As promised, here’s another blog about food. The other night when we had our dinner with the pasta and prosciutto, I made a tasty fruit salad, too, that is mind-numbingly simple and so I thought I should share it:

Insalata di Frutta (per due)
1 kiwi
1 banana
2 nectarines
a couple tablespoons of sugar and honey

Dice and mix! Chill if desired. A fun twist is to add a little bit of prosecco or sweet white wine; sometimes as a dessert drink, Italians add chunks of peach to white wine to give it a nice, fruity bite.

Last night (Tuesday), Jeremy and I hosted our first dinner here at our new apartment. Three friends of ours who were still around after the dig came over; one, Alessandro, had promised he would cook. I had told him that it wasn’t necessary but when I joked about our anxiety for cooking for Italians, he laughed and assured me that he wanted to bring dinner. Evening came, and after it took him about half and hour driving around to find parking, Alessandro arrived with dinner in hand.
“Poi, che mangiamo?” I asked (So, what are we eating?). It turned out, he wanted to make a variation of what we had made just a couple nights before with prosciutto and crema! Neither Jeremy nor I said anything, but I had a slight feeling of pride, knowing that we had chosen something to cook that an Italian might have made.*

Our other two friends arrived shortly thereafter, and had brought a nice red wine (Sagrantino de Montefalco 2004). For dessert, I had decided to bring a taste of America to the table, and I tried a dear friend’s recipe for chocolate chip cookies, which turned out very well and even the day after are still moist despite being left out overnight. We ate and chatted about famous Italian archaeologists (Fun fact: apparently here, some have political power and lots of money…), mayonnaise, and sleeping in cariole. I would consider our first hosting experience a successful one.

*That being said, please see the edited version of Dinner Tonight for more variations and suggestions for the prosciutto/panna recipe.