In college I’ve enjoyed a wide variety of activities including cooking. I would not consider myself a chef, but I enjoy finding a recipe and enjoying it with my friends. I was so excited when I found out that my study abroad program would be doing a cooking class together, and the experience did not disappoint! We had two separate stations in the cooking class. At the first one we helped prepare the pasta sauces and dessert. The sauce was made out of fresh tomatoes, onions, and herbs. Usually I just grab a can off the grocery store shelf, so it was interesting to see all of the ingredients come together to create the sauce. Our chef also showed us how to make sage butter which is a delicate process to prevent the butter from separating. After finishing making our strawberry shortcake we headed to the pasta making station. I had never made homemade pasta before and was amazed to see how simple it was. You had a bowl of flour and an egg and just mixed it into a dough and kneaded it a certain way. The kneading was a workout and took probably five minutes by itself. While we kneaded our pasta we got to hear about our instructor’s family and background. She told us how her five year old daughter could already make pasta which is an impressive feat after trying to do it ourselves. After our dough was ready we rolled it through the pasta maker which made the dough thinner and thinner each time. Half of our dough we cut into spaghetti pieces and the other half we filled and made into ravioli.
It was finally time to sit down to dinner. Like most Italian dinners, the food was brought out one at a time and the meal lasted hours. While this is simply not the way things are done in America, I found myself enjoying long dinners more and more. This night was one of my favorites because I got to know some of my classmates much better while we enjoyed our homemade food. The pasta was some of the best I have had my entire trip, and it was paired with delicious wine. Overall this was one of my favorite nights in Florence because I got to learn about something I really cared about and get to know my classmates better. My favorite moments of my entire study abroad experience in Italy were sitting at dinner with my friends. Dinners were the place we connected with each other and bonded over our experiences. The friendships I created while studying abroad were the most important takeaway of my whole experience, and Italian culture allowed me to create those friendships. While I doubt I will ever be able to recreate the dinner we had that night, this next semester I hope to cook and enjoy dinners with my friends like the Italians!
