My First Supper

So I’m very lucky in that I have some terrific neighbors.  A couple from school who are also new this year live just a few steps away.  They are super nice and have become great friends.  It’s definitely been an easier transition having wonderful people so close.

A few times in the past few weeks they’ve had me over for dinner.  So I decided it was time to reciprocate so I invited them over for supper last Tuesday. 

Yikes!  What was I to make?  A recipe I knew offhand with ingredients I could get in Italy?  This was not a task to be taken lightly.

I decided to do a stir fry.  How hard could that be?  Vegetables, meat, rice and sauce.  Easy right?  Well, let me tell you…..

Materials all out and ready to set to work to cook a great stir fry.

Table set and ready for guests.  Yes I only have 2 placemats

so a dish towel was the third lol.

The vegetable part was easy.  It was no effort to find carrots, broccoli, beans, peppers, onions and mushrooms at my local grocery store.  I would’ve loved some snap peas, but that was pushing things too far to expect that. ;)

The meat part was fairly easy as well.  Although I could not read the labels to tell what kind of meat I was buying (and there’s no service on my phone in the grocery store so I couldn’t even Google translate while I was there) I could visually find meat that was similar to what I knew.

Fridge stocked with all the essentials.

Rice – that was a whole other process.  Did you know that there are like a million kinds of rice here? Well, there are!  Original, thaibonnet, insalata, etc. etc. etc.  This is where I called a friend.  Not really, since I couldn’t but I did pathetically ask one of my teaching partners and she picked up a box for me on her break.  Again, super grateful for the help of others at the school here. 

Sauce – this was the part that gave me the most anxiety.  However, I was shocked at the simplicity (although the price I paid was worth it but showed it’s a commodity) of finding some sauce.  In the Mexican/Asian food area, I found Thai Wok sauce.  Worked out perfectly, added lots of flavour and tasted amazing! 

Onions prepped.

Meat cooking.

Rice boiling.

Sauce, veggies and meat together. Complete!

It was tricky getting used to the burners as I have gas burners so the heat variation varies.  However I was able to get the meal successfully cooked and it tasted awesome! (If I do say so myself lol)  Actually my dinner friends said it was great too. Yay! 

Tadah!!

Cheers!

Now I know I have a meal in my tool kit for another time.   

The leftovers tasted amazing tonight too! ;)

First dinner part in Italy: Check!!