Tomorrow we head to Guardialfiera, our home for the next two months.  From what I can see on Google maps, there is only one restaurant in the town.  Therefore, we decided to splurge on eating out during our 4 days in Campobasso, even though we have an apartment with a good kitchen.  We plan to prepare our own meals in our apartment in Guardialfiera.

In Italy, it’s common to go out for an aperitivo (a small drink) and a snack around 6 pm.  This tides you over until dinnertime at 8 pm or later.  Chad and I embrace this custom when we are in Italy.  You have a small beer or wine or cocktail and savory snacks while you socialize and people-watch.  Happy hour usually lasts 1-2 hours.  Here’s our happy hour one evening:

Bar Luppachioli – assorted cured meat, toast, and toast with chopped tomatoes, a Negroni cocktail and a gintonic

For meals, here’s what we ate during our long weekend in Campobasso.  (File this blog post under “Food Porn.”)

Osteria Cannavina:

This was where we dinner down in the cave-like basement.  This dinner took 2-1/2 hours.

The dining area is down in the basement among the old building structure

– Appetizer – mix of salumi (cured meats), squash flan with pecorino sauce.

mixed salumi

squash flan was so delicious that I almost started crying

– Pasta course – tagliatelle au ragu di coniglio (pasta with rabbit sauce), tortellacci dell’Osteria (house tortellini stuffed with pork).

bunny rabbit tastes good!

tortellacci – giant tortellini

– After-dinner drink – genziana (local liqueur made from local ginseng root).  We first had this at Chad’s relative’s house just north in Abruzzo.  It is earthy and savory and “forte” (strong).  You just have a small glass of this after a meal, and it helps with the digestion.  (See below for photos.)

Il Sagittario:

There was no menu.  The server listed off the items for each course, and then you told him what you wanted.  Keep in mind that we went to a bar for a cocktail and snacks before going to the restaurant, so I was not as hungry as I thought.  The server convinced us to each get our own appetizer plate, and then he was scandalized when I said I was full afterwards and that I couldn’t eat even a pasta course.  I did eat a little bit of Chad’s pork dish, because he was also kind of full.  This dinner took 2-1/2 hours.

• Appetizer – mixed items.  See photo below for a list of all the items.

clockwise from bottom left – cured ham, the “wrap” is veggies and mozzarella, a little sandwich with spicy soppressata and the “bread” was the light pastry bread that you find in an eclaire, an omelette slice rolled with veggies, mashed potatoes with a cheesy crust, roasted eggplant, english scone/biscuit with jam, buffalo mozzarella

homemade chips with cheese and truffles, melted cheese with honey and walnuts

• Meat course – pork roasted in red wine with bitter greens and homemade chips.
• Dessert – biscotti.
• After-dinner drink – genziana.

our genziana came in a little bottle to split for two glasses

Ristorante Miseria & Nobilta:

This family-run restaurant has been around for years, and all the pasta is made in-house.  All dishes and ingredients are local, and there is the option to make most of the dishes vegetarian, vegan, and/or gluten-free.  In Italy!  This lunch took 2-1/2 hours.

the antipasto (appetizer) menu: red means “can be made vegetarian,” green means “can be made vegan,” tan means “can be made gluten-free,” blue means either “raw fish” or raw meat”. this variety was typical throughout the menu.

• Amuse-bouche – sliced polenta with bitter greens and pecorino.

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  amuse-bouche

• Appetizer – smoked salmon and orata tartare with green apples and fennel.

antipasto

• Pasta course – tricolor gnocchi (to represent the colors of the Italian flag) with broccoli rabe, cavatelli with broccoli, pecorino and guanciale (pig cheek).

gnocchi

cavatelli

• Dessert – panna cotta with espresso and amaretto cookie sprinkles, creme brulee with licorice flavor.

panna cotta

creme brulee

• After-dinner drink – genziana, espresso.

genziana

Kudeta:

We stopped in here on our first night for a happy hour cocktail, and the experience and snacks were so good that we made reservations to go back another night for dinner.  The menu had several items with an Asian influence.  This dinner took 2-1/2 hours.

happy hour cocktail and snacks

one of the dining areas

• Amuse-bouche – fried polenta with roasted bell pepper cream.

fried polenta

• Appetizer – shrimp with an Asian dipping sauce, cannoli filled with bacala (salt cod) and sauce of roasted peppers.

the shrimpies

savory cannoli

• Pasta course – ravioli cinesi (pork-stuffed ravioli served with gyoza sauce).

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  ravioli cinesi

• Meat course – seared salmon with sesame seeds and soy sauce.

seared salmon

• Dessert – millefoglie pastry with orange cream and maraschino cherry sauce.

this dessert was surprisingly light and not very sweet

• After-dinner drink – genziana, mescal.

a final sip to help with the digestion

Breakfast:

Typically an espresso at the pastry shop downstairs from our apartment, drinking while standing at the barista counter.  This morning we ordered pastries and cappuccino and sat at a table.

cappuccino and pistachio pastry

Ristorante Chad:

We did have a couple of meals at home and, as usual, Chad’s meal prep rivaled that of the restaurants.

• Lunch today – pork cutlets, arugula salad with fennel and orange, green beans, olives, toasted bread, and fruit.  This lunch took 15 minutes.

lunch at home

After eating so much food over the last few days, tonight’s dinner will be light – some soup we picked up from the grocery store, the rest of the green beans, fruit, and yogurt.

But first, the traditional happy hour drinks and snacks!  This time we went to a small beer bar/shop.  One wall had beers and whiskey for sale.  There was also a little section of dry pasta in packages for sale, of course!

Beer Shop

Partial beer selection

note the packages of pasta for sale on the bottom shelf

two pilsners and an empty snack jar (we demolished the snacks in about two seconds)

We landed in Rome on Thursday at noon local time.  We breezed through passport control and customs, and we were loading our luggage into our car within 45 minutes.  I was surprised at how quickly we got out of the airport.

The trains and buses in the Molise region are not very frequent or convenient, so we decided to get a car for our time in Italy.  Chad found a company that does short-term automobile leases, kind of like leasing a car in the US only instead of a 3-year lease, we have a 2-1/2 month lease.  It’s much cheaper than renting a car through Hertz/Avis/etc, and it’s a brand-new car, and it’s “ours” while we have it.

Our new car!

We leased our car from a company in Paris, so it has French license plates

We spent the afternoon driving east to Campobasso.  We were on a toll highway, and there were limited food options.  We had a gas-station sandwich for lunch, but never fear!  It was mortadella, with butter and chopped pistachios on focaccia, and it was delicious!  Best gas-station sandwich I’ve ever had…

We arrived in Campobasso at 5 pm, checked into our apartment, and then went out to explore the town.  Our apartment is in the old city center with narrow streets, cobblestones, and old buildings/houses/apartments.  It’s very quaint. 

A piazza in our neighborhood

A pedestrian street

Many buildings have the street address just painted onto the building

It was also very cold on Thursday evening.  You might think, “March in Italy must be lovely,” but Campobasso is up in the mountains.  It was 4 degrees C on Thursday evening (40 degrees F) and windy.  I was bundled up in my ski jacket, ski hat, and gloves. 

The mountains nearby are still covered in snow

The weather didn’t deter us from our explorations.  After wandering about the old town, we stopped in a bar for an aperitivo (cocktail) and a snack (which came free with the drinks) at Kudeta.  

happy hour cocktails with snacks

We then went to nearby Osteria Cannavina for dinner.  There were only two other tables of patrons in the restaurant (perhaps due to the weather), but the food was delicious.  Appetizers were cured meats and squash flan.  Then I had pork-stuffed tortellini and Chad has pasta with bunny rabbit.

Osteria Cannavina

The dining area is down in the basement among the old building structure

A few introductory notes about Campobasso:

The city of Campobasso is the regional capital of the Molise region.  (“Regions” in Italy are similar to “states” in the US.)  The city has about 50,000 people, and Molise has about 310,000 people.  The city has been damaged by earthquakes over the years, so there is a lot of new construction and sprawl.  The old town center, however, is still very charming. 

I’m glad I don’t live at the top of these stairs…it’s a long way down to the grocery store

A lighting installation on a street near our apartment

I’ll follow up with another post discussing some of the highlights of the old town.  As crazy as it sounds to us right now, it’s time for us to start preparing for our evening out – a passagiata (evening stroll), then an aperitivo, and then dinner at 8 pm.  It seems that all we do in Italy is walk, eat, and drink.  But I’m not complaining!

We head to Italy tonight!  We have a direct flight from Atlanta to Rome, a 9-1/2-hour voyage. 

We have a short-term vehicle lease lined up in Rome.  When we land, we’ll get the car and then drive about 3 hours to our first town, stopping for lunch along the way.

Much like the U.S. has states, Italy is divided into 20 regions.  We will be staying in the Molise region east of Rome in the central part of the country.  The first 4 days will be spent in the region’s capital, Campobasso, where we will work through the jet lag, explore the town, and stock up on groceries.  Then we will head to the town of Guardialfiera where we will be honorary citizens for 2 months.  Guardialfiera is a town of about 1,000 people.  From what I can see on Google maps, it has one restaurant, two cafe/bars, and one cafe/grocery.  There is also a clothing store and, oddly enough for a small town, a furniture store.

Chad has family in the Abruzzo region which is just north of Molise, and we’ve been there to visit with them.  It’s a beautiful part of the country with mountains, lakes, rivers, forests.  We haven’t spent time in Molise, so we’re looking forward to exploring that region.  And, of course, we look forward to seeing the extended family again.

Chad will work remotely for the first month as he wraps up a project.  I’ll spend that time practicing my language skills, reading up on the history, and exploring the town.  During the second month, Chad will have more time for exploring.  We plan to take some day trips on the weekends to see other parts of Molise, but mostly we just want to get settled into the town of Guardialfiera and get to know the people, the culture, and the food.

Fun fact:  Chad and I only travel with carry-on luggage; we don’t check bags.  Here’s my bag for the next 2-1/2 months:

Carry-on luggage all the way, baby!

We’ll do laundry while we’re over there, so we don’t need to take more than a week’s worth of clothes.  We can also buy toothpaste, shampoo and anything else that we need when we’re over there, so we don’t need to take a bunch of stuff with us.  Chad has already found a sporting goods store over there where we can buy a yoga mat and an exercise bolster so we don’t have to haul those things across the ocean.  The only “luxury” items in my luggage are my laptop, Kindle, Italian study notebooks and a book about the history of Molise and Abruzzo.

Stay tuned for news direct from Italy in a couple of days!

So, I’m a bit of a language nerd.  I love learning new languages!  When I was a baby, my mom took me down to Brazil to live with her parents when my dad was drafted to go to Vietnam.  Then again, when I was two years old, my family moved down to Brazil and my dad taught at the American School in Sao Paulo.  As a result, I know toddler Portuguese.

Fast forward to December 1987 when I was a junior in high school.  I mentioned to my parents that I was tired of living in a small town in Missouri and wanted a change of pace.  Two months later, my parents had jobs at the American School in Lisbon, Portugal.  I thought Portugal was in South America, but a consult with an encyclopedia at the local college library cleared things up.

Moving to Lisbon was life-changing.  The cultural experience broadened my horizons in ways that I never imagined.  I made friends from countries around the world.  I got reacquainted with Portuguese, and I learned how to navigate in a foreign country and a foreign language.

And then in college, I was a French major, because, why not learn another language?  As part of my French major, I spent my junior year in Aix-en-Provence, France, and all of my classes were taught in French by professors from the local university.  I still remember the sense of pride that I had when, during my first week in France, I went to the post office and exited with the exactly correct stamps that I needed in order to mail a postcard to my family in the U.S! 

I’m now studying Italian because there’s this Italy trip coming up.  I’ve been studying on and off (mostly off) for seven years, but it’s finally been sticking in my brain.  Chad studied Italian when we were dating in San Francisco, so I’m using his old Italian textbook to study.  The book was published circa 2002, so I’m learning some words that I will never need to know, such as “chalkboard” (lavagna, pronounced like “lasagna”) and “chalk” (which is the word “gesso” that I think a lot of us learned in elementary school art class). 

But I have also learned important words like:

• Hello – ciao
• Good morning – buon giorno
• Good afternoon – buona tarde
• Good evening – buona notte
• Please – per favore
• Thank you – grazie
• A beer please – una birra per favore
• A white wine – uno vino bianco
• A red wine – uno vino rosso
• a water – una aqua (frizzante is sparkling, naturale is still/tap)
• Can I get the check – il conto per favore
• Where is the bathroom – dov’e i servizi (but we now know that there might be another version of this, dialects and all)

We’ll be staying in a small town in Italy, and I have a  hunch that few people will speak English.  I’m hoping that I will get lots of opportunities to practice my language skills and impress people with my antique vocabulary words like “lavagna” and “gesso.”

Italy, as we know it today, became a country in the 1860s.  I know!  I’ve always thought that Italy was its own country for many, many centuries.  But no.  Before the 1860s, it was a mix of kingdoms, city-states, ducal estates, and misc agrarian areas and, of course, the Papal States (The Pope’s Country).  Italy was “unified,” so to speak, during the 1860s during a period called Il Risorgimento (roughly translates to “The Resurgence” in English) which was a period of civil war for several years.

Part of what contributed to the many separate political entities was the fact there is a vast mountain range that goes down the center of the peninsula, the Appenines range.  This mountain range made it difficult to travel across the country from one coast to the other for many centuries.  In fact, there was a time when it was faster/easier to go via boat from Rome on the west coast to cities on the east coast, traveling around the bottom of the peninsula.  In a car today, the trip across the country takes 3-4 hours via highway.

Chad’s great-grandparents grew up in one of these mountain towns called Monteferrante, and we’ve been there a couple of times to visit relatives.

Monteferrante – a three-hour drive east of Rome, Chad’s great-grandparents emigrated to the U.S. from this village in the Appenine mountains

The rugged terrain also means that many villages were isolated from each other.  It wasn’t uncommon for villages to be a couple of miles apart and for the people to never meet each other.  This is also the reason that there are so many local dialects of the Italian language.  People lived within their own communities for generations, and the language evolved over time.  As result, when you travel around the country, you might encounter multiple words for the same thing.  For example, these words all mean “boy” in Italian:  ragazzo, ragasol, putel, pischello, putlet, piliso, pizzinnu, piccioccu, picciriddu, garsun, fante, magatel, begalt, redesoot, toso, butel, mulo, fioo, and frut.

And here’s another view from Monteferrante, looking over the adjacent valley at night.  You can see lights from nearby villages below:

View from Monteferrante looking down at the valley below

The rest of the geography and climate of the peninsula also contributed to the development of different parts of Italy.  The north has more vegetation and lakes and rivers and is more conducive to raising livestock.  The south is warmer and more arid.  If you think about this, it makes sense that, historically, the cuisine in the north has more meat and is cooked more frequently with butter (which is an animal product), and the cuisine in the south is more vegetable-based and uses olive oil as a staple ingredient. 

And now the obligatory food photos from our last trip to Italy because, well, Italy:

Chad went foraging for mushrooms with cousin Antonino

Speaking of foraging, wild blackberries were in season when we were last there

These cheese-bread dumplings are served with tomato sauce and are a specialty of Chad’s ancestral region – I thought I died and went to heaven

…AND the obligatory meat and cheese plate photo

If you want to learn more about Italian history, I recommend the book The Pursuit of Italy by David Gilmour (can be found on Amazon).  The author dives into everything from food to geography to politics to language to arts and architecture.  I’m now reading it for the third time.  (It’s that good!)

Chad and I first went to Italy together on our honeymoon in 2007. 

Sightseeing in Florence in 2007 – with me hanging on for dear life since I’m scared of heights

Some people might think it’s weird that we spent the first two weeks of our honeymoon trip with his parents Jim and Fran, his sister Michele, and his aunt Connie, but we all had a great time together exploring Rome, Florence, Venice and the Cinque Terre.  Then, after the rest of the family went back to the U.S., Chad and I spent extra time in the Cinque Terre and then visited Siena and San Gimignano.

Aunt Connie, Fran, me, our friend Claudio, Chad, Jim – wine-tasting dinner in Rio Maggiore

Needless to say, Chad and I fell in love with Italy on that trip.  The food, the history, the art and architecture, the culture, the language…  It all resonated with us.  In the years since then, we’ve been back several times. 

This pecorino flan was so delicious that it literally made me cry

Chad’s maternal great-grandparents emigrated from Italy to the U.S.  One set of great-grandparents came from Sicily and the other set from the Abruzzo region just east of Rome.  Chad’s mom did some research and was able to find the Abruzzo relatives, and we met four generations of the extended family during a trip in 2016.  We’ve been back to visit with them since then, and it’s always like we’ve been family forever.

Which brings me to my next point…

With family history in Italy, Chad is eligible for Italian citizenship, and he has been going through the citizenship process.  Gathering the records and documents and the general paperwork took a while to complete, but now we are in the home run.  The final step is to go live in Italy for 60 days which will show a commitment to being a citizen of the country.  (I know, I know, it will be a hard life to live in Italy for 60 days and eat all of that delicious food!)

In case you’re wondering, Chad will still retain his American citizenship.  He can have dual citizenship.  The benefit of having Italian citizenship is that it will make it easier for us to buy property and work over there if we choose to do so.  And who wouldn’t want to have an apartment in Italy where you can spend part of the year?  (And, of course, we will have a guest room if you want to come visit!)

And to answer the final question, I will eventually be eligible for Italian citizenship myself.  Once I’ve been married to an Italian citizen for two years (aka Chad), I will be eligible, which means that, sometime in 2025, I will apply for citizenship.  And while Chad just has to prove ancestry, I will have to take a citizenship test.  I think this will be much like the test that U.S. immigrants have to take to get American citizenship.  I’m not sure if this means a language test, government, history or what.  So in the meantime, I am studying lots of Italian language and history.

Speaking of Italian history, did you know that Italy as we know it wasn’t a country until the 1860s?  Mind-blowing, I know.  Stay tuned for the next blog post…