Food, Grocery shopping, and Eating out

I honestly haven’t eaten out too much since I’ve been here. I’ve been trying to be frugal by eating breakfast and most dinners at home. I do typically eat lunch at school and it’s relatively inexpensive, simple, and good.
I have attempted to eat out a couple of times. Unfortunately, I think I’ve either never noticed or failed to remember that Italians have a very particular eating schedule. This is beyond the “everyone eats dinner late” issue.
One my first Sunday here, I woke up pretty early and decided that I would check out my neighborhood and also try to find a grocery store so that I could stock up on items for the week. I had gotten in so late the night before and if you recall, I had no TP in the bathroom. (Unfortunately for the old plumbing I did find paper towels, which I used sparely.)
Anyway, I left my flat pretty early, maybe around 10am, and began my little journey. Well, apparently EVERYTHING is closed on Sundays. By about noon I began to see one or two café’s opened but nothing else. I keep thinking I’ll see something opened and finally spot a bakery. I’m really dying for regular food but I’m pretty much cross-eyed with hunger at this point so I have to stop. I try ordering the item that seems the simplest to pronounce, “Bigne da crema” or something like that. Of course I pronounced it wrong and more like “bignet”. I didn’t care. I had “food”. It was so good. YUM.
After that I figured the only areas open would be in the tourist filled centro so I headed there, found a store, found food, and was a happy camper.
Last weekend, I experience the same problem again. I’m walking forever through Trastevere and finally at about 4:30, I think I better stop and eat. I’m at the cross-eyed point and need to find something. (I’m not sure why I kept getting to this point.) Anyway, I pop into one place and he tells me know that they are closed. But, your patio is filled with people?? I go to the next restaurant and he tells me the same thing but adds the key word “pomeriggio” which is the afternoon. OH! I realize that they are closed for lunch and everyone was finishing lunch. I looked in my guidebook and found that ever restaurant pretty much closes around 3pm and re-opens around 7 or 8pm. Nuts. So once again I am wandering around looking for some place to eat and I don’t want a panino or pizza. I end up pulling the same routine I did on my first Sunday. I stumble into a bakery and order the one thing I can pronounce, “ravioli di ricotta”. YUM. It was the size of a scone but so light and airy. I really have to make sure I eat before I get cross-eyed because I always go to sugar once I’m at that point. I need that instant blood sugar hit.
So since most of my eating has been at home, I’ve been going to the grocery store by my flat a lot. I have seen some interesting things in there. One of my first trips there, I’m walking along looking at the meat section, trying to figure out what is what. You would think it would be easy with the popularity of Italian cooking but the store is another experience. I was shocked on one of my first trips to discover what I thought I read as being an in uterus baby lamb. It looked like a little hairless baby lamb - legs, eyes, and all laying on a Styrofoam plate and sealed in plastic. I was so freaked out. I had to bring this up in class. You should have heard me trying to explain this in quasi-Italian. I had to do sound effects of a baby lamb. Che significa baby lamb? Apparently this is a special Easter treat. The baby lamb has never had anything but it’s mother’s milk. In the intestine of the baby, the milk turns into a special cheese. They eat the whole thing. GROSS. They have boatloads of them at my store, which is apparently unusual.
I think I learn a lot on my grocery store trips. If I buy anything that has instructions on how to cook it, I’m usually in the kitchen with my dictionary looking up words.
I’d like to pull my dictionary out when I’m in the store but I’m a bit embarrassed. It goes back a long way to my first trip to Europe. I think I was ten. I remember very clearly being in an elevator with my family and there were some other French people in the elevator. I think we were in Paris. Anyway, I wanted the French people to think that I spoke French so I didn’t say anything in the elevator. I wanted to blend in, be chameleon-like. I’m sure my parents probably even spoke to me and I didn’t want to respond for fear that the French people would figure out my secret. Never mind that I was ten and in an elevator with people whom I looked like and who were speaking English. Oh well. I’m trying to not worry so much about blending in anymore.