Food

Bologna is a great place to eat. The tortellini (left) is a local delicacy, as well as mortadella and parma ham.

The IperCoop (Hyper-Coop) is this huge supermarket, owned by a co-operative, next door to the apartment building in which we live. Virtually all the fruit and vegetables are grown here in Italy, notably in Sicily. Most of the packaged food, from tinned tomatoes, to pasta, to mustards to milk are produced here as well. I don't see any corn syrup or starch added to any manufactured food. Today I bought Belgian endive, that was a first. There is an instore bakery, but all the bread is white and baguette tasting. They eschew preservatives here, and no GMOs are allowed. The Clementines I bought a few days ago go bad quickly because of pesticides being reduced or eliminated.

The food has a "deep" or rich taste. Today at the mall, i bought a slice of pizza. It was this wonderful thin crust pizza with scant cheese and fresh spinach and boiled egg slices on it. All for the price of 2.60 Euros (about $4.00). Everyone sits to eat here, and no one is wandering thru the mall eating as they do in Canada. They sit at nicely designed tables and decent chairs (not picnic style), with glasses of wine or beer, and cutlery and "eat" lunch. The businessmen near me ordered these wonderful salad plates (on real china) for about 7 Euros. Coffee is always cafe solo - tiny espressos served in china with a saucer-- about two gulps-worth. The custom here is to chase it with a 4 oz glass of sparkling water. So when you order cafe even at the counter in the food court, you get a china cup and saucer, plus a small glass of water alongside it. The exception is Macdonald's which serves caffè in tiny paper demi-tasses. Caffè solo is one shot and it's microscopic. Caffè doppio is a double espresso -- oh and you can get it decaffeinato. There is no bad coffee here. No one wanders about with a 12 oz paper cup of Timmy's or a Starbucks in a sleeve. I haven't seen any drivers drinking coffee behind the wheel.

Everyone drinks bottled water, though in rebellion I (Judy) drink tap water. Bottled water is cheap enough and people haul home 2 litre plastic bottles in six packs! Where all that plastic goes is a mystery.

Wine is good, and ranges from cheap (about 4 Euros) to way more. So far so good. We have tried to drink the local stuff (like Sangiovese di Romagna) and Italian beer (though there's a lot of foreign beer.) And I saw people just drinking Cava (sparkling wine) at the mall this evening, in glass flutes. Outdoor cafes abound and even with temperatures about 5+C, we see people downtown sitting outside, bundled up, and drinking and eating.