Goodbye Italian Vacation Food, Hello Arugula and Chicken

One of the joys of traveling is discovering new foods, well maybe in the case of Italy is not so much discovering them, but allowing myself to eat them.  I have to say that the Roman diet is almost as unvaried as my at home diet, except that there it is full of pasta and bread and here, well, not so much.  

To me it is amazing how quickly I can get sick of pasta, which once was probably in my top five favorite foods.  Now Russ proved that he could eat Carbonara almost everyday, it is and has been his favorite food for a very long time.  On my last count he ate it seven times while we were away, of course it helped that he had a trio of different Carbonaras at one restaurant.  I did not know there were different ways of making what is basically a bacon, egg and cheese pasta dish, but I am wrong.  

As fun as it was to try gelato in interesting flavors like stracciatella, which is a vanilla base with tiny bits of chocolate, somewhat reminiscent of chocolate chip, but not the same since the chocolate is little flakes like angel wings in cream.  Describing it was almost better than eating it because I knew that I would have to pay the piper as soon as I got home.  

Do I think that the gelato combination cup of almond and dark chocolate was worth it?  Maybe, but ask me in three weeks when I am still trying to work off the vacation weight.  Overall taking a break from the salad life is good in small doses, but in no way can I live a vacation eating existence full time.

I had to get back in the groove right away.  Russ ran out for milk and blueberries first thing this morning so I could enjoy my regular cereal.   Salad for lunch, and salad for dinner.  I actually missed all my greens.  I also came home to a DVR full of missed shows, which made getting my steps easy while doing the vacation laundry.  Treadmill laundry folding should be a new Olympic sport or at least a good you tube video.

So goodbye artichoke paninis and hello grilled chicken.  I’ve actually missed you and am happy not to be reading menus and being tempted by descriptions of yummy sinful food.  Thank goodness we have no waiters at home placing bread baskets on the dinner table, actually thank goodness we have no bread at all.