February 27

Taking a traditional spinach and ricotta lasagna dish to the oven in cooking class. Today's focus in class was all about nutrition and the Italian food pyramid. Take away: olive oil is good for ya. My sweet professor went on and on about typical Italian "skinny diets"--her term for a diet designed to lose weight--that left the class cracking up. This lasagna dish couldn't have been easier to make: throw together a quick tomato sauce of canned tomatoes and seasonings, mix ricotta and spinach, layer it all with lasagna noodles. Easy peasy. A girl in the class made the mistake of confusing the salt for sugar when making the tomato sauce. Her face was as red as the sauce when the professor (loudly) corrected her mistake. I could hear dramatic Top Chef theme music in the background as the scene played out. Do I particularly mind sampling lasagnas at 10:30am? Hey, you only study abroad once, right? We also made chocolate covered strawberries, Cantucci (traditional Italian almond biscotti), spinach and ricotta nudi (think gnocchi), and balsamic chicken.