Cured Meat, and more cured meat

This last week, we spent three days on a cured meat stage. From about 9am till 6pm, we traveled in and around Parma visiting different aspects of cured meat, mostly prosciutto. Each day was super exhausting, but tons of fun! I think I had my fill of cured pork for a while. At least for a few days! Imagine, all of the prosciutto and salame you can eat, with hunks of parmigiano thrown in for good measure, all washed down with endless Lambrusco. Three days in a row.

Above, a visit to a cured meat school for a demonstration of typical processes.
Preparing for a visit to an extensive pig farm...

Disgusting and something best forgotten if I ever want to really enjoy pork again!

Slightly higher fashion at an industrial prosciutto factory

A LOT of prosciutto!!!

Week 4

It's hard to believe, but this week has marked a month into the program. The time is really flying by, and I'm sure it will only continue to accelerate with the commencement of the "stages" this next week (a fancy word for field trips). The highlight of last week was a honey tasting class. A "nomadic beekeeper" came to conduct the class and taught us just about everything there is to know about bees and honey. I have a new respect the this remarkable insect! And a new respect for great honey! After learning about the how and why, we tasted 9 different honeys that were beautifully prepared, sourced from all over Italy. My favorites were the lavender, dandelion, and sunflower honeys.


We tasted the honeys off of an art palette, because according to the "bee guy", honey is art. We were then instructed to coat the inside of the wine glasses filled with honey using the spoon to release the varying aromas. Practical and beautiful!


By the end of the class all of the girls were swooning. This guy had amazing passion for bees and honey. It was incredibly inspiring.

What I learned

I just thought that I would would share the most interesting thing that I learned this week, mostly because I need a distraction from the paper that I am half finished writing. In Food Technology, we started applying everything we have been learning about bacteria, spores, fungus, and food preservation to some concrete products. The class this week was on dairy.

There is a unique situation in Italy in that about 85% of the county in mountainous so there is relatively little room for grazing. Therefore, most dairy cows are raised in barns, and are fed silage (corn that has been held and fermented in silos). But there is a certain bacterial spore that is present in silage and when it is feed to the cows the spores travel to the mammary glands and are then present in the milk. When the milk is made into cheese, during the cheese making process, the spores are activated and while the cheese is aging, the active bacteria release gasses that create little holes throughout the cheese and can sometimes cause a wheel of cheese to blow-up. (I would like to see this happen!) The bacteria are harmless, and very interesting. However, the cows that produce the milk for Parmigiano Reggiano are not allowed to eat silage, therefore no spores in the cheese, and no holes (or "eyes" in industry terms). The very similar cheese, Grana Padano, is made from silage milk, but a natural enzyme is added during the cheese making process to keep the spores dormant. Grana Padano very similar but slightly cheaper than Parmigiano and is typically what you are served at Italian restaurant in the guise of Parmigiano. So next time you are buying real Parmigiano, here is one more reason to beleive that it is in fact the king of cheeses.

Week 3 has been busy, and thanks to a literature paper due Monday, it is starting to feel a bit like real school. There's nothing too exciting to write about, other than the continuation of the great time I'm having! Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately, I am falling more and more into the lifestyle here. Just two examples, I have found it increasingly difficult to be on time to things and dinner time has been moving later and later. Che una bella vita!

I took some pictures around Colorno this week. Amazingly, we had 2 sunny days in a row and I finaly saw a beautiful sunset.


However, the sunny days were followed by some of the thickest fog I have ever seen. I'm afraid this is more the norm. These were taken around the school building at 5 in the afternoon.

Weekend

This past weekend, I went with a small group of friends to Bologna (one of my favorite cities) to check out an art event. The train ride is about 1 hour, so we caught the Saturday night gallery crawl and afterward enjoyed some really great music in a small hot spot, then made it back to Parma by about 2 am.
And while there, I found my namesake!


And other big happenings, last Thursday was sunny! This pic was taken out of a window of the classroom were I spend most of my days, looking out over Colorno and the previously engorged river.

More on the real reason I am here

So far, after 8 days of school, here are a few of the classes I have had: Italian literature, Italian language, Food Technology (mostly on preservation techniques and the chemistry and biology behind them), and my two favorites, Cheese tasting, and "The sense of smell." In cheese tasting, a professional cheese taster led us through the process of analyzing the qualities of cheese and quite obsessively had us fill out professional evaluation forms. We examined four cheeses, and somehow we are supposed to be able to sense 20 different scents in each cheese. I can maybe detect 3 or 4, but animal hair and dark chocolate are a little out of reach for me at this time. Regardless, the cheese was tasty, and I learned to appreciate Taleggio, a cheese with which I previously could not get past the similarity to smelly feet. And in "The sense of smell," after a round of blind smelling of essential oils from everything from sandalwood to flint to papaya, I was awarded the "Golden Nose." Apparently I have a good sniffer!
Another big event is the near flooding of the Parma River, which runs right through Colorno and borders one side of the school. Late last night as a group of us arrived back from an inaguration gathering in Parma, a sizable group of spectators were gathered around the ancient bridge that connects the two sides of the town. The normally very low river was about 1 1/2 feet from breaching the barier walls. So we took pictures and went to bed hoping to not wake up swimming in the morning. Being Colorno, this was very exciting! (If I have not yet mentioned, Colorno is a TINY town with not much going on!)

I survived...

the post office. The Permesso di Soggiorno is now MINE!!!!!! (or at least the temporary one, as I will not get the actual card until the goverment decides it wants to send it to me. 3 months, 5 months, who knows) I have completed the first week of classes, and I am ready for more.