Here’s a few words of advice for anyone hoping to visit Italy in the near future.

1. Tipping in Italy. Though regularly discussed, argued and debated, the truth is you don’t need to tip in Italy. Really. Let me repeat that: you don’t need to tip in Italy. Of course most workers will not scoff or refuse a tip (though a few will), but it’s not necessary, and I think it’s a bad precedence to set for foreigners to tip in Italy for simple things like a coffee, taxi rides, or dinner in a pizzeria. Many Italians I know will only leave a tip for very exceptional service (think: anniversary dinner in a Michelin-starred restaurant) or will leave the change when paying cash because it’s easier not to wait for the waiter to make change (think: leaving a 100-euro banknote on a 99-euro bill), but it’s a choice of convenience rather than rewarding service. In Rome, waiters / taxi drivers are getting spoiled with foreigners leaving tips and are now expecting them. But you don’t need to tip in Italy. You’re probably already paying a supplement through the coperto (cover charge) or servizio (service charge) on your restaurant bill. You probably still want to tip a hotel porter for bringing up your bags.
2. Assuming you can buy tickets for public transportation directly on the bus / tram. Most big cities in Italy (Rome, Milan, Naples, Florence) require you to buy your bus/tram tickets before boarding. And not just that, but most bus stops will not have a ticket machine next to the stop. Rather, you’ll need to find a newspaper stand (edicola) or a tobacco shop (tabaccaio) to purchase your tickets. If you’re planning on using public transportation on a Sunday, buy your tickets the day before – you’ll save a lot of time not looking for an open place to buy tickets. And once on the bus/tram, make sure you validate the ticket – put it into a machine that will print the date/time used on the ticket (so it can’t be re-used). Save yourself a fine!
3. Calling the afternoon store closings a “siesta.” It’s not called a “siesta”…the stores are just closed. Some stores have a day of the week that they are closed and they will call it a day of rest (giorno di riposo) or (riposo settimanale), and most stores will also be closed Monday mornings, opening in the afternoons directly. A misconception is that all stores will close in the afternoon, but it really depends on where you are in Italy, and what time of year. Especially in crowded city centers, many stores should remain open through the afternoon, but if they do close, it’s not a siesta. It’s not Spain. It’s just closed. As my friend Max reminded me, store hours are set at the Comune (city) level, so opening times will vary from city to city.
4. Not respecting meal times, especially at lunch time. Most restaurants and bars have specific opening times, and they will close in the afternoon – that you can count on. If you have a late breakfast, visit museums through lunch and hope to get a bite to eat at 2pm or 3pm, you’re going to find a very limited selection, and some of which was prepared before the lunch rush, including those sandwiches that have been sitting there since 10am. Try to eat when Italians eat – lunch hour is usually 13-14 (some start as early as 12.30 eating) and most will be done by 14.30. Dinner is a little different – the further south you go, the later they start eating. A good rule of thumb is a reservation for 20/20.30, but some groups will make reservations for 21.30/22 and will stay until the restaurant closes! If you’re hungry earlier, why not have an aperitivo (pre-dinner drink) before dinner?
5. Expecting to be waited on very attentively in a restaurant or store. The culture of “il cliente comanda” (the client dictates / is right) is not present in Italy. Furthermore, most restaurants will be “understaffed,” that is, they will have few waiters working many tables because their main job is to order and deliver your food. They probably won’t ask “how are you folks doing?”, if you like the food, if you want a refill (this concept doesn’t exist) or other general “friendly” requests that are in reality superfluous to your main dining experience – they just don’t have the time. So, sit back, be patient, and flag down your waiter when you need something, but be patient in knowing they are probably working very hard. The good news is, you’ll rarely be presented with the check until you ask for it. [Update: someone made a comment to me that I'm wrong here, and the service is fast in Italy. I am not debating the speed of the service but rather the amount of attention that is given to the patron who may be accustomed to a high level of attention throughout the dining experience. I think the quality of service is relatively high, but it's not conveyed in terms of client attentiveness but in other ways.]
6. Ordering peperoni on your pizza and expecting hot/spicy salami. Peperoni in Italian are bell peppers, not pepperoni in the US which is hot salami. So if you want hot salami on your pizza, don’t order a pizza with peperoni (note the spelling – just one p) order a pizza diavola or look for a pizza that has salame piccante as one of the ingredients.
7. Thinking you have to order an antipasto, primo e secondo at every meal. Most Italians don’t eat an antipasto, primo, secondo and dolce at every meal – you don’t have to, either. If you eat like this at every meal, you will definitely feel full! Feel free just to pick a primo or secondo for your lunch and maybe splurge at dinner with a more robust meal.
8. Ordering before paying, paying before ordering in a bar. Many bars require that you get a receipt (scontrino) before ordering, especially if you see the cash register (cassa) sitting apart from where you’ll pick up the food or coffee, and you don’t see immediate table service. When in doubt, observe for a few minutes or just ask at the cash register how to proceed – you might say, “scusi, si paga o si ordina prima?” (Does one pay or order first?)
9. Drinking a coffee during a meal (other than breakfast). Coffee is used mainly to help digestion and to finish off a meal, and therefore at lunch or dinner it is ordered after the meal and dessert have been consumed. If you order a cappuccino to go with your spaghetti carbonara, expect a nasty look…from everyone.
10. Touching fruit & vegetables with your bare hands in a market or supermarket. In a supermarket you should see plastic gloves and bags near the scales or throughout the fruit/veg section. Use them. In an open-air market, you won’t see these gloves because you are not expected to handle anything yourself – the people working in the stall will do everything. Don’t touch the goods! Also, it’s considered pretty rude to tell the fruttivendolo exactly which fruit he should put in your bag.

Here’s a few to start….any tips you have for tourists in Italy?

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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Related Articles at Ms. Adventures in Italy:

• Taking a Break in Rome’s Campagna
• Letters, Lettere
• Visiting the Sultan Ahmed Mosque – Blue Mosque in Istanbul, Turkey
• Day Trippin’ Firenze: Gelato da Grom
• Trenitalia owns my first-born child

Social Networking

I didn’t spend much time joining new mainstream social networks, but dedicated some time to finding some communities organized around action! (keep reading the entire post to find out what I mean)

• In 2009 I remained very active on Twitter and Facebook and said goodbye to FriendFeed. I’m still using ASmallWorld, Flickr and LinkedIn but they are not the first sites I open each day.
• Biggest resource of 2009: It remained Twitter. The diversity of people I follow or are exposed to through ReTweets and lists make it an immediate go-to for me.
• Biggest sell-out of 2009: For me, it was FriendFeed. I think Facebook buying it (and subsequently not improving or investing in it) means it’s dead in the water, and I think FF really needs to improve the way users interact (perhaps adding photos to each comment) as some very interesting discussions occurred there but also some crazy flames and ganging up, too. Also, people deleting their accounts meant entire discussions disappeared. There’s a lack of accountability that I feel other sites handle better.
• Bloggers met (in person) in 2009: This was a big year for seeing food bloggers at the BlogHer conference in Chicago, but I was a little upset BlogHer Food was announced after I’d made my plans (hurry up and announce if there’ll be a date in 2010!). I really enjoyed Travel Blog Exchange in Chicago where I met so many great travel bloggers. I continue to meet tons of Italian bloggers as an organizer for the Girl Geek Dinners in Milan.

Blogging, Photography and Computing

• Domains I have active websites on: 5
• Domains I have bought but haven’t started using: 6 (I see this number increasing very soon – buying domains is the new impulse shopping)
• 5 Most popular blog posts on this blog (written in 2009): Nutella Virgin? 50 Ways to Eat Nutella and Nutella Lover Types, The Search for the Perfect Frosting Recipe, Lemon French Macarons with Limoncello White Chocolate Ganache Recipe, Dark Mint Chocolate French Macarons Recipe, Panzanella: Tuscan Bread Salad Recipe
• RSS Feeds: I know some people are saying RSS is dead, but for me, it’s still going strong. This year I had a huge jump in feeds – from 211 to 339 feeds that I read, but I find that most people aren’t posting as much as they used to, and I’m getting much better at skimming titles and content so I don’t feel it’s taking more time. I added three new categories that I classify my feeds in: “Girl Geeks” “Travel” and “Photography“
• Camera and Video camera equipment: Still using my 10MP Canon Digital Rebel XTi, and my Canon PowerShot SD750 7.1MP for quick shots and video. But this year I’ll have the Kodak Zi8 (my Zi8 is raspberry!) as my go-to for video – I am really loving it, though I also used a Flip Ultra this summer. I had to buy another Canon 50mm f1.4 lens as I broke the first one in January in Istanbul, and this year I added the 28-135mm Canon zoom for a decent telephoto lens. But I like playing with prime lenses – I’m thinking about an 85mm, 100mm or 200mm!
• Backing up Data & External drives: This continues to be the most important part of my regime – backup! I am employing the 3,2,1 method – 3 copies of everything, 2 onsite, 1 offsite. For the onsite, Western Digital 250GB Passport and my Western Digital MyBook 750GB do fine for now, but probably this year I will upgrade to a 1 or 2TB. I’m also still using Mozy (a Pro account) to do a further backup online of my photos and other critical files, now from my Mac. Read more about How to Backup Files using Online and Offline Software on my tech blog.
• Computer: This year, to avoid the Microsoft XP-Vista-7 Bermuda triangle this summer, I bought a MacBook Pro. So far I’m enjoying it and using OpenOffice and GIMP instead of Office and Photoshop on my old laptop.

Fundraising, Donations, and Supporting Causes

This section has become even more important to me as this year I stepped up my giving efforts and put my money where my mouth is when it comes to supporting open source, services that I regularly benefit from and interesting causes.

• Working with causes, powered by Social Networks and Bloggers: we continued Ovarian Cancer for Awareness in October with a great turnout, I contributed two great bid items to Menu for Hope and gave David a hand with the Europe round-up – we raised more than $78,000! I also want to give a shout-out to the travel bloggers’ initiative Passports with Purpose which raised more than $26,000 – this year I just donated money but hopefully next year I can be more involved.
• Supporting other entrepreneurs via Kiva.org, which I had known about for quite some time, in July I bit the bullet and signed up to become a microloan lender. For now I’m concentrating on mainly female entrepreneurs. I know that I’m not donating directly to the individuals, but for now I still think it’s a worthwhile contribution that I can keep reinvesting.
• Supporting interesting projects and the arts at Kickstarter.com – it’s a community-powered lending site for projects that are proposed by individuals and teams who are then responsible for getting 100% of the funded amount (or nothing at all) by a deadline. Most projects revolve around the arts (music, photography, film, design) and new projects are being inserted often! The project owners offer special incentives to donors based on the level of donation in the form of handmade things, photos, updates, etc., tailored to the project. It’s the 21st century of patronage. Here’s my profile. (Anyone have an invite to start a Kickstarter project? Contact me…I have an idea!)

Open Source Software and Creative Commons

I continue to be a big advocate of open source software and I’m also making some strides to contribute more in terms of my own T&M (time and materials).

• CreativeCommons.net – I’ve contributed to CC and now I’ve also got a profile on the Creative Commons network that I will update as I release more works with Creative Commons licenses – so far I’ve listed my photos that are Creative Commons (easily found on Flickr) and the ebook I created this summer: “101 American Foods to Try in the USA” - if you don’t know what Creative Commons is, read my “Guide to Copyright and Creative Commons” on my tech blog, When I Have Time.
• Open Source Software I’m Using: not much has changed here – I’m still using WordPress for websites/blogs, Firefox web browser, FileZilla for FTP, VLC media player, Open Office docs and spreadsheets, PDFCreator, Synkron synchronization software, and 7 Zip zip files.
• Goodbye Photoshop: Last year I said goodbye to Microsoft Office, and this year I’ve left Adobe Photoshop and moved completely to GIMP for my photo editing, and recently I wrote a tutorial about 7 easy Photoshop Tricks you can do with GIMP for Free on my tech blog, When I Have Time.

Food, Cooking & Eating

This year, while I never stopped eating, I did decide not to keep up with the Joneses so much this year. I can’t be chasing the latest trend across the globe, stocking my pantry full of one-use ingredients, or making a ton of space in my tiny apartment for single plates, forks and endless napkins that I can’t use in normal life. When I moved apartments this year, and I had to choose between plates and memories as my meager belongings are still following me around the globe, it definitely struck me that I can’t become a food stylist with the shelf space I have available in the near future.

This year, I’m changing up my goals a bit. I’m trying to focus on a little more savory things and more “basics” – I got the book “Ratio” by Michael Ruhlman and I bought a few more cookbooks with some basics in them – I intend to do a little more offline reading this year for my cooking inspiration. Luckily I have a little space available to expand my cookbook collection (currently hovering under a dozen books!) as I made room for things during the move.

• New discoveries on the blog: camel milk chocolate, lokum from Istanbul, Turkey, the search for the perfect frosting recipe, Pocket Espresso to Go

First, let’s look back: How did I do on my “I Dare” cooking challenges for 2009? Again, not as well as I’d hoped.

1. Cake, cupcake, cookie decorating – I did make valiant advances in looking for the perfect frosting recipe, but my decorating set remained mainly untouched.
2. 12 Fresh Pastas – I continued to make fresh pasta like Fresh Spinach Reginette Pasta with Walnut Pesto and How to Make Fresh Homemade Spaghetti alle Vongole, Pasta with Clams but I didn’t get to 12 types, at least on the blog.
3. Alternative flours, grains and legumes - I continue to use alternative grains every day but I’m not blogging about it.
4. Playing with Flavored Liquor – I failed at this one.
5. Croissants – this one, too :(

I’m getting ready for World Nutella Day, in its 4th year, on February 5th, 2010!

Reading and eBooks

• Books (new) read in 2009: 79 (100% were ebooks). These are only new books for this year – I tend to re-read from my library as well. I also added a few paper cookbooks to the mix, too.
• Ebook Advocate: I have been digital for 4 years now – I wrote a Guide to Ebooks for Ebook Week on my tech blog, When I Have Time, for those that are new to ebooks or are interested in getting started!

Travel and Moving Around

• Cities lived in: 1 – Milan, Italy; but I changed apartments, yay!
• Countries visited: 4 – U.S., Dublin, Ireland; Paris, France, Istanbul, Turkey
• Years without a car: 6.5 but this streak has ended. We officially picked up a used car at the end of the year. I’ll continue taking public transportation every day to work.
• Carbon: According to Dopplr, a service I used to track my travels, for the first half of 2009 I totaled: 913 kg CO₂
• Moving around: I signed up for a gym after taking a break for a while, and started up with Nike+ sensor with my iPod Touch and I’m loving it.

What about you – do you have any interesting stats you track for your end of year?

Note: I have an Amazon affiliate store – many of the links in this post have an affiliate link to the Amazon site in case you are interested in buying that product. I will get a small percentage of the purchase price if you do (4-6%). Otherwise, plug the name of the product into Google and buy it somewhere else!

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Related Articles at Ms. Adventures in Italy:

• Getting Banned by Google, and Upgrading WordPress
• 2009 Year in Pictures
• Adopt a Blogger: Finding New Sources of Traffic and Readers for Your Blog
• It’s Alive!
• FemCamp, Moo Notecards, Me in Italian Glamour

SARA ROSSO: Julia, you’ve had such an interesting career path: Yale, Berkeley, Stanford; from mechanical engineer to management consultant and MBA grad to bakery owner to food writer! Do you see any common themes to your career choices, and why did you decide to finally make the leap and change careers?

JULIA USHER: Well, Sara, my answer depends on which career change you’re talking about! I’ve certainly had more than my fair share. My internal logbook registers three fairly significant transitions over the years (engineer to consultant, consultant to bakery owner, and bakery owner to food writer), but let’s focus on the second one (consultant to bakery owner) since it probably appears the most radical and least explicable of the bunch.

Back in 1994 at the time of this shift, I had just moved from San Francisco to Boston to be closer to my former college sweetheart (now husband). While I was trading up in my personal life by making this cross-country migration, I unfortunately traded down professionally. I was working in a small entrepreneurial office of Bain & Company in San Francisco, but when I transferred with the company, I found myself in the much more unwieldy and bureaucratic flagship office in Boston. I suddenly had layers upon layers of bosses and much less decision-making authority. Basically, I fell off what was a fast-paced path toward promotion in San Francisco and felt lost without any senior-level support and advocacy in Boston. It became very difficult to justify working 100-plus hour weeks for the firm when the rewards were becoming increasingly fuzzy.

So, in a nutshell: I found myself pretty darn miserable, and decided that if I was going to work hard at something, it ought to be at something I love to do. I had always been an avid avocational cook and foodie, and I fortunately had some natural aptitude for baking that was cultivated from cooking alongside my mom from a very early age. With so much else changing at the time (new relationship, new residence, new outlook on life), I actually found it pretty easy to throw another ball in the air. In 1995, I quit Bain and enrolled in the Cambridge School of Culinary Arts. Since then, I’ve never looked back or missed my work as a consultant – except for the nice pay, that is!

To the other part of your question about common themes: as radical as this change may seem, it really wasn’t because the success factors for each of these jobs are very similar in many ways. In order to be a great pastry chef, you need to be exacting and detail-oriented (winging measurements rarely cuts it); at the same time, you have to be resourceful when recipes don’t work out as planned, and in tune with outside influences in order to sharpen your creative edge. Likewise, with consulting, my recommendations to our corporate clients were always fueled by in-depth, detailed research. There was a lot of fact checking and re-checking involved. I was also constantly surveying and testing the marketplace to define sustainable strategies for my clients – exactly the same steps I took to develop the business plan for my bakery.

SARA ROSSO:Do you have any advice for people that find themselves at a similar crossroads?

JULIA USHER: Yes, look before you leap – that is, do your research, talk to people who have made similar forays in the past, and know what you’re getting yourself into. A transition, big or small, can be emotionally and financially unsettling if you don’t have the backing of a significant other or family members – or the money to support it. I used my savings from Bain & Company to fund my explorations at culinary school and also to jumpstart my bakery. Without these reserves (and the support of a very patient husband), my path to pastry chef would have been a lot more challenging.

On the other hand, resist over-analyzing the situation as that can lead to paralysis. Weigh the facts, but learn to trust your gut as well. You only live once. There’s no sense in going through the motions miserably or working in a job because you think it will bolster your resume or impress your friends. Work and happiness shouldn’t be mutually exclusive; the more you love what you do, the more successful and fulfilled you’ll be. Pardon me for waxing philosophically, but finding the courage to pursue my passion was a critical life lesson for me.

SARA ROSSO: The cutout cookies in your book are beautiful and exquisitely detailed – what tips do you have for someone on a) efficiently cutting / baking cutout cookies and b) using such intricate designs and color combinations?

JULIA USHER: First of all, thanks! It’s nice to know that this labor of love of mine is appreciated. You know, there’s not a lot that’s complicated about cutting, baking and decorating sugar cookies. Success with both tasks is largely dictated by proper time management and practice, practice, practice. A few technical tips can help though:

1. Don’t rush the chilling time of the dough (this gets to my time management point). The dough will roll more easily and cut more cleanly if thoroughly chilled. Proper chilling will also allow you to get by with less flour on your work surface – a good thing, as excess flour can toughen the dough and diminish flavor. I frequently re-chill the dough during the cutting process to make sure it’s at the best working consistency.
2. I also handle the dough as little as possible to keep the cutout shapes from morphing. Always transfer cutouts to a cookie sheet with a wide offset spatula that fully supports the cookie.
3. I prefer baking on the backside of thick gauge baking sheets, and ideally on a silicone baking mat. It’s easier to slide the cookies onto the backside of the pan without the sides getting in the way; plus, I find that the cookies generally bake more evenly this way. Even heat distribution is also one reason I like to bake on a mat. The other reason is that parchment paper can buckle and misshape in the heat of the oven, sometimes distorting cookie shapes.
4. As for decorating, I use royal icing for much of my work, as opposed to confectioner’s icing that others sometimes use. The protein content of the egg whites in royal icing causes it to dry much more rapidly. The egg whites also give it a higher tensile strength (here’s where my engineering background comes in) that allows the icing to stretch and behave in ways that confectioners’ icing simply will never do. Essentially, royal icing permits much finer, detailed piping work.Consistency is king, however. For best results, you’ll need to adjust the consistency of the royal icing, depending on the decorating technique you’re attempting (I describe 11 techniques in my new book Cookie Swap). Marbling, for instance, requires all icing colors to be at the same consistency. Beadwork requires a relatively loose consistency, outlining generally calls for a thicker texture, and so forth. I could go on and on here. My best advice is to check out my book, where I give recommended consistency adjustments for each of the 11 techniques.
5. One last tip on tinting icing: because consistency adjustments can take time, I prefer to use liqua-gel, gel, or paste food coloring. All are concentrated and thick. A little goes a long way, so unlike liquid food colorings, these dyes are less likely to impact the consistency of your icing. However, my favorite coloring of all is the liqua-gel type. Because it gets dispensed through a dropper, I find it far easier to control the quantity of dye added than with paste or gel food colorings. (The latter colorings most often come in lidded containers and must be doled out with a toothpick – a much less precise and often messy endeavor!)

SARA ROSSO: What about organizing this sort of decoration in a group, or doing a group decoration party like Drop-in and Decorate?

JULIA USHER: Sure, decorating in groups is always fun. I regularly teach hands-on cookie decorating classes where I set up small work stations (about 5 people per station), each equipped with all the necessary tools. This makes sharing of scarce items a little easier. Each person decorates a dozen or more cookies to take home using the various tools and cookie trinkets (sanding sugar, luster dust, stencils, etc.) at their station. A lot of the fun comes in comparing what the different people and stations end up with.

I believe I’ve heard of Lydia’s concept (Drop in and Decorate); my only caution is that many food shelters will not accept food unless it is packaged or canned or made in a certified (DOH-approved) commercial kitchen. I’ve never been able to donate cookies made in my own home – or even my commercial bakery – to a St. Louis shelter, for instance. Here, they don’t want to receive unpackaged materials.

Thank you, Julia! Cookie Swap is available at Amazon and other independent bookstores.
Julia’s photo by Karen Forsythe.

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