January 10th MSP and we're off!!! Well... not exactly...

Italy here we come!!!

Well it's 8:04am CST with beautiful fresh snow falling and black ice from last nights snow/freezing rain storm. Our flight leaves for Chicago at 9:55am and we are still 40+ minutes away from the airport. 🤗 Let the fun begin! 25 of us checking bags, and getting through TSA. Haha. 

It's now 4:05pm and after the snow, the ice, and now the sun, the 10am departure, then 10:30am, 12:00pm, 12:15pm, 2:20pm, 4:00pm and finally 3:25pm we have all gone on our own separate ways out of the MSP airport. We all sat and watched at 3:20pm as our bags got loaded on to the plane to Chicago and we came to the realization we wouldn't be in Italy on January 11th, 2017. Tomorrow we are all coming back here from our separate parts of the cities to start this adventure over, and this time we are staying clear of Chicago. 😉

Today was just a good reminder that every morning when you wake up you don't know how the day is going to end. We are having fun with it though and will definitely enjoy telling this story one day.

Alemar Cheese Factory

Today it was -27 degrees outside as we traveled to near by Mankato to visit the national renowned cheese company, Alemar Cheese. We got a brief tour of their cheese factory, getting to watch the milk be churned. We the learned about renat, live enzymes and the entire cheese making process. Here at Alemar, they have their milk delivered each day from local organic dairy farm. They recycle they cheese waey by giving it to a local hog farmer to use as feed. They also use Thissel renat instead of animal or cow. A fun fact we learned was that the live cultures they use now live in the building, so if they were to move their cheese would taste different, We tried 3 different ages of their Camembert cheese, brie, beer cheese and new hard liquor cheese (we were some of the first people to ever taste it).

Neighbors Italian Restaurant (and how hard is it to trip up 23 students?)

Today we visited my favorite restaurant in the Southern Minnesota area, Neighbors Italian Kitchen. Here we had a preset course of caprese bruschetta, lasagna and tiramisu. It was a lovely meal. We heard from chef and sous chef about how they adapt the recipes from the original Italian recipes. For example, they don't use ricotta in their lasagna. 

---

We also had a challenge to see how observant we can be. We were told to describe what we see... we all focused in on the structure in front of us. No one noticed that all 23 of us were wearing grey Eat Italy! shirts or that there was carpet on the floor or screen projector down behind two students, etc. This exercise was meant to simulate what we will need to observe when traveling around Italy as well as giving us a new perspective on art that we mays see. 

Tasting!!!

We have all eating bell peppers, onion, olives, cheese and bread before, but have we tasted it?

Today between getting to know everyone and class procedure we had our very first tasting!

We started with bell peppers; green, red and then yellow. Some were sweeter, juicier, others more tart. Some the subtle hints of flavor you have like over looking when eating them before. Did you know that the only difference between these peppers is when they were picked?

Then it was on to bread. Four pieces of bread later and bread texture is never quite the same again. 

Onions. Spicy, sweet, burning strong and flavorful. Who knew onions had such a potent kick?

Cheese. Mild cheddar :P Gouda on the  other hand is strong, smooth and flavorful, absolutely to die for. Now some of my classmates describe the blue cheese as "barf" and "dirty gym socks". Though I'm not a fan of it on its own, I don't think I'd go as far as to call it "dirty gym sock" worthy. 

Olives were last and almost as surprising as the onions. California black olives are way better then Italy black olives (not nearly as salty, however the Italy ones fit the fingers better). Green olives. Why did I always think they are gross? So good! Kalamatas on the other hand were just as I remember too potent and slimy! :p

Eat Italy!

January 10th through January 26th the Eat Italy! J-Term class of Gustavus Adolphus College will be traveling to central and southern Italy. Class travels and information can be found by clicking here. 

We have spent 7 days around the southern MN area visiting local cheese factories, wineries and Italian restaurants as well as doing class activities including yoga and cooking.