If you want a more natural, non-Hulk-green version, try making a quasi-mojito without the liquor – muddle some mint lives with some sugar and add in the lime if you need it.

This Venetian glass was a gift from friends that I think can make the simplest acqua e menta look amazing. Don’t you think? (If it gets as hot as it’s getting here in Milan, you too may become obssessed with the heat, the fading afternoon sun and the lovely light it throws around your house like me)

If you are interested in Venetian glass, be sure not to miss the episode 12 of the Eye on Italy podcast where we talked about 11 million pieces of fake Venetian glass being seized.

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• Granita, Iced Coffee, Caffe Shakerato, Italian Soda: Summer Drinks in Italy
• Introducing Ferrero Pocket Espresso to Go: the summer Pocket Coffee
• Dark Mint Chocolate French Macarons Recipe
• Drinking the Green Kool-aid
• Summer Means Aperitivo 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.

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 frest 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:

• Festival of the Mozzarella Nodino – Knot and Bruschetta
• Fresh Strawberry Semifreddo with Coconut and Mascarpone
• Spoleto in Early Morning
• A Wedding in Sicily and a Sicilian Food Feast: The Desserts
• How to Love Granita Siciliana with a Brioche…for Breakfast

Here’s some reflections I’ve had on how it’s changed since I moved here:

• Portion size
  

In the US I was used to ordering and expecting to take whatever I didn’t eat home and perhaps eating it again. Sometimes we would pick a particular restaurant knowing that it served too-large portions and we’d eat twice…for the price of one! In Italy, I find that I eat less, in terms of portion size, especially when eating out. Restaurants don’t compete with each other and you won’t find people recommending a place because they give you so much to eat. That doesn’t mean that you should eat every morsel that gets placed in front of you in a restaurant in Italy, but there’s a better chance it’s just right.

• Glass size

How I loved getting a big plastic tumbler in the summer, filling it to the brim with ice, and then with my favorite beverage – water, soda, or juice back in California. I missed these huge glasses (and ice) when I first moved to Italy, where most glass sizes are 4-6 ounces. But I now appreciate them because it helps me regulate myself much easier in terms of how much juice or soda I drink (and I drink very little already) – often I pour in a few swallows at a time into the glass, and I never yearn for those 20 oz. cups.

• Ice

A follow-up from the above point, I couldn’t tell you the last time I cared if I had ice in my drink, though most bars will give you ice in cocktails. Keep the water and drinks cold, pour just the amount that you need to drink in that moment and return that bottle to the fridge, and everything stays perfectly cool. But again, I’m not a big soda drinker.

• Pork products: much more of the other white meat
  

For those of you who love your pork products (and I mean well beyond bacon), Italy is the place for you. For those of you who prefer the original white meat (chicken) to the “other” white meat, it’s not so great. Lunchmeats are limited to mainly pork and beef products, with the rare, plain slice-able turkey breast lunchmeat available in a rare bar, or in most supermarkets. Oven-roasted peppered turkey? Honey-roasted chicken breast? Not going to happen. This change has been rather against my will, but I’m getting used to it. One thing I do like is praga – smoked prosciutto / ham that is slightly different than the salami / prosciutto cotto – crudo / bresaola / mortadella continuum.

On a related note, you won’t find mountains of skinless, boneless chicken breast on menus in Italy. You won’t find much chicken at all and definitely, definitely no chicken in a pasta dish or on a pizza. You’ll more likely find roasted chicken (skin on, on the bone) with a side of oven-roasted potatoes.

• Raw cheese vs. melted cheese

While cheese has always been a big part of my diet, and continues to be, I have definitely been eating less melted cheese (read: less Mexican food & American food) and instead I eat much more raw cheese while living in Italy. The few Italian dishes I really enjoy with melted cheese are cacio e pepe pasta (pasta with pecorino romano cheese and pepper), and of course lasagna and parmigiana di melanzane (eggplant parmesan) but I eat these dishes mainly in winter months, and not even once a week.

And before you say, ah ah, what about pizza? Yes, of course there is melted cheese…on most pizzas. I’ll let you in on a little secret about my favorite pizza: rossa (tomato sauce) with no mozzarella, salame piccante (hot salami/pepperoni), gorgonzola cheese (very little) and fresh rucola (rocket / arugula) on top. So very little melted cheese there, too :)

• Beer

Wait, what? I know you were expecting a line about wine here. But living in Italy, and perhaps together with getting older, has made me realize and have the courage to say that I prefer beer over wine. Yep. Besides the fact that American beer here is considered foreign (ack!) and preferred by a few people, I have also gotten to experiment with some great European and local Italian beers. My secret is out. I don’t drink alcohol with every meal, and I still drink a glass of wine now and then, but I’m more likely to order a cocktail or a beer over a glass of red wine, or instead get a glass of white wine or prosecco.

• Packaged snacks

I don’t think Italians snack as much as Americans do. Sometimes I miss the salty, nasty packs of low-fat BBQ chips, nut mixes, and crackers that I regularly would purchase in the States. Nuts are relatively plain (I often bring back honey-roasted, chili and dry-roasted nuts from the US) and snacks are often more sweet (the mid-afternoon break, the merenda is mostly sweet) than savory. This is probably a good thing, though. Snacking is not our friend!

• Working out

In the States I was working out 3-4 times a week, and eating whatever I wanted. Here, for various reasons I’ve had an on-again, off-again relationship with the gym and so even though I’m generally eating better quality and fresher food, I’ve had to watch what I eat a bit more than in the States since I’m not burning off calories as fast.

I am sure there are many more, and I’ll do a part 2 in the future. I’m going to add a few more here:

• Coffee

I didn’t drink coffee, at all, before I moved to Italy. I started drinking espresso here socially, with students, friends, and colleagues, and then 3 years ago I started drinking it every morning. I love and prefer Italian espresso and I seek it out wherever I go, even back in the States.

• Breakfast

Where I once used to eat a balanced breakfast – a bagel, some fruit, a granola bar, or occasionally an American breakfast, I now eat nothing in the morning. Just a coffee.

• Meal times : Lunch and Dinner

Instead of lunch from 11.30/12 – 1pm like in the States, my lunch hour is now 1-2pm, which means that I also get home later from work, and I eat later. Most evenings I don’t ever eat earlier than 8pm, and when I’m staying in Puglia dinner can be as late as 9.30/10pm. (thx to Tina for the reminder in the comments)

Have your eating habits changed in the last seven years, even if you haven’t changed countries?

Still hungry for more Italy news? Listen to the All-Italy podcast I co-host called Eye on Italy at www.eyeonitaly.com/podcast.

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