It is I, Lego Man! And I am getting sleepy…so very, very sleepy. Do you know why?
There is a large time difference between Italy and America. When you are eating lunch, I am almost ready to go to bed for the night. Lots of you have traveled before, to see your families and grandparents who live all over the world. Do you remember there being something called a time change, when you made those trips? If not, do you remember being really sleepy for the first few days? This is sometimes called jet lag. It just means that your body is getting used to doing things at a much different time of the day.
Lego Man deeply values his beauty sleep (it is so hard to maintain this mustard-hued complexion!) therefore Lego Man has been napping a lot. Ginny is not as sleepy as I am, and is really excited to be here, so she has left me in the hotel to rest while she goes out to explore the area around Reggio Emilia. I think she drinks entirely too much coffee. (And there is an awful lot of coffee in this country.)
Earlier today, one of the first places she decided to go to was a giornalaio, a newsstand, so that she could buy the day’s newspaper. After that, she went to a paninoteca ambulante to buy a hot sandwich. (Paninoteca ambulante means a sandwich bar on wheels. It’s a food cart, basically.) Have any of you ever tasted a panino before? Panini are a type of simple Italian sandwich; they are very popular, even in America, and are almost never alike. Ginny got a pomodoro, which is kind of like a grilled cheese…except with basil, olive oil, tomato and mozzarella. I hear you are all gourmet cooks, and that fresh basil is one of your very favorite secret ingredients—along with paprika and cinnamon. Panini are very delicious, in Lego Man’s humble opinion. You can put pretty much anything, apart from a hippopotamus, onto panini bread and it will taste delicious.
After Ginny ate at the paninoteca, she went to a gelateria. Do you know what gelato is? It is Italian ice cream, and it is also one of Lego Man’s favorite things. (Ginny made sure to bring Lego Man back a small cone of his own.) Gelato tastes different than regular ice cream. Can you guess why? There is one big difference between the ingredients for ice cream and gelato. Ice cream uses cream and milk. Gelato does not; gelato uses lots of egg yolks, as well as custard. Do you remember some of the investigations we did about eggs last month—and the day that we cracked open the eggs from the supermarket, and compared them to the eggs that had come from Martha’s Bantam hens? Do you remember our taste test, after we cooked a store egg and a Martha egg? So can you imagine what a cup of gelato, mixed up with fresh egg yolks, might taste like? It is so good. Gelato uses a lot of egg yolk as well as fresh fruit, and it’s a bit less sugary than ice cream. Gelaterias are all over the place in Italy, and gelato really does not cost very much. The cases are always a rainbow of color choices, and there are often complicated flavors; some gelato chefs think of their work as an art, and they create flavor combinations you might not think of—like honeydew melon mixed with raspberry and mint. Or honey, chocolate and lilac. Sometimes, walking into a gelateria feels a bit like walking into Mr. Wonka’s workshop. You kind of have to see it and taste it to believe it.
Hey, have you guys finished Charlie and The Chocolate Factory yet? I heard about your secret plans to make a little Augustus Gloop out of Popsicle sticks and paper, and then stuff him into the tubes at the cocoa lake in the water table…that is AWESOME.
Today is Sunday, so the preschools aren’t open yet. After Ginny and some new friends did lots and lots of walking around, they took a bus into the hills surrounding the town—so that they could have lunch and see a balsamic vinegar factory. You might remember the word vinegar from when we set off some baking soda volcanoes in the water table. Balsamic vinegar is actually much different from white vinegar, which is the kind that was used for your volcanoes. Both types of vinegar are usually Italian, but balsamic can sometimes be sweet…whereas white is almost always sour, sometimes even used for cleaning or bleaching. (Do you remember talking about your taste buds, and how taste buds develop? A spoonful of white vinegar would make you all make a sour face.) Balsamic is used for cooking, and is often aged for years upon years…not just mixed up in some giant factory vat, the way that white is. Some balsamic vinegar are mixed up in giant factory vats, but they’re not especially good.The factory that Ginny and Lego Man toured today is one where the vinegar is allowed to sit and ferment for years after years…and is stored in little wooden barrels (or “casks”) so that the vinegar can absorb some of the flavor from the wood of the tree that was made to use the cask. This vinegar factory likes to use casks made out of cherry wood, chestnut wood, juniper wood and oak wood. The factory owners also told us that if you’re going to cook with high quality (that means good, old and generally awesome) balsamic vinaigrette, it’s VERY important not to cook with high quality olive oil. (Lego Man hears that you use lots of olive oil in your cooking projects. Delicious. Olive oil is one of Lego Man’s other favorite-est things.) You either want to cook mixing a very old balsamic with some not-so-old olive oil, or you want to cook mixing some not-so-old balsamic with some very old olive oil. Both olive oil and balsamic vinaigrette are usually stored in a dark place with a raised roof, while they age, which lets them soak up the heat in the summer—and the cold in the winter.
We’ll start visiting the preschools tomorrow. Lego Man and Ginny aren’t allowed to take photographs inside of the preschool, but we will try to draw you pictures of anything interesting that we might see. I don’t know how much time we will have to write you, because the days at the preschool are supposed to be pretty busy and long. But we’re really going to try.
As an extra, here are some photographs of stone lions that we passed in one of the town’s big squares. The children of Reggio Emilia love these lions so much that they’ve written stories and drawn pictures about them; they like to climb on the lions, sometimes pretending to ride on them. Also, here’s a picture of the playground just next to the hotel where Ginny and I are staying; there’s a little train that children can ride without a grownup’s help. How cool is that? Arrivederci!
Love,
LEGO MAN (and Ginny)
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