Day 2: Venice

Typical Italian breakfast

On the second day of our vacation, we slept in until about 8:00 am and then went to breakfast in the back garden of our hotel, Casa Rezzonico.  For those of you who may not know, Italian breakfast is nothing like American breakfast.  Rather than eggs and bacon, it is much lighter fare such as yogurt, croissants, fruit, prosciutto and cheese, or pastries. 

One view of the back garden at Casa Rezzonico

When reading some reviews online, we realized that the church or "library" from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade took place at San Barnabas Church.  According to the map, the church should be right around the corner....  so after breakfast we took off in search of the famous church where one of our favorite old-school movies took place.  We managed to get all turned around...big surprise! We could not figure out where in the world this church could possibly be...  We broke out the map and tried our best to re-navigate toward San Barnabas.  Eventually we ended up circling around and found Campo San Barnabas....RIGHT next door to our hotel, but in the opposite direction than we originally headed.  Ooops.  It is even funnier that we had walked through this campo at least six times already and by this church several times, but I guess we never took a good, hard look at it straight on (we were almost always walking into the square from behind it...) , and once we looked at it in a new light, we realized that this was the church from the movie!  We laughed so hard that we had totally missed this detail every time we saw it before and that we had just spent over an hour tracking down a church that was 100 meters (Like that metric touch?)  from our hotel! It was open so we entered the church, but it is now used to display an art exhibit on Leonardo Da Vinci.  Very interesting to me, but there was a hefty price tag to enter, so we chose not to.  Cool connection though!   

Where "X" marks the spot in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade...

Typical narrow walkway in Venice

Speaking of wrong turns, this may a good time to discuss navigation within the island of historic Venice.  First of all, let me say that maps should only be used "loosely" in Italy- especially Venice.  Venice is comprised of one main Grand Canal and several smaller offshoots-smaller canals. These are the main thoroughfares.  If you are not on a boat, you need to take to the walkways of Venice.  There are no typical streets or cars or land buses on the island.  These narrow alleys wind all over Venice- around buildings, around water, around anything.  None of them are straight.  Many of them are not even marked.  On a map, it may appear that you come to a crossroads where you can either go right or left, but when you get to that actual crossroads, it is more like your choices are to continue straight or veer to the right.  So we just learned that you have to just choose one.  You will most likely be faced with this decision about 30 times in a typical walk which leaves a lot of room for error.  To complicate things, you can usually not get a bearing of where you are located based on landmarks (if you are unfamiliar with the area as we were), because you are sandwiched between tall buildings and cannot really see out in the area around you.  8 times out of 10, you will "choose poorly" (Get it??) and end up on a completely different part of the island than you originally intended. However, the good news is that you are on a small island.  You can only go so far. We quickly learned to take this lightly and just enjoy getting lost and finding our way back.  It became a sort of an adventure.  We felt very safe in Venice everywhere we went- even in the back alleys as long as we were together.  However, as a single female, I would not be caught in these skinny walkways alone at night.  

Our next step was purchasing a day (12 hour) pass for the vaporetto, or water bus.  In hindsight, we wish we had purchased the three day pas to begin with, as then we could have just hopped on and off the vaporetto to get here or there without getting so lost. It is good to know that there are no direct walkaways immediately adjacent or following the Grand Canal.  You will have to enter the maze that is Venice and it will take a lot longer than you think.  Also, there are only four bridges that cross the main canal so you have to find your way to the next closest bridge to cross- if you can find it... This is where vaporetto pass comes in handy. No matter where you are, you can almost always find a stop along the Grand Canal. Let me add that the vaporetto can be quite pricey, but it is very worthwhile if your time is limited in anyway or if you want to venture out from the main island at all. A single-use vaporetto pass- good for 90 minutes or one trip- is  €7.  However, if you plan to be around and sight-see for at least one day, I recommend that you buy a pass, saving you a chunk of money and time.  See this sight for a list of the current prices, which by the way were raised the very day we arrived in Venice...go figure! We wanted to have free reign of the island that day and even leave the main island, so we each bought a 12 hour unlimited pass for  €12 each. 


Watch this great video of our ride along the Grand Canal from the vaporetto bus... 

We hopped on the vaporetto and headed for St. Mark's Square once more.  There Sam found his hat.  And it was another perfect picture opportunity. 

Next we jumped a vaporetto to the island of Murano- a smaller island of Venice.  There are several, but Murano is well-known for its Venetian glass.  We decided to see some glass-blowing in action.  It was a fun 25 minute boat ride out there for a fairly short (and HOT) glass blowing demonstration, but it was something different to do.

Venetian Glass Blowing Demonstration

Sam enjoying Murano

Church of Santa Maria e Donato

The island of Murano was small and somewhat uneventful, but did we take a stroll into the Church of Santa Maria e Donato. With that, we decided to head back to the historic district, find our way back to the hotel and find some grub. 

More Murano

Next we took the vaporetto back to the Ferrovia stop by the Saint Lucia train station. We stopped in and bought our train tickets for the following day to Monterosso al Mare.  This was our first time using the self-service machines, but were glad to discover that it is pretty easy (as long as you find one in working order) and they take American credit (non chip and pin) cards just fine.  For more info on how to do this, I found this site particularly helpful.  After buying our train tickets for the next day, we ventured towards home and stopped at a Snack Bar.  Unfortunately, I did not write down the cross street, but it was somewhere on the corner of Calle de Mezzo near San Polo.  There are several restaurants called "Snack Bar" throughout all Italian cities, and most of them I would not recommend, but this one was OK. There are the type of places that several pre-made sandwiches, pizza, and pasta. You pick out what you want and then reheat it for you.  We chose to sit and relax, while others get it to go.  This one was quite nice. Sam chose to get a ricotta and spinach cannelloni, while I chose just a simple pasta pomodoro (with tomato sauce). 

It was at this restaurant that we found ourselves in a conversation with other Americans- truck drivers in town from Georgia.  They had just come from Milan.  They had a bit too much to drink and invited us to tag along with them to St. Mark's Square. Although we were honored by their invitation, we politely declined and continued on our way to our hotel. Or so we thought...  We stopped by a second snack bar along the way for some very mediocre gelato.  Sam got banana. I had chocolate. We ended up getting completely lost once again- ended up somewhere in the area known as San Polo.  Here we found our very first grocery market.  We were in love!  In Italy there is almost a complete absence of any commercialism-no Home Depot, no Wal-Mart, no large grocery chains, and we only saw one ritzy McDonald's and a Burger King awkwardly crammed into some historical buildings all throughout Italy.  It felt so good not to have to rely on these franchises and just get back to basics.  This was just a family-owned market, stocked with the freshest ingredients.  We wandered through the store and bought a couple huge 1.5 liter bottles of water.  (We were seriously dehydrated.) We explored the market and bought some random items to snack on during our train trip in the morning.  We were amazed by this boxed wine that looked like a giant juice box, so we had to buy it.  And note this boxed wine only cost €3 (not €10)!

Check out the price for THREE balls of fresh mozzarella!  Outstanding! 

I think Sam's favorite part of the whole trip were the grocery stores! 

We headed home and took a one hour break in the blessed air-conditioning of our hotel room. Then we sat on the back patio of the hotel and drank some wine in the nice, cool shade. It was so hot, so Sam was desperate to find a linen shirt.  The guy at the front desk of our hotel recommended a department store near the Rialto.  The store is called "COIN". We thought we would check it out after our visit to the Rialto Bridge.

Before we embarked for the Rialto, we were really in need of our own multi-tool/pocket knife.  We figured the corkscrew would be handy for opening wine and the knife could be used to cut bread and cheese when we snacked.  We found a tiny hole-in-the-wall hardware store just by our hotel in Campo Santa Margherita and bought one after much sign language due to an obvious lack in communication. It was an awesome cultural experience!

The Rialto Bridge

The Accademia Bridge

We took the vaporetto (using our 12 hour pass) to the Rialto stop, wandered along the insanely-packed shops of the bridge where I bought my one and only souvenir- a beautiful blue and white beaded bracelet.  We then continued around the corner into a very ritzy shopping area (totally NOT us), but we eventually found COIN.  They had a couple linen shirts, but as I suspected they were way more than we are used to spending on clothing, so we opted out.  Sam was disappointed, but now had made it his mission to find a linen shirt sometime on vacation.  While we circled stores on this quest we somehow ended all the way back at St.Mark's Square again- funny how this happens! We then walked back to the Accademia Bridge. From here, we hopped on the vaporetto down to the Ferrovia stop near the mouth of the "fish" (Look at a map of Venice here.)  We crossed the Scalzi bridge and immediately came across Bar Pizzeria Vittoria.  We had passed it a couple times prior and it just looked inviting so we thought we would give it a try. It has nice sturdy wooden booths outside.  We sat, each order a glass of wine and split a margherita pizza. The food and service were both fine- nothing spectacular, but definitely not bad.  See the full review here.  

Bar Pizzeria Vittoria

Margherita Pizza

We then hopped back on the vaporetto (Thank goodness for that day pass!) and rode it all the way down the canal, awaiting sunset!  We eventually circled back to our stop.  We once again (don't judge) grabbed a gelato at Il Doge- Sam had the Italian wedding cake, and I had the Crema, similar to a custard flavor. I just found this awesome website that decodes Italian gelato flavors!  If only I had read this before we left!  We were always just guessing...  

Finally back at our hotel, we indulged in our € 3 wine in a juice box, and it was much better than the selection from the night before!  

Tune in tomorrow for more adventures when we take one last look at Venice and then head for the beach! 

Breakfast Kolaches: Dough stuffed with goodness!

I love anything stuffed inside a carbohydrate shell.  It may not be good for me, but it certainly is delicious.  My husband taught me how to make awesome cabbage burgers. I always loved growing up in Cleveland surrounded delicious Polish food like pierogies.  I am always surprised how few people know what these delectable pockets of goodness entail!  Last year, Sam and I even used our homemade pasta maker to make our very own pierogies...delicoius!  However, all of these tasty treats will have to wait until a later post.  Today I will focus on a new-found love- kolaches!

Moving back to the midwest, made it possible for me to finally attend The McDonald Family Christmas, which I have always loved.  I hadn't been in many (7 years)- yikes! Flights from Colorado were always astronomical at that time of the year.  It is always a festival full of aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents, games, wine, beer, and food. LOTS of food!  This year was also a bit different for me. I was now the oldest cousin of 13, and at least 12 years older than many of my first cousins, I was in for a surprise.  My last family holiday celebration included a multitude of little munchkins running around the basement or swooning over the presents under the tree.  Now all of my "little" cousins had suddenly grown up, are in college, and well...were giving myself and my sisters some competition when it came to beer pong, Dance Revolution, and well...wine. Lots of it.

One of the other new things I discovered while in Indianapolis for this family event, was the kolache.  In short- dough stuffed with goodness.  In Indy there is even a place that served up a variety of these delectable carb-coma- inducing meals- The Kolache Factory. We would order them for breakfast one morning and bring them back to the house to serve the masses.  Kolaches can have just about any filling you could desire: fruit, cream cheese, eggs and sausage, ham and Swiss, pepperoni and mozzerella, potato...I even recently read about someone taking their Thanksgiving leftovers and stuffing it into a kolache.  Pretty much anything goes!

When Sam and I saw these at Christmas, we both remarked, "Hey- we can make these!" And so I did.

As I mentioned, you can pretty much choose any filling you want that sound good to you.  I opted for a breakfast blend this time because we ran out of breakfast burritos, and we need something quick to reheat for breakfast on weekday mornings. I chose to do egg, cheese, and bacon, although sausage was tempting too. I had some leftover onions and red peppers in the fridge from BBQ Chicken Wraps and wanted to use them before they want bad, so I sauteed them and threw them into the egg mixture.

Ingredients: 

2 cans Pillsbury Buttermilk Biscuits

OR 

16 Rhode's frozen rolls, thawed and risen

1 bag of Shredded Cheese

1 bag frozen Shredded Hash Browns

1 package of Cooked Bacon

8 Scrambled Eggs

1 Egg for top of Biscuits

Any assorted, sauteed veggies you have on hand that you would like to include

First, cook your bacon.  Here is a trick that we use all the time that very few people know about: Use your oven to cook the bacon. It is super easy and use foil on the cookie sheet to catch the grease.  Set the oven at 400 degrees and cook for 20 minutes. 

Next cook your hash browns. 

Scramble your eggs.  I added the sauteed veggies. 

Next, let the bacon cool from the oven. Then crumble. 

 Whisk an egg in a bowl with about a tablespoon of water.  Set aside for later. 

Roll out each biscuit or Rhodes roll with a rolling pin or glass. Roll until it is flat. 

On the rolled-out dough, place a small scoop of the egg mixture, some potatoes, bacon, and then cheese. (I always put too much in the first few and then learn my lesson.) Make sure all fillings are room temperature! 

Carefully fold up the sides one at a time, pinching the dough together. 

Then flip the kolache over and put pinched-side down on a well-greased cookie sheet. Now, brush the top of each pocket with the egg and water mixture.  This will give them a nice golden color when they come out of the oven. 

Sprinkle a little salt and pepper on each of the pastries. 

Put in the oven and cook at cook at 425 degrees for 8 to 10 minutes. Every oven varies so I would check at 8 and if they aren't brown yet wait and check again until they are done.

We ate these for breakfast for the past two days and still had plenty left to freeze for later.  I put them in individual Ziplock baggies and stuck them in the freezer.  To reheat, pop them in the microwave for about 30 seconds or until warm. 

Maybe next time, I will try another filling and make some for dinner!   

For my Colorado and Ohio peeps: Upon further inspection, I found that there are Kolache Factory locations also in Lakewood, Colorado (IF I had only known....) and in Cincinnati, Ohio!  Currently the closest to me is in Brentwood, MO.... Maybe my cousin Maddy can pick me one up! 

Breakfast Burritos Bonanza

One of my all-time favorite indulgences are breakfast burritos.  I am talking a REAL breakfast burrito. For those of you not lucky enough to partake in one of these delectable meals, a breakfast burrito might contain savory ingredients such as eggs, your choice of breakfast meats- sausage, bacon, ham, or the ever-popular chorizo, potatoes, cheese, and if you really want to go all out, include salsa, sour cream, beans, whatever your heart desires!  However, let me clarify that a real breakfast burrito requires green chili. This is a must.

In Colorado,one can find an authentic Mexican place selling savory breakfast burritos in almost every neighborhood of town or even from a cart.  They used to even deliver to our school. $2 bucks cash and you had yourself the most yummy breakfast creation known to man.  I enjoyed them more than I would like to admit.  However, now that I am back in the midwest, I am lucky if anyone knows what a breakfast burrito is or if they do, it is an oddity sold by the local fast food joints.  I am ashamed to say that sometimes I would even break down and get a paltry fast food replacement, but it is no comparison to the real thing.  Taco John's, McDonald's, even Qdoba has nothing on the genuine breakfast burrito.

So I have been majorly craving these, but also looking for a way to save a few bucks.  We needed an easy meal that we can grab and run on frantic work mornings, so I decided to make a big batch of breakfast burritos and freeze them.  Much to my dismay, this batch does not have green chili. I know, I know- did someone say "hypocrite"?  Oh well, they are still really darn good and the next time we make green chili, I am storing away some extra just for this purpose. I just didn't have the time or energy to take on both of these projects today.

*Makes about 16 burritos
Ingredients:
1 dozen eggs
1/2 onion- chopped
1/2 green pepper- chopped
Fresh cilantro (optional)
1 can black beans (drained and rinsed)
1 lb. turkey breakfast sausage (You can substitute any meat you choose)
1 bag shredded cheese
1 bag of frozen shredded potatoes
Garlic salt
Black pepper
Salsa or sour cream to taste

Directions: 
Start by browning the meat.

I then chopped the onion, green pepper, and eventually the cilantro.  (I bought cilantro for dinner the other night.  I inevitably always have WAY too much cilantro and it goes to waste.  I thought this was the perfect way to use some more of it up.)

Next, I added the chopped veggies and the black beans to the meat mixture and sauteed.

I then used a large pan to scramble all the eggs at once. I like to add black pepper and garlic salt to my eggs. I also added about a 1/2 cup of water to the mixture to give the eggs a little more fluff. Continue to stir the eggs until they scramble and then remove from the heat.

I also cooked 1 bag of frozen shredded potatoes.

Now it is time for burrito construction.  I used medium-sized sheets of aluminum foil, placing one tortilla on the foil, and then I made a sort of assembly line. I placed each ingredient in the tortilla one at a time.  I scooped the eggs on first, then potatoes, then the meat/veggie/bean mixture. Sprinkle cheese over the top of each burrito. 

Top with salsa and then roll in foil. 

Place the burritos in the freezer.  Now you have a quick breakfast, ready to be reheated and eaten on the go.  Be sure to remove foil before reheating. Enjoy! 

Mini Egg Frittatas

So I think it is due time for a recipe.  I came across these on Pinterest awhile back and gave them a try.  Hubby seems to like them, as they are steadily disappearing from my freezer. I usually make them on the weekend and then freeze individually. It is a great way to get a protein-rich breakfast on the go.  I have made a couple different varieties and you can pretty much fill them with whatever veggies, meats, and cheeses you desire! 

*Makes approximately 12-16 Mini Frittatas

Ingredients: 

8 eggs

1/2 cup of skim milk

teaspoon salt

(I used dashes of pepper and garlic salt too.)

1 cup shredded cheese (You pick what kind!) 

Assorted mix-ins such as chopped veggies or meats

The first time I made these I simply used what I had in the fridge: leftover sliced cold-cut ham, chopped broccoli florets, sliced carrots, chopped onions, and shredded Swiss cheese.  


The second time I made them I used shredded pepper jack cheese, chopped onions, chopped green pepper, 1 small can of diced green chilies, and 1 can of Rotel tomatoes.  (This batch turned out much more moist and then resulted in "wetter" eggs when defrosted.) 


 Heat your oven to 350º F. 


Chop any veggies or meat that you plan to add to your frittatas. I chose to sautee the vegetables lightly, however you could add them fresh.  It is your choice. 


Either coat a 12-cup muffin pan with nonstick cooking spray, or I would recommend using the metal muffin-cup liners, as the frittatas would be much easier to remove.  *However, this means you would have to remove the metal liner before reheating in the microwave when ready to eat. 


Whisk together the eggs, milk, salt, and any other desired seasonings in a medium bowl, then evenly distribute the egg mixture among the muffin cups.


Add about 2 tablespoons of mix-ins to each cup.  Then add cheese to each cup.


Bake the frittatas until they are puffy and the edges are golden brown, about 20 to 25 minutes. (If necessary, run a butter knife around the edge of each one to loosen them before removing them from the pan.)


I then allow them to cool. I must add that the frittatas do "deflate" slightly after taking them out of the oven so they end up being much smaller servings than you think.  I have found that two makes an ample breakfast for one.  If you can find one of those pans that make the giant cupcakes this might work beautifully for the perfect-sized frittata. 


After cooling, place frittatas one-by-one in a sandwich bag.  I stash them in the freezer.  To reheat, I simply remove the metal liner if necessary, place it in a bowl, and microwave anywhere from 1 to 2 minutes.  I then like to mush mine up with a fork!