Academia Estruria

So, Josh surprised me by taking me to a night at an Italian cooking school for Valentine's day.  I wish we had gotten a picture of us, because we were a pair!  He was told we needed to have aprons, hair covers and closed-toed shoes.  So, the only things we could find were short little aprons worn by cleaning people here where it covers the front and the back down to your waist and has little ties on the sides.  And I was definitely sporting a hair net.  We walk in and the other two people in the class look like professional chefs with nice cooking aprons and chef's hats.  Besides feeling a bit out of place in the way we looked, it was an absolutely amazing night.  The instructor was an Italian man from Florence who looked exactly like the old chef on the movie Ratatouille.  He also had this sidekick who just fluttered around the room teaching us all kinds of cool things about Italian cooking and throwing out Italian words as if he was straight off the boat from Italy.  Come to find out, he is actually Costa Rican.  The whole class together made 3 different things, and I can't remember a single name because they were in Italian.  The first was a meat dish which in Spanish was called Roll of Meat.  It was layered pork, then ham, then beef then bacon with a mushroom tomato sauce thrown in the middle somewhere, rolled and baked.  The second was a delicious vegetarian tomato sauce with pasta.  It was the first fresh sauce I have ever made which was exciting.  The third was fried cheese balls which were AMAZING!!!  The best part was at the end of the night, everybody sat down to eat the food we'd prepared together.  We got to try proscuitto made right in his kitchen and everything.   It was really such a great experience, and Josh and I had so much fun together!  It was a great way to spend Valentine's Day.  And the best part was, he let us join his class for the night without charge!