Recently I’ve had the opportunity to do this several times for friends visiting me (and at least one more time, next week when my best friend comes to visit me in Italy for the first time) and I like this reminder that not only is the grass greener on the other side of the fence, but I should be reminding myself on a daily, not bi-monthly/yearly basis, about the beautiful place I live in.

I’m known to do crazy things like go to Venice for a few hours and I convinced a visiting friend this would be a good idea. We lucked out, too, with a beautifully sunny October day, and it was freeing to just “hit the highlights” of Venice, which of course included food and gelato.

I met up with Nan from Living Venice, a friend and expat I have been in contact with for years but had never met. I’m always amazed at how many friends I have like this – friends I could ask for advice from or help yet it might be hard for us to pick each other out in a crowd. As I made plans to meet with Nan for some cicchetti, Venetian little bites/snacks (above), I told my visiting friend, “we’ll meet my friend who lives here for lunch” and immediately after “it’s the first time I’m meeting her.”

It’s such a powerful feeling to connect with so many people through something as simple as a website.

I’ve found myself feeling quite nostaglic this morning, about this blog, whose entries have been public for more than 6 years (last month) but there are another 2+ years of entries which are now private and start from the day I stepped off the plane from the US on this big adventure living abroad.

Some of those entries are the most raw and honest writing I’ve ever done, and I hope that I can start to get back to that feeling of writing freedom somehow. The absolute pouring of emotion through words, fear of failing, flailing through experiences, and using writing as a tool and therapy both. It’s something that I’ve shielded a bit on this site as traffic grew, but it’s a disservice especially to myself as it stifles my creativity.

I kind of blame Jori Des Jardins’s recent post for sparking some of this this morning. Thanks for that something – I plan on creating something more often :)

Want more Venice? Check out my posts and photos about Early Morning in Venice or Sunset Aperitivo in Venice.

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Related Articles at Ms. Adventures in Italy:

• Sunset Aperitivo in Venice
• Nanowri-what?
• It’s Alive!

where I can find good gluten-free Italian food in restaurants in Milan? I’ve been “told” that some restaurants in Italy even offer gluten free pasta. I did see that you posted about the grocery shop Natura Si, which sells gluten free products and great if you live there, but I’m like to find where we can eat out as a visitor without a kitchen. ~ Jaime

Jaime,

While I’m not gluten-free myself (though I often experiment with gluten-free recipes, alternative flours, and grains like chestnut flour muffins, quinoa and the recent flourless Chocolate Nutella cake) I can imagine the difficulty in traveling to foreign countries and not being able to serenely order from a menu.

Here’s some of my advice, and I strongly welcome comments from actual celiac disease sufferers with experience eating and traveling in Italy. I’ll incorporate some of the best / most helpful comments back into this post as well.

Some people recommend just saying, “Sono celiaco/a” (a for women, o for men) when traveling in Italy but I don’t think it’s quite enough. While everyone in Italy will understand what the disease is, it’s not guaranteed that they can or will accommodate your special needs. Italian restaurants and people are normally sensitive but they won’t always rearrange their menu and cook a special order, and it’s a bad assumption to make when arriving at any restaurant. Another useful phrase to ask is “è senza glutine?” (is (it) gluten-free?)

Ideally, you would call ahead of time to check a) if there are any gluten-free options already on the menu, or b) if you bring your own gluten-free pasta, will they cook it for you. If you have even more time, and the restaurant is online/has an email address, try sending the following message (not perfect, but it’ll do):

Sono celiaca, e sto cercando informazioni sui ristoranti a (cityname). Sarebbe possibile sapere se ci sono piatti senza glutine sul menu al vostro ristorante? Altrimenti sarebbe possibile far cuocere la pasta senza glutine, che porterei io al ristorante?

or for breakfast in a hotel

Sono celiaca, e sto cercando informazioni sugli alberghi a (city name). Sarebbe possibile sapere se ci sono opzioni senza glutine per la colazione al vostro albergo?
Grazie per l’informazione.

For people suffering from celiac disease, it is possible to eat well and travel in Italy – the land of pizza and pasta.

Please note that the smaller town you visit, the fewer options you might have. Luckily Milan is a big city with a lot of options for you. You can get gluten-free pasta at many pharmacies and definitely at health food stores like Natura Sì (Porta Venezia & Centrale/Gioia metro), and some international stores like SuperPolo (Moscova metro stop) might be good options if you want to pop in and get a few packages of pasta to bring with you. Many of the larger supermercati will have rice cakes,  gluten-free crackers, and probably some sort of pasta di riso (rice pasta). In any case, I would stick a package in your luggage/purse that you can have on hand for a backup.

To find a gluten-free-friendly restaurant, I suggest you visit the Associazione Italiana Celiachia (AIC). I can’t provide a list of restaurants and hope it will stay updated on this site – but they are committed to providing one for restaurants (ristoranti), gelaterie, and even bed & breakfasts. They also give a phone number to call inside Italy: 89.24.24. The English section of the site is currently offline, but they have a Facebook page and might be a good place to get some information or possible feedback before your trip.

To use, go to the Restaurants section, click on “Seleziona un regione” (choose your region) in the drop-down – the names of the 20 Italian regions are in Italian. If you’re not sure what region the city you’re visiting is in, a quick Google search for “cityname regione Italia” and it will probably turn up the answer. For Milan, we’ll select “Lombardia” (Lombardy region) and you can further narrow down the results by selecting “Provincia” province. Google can also help you find this out “cityname provincia Italia.”

Once you get the results, click on the restaurant name and you should get an address and phone number.

Here’s some helpful direct links on the AIC website:

• Milan gluten-free restaurants
• Rome gluten-free restaurants
• Gluten-free restaurants in other regions
• Gluten-free gelaterie in italy
• Grom, one of the decent gelaterie that are a chain and found in many cities is celiac-friendly

Here are suggestions for some Italian dishes that are gluten-free, just the way they are:

• Polenta
• Patate – Potatoes
• Farinata or panelle – made with chickpea flour. For panelle, make sure they are not fried with flour/breadcrumbs.
• Gnocchi – ask if they are made with only potatoes, some have flour
• Crocchette di patate – a snack; potato balls/tots; might be covered in flour/breadcrumbs.
• Risotto – rice, ask if gluten free broth
• Zuppa di lenticchie – Lentil soup
• Insalata di riso – rice salad (more a summer dish)

Breakfast is probably the most difficult meal to eat gluten-free, as it’s mainly a piece of bread or Italian croissant with jam and of course coffee. Eggs and other savory breakfast items are not part of the normal Italian breakfast. You may try to request gluten-free crackers, fresh fruit (frutta fresca) or yogurt as alternatives, but bringing a few options from home is always a good idea if you need a hearty breakfast while in Italy.

Do you have suggestions for finding gluten-free food in Italy? What are your favorite Italian dishes that are gluten-free as they are?

If you have a food-related question, contact me with “Ask Ms. Adventures in Italy” in the subject line and I might answer it online!

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Related Articles at Ms. Adventures in Italy:

• Better than Nutella? Deanocciola Chocolate Hazelnut Creams
• 2011 Year in Review in Pictures
• Italy & Milan Links

Being location-independent now means that I can do something like wake up at 3:30am on a Saturday morning to drive down to Puglia so I could work from there for the week. Unfortunately, even leaving at 4am from Milan we encountered massive problems. Around 6:30am at the “nodo” knot of Italian highways that meet at Bologna, it took us about 90 minutes to go a few kilometers and I heard it only got worse later in the morning. If I could tell you how many Swiss license plates I saw going to Rimini…and they got up much earlier than we did.

But 10 hours later, and in time for lunch, we made it to lovely Puglia. We spent a few hours on the beach on Saturday afternoon, and then decided the day to enjoy the beach in full would be Sunday. And we wouldn’t be fooling around. We woke up early, or late compared to the day before, depending on your viewpoint.

Perhaps a bit too early. The lifeguards weren’t even on duty yet, and the beach was blissfully empty. We went for a swim in the already-warm water while we waited to find out if we would get an ombrellone, big umbrella, on the beach.

More after the jump…

I enjoyed the peace and quiet.

And good thing we did get there early. When the lifeguards arrived at 8am, we got the very last ombrellone of the day. At 8am. This is what the beach looked like later in the day.

Since Sunday, I haven’t gone far from my temporary office, though you won’t hear me complaining. In the morning I walk down to the best cornetteria and pick up a still-warm-to-the-touch cornetto, Italian croissant, filled with marmellata, [apricot] jam, (which I categorically hate except for these, so you know they are good) to have with my beloved marocchino coffee, or espressino as it’s called here. I have lunch and dinner in one of the best mensa, company cafeteria, a working girl could ask for: her Pugliese mother-in-law’s.

Here’s a bit of a sample:

Grilled fish – pesce alla griglia

Orecchiette, little ear pasta Puglia is known for, with creamy zucchini and gamberi, shrimp. The risotto ai frutti di mare didn’t make it into this post, nor did the eggplant parmigiana my MIL makes every time we come for a visit, otherwise this post would have about 30 pictures of just primi, pasta.

Perhaps my favorite pizza in all of Italy: crispy, crunchy pomodoro fresco fresh-tomato Pugliese pizza (of course I also love pizza bianca and pizza napoletana). The MIL didn’t make this, we brought it home from a favorite pizza place that is so popular and known, he has absolutely no signage anywhere outside the tiny take-away-only pizzeria indicating that it’s a pizzeria or a business, and it’s standing-room only.

These polpette, meatballs, are not meatballs in the traditional sense – they are not made with meat, but with eggs and bread, and then fried, and served in a meat-based sauce.

And the special pepperoncino, hot pepper, that just sits on the table at every meal, waiting for you to dip your spoon or knife in to spice up the plate in front of you. Nonna, grandma, still selects the peppers, dries them and grinds them up for the whole family. At home I alternate between the dried pepperoncino and the spicy chili oil I make with the peppers.

Of course, even in the summer Nutella is around. And in big quantities! 5 kilos for 30 euros. 5 kilos. That’s a lot of hazelnut chocolate to eat in the summer. Best stuff it into a cornetto as advertised – only 1 euro!

I was able to escape for an occasional passeggiata, stroll, in the evening through the city and do a little people-watching of people….watching.

And fit in an aperitivo on the evenings we hoped not to ruin dinner. Just a few finger foods to nibble on in case we were hungry.

I tried not to watch all the people walking around with their beach coverups on, and concentrated on palm trees and fountains surrounded by whitewashed and marbled walls…

…and a sunset or two among the cactus before back to finishing up work in the evening.

Yes, I definitely feel lucky. I’ll be in the US for the whole month of August and moving my temporary office from SF to SD and Alaska, too – hopefully I’ll run into a few of you :)

Posting will continue of course, but if you’re hungry for more Italy news, make sure you listen to all 14 of the Eye on Italy podcast episodes we’ve done so far and let us know what you think!

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Related Articles at Ms. Adventures in Italy:

• Heading to BlogHer 11 in San Diego
• Another behind the scenes look in Puglia
• Food and sights I’ll miss from summer in Italy

If it’s summertime, that means loads of wonderful sagre, festivals, in Italy. Many sagre are food-related celebrations and festivals, but not all. But when it is food-related, you know that you’re going to eat well! Even the tiniest cities can have excellent sagre.

Case in point is the Sagra delle Fragole I went to in Fosseno, a little frazione of the city of Nebbiuno, high above Lago Maggiore in the Piedmont region. This sagra is not the only of its kind – there are many many strawberry festivals around Italy.

Keep reading…

Every sagra has a special menu, and I love it when they are handwritten (they often are). Prices are bound to be lower and that means that you can indulge a bit more. In my case I got the risotto alle fragole, strawberry risotto and the fresh gelato and cut strawberries for after.

After ordering, we sat down and waited for our food to be delivered.

Let’s take a look at those strawberries! This one is almost ready to eat – as soon as it loses the slightly-white tip, it’s perfect. But you might sneak one or two even now, and they’d still taste great.

Risotto alle fragole, strawberry risotto. It’s not sweet aside from the taste of the strawberries. Not something I’d like to eat every day, but some people were going crazy for it. If you like subtle flavors, definitely try this. On the placemat, you can see the advertisement for the Sagra della Polenta in September in that area.

After the risotto, I got the fresh gelato, which was so fresh and creamy it was almost like fresh whipping cream but even better. This didn’t last very long.

After all that eating, you need a rest while you wait for more strawberries.

Something you’ll see in small towns everywhere: everyone works!

The sagra menu is a bit of distraction from the main event: buying crates and crates of strawberries to take home. Each crate was 15 euro, which is a decent price if you consider in Milan one of the 8 baskets in the crate would cost 3.50euro.

There aren’t only strawberries at the sagra – often there are booths selling other local-made goods or other products. Yum for salami!

More about Italian sagre:

• What’s a sagra? on About.com
• Rowena from Rubbah Slippers in Italy has been to 48 sagre so far (left-hand column nav)
• Sagre in Italia – the Italian sagre portal (in Italian) has a great search by region and type of festival
• The sagra of the Nodino – Mozzarella knot festival on my blog
• Sagre from Episode 4 on the Eye on Italy podcast w/ Leif Pettersen

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Related Articles at Ms. Adventures in Italy:

• 2010 Year Review in Pictures
• Festival of the Mozzarella Nodino – Knot and Bruschetta
• Fresh Strawberry Semifreddo with Coconut and Mascarpone