So I know that its past last Friday when I said I wanted to have put up my next postius and that this in fact is not the updatius that you are looking for but I thought that I would let you know that I am alive, that a proper updatius is coming, oh and that just conquered the shops... well sort of.
Today is a Tuesday and it appears that every Tuesday we have family over for dinner its also the day that I finish school 2 hours before Giulia and thus I get time to potter around without getting in the way of her study. It also happens that one or more bags of apples appear along with the Grandparents, the majority of which sit there for a week until we decide that they are too squishy for eating and throw them out. To me apples and boredom say 'apple pie' (yes I’m strange and a procrasti-baker) so I thought that I would nice to make apple pie today. For those of you who have tried my apple pie you probs know that its the addition of apple cider vinegar that makes it different from other apple pies (for those of you who haven’t tried it remind me of this fact next time you see me and I'll see what I can do to remedy it) and my extensive house searching last week for measuring devices didn't turn up any aceto di mele (the vinegar in question) so to make pie I was going to have to venture to the shops. I also needed to pick up some cinnamon (another of the key ingredients), butter and alfoil pie tins because despite the impressive range of baking dishes none were really of the right proportion for pie (which if you are ever wondering is a round base of aprox. 18cm and a, preferably, slightly sloped wall of 3ishcm). Going to the shop to fetch these things was waaaay less daunting that fetching stuff for pav because I'd actually bought all of these ingredients in an Italian supermarket before (when we were in Varenna on Lake Como last year for Dad's birthday).
Right so after spending like 20mins looking for the shopping bags (in Italy you use your plastic shopping bags over and over or have to work out how to ask for some before any of your items get scanned) I headed out to the shop which is just around the corner. Having only been to the shop once before and trailing around after Giu instead of paying attention to where things where I went with the 'walk past the end of all the isles and head down ones that look useful' approach. As it turns out this was a good plan as it took me past the stationary and I was able to pick up mechanical pencil leads and some gomme (erasers), both of which I was almost out of. After this success I decided that I would look for some other things on my 'I don’t need it yet but I will soon' list which included shampoo, conditioner and Johnson's soap. Finding the shampoo/conditioner section was easy but Sunsilk (the brand I use) is in the middle of changing its packaging (meaning that if I grabbed the green bottle I would end up with either 'for curls' or 'for straight hair' depending on if I got old or new packaging). Having needed more conditioner when we were in Italy last year I recognised that (it was still the old bottle), but the shampoo next to it was in a bottle with the new shape but it was green (the old colour), so I didn’t know if it was 'for curls' and in Italy they just hadn't changed the colours or if it was 'for straight hair' and the person who stocked the shelves just liked matching colours. I eventually decided that they could wait until I'd done more research into which ones I needed so I headed off to look for soap.
Soap should be easy, we bought it last year and it was in the same bottles as at home. Well I've either completely ignored the fact that Johnson's have like quadrupled the number of products they stock in IDENTICAL packaging or Australia just only stocks some of them because I got there and there were 9 or 10 bottles in various colours, non of which looked like those I remember. Knowing that in Australia we'd managed once to end up with moisturiser instead of soap I whipped out my lonley planet phrase book to find the word for soap. Its sapone. Not one bottle said sapone so I figured that could wait too, I hadn't intended to get some today anyway.
Now I headed off to find the things I actually needed (still in front because I’d picked up the stationary). Aceto di mele was easy, same bottle as last time (can you see a recurring pattern in how I find things in shops?) however I ended up getting a different one (that was next to it) because it was cheaper, but anyway. If I had failed in finding burro (butter) then I really wasn't qualified to cook without supervision, so all I had left to find was cannella. I'd walked past a spice section on the way from aceto to burro (someone was stacking shelves) so I headed back there to get the last thing on my list (what about the alfoil containters you say? Yeah well I forgot to put them on my list). I found the cannella macinata section quite easily, it was next to the cinnamon sticks, it was however empty. I searched around in case there was a second brand that stocked it but found none. And that is why I 'sort of' conquered the shops; I managed to find everything on my list (and some things I would need in the future) but there was no cannella.
On my way to the checkout I did a quick scan around so see if anything caught my eye. Lucky I did otherwise I would have forgotten the foil pie trays...oops, despite going over my list several times I had apparently managed to forget about them completely. Grabbing the ones I needed and (letting the shop win with the cannella) the only obstacle I had left was the checkout. We'd done this plenty of times in Bellano (the closest town with a supermarket to Varenna), however I’d never done it by my self and we'd got in the swing of it pretty quickly ( I was allocated to bag packing). I managed fine except for the fact that I have enough trouble deciphering numbers when they are said slowly as opposed to uber-quick by the checkout-chick. This however was easily fixed by giving her a €50 note and making her deal with the change (it turned out to only cost 7 Euro something so I looked pretty silly but anyway).
YAY! I survived the shops! Nothing when horribly wrong, no one started speaking to me in Italian and I didn’t forget anything (well I haven’t discovered it if I have). The only problem I’m faced with now is what to do about the cannella... there is a little bit in a bottle (that I think Gabri puts in her coffee?) but it's not enough for making pie and I didn’t spy any in my kitchen wide search... maybe I can get Gabri to pick some up taking Giu to dancing or have Giu ask Nonna Scaletti to bring some... I’m relatively sure this recipe should hate me by now; more often than not I’m improv-ing some part of it!
Anyway I'll put up pics when its done, and hopefully and actually updatius soon too.
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