My Chief Recipe Taster and I are now nearly three months into the great adventure called, “Let’s Pack Up Everything We Own and Move to a Country Where We Don’t Speak the Language,” and I am finally writing this from our own space, rather than an Airbnb. Let me tell you, no matter how nice a rental, there is no place like (your own) home, where you can accumulate condiments and spices with abandon.
I’m thrilled to be able to fill the cupboards, but my relief at being in our apartment is much greater than that. We’ve been nomadic since August, soaking up time with friends and family before heading to Italy, where we went from rental to rental. Now that we’re in our own space—where we plan to be in for the next few years—we’re both coming to grips with how stressful the last few months have been.
You might wonder why we feel that way. Moving to Italy is a dream for many people, and it was—still is!—for me, too. But let me be real for a minute: it isn’t all Under The Tuscan Sun. When I pictured my Chief Recipe Taster and I moving to Rome, I knew it would be difficult and that the learning curve would be steep. But truth be told, I also pictured us always being in the sun, laughing and drinking wine and just being really happy all of the time. There has been a fair amount of laughing and happy and wine drinking and a LOT of sun (until the start of November), but it’s also been hard to start a new life, in a new city, with new jobs, in a country where we know almost no one and don’t really speak the language.
Food remains a way to ground ourselves and to explore our new city, whether that’s going to new restaurants or simply navigating the grocery store. We’re trying to find the middle ground between what we know and what exists, retrofitting recipes we know and love with what’s available; learning new ingredients and ways of buying and preparing food. Recent experiments have included using piadina flatbreads as tortillas and sampling every flavor of stuffed gnocchi we can find. Befitting my interest in all things culinary, my knowledge of Italian food words is far larger the rest of my vocabulary.
It will take time to bring it all together, to really make a life for ourselves that feels exciting but comfortable. We’re still assembling the ingredients, but I’m confident that this is one experiment that will turn out deliciously.
