The First Supper

As you can tell, we have begun our two weeks in Vatican City - the smallest sovereign state in the world. Since embarking on this trip, we've gotten a lot of "even Liechtenstein?"s, but surprisingly few exclamatory questions about the Vatican. I guess it's because it's chock full of stuff to see. As one of my friends put it, "I could spend two weeks just looking at the Sistine Chapel." We may just spend two weeks waiting on line to see the Sistine Chapel. Anyway, something we've been looking forward to is our rental apartment, as close to Vatican City as humanly possible. And the chance to cook.

Our first dinner was eaten in a sort of hunger panic, so taking pictures of it didn't work out so well. We started off with some never-before-seen large Carr's table crackers with gooey gorgonzola and a homemade Aperol spritz. Seriously, do they have these double-sized Carr's in America these days? We were amazed.

Obviously, one of the best things about having a kitchen is being able to keep and eat leftovers. Merlin had quite a bit of steak left and a bunch of the salad and carrots we made also survived. So, we would up being able to take pictures of our first supper-cum-lunch after all.

And what a lunch it was. Our kitchen not only has a gas stove, an oven, an immersion blender, a juicer, a coffee machine and a dishwasher. It also has a toaster. You can tell you're in Italy when your rental has more than just an electric stove and a microwave. (Though, we're not technically in Italy anymore. So, I guess Vatican Cityians have a respect for cooking as well).

My dinner was decidedly more "lenten" both in size and protein. It consisted of white fish and didn't survive the evening. So, a quick sautee of mushrooms became my sandwich meat.