loved it and I will definitely make it again! It doesn't photograph well, I'm afraid. I did end up using chicken pieces as opposed to legs. With sautéed cime di rapa. This would be okonomiyaki that looks more like a frittata, made with cabbage and shrimp and before any sauces or anything else has been added as my son likes his plain. Finally, this is what my MIL would call "Tagliatelle Strapazzate". I think it's s dish she made up, but it's basically just a quick tomato sauce, with prosciutto cotto pieces and fresh chopped mozzarella, and a sprinkling of parmesan over tagliatelle. The mozz gets melty as you mix everything together. Finally, the kid wanted a "meat pie" (strictly no vegetables! 🤪) because he saw one on the internet. He did a perfectly fine job. It was tasty. I think it was an Australian recipe.

Fridays are a great day because we get our vegetable delivery, shown in the basket to be washed and processed. The next pic speaks for itself and then there is the wheat bread and another with assorted seeds like flax. We cut in half, freeze, and eat throughout the week.

Thank you so much for the kind words, @heidih, @Kim Shook, @scamhi, @chromedome, and @chefmd! Here were some pork chops with mushroom sauce. Some tiny arancini And finally, orata with a clam and tomato broth. The clams were salty, so I had to make it more brothy than saucy, but I would have preferred it saucy! 😀

Couscous salad with leftover chicken, chick peas, avocado, dried red currants, red pepper and green onion in like an orange dressing.

Hi everyone, I've been quiet as I got extremely ill for a long time and wasn't much cooking. (Nothing Covid related.) Things started to get a little better. Here are some recent mostly repeats. Because of my illness, I need to keep it pretty light and because I'm not feeling great, I like to keep the kitchen time to a minimum. I have a list as long as my arm of recipes I can't wait to make. Some whole roasted Orata the way I always make it, with potatoes, cherry tomatoes, olives and pine nuts. Whole roasted Branzino with capers, olives and parsley and sautéed cime di rapa. Then there were some puntarelle with the typical dressing of anchovies, garlic, oil etc. This is heaven on a plate. I had a whole head of the puntarelle and wanted to hide in the kitchen so I wouldn't have to share. 😈 Alas, the guilt sets in. Then there were carrots with orange, pistachio and pomegranate and a tahini dressing, from a random recipe a friend sent me because she thought I'd like it. it was delicious. Then a rice bowl with shrimp and other non-traditional ingredients like avocado and other stuff liked sautéed greens, raw carrots (cut too big) edamame, mixed sautéed mushrooms, green onion. And the fried egg (errr, overeasy anyway) that brings it all together. An appetizer plate of hummus, which might not look so appetizing since the food processor gave out before I was done. with roasted and marinated peppers, a lone cariofo alla romana (not the classic artichoke but still worth it) and roasted cauliflower with oil, vinegar, honey, pine nuts, raisins and capers. Lots of fish because my weekly CSA added fish that you can specially order. The only ones they have that are worth the price are Orata and Branzino. And a couple of months ago, we received 8 5-liter cans of new olive oil shipped to us, thank goodness, because we paid so much less than what we would have paid up in Northern Italy for oil half as good. In both cases, we personally know both the purveyors. The one from Siena is very peppery, with more bitter notes, (possibly due to more leaves) the one from Lucignano (30 minutes towards Arezzo from Siena) is milder, with citrusy notes and pepper on the finish. Someone might remember (or not) from years back that I have a slight olive oil obsession. The one from Siena is also filtered, while Luci was not. Boring in my convalescence. But have this extremely rigid diet to stick to until I figure out what's going on.

That is a gorgeous bread!

Really have to agree. Especially with green sauce.