Deranged Lover

I'm pretty sure some of you assume I pass the time adhered to my canvas ikea sofa, eating ragù and drinking chianti on weekday afternoons. and you know what? you're not even half wrong.

Today before my second dinner of chinese takeout, I made a loaf of bread with my bare hands, watched it rise for an hour, then watched it bake for another hour, and then spent three minutes gobbling half of it down after smothering it in black truffle pâté. I actually ate so much minced truffle that I considered this may be the source of the mild hallucinatory headache I am currently experiencing. That, or the MSG, nobody can say for sure.  

But there are other things I do. Like school. I do school. and at the moment that's driving school. Actually if I'm to be sincere, I'll admit I skipped school tonight in favor of fresh bread and truffles on my canvas ikea sofa, but it's Friday so I petition for charity. 

Hell hath frozen over.  I know this to be true because I have officiated the reincarnation of my 15 year old self, a life milestone I thought I left behind in the plastic chairs of Bakkers Driving School that made my butt itch whenever I wore lycra tights. The only difference is that this time I'm twice the age of my peers and don't understand a lick of what my 90 year-old, sass-throwing, bowtie-wearing, southern-italian-speaking instructor has to say.  I'm not exaggerating when I say that there are only two things he's ever muttered that I was capable of understanding. The first was the day I made my debut in the classroom:

Prof: "Ciao cara, da dove sei?" [Hi dear, where are you from?] 

Me: "California" 

Prof: "Che cazzo stai facendo qua?" [What the dick are you doing here?] 

The second underscores the only theoretical point in the last four weeks to have left his lips, entered my ear, and successfully wriggled its way into the folds of my cortex. It occurred when he proselytized last week in all seriousness that "periods of driving for 3 hours or more merit a pitstop for a leg stretch and a cigarette." Dogma, folks. I mean, I paid 500 euros for this kind of golden wisdom. 

I frequent the autoscuola because I have to. Because there's no reciprocity between each our great nations in spite of the fact that it's TWO THOUSAND BLOODY FIFTEEN and I've been taking the road more AND less traveled for over fifteen years. My American license is effectively no more valid than my diminishing sense of self worth. 

The exam consists of 40 questions, True or False, and I have to miss not more than four. It's not as easy as it sounds, thanks to a language barrier more formidable than those shields employed by the riot police on American college campuses these days. I do my practice questions online with two windows open- one dedicated to sample questions, the other to GoogleTranslate.

(Wot??????)

Umm.. False????????

Next time my vehicle catches fire actually I think I will throw a wet blanket and earth at it.

One of my favorites:

"If you see a wounded person in shock, you'll help him if you make him drink small amounts of liquor". 

(TRUTH. HEL-LO.) 

And this one:

"In the event of fog, it's better to leave your seatbelt unbuckled so that you're more ready to abandon the vehicle in the event of an accident."

Mmmhmmm. 

And a question that recapitulates and even substantiates the stereotype of driving in Italy:

"This sign indicates the MINIMUM speed limit"

(TRUE). I mean, these people park on the sidewalk, ride mopeds with four dining room chairs strapped to the back and one under the crux of each arm, and have limits on how SLOW they're allowed to go. 

So my theory exam is in precisely one week. I am having some some serious doubts about my preparedness considering on my last four practice exams I missed 12, 13, 18, and 14, questions, respectively. 

One evening while on a stroll with my Italian husband-to-be (who is the embodiment of why I am willing to suffer said annoyances) I brazenly asked if he would reward my perseverance with a beautiful new black painted tinted-windowed Range Rover (a deplorably environmentally unfriendly vehicle I will never admit to secretly adoring) once I pass  the tests for my driver's license. He responded by saying that he would get me one someday, only if I agreed to have the writing on the back changed from R A N G E R O V E R   to    D E R A N G E D L O V E R, a suggestion I think demeans his true genius, but he seems to think is great.  He also said that in the meantime he would get me something similar but more affordable. Something more like this: 

So, nobody's going anywhere in a hurry. 

it's called a COOKIE, fool

I think the world would agree that Italians do a lot of things right. Art, science, architecture, food, romance, fashion bla bla bla. 

One thing Italians do not do correctly however, is cookies. They don't even know what a cookie is. They are so clueless that they call it a "biscotti".  And they eat biscotti for breakfast, and not in the advertised devilish way Americans do, but in the nonchalant "this is absolutely normal breakfast food" way. Why? because their "biscotti" are plain, minimally caloric, and frankly more boring than a piece of cardboard sprinkled with stevia. This, along with the fact that Italians are extremely misbehaved when it comes to forming a line, make me want to throw all my papers up in the air sometimes and just quit at life. I mean, you can't even find chocolate chips in a grocery store.

I did not grow up in a home culture where my mummy was constantly patting me on the head and baking me cookies. She would however allow me cantaloupe. Nevertheless, I was raised in a country that celebrates few things with more passion and nostalgia than the freshly baked chocolate chip cookie. And now that I can't have them whenever I want them, i NEED them.

The advantage of living in a cookie-forsaken foreign country is firstly, that my mother can no longer control the terror that is my diet at times (particularly of emotional stress), and secondly, that I have adapted to the deficit of chocolate chips by making my own cookies with chocolate CHUNKS chopped up from swiss chocolate bars. 

Occasionally it occurs that good energy is catapulted into my universe, as it has happened recently with having wrapped my sticky fingers around the magical recipe claiming to yield the greatest chocolate chip cookies known to man. I recently verified this as fact.

So I bestow you with this recipe below, making the very important disclaimer that if you share the same flawed soul as I ("going to eat all of these NOW so I get them out of the house so I can be healthy again starting tomorrow"), you're really going to regret the way you feel once resurrected from your impending hard cookie coma. I am cautioning you: THESE WILL ANNIHILATE YOUR FREE WILL. THEY WILL MARCH THEIR WAY ONE BY ONE INTO YOUR PIE HOLE UNTIL YOU PASS THE EFF OUT.  You can thank me later. 

INGREDIENTS

• 2 cups + 2 tablespoons all purpose flour (265 grams, farina 00)
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 2 teaspoons cornstarch (o fecola di patate)
• ½ teaspoon salt
• 6 oz (170 grams) butter, melted and cooled
• 1 cup (210 grams) brown or cane sugar
• ½ cup (100 grams) granulated white sugar
• 2 large eggs
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 1½ cups (285 grams) dark chocolate CHUNKS [i used a mix of dark chocolate orange and dark chocolate with hazelnuts, but use any type you prefer]

DIRECTIONS

1. In a medium-sized bowl, whisk together flour, baking soda, cornstarch, and salt. Set aside.
2. In a large bowl, beat together cooled melted butter and sugar for one minute. Add eggs and vanilla extract. Beat until just combined.
3. Slowly add in the dry ingredients and mix briefly, just until there are no flour clumps left. Fold in chocolate chips.
4. Cover and refrigerate dough for at least 30 minutes.
5. Remove dough from refrigerator and preheat oven to 325 degrees Fahrenheit (165 celsius), making sure the rack is in the middle of the oven.
6. Scoop ¼ cup of cookie dough at a time and roll into balls. Flatten them a little bit, then place on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper, making sure the cookies have plenty of space to spread.
7. Bake for about 12 minutes or until the cookies have spread out and the edges are golden, but the center still looks soft and slightly under-cooked. Let cool on the baking sheets until the cookies are firm enough to remove. 

ALL GONE. 

Rat Droppings

Happy New Year, if you're into that sort of thing. 

Reflecting on the last rotation around the sun, I'd say 2014 was pretty good. The echo of the impeccably timed carnival-esque emcee at the local bingo night in Sestri Levante failed to sully the moment my curly-haired q-tip formally proposed we go steady forever. I saw my first full-term pregnant woman smoking a pipe on the beach in Ibiza. I turned 30- a fact actualized by the automated transition of gmail advertisements from the best clubs in Amsterdam to $100 off your next tummy tuck. There was linear growth. I learned how NOT to use Uber - it's an app, not telepathy, and one must not stand on the curb at 3am sozzled in west hollywood prepared to enter the first vehicle that stops unsystematically, promising to fulfill you of your request for taquitos. The pinnacle of 2014 wasn't slamming vodka sodas at the same intimate afterparty as Leonardo DiCaprio, but shouting "Auguri!" at a New Year's Eve party in the basement of a pastry shop in Milan while eating lentils off a plastic plate and smoking something dubious under a shroud of a hundred panettones that had been glued to the ceiling.

Another major life event was ticked off the list when I had my first encounter with THE EX while out Christmas shopping with my man (her ex). Believe it or not, in my fantasy of how this moment would eventually transpire, I imagined showering her with kindness because from the anecdotes I had heard over the years, I sort of came to like her. So there we were, finally face to face, my opportunity to throw some warmth into her universe, when my internal google-translate went on the fritz and instead of saying "buon natale" I said "happy birthday" with a goofy smile that in the context of such a cunty salutation could have only come across as draconian sarcasm.  

Giulio came back to visit after spending the autumn working in the United States, evidenced by the fact that he was received off the plane wearing tapered maroon sweatpants, new balances, and a giant yellow northface backpack.  I don't judge because I personally have passed 80% of my life wrapped in spandex, I just never expected the man who posesses a paradigm banning pajamas after 8am to trade in his Church's for his tennies. That, and he has also begun confusing the expression "24/7" with "7/11" saying stuff like "the Chipotle by my house is open 7/11."  

Over the holidays my dad popped over the English Channel for a quick visit. The two most remarkable things that happened were introducing him to Giulio's extended family, and watching him have a mini freakout when he mistook a grain of black rice on my sofa for rat poop.  

I know January 1 is meant to mark the day everyone puts their life in the paper shredder and starts over or whatever, but I spent the day doing exactly what I always do- eating an entire box of cookies and procrastinating. So after all the chocolate-covered peppermint Joe Joe's were exhausted, I decided it was the appropriate moment to de-ice my freezer- an activity hastened by my active involvement chipping away at it with a wooden spatula. I followed this up by gathering all the loose snow, placing it in the sink, then watching it melt. And you know what? The year hasn't gotten any better from there:

NONE of the socks from the clean laundry make a pair.