I’m telling the truth when I say I’m leaving Italy with some “pasta babies” located on the thighs, hips, love handles and even one cling­ing around my mid-section. I’m relying on the heat and walking in Morocco to abort all the “pasta babies”.

I first started growing my pasta babies during our month visit in Lanciano which meant eating at a buffet for 99% of the meals, and I think we all know what buffet eating leads too. My pasta baby situ­ation only got worse when Chris and I headed to north­ern Italy to visit my dear friend Christine who is cur­rently study­ing abroad. Her uni­ver­sity program has her living in three dif­fer­ent coun­tries this year:  France, Italy and Spain. We were lucky enough to catch her in Piacenza, Italy.

Christine....and we are the apples in her eyes.

I met Christine 10 years ago, in Lanciano Italy, on my first day of Grade 10. We were sitting next to each other at the back of the bus.  I had just turned around from waving goodbye to my parents and brother Geoff and was trying to hold back tears from the fright of being alone in board­ing school, when Christine tapped me on the shoulder and asked if I had a pen and paper. With that, our lifelong friend­ship began.

Piacenza is a 45-minute train ride from Milano. 95% of the pop­u­la­tion own and ride cruiser bicycles, nearly all of them are equipped with baskets and/or saddle bags. It is not an uncom­mon site to see people, of all ages, biking home with their basket full of the parmag­giano and fresh veget­ables from the market.

Bikes and markets are the two main ingredi­ents of Piacenza.

Bicycles are Piacenza.

Piacenza has many markets that set-up in the main piazza through­out the week.

The town centre has a youth­ful, vibrant energy even though the build­ings and streets are thou­sands of years old. The main piazza is a won­der­ful piece of archi­tec­ture. The facade of the main build­ing has numer­ous arches. If you look closely at the detail, each design is entirely unique. The main basilica is modest com­pared to most with a facade made of brick, but inside its high vaulted ceil­ings with dark oil paint­ings hold a beauty that we new world people can never get enough of.

The main build­ing in the central piazza of Piacenza, Italy.

One of the basilicas found in Piacenza, Italy. Almost every fourth build­ing is a church.

Chris and Christine waiting for the train. We enjoyed a day trip to Parma, Italy.

Every day in Piacenza, we woke-up around 11:00, made mul­tiple espresso’s and a lux­uri­ous break­fast con­sist­ing of Italian eggs (which by the way have the most incred­ibly rich tasting yokes I’ve ever tasted in my life.  Apparently some chefs will refuse to make a recipe if it calls for Italian eggs and they can’t get any!) Anyways for break­fast we also enjoyed yogurt, toma­toes, apples, oranges and bread. We talked for hours. Went on casual walks and almost daily we did grocery runs, for food was our main objective.

Christine loves cooking and we love eating. Every lunch and dinner Christine, with a little bit of support from us and  Jamie (the guy who wrote the fant­astic cook book she used for at least 10 of the meals we ate) would create meals that made our toes dance with hap­pi­ness and our bellies swell with the pride of a king. Without any exag­ger­a­tion, every lunch and dinner con­tained garlic, basil, olive oil, wine, salt, pepper and toma­toes. 95% of the time the base of the meal was pasta: penne, tor­tellini and lin­guini. The pure rich flavour of the pasta alone would be hard to match with brands bought in Safeway. The other 5% of the time we ate the most mouth water­ing home-made pizza.

We ate mounds of freshly grated parmag­giano everyday.

Home-made Italian pizza, made in Italy with Italian ingredi­ents by Christine.

Everything was from scratch, even the dough. Christine’s sore shoulders from the relent­less knead­ing can attest to this. This fla­vour­ful dough was made with flour #zero which is spe­cially pro­duced for pizza and may be hard to find in regular grocery stores in Canada, so head to your nearest “Little Italia”. Each pizza had simple and few top­pings. I believe this helped us appre­ci­ate the texture and taste of each bite. I hope these photos give your belly the slight­est ping of hunger, for none of them do Christine’s fant­astic, tasty cooking the justice it deserves.